Radioactivity Is Just Knot Untying
In the Standard Model, radioactivity is mysterious: you need three different mechanisms (strong, weak, electromagnetic) and a zoo of virtual particles.
In LIMA-QTE there is only one mechanism for all three types of radioactivity: a nucleus is a tightly interlocked three-knot system made of electromagnetic tubes. When one of those knots finds a lower-energy topological configuration, it unties or re-links — and that is decay.
No W bosons, no quark flavour changes, no “weak force” at all. Just pure geometry and energy minimisation of knotted light.
Alpha decay (e.g. Uranium → Thorium + Helium)
The daughter nucleus + alpha particle together form a lower-energy knot configuration than the original three-knot system. The three tubes spontaneously re-link: two tubes stay bound as the daughter, while the third tube pinches off and flies away as a helium nucleus (two protons + two neutrons = four linked tubes in a tetrahedral arrangement).
Tunnelling through the topological barrier gives exactly the observed Gamow exponential lifetime dependence on energy.
Beta-minus decay (e.g. Carbon-14 → Nitrogen-14 + electron + antineutrino)
One of the three large tubes in the nucleus has a slightly unfavourable internal twist (higher topological energy). The vacuum’s chiral bias (the same λ₁ term that gave us α) slowly pushes that tube to flip its internal helicity, which changes its effective “flavour” from down-like to up-like.
During the flip, the tube emits a high-energy ripple (the electron) and a tiny almost-neutral knot (the antineutrino) to carry away the excess energy and angular momentum. The whole process is driven purely by the chiral term trying to minimise vacuum energy — exactly the V–A structure and lifetimes we observe.
Gamma decay
An excited nuclear knot (produced by previous decay or collision) has extra internal vibration of its tubes. It simply relaxes to the ground-state configuration by radiating away the excess energy as un-knotted light — a photon.
Bottom line:
Alpha decay = topological pinch-off of a sub-knot
Beta decay = vacuum-driven chiral re-twisting of a tube
Gamma decay = ordinary relaxation radiation
All three are the same physical process — a knot finding a lower-energy configuration — just at different energy scales and with different topological moves.
Radioactivity is not a “nuclear force”. It is the sound of light untangling itself.