Electron capture doesn’t contradict “electrons don’t fall into protons.” In an atom, the electron isn’t a tiny ball spiraling inward; it’s a stable quantum state.
But for inner orbitals there’s still some chance of finding the electron right at the nucleus. if the nucleus can lower its energy by turning a proton into a neutron, the weak interaction can use that overlap and the capture happens. so it’s not an electromagnetic “collapse”; it’s a weak nuclear transition that only becomes possible in certain nuclei.
My point is that a deeper microdynamics can still reproduce the familiar quantum phenomenology (including Dirac as the macroscopic limit); what would separate it from "repackaging or pseudo-theory" is if it actually predicts the physical constants and transition behavior that the standard model largely treats as input or has no idea about them, rather than explaining them.
But for inner orbitals there’s still some chance of finding the electron right at the nucleus. if the nucleus can lower its energy by turning a proton into a neutron, the weak interaction can use that overlap and the capture happens. so it’s not an electromagnetic “collapse”; it’s a weak nuclear transition that only becomes possible in certain nuclei.
My point is that a deeper microdynamics can still reproduce the familiar quantum phenomenology (including Dirac as the macroscopic limit); what would separate it from "repackaging or pseudo-theory" is if it actually predicts the physical constants and transition behavior that the standard model largely treats as input or has no idea about them, rather than explaining them.