Space as an Ether Crystal:A Unified Model of Gravity, Electromagnetism, Light, and Matter by Ors Marton

Classical physics describes gravity, electromagnetism, and light with extraordinary precision but not what they are. This paper proposes a unified mechanical model: they are consequences of space being a crystal of spinning spheres. The crystal elements — hyphons — are packed in the same face-centred cubic arrangement as atoms in a silver crystal. Light is a transverse wave in this crystal, governed by the same wave mechanics as transverse sound in silver. The proton is a vortex configuration in the lattice with a bound positron crowdion that gives it charge +1e. The neutron is the same vortex with an additional bound electron, cancelling the charge. The free electron is a crowdion — an extra atom forced into a close-packed row, creating a propagating disturbance. Crowdions are well-studied in real metals; this paper identifies the electron as the same defect at the hyphon scale. Every proton and neutron is a vortex that creates a pressure drop propagating as a 1/r field — this is gravity. Charge is lattice distortion: each crowdion carries a localized strain pattern; same-type strain patterns overlap constructively and repel, opposite-type patterns cancel where they overlap and attract. The strong force is surface contact between nucleon vortices in rock salt ordering. The weak force is the energy threshold for an electron to escape the neutron's bound configuration; beta decay is this escape. New in v13: explicit confidence stratification distinguishing well-grounded components (lattice, light, gravity, time dilation, neutrino as longitudinal wave, electrons and positrons as crowdions) from exploratory ones (detailed proton geometry, the §9 quantitative calculations, cosmological extensions). Charge mechanism rewritten using the established Frenkel-Kontorova kink interaction physics. Polar-crystal LO/TO selection rule cited as the empirical analogue for the source-geometry rule of light vs. neutrino emission. New cosmological extensions (§2.5): cosmological redshift as lattice stretching with energy conservation restored; the Big Bang reinterpreted as a local collision event; multiverse as scale-invariant nesting of dense lattice patches in unstructured ether; heat death as loss of structured space itself. Origin of matter (§2.4.3) reformulated via winding conservation and absorption into black hole interiors. The fine-structure-constant chain (§9) explicitly framed as a consistency check rather than a prediction. This is a preprint upload.