I Can Prove Neutrons don't Decay by Quarks Transforming.

[Talanum46]

I can prove neutrons don't decay by quarks transforming:

Proof:

Take the reaction:

u + e^- -> d + electron neutrino. (1)

Since this is called "electron capture" the electron could not have changed into an electron neutrino. Therefore the neutrino got produced illegally. Hence the reaction couldn't have happened like this.

If we rewrite this as:

u + e^- + electron antineutrino + electron neutrino -> d + electron neutrino(2)

and then cancel the electron neutrino on both sides we get:

u + e^- + electron antineutrino -> d.

This reaction in turn cannot happen because the electron antineutrino would have illegally ceased to exist. Instead we need to find a way to let the electron and electron antineutrino combine into energy. We can build throwards this by assuming the electron and electron antineutrino binds to form an anti-ud. So we have:

u + anti-ud -> d + anti-uu.

This can be done since the anti-uu can annihilate into energy. This reaction can happen. It also fits the data and would look like the process of (1) since a neutrino can also be produced (see (2)) and the Anti-uu annihilation energy can be absorbed by the neutrino. We therefore see that the only thing that could have happened is that the u and d changed places, and that quark transformation didn't happen. QED.

With this logic neutron decay happens as follows:

udd + anti-uu > uud + anti-ud > uud + e^- + electron antineutrino.

Saying that: the d (charge -1/3) changes into a u (charge 2/3) by emitting a W-minus (charge -1) by charge conservation is coupling the numbers to the quarks and the operation "plus" to the W-minus via someone's mind. Physics does not read minds. If you were to implement these numbers and operation physically you would run into the problem of not being able to describe the transformation in detail. My way does describe the process.

You also can't write the in between state (d/u-virtual W-minus is undefined). I can, it is: d-anti-uu, and the reaction then proceeds by minimization of energy. One may even draw an animated picture of how the swap happens.

Reference:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture