In two words, “Population Pressure”

Like gravity, strong, and electromagnetic forces, the weak one is also powered by the pull of links.  Cause and effects are so indirect however, that mainline science still has nothing approaching a full explanation.  In this case, tugs of the links cause continuous motion of source and termination couplings on particles. 

This bumping and jostling about will just naturally try to spread couplings around (entropy).  They are just link couplings and do not “know” one particle from another.  The weak force is the ‘population pressure’ that makes source and termination couplings migrate from one particle to another that has more ‘real estate’.

Depicted above is a hapless inert aggregation which drifts into contact with a neutron in a uranium nucleus.  Only an inert aggregation without mass can slip inside an atom this way, let alone cozy up to a nuclear particle.

The aggregation does not immediately recoil, because it is without inertia, and this allows time for the migration.

This is corroboration for the existence of inert aggregations introduced on the “Main” page. They are discussed in detail on the “Natural Gravity Shields” page and mentioned on the following pages: “Why are all Electrons the Same?”, and “What Happened to all the Antimatter?”  

For the first time, the root of the weak force is explained and unifies it with gravity, strong, and EM forces.

The aftermath of this migration is what makes weak interactions so unique and weird.  Having lost couplings, an internal down quark becomes an up quark and the neutron changes into a proton.  Needless to say, the uranium of which it is a part also changes to a different element, Fig. 1.

This is not a new union of different particles but a change of fundamental nature from one particle to another.  Changing a particle’s identity ‘mid stream’ this way is an embarrassing violation of parity and conservation laws that has been observed repeatedly.

The inert aggregation now has a problem because of its ill gotten gains of couplings which support extra links.  The pull of each link is extra mass.  In this case, more terminating than source couplings were in the migration so the aggregation also took on an unwanted charge. 

Its whole perfect balance has been destroyed and it becomes “visible” (W or Z particle) as it is forced to reorganize its links.  In order to regain balance, the aggregation must get rid of the excess mass and charge.  The easiest thing to do is abandon links to an electron.  Now with more links on the ‘side’ away from the aggregation, the electron is pulled away at any speed up to nearly that of light.  A positron would be the next most ideal particle to jettison but that

would be removing a bit too much.  The aggregation does eject a positron but only after stripping most of its couplings and redistributing them internally, (a secondary migration).  The stripped positron is what we recognize as an antineutrino.  This particle has only a couple of links (very little mass and no charge) in the direction facing away from the aggregation.  With no ‘side’ links at all to shear, the antineutrino takes off at full light speed. 

At this point, two things can happen to the aggregation: a) all internal links regain complete balance so the aggregation appears without mass to the outside world and promptly disappears again.  b) satisfaction is not quite achieved so the unstable W or Z aggregation quickly breaks up (decays).

A casual observer of this “nuclear beta decay” sees only a neutron apparently decaying into a proton, electron and antineutrino.   Scientists now know it is not quite “decay” because while the neutron gets changed into a proton, the electron and antineutrino do not come out of the neutron.

The weak force is involved in everything from nuclear beta decay and muon decay to high energy collisions of neutrinos with other particles of matter.  The details and final products may vary but migration is always at the heart of it and identity changes are common. 

Decades of experiments and theoretical work by many scientists have revealed great complexity and many weird effects in these interactions.

For the brief instants that the inert aggregations are “visible” as very massive particles, they have been dubbed virtual W⁺, W^-, and Z⁰ particles, depending on charges involved in the interaction.  It is now understandable why these bosons are said to “carry” the weak force, but they actually shuttle link couplings (for mass and charge).  The weak force of population pressure is always what moves the couplings onto or off the normally inert aggregation.