rgy state of the early universe reproduced by the large mass of the “W” family of IVBs.) In the electroweak symmetric energy state the separate leptonic “species” (electrons, electron neutrinos, and their heavier kin) are collected into their common “generic” identity (“leptons”), and likewise the quark species into their generic identity (“hadrons”). Within each “genus”, transformations of “species” identity take place naturally, simply as a matter of course betweem congeneric members. This is the general principle underlying the IVB transformation mechanism. (See: “The ‘W’ IVB and the Weak Force Mechanism”.)
As the temperature continues to rise, spacetime goes through several more “phase transitions” which are symmetry states of successive unifications of the four forces. The “W” IVB mass “family” is gauged or scaled (by the Higgs boson) to the lowest or first in this hierarchy of force unification symmetry regimes, the electroweak unification energy level. (See: “The “Higgs” Boson and the Weak Force IVBs: Part I.)
Now in our imagination let us reverse the process and allow the “Big Bang” to proceed normally, expanding and cooling spacetime. Spacetime quickly cools below the point where it can act like a cosmic-sized IVB, and particles can only transform if they get caught in local “knots”, eddies, or fluctuations of sufficient metric energetic density. As spacetime continues to expand and cool, all the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs slowly disappear back beneath the “surface” of the virtual sea, the heaviest ones first and the lightest ones lingering the longest. The IVBs are among the first to go, and as the spacetime metric cools and expands, transformations among or between elementary particles become rarer and rarer because these very heavy metric particles or quantized “knots” of spacetime (the IVBs) are very expensive and hence very difficult to materialize, depending entirely on the temperature and energy density of the local spacetime metric. As spacetime passes through the phase transitions between three successive levels of force unification, a great deal of heat is released reflecting the loss of symmetry (analogously to the “heat of condensation” released by rain or freezing water). This energy materializes as the heat and particle-antiparticle pairs characteristic of the “Big Bang”.
“Real” (temporal) particles are left floating on the “surface” of the spacetime sea as it cools, while the virtual particles sink beneath the waves. They are all still there in unlimited potential, but are seen only if enough energy can be brought to bear locally to materialize them, to raise them to the surface of the “sea” and give them again a brief “life”.
In the Universe today, with the cosmic background radiation (the basal temperature of spacetime) at about 2.7K, the virtual particle sea is rarely seen because the spacetime metric is cold and energy sparse – a necessary condition, however, for our life form. But just occasionally, for very brief instants, due to quantum fluctuations of vacuum energy focused around and by the presence of a real particle, the particles of the “virtual sea” can be raised again to perform their former duties, like the ghostly crew of a phantom ship. The weak force IVBs are especially difficult to materialize because they are so heavy, hence weak force transformations are rare and for this reason the force is said to be “weak”.
I have called the weak force IVBs “metric particles”, because I conceive of them as simply quantized “knots” of very dense spacetime metric, whose “mass” is a consequence of the very great energy required to compress (and perhaps convolute) the spacetime metric to such a density and/or configuration. The IVBs simply recreate the very dense metric of the early moments of the Big Bang when all elementary particles were so close together that they could freely swap and exchange charges and energies amongst themselves without danger of violating any charge or energy conservation law – because being so close together (or actually “touching”), exchanges can happen very