I'm open to all official answers as well as intuitive speculations. Einstein seemed capable of coming up with kinaesthetic and geometrical metaphors to describe the results of his equations. I was wondering if anything comparable has been done with charge. A set of mathematical formulae only .001% of humanity understands is one thing. But a real explanation should make sense to the average joe on the street. If not then you haven't done a very good job at explaining have you? In any case, I'm open to the fact that we probably don't understand near as much as we think we do. I see science as a map. You can make accurate predictions from it. You can even define your location in terms of its coordinates and place names. Nevertheless, the fact remains that "the map is not the territory" and never will be. Sometimes we need to put the map down and just observe the mystery that surrounds us. Asking intelligible questions seems one way of doing that.
Why Anything?
The human condition is such that it often just prematurely halts at a word, such as ‘God’, for the believers, or ‘matter’ or ‘forever’, for anyone.
The Cosmos or its basis, meaning All, not just our locality or universe, must be eternal, or it wouldn’t be every-when, as well as infinite, or it wouldn’t be everywhere, and so the prime and causeless mover must have these attributes, requiring nothing else but itself. Nor can the ultimate basis be a complex composite, for these are not fundamental, but come later. (‘God’ is out, too.) The ultimate basis must be the simplest state.
As for matter, it has many particulars, such as its total amount and its individual properties of spin, charge, form, size, mass, location matter vs. antimatter state, and other specifics, or limitations, such as that there are only two stable matter particles, the electron/positron and the proton/antiproton, and only one stable energy particle, the photon. (Neutrons decay.)
We cannot just stop at the word ‘matter’ and just say that it is what what was around forever, for one simply cannot have an eternal something already made and defined in all of its particulars without it ever having been made and defined in the first place that never was. Impossible.
So, where does this leave us? We are fine, for there is/was literally nothing to make the original stuff of, anyway, and no way around this fact; so, ‘nothing’ must be the answer, it also being the simplest state, one that is necessarily perfectly unstable, for it cannot be at all or stay as such. So, the vacuum fluctuates, making the vacuum a ‘vacuum’. Movement is natural, not stillness. Existence is a positive/negative distribution of nonexistence. ‘Nothing’ is the only candidate for the prime mover.
Welcome to zero-sum physics; (and ‘nothing’ is exactly the opposite of ‘God’.) Look about; there are particles of opposite polarity of charge and matter/antimatter states; the weak force opposes the strong force; the positive kinetic energy of stuff is canceled by the negative potential energy of gravity, etc., for an equation of a zero balance had to replace the cause and effect that could not have gone on forever beneath.
What does all this have to do with charge?
It is the opposite polarity of charge that nullifies all of existence in the overview, but not in actuality, for nothing cannot be.
Zero-sum physics perhaps started here:
Einstein as a near traffic fatality…
George Gamow told in his book, ‘My world line’, how he was conversing with Albert Einstein while walking through Princeton in the 1940s. Gamow casually mentioned that one of his colleagues [Pascual Jordan] had pointed out to him that according to Einstein’s equations a star could be created out of nothing at all, because [at point zero] its negative gravitational energy [mass defect] precisely cancels out [is equal to] its positive mass energy [rest mass].
“Einstein stopped in his tracks,” says Gamow, “And, since we were crossing a street, several cars had to stop to avoid running us down”.
Now that we know of this zero-balance requirement, we might use it as a reason for the necessity of conservation laws, in some way.
What about the word ‘eternal’ or ‘forever’? We need go on to the implications, for forever systems are their own precursors. No first matter making light; no first light making matter. No first anything.
How? Opposite pair production, perhaps.
