Quarks.
Our current understanding of the atomic nucleus looks pretty incomplete and messy. In particular the explanations of why u and d quarks with a mass of just a few MeV each combine to form protons and neutrons with masses of nearly a thousand MeV don’t look particularly convincing.
The HD8 hypothesis suggests that particle generation arises from a particular type of higher dimensional ‘spin’ or vorticitation.
Now we commonly observe particles that appear to have come from a state of superposition immediately prior to the observation or measurement that kills the superposition. (HD8 assigns these superpositions to extra time dimensions.)
We have observed that neutrinos appear to fluctuate between three generations whilst in flight, or alternatively that any one generation of neutrino could perhaps consist of a superposition of various amounts of all three generations.
Thus perhaps, whilst confined in nucleons what we call d quarks actually consist of a superposition of various amounts of d,s and b quark, and that u quarks actually consist of superpositions of various amounts of u,c, and t quarks.
The second and third generations of matter would then appear not as bizarrely exotic and apparently unnecessary components of the universe but as entirely integral to it, for without some contribution from the generational spin components of say bottom and top quarks, protons and neutrons would not have much mass at all.
Conventional provisional hypotheses of light valence quarks surrounded by heavy clouds of virtual quarks and gluons seem rather baroque.
At the moment this remains a bit of a handwaving idea, the maths may follow eventually.
Aha, I just noticed that the Bottom Sigma baryon (ddb) has a mass of 5815 MeV, whilst the Bottom Xi baryon (dsb) has a mass of 5790 MeV.
How come the replacement of a down quark by a heavier strange quark lowers the mass?
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Above see Yog-Sothoth as rendered by the Artist for our forthcomming Esotericon and Portals of Chaos (EPOCH)