AN INTERPRETATION OF THE TOP-QUARK MASS IN TERMS OF A PROTON MASS DOUBLET IN GENERAL-RELATIVITY

The recent experimental discovery of the ''top quark'' reveals it to h ave a mass of (199 +/- 20) GeV. The data is interpreted as a fractiona lly charged quark, within the Standard Model. This interpretation is c onsistent in the experimentation with the predictions of various chann els of decay of the colliding particles <p(p)over bar> --> <t(t)over b ar>, yielding as final, observed particles the leptons e (+/-) and mu (+/-). This paper proposes an alternative interpretation of these data in terms of the mass doublets in general relativity, predicted by thi s author's theory. It was found earlier in this theory that e (+/-) an d mu (+/-) would be the end products of the <p(p)over bar> interaction , and that the ''heavy electron'' of the electron mass doublet has all of the physical properties of the muon, and that the heavy-proton com ponent of the proton doublet has a mass that is 193 GeV. The latter is in agreement with the measured top-quark mass, within the experimenta l accuracy. The crucial difference between this theory in general rela tivity and the quark theory in QCD is that the heavy proton has integr al charge, while that of the quark is a fractional value. The direct m easurement of the charge of t could then settle the difference between these two theories.