Steve,
Pardon my posting this way instead of logging in, lot's of reasons including some(thing)body getting my email address and wanting me to buy a new bathroom, meaning its hunting my bank routing number.
We aren't going to agree, of course, but so what? But we have similar conceptual issues. In a sense I agree that matter decay is the source of force, but I treat it as attenuation of density rather than decay. I can get my head around Black Holes being where mass:energy goes to die, and I don't think that *information* is so exclusive that there can't be more of the same to be generated in natural course.
I had read your 2017 FQXI contest essay which is half the length of most entries, so there would be much not addressed in that brief abstract. And Physics in general is one big measurement problem, so I'll let the arguments rest with you about a collapsing universe. I do see something of a similarity with Lorentz' model of an electron which he shelved as a work in progress in the explosive advent of Quantum Mechanics. I have long thought that he had been on the right track for developing a classical model of particulate matter. He found that the greater the value of charge, the smaller its radius of measure. Which of course goes to density. But as with General Relativity, there is no proposed hypothesis for predicting a proportionate upper density bound. And if you go global with that in aggregate of discrete matter:action, it isn't surprising that the resulting math would be a contracting spatial parameter. Over in the "Thermo Demonics" article I proposed a proportional density limit which I've had success with, it's in one of a number of anonymous posts that led up to a brief overview of my pet working model. So I'm am a little curious of what your reasoning was in proposing the c/alpha relationship, as a determinant of charge radius?
I have to be careful with 'phase' it can be two different things. An oscillation, or a state. - jrc