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Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#41

Post by SECProto »

aap_ wrote: post #26
andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #18

I just had a really stupid thought, after finishing reading the article. So, the electron is an elementary particle, right? Compared to the proton, the electron is "simple", yes? Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person). my question is... why? why must pr…

Charge is quantized. You cannot have just any amount of electric charge. An electron has three elementary units of negative charge, quarks have -1 and 2. Whether it's a coincidence that proton and electron charge are of the same magnitude (and the neutron is neutral) is another question, but at the elementary level you don't have that much choice for what the charge of a particle is.

> quarks have -1 and 2.

Wikipedia suggests the quarks that make up the proton have charge ⅔e and -⅓e

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_quark

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_quark

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#42

Post by mianos »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #18

I just had a really stupid thought, after finishing reading the article. So, the electron is an elementary particle, right? Compared to the proton, the electron is "simple", yes? Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person). my question is... why? why must pr…

Imagine you have a bunch of fulcrums in the air and items droping down. If the things that land on the fulcrums don't balance each other out the fulcrum tips and the items keep dropping. Eventually all the fulcrums are balanced.

A lot of these things coalesce until they are stable enough they don't fall apart. If there is a stable form and you have enough of them, eventually you get a lot of stable forms.

It is not some magical thing that makes all this balance, it is more of a settling thing where things eventually drop to a stable state. There is lots of matter that is still unstable.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#44

Post by bigbillheck »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38
Tagbert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard neutrons described as a union of a proton and an electron based on masses. The reality is probably much more complex.

> neutrons described as a union of a proton and an electron based on masses If you squish an electron and proton really hard, you'll get a neutron [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_degeneracy_pressure

And a neutrino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#46

Post by lisper »

bmartin13 wrote: post #43

[flagged]

You are objectively wrong. It requires no faith. There is simply no evidence for an intelligent being at the root of creation, no data that cannot be explained with much simpler mechanisms than intelligence. The proton is complicated by human standards, but it still is nowhere near as complicated as intelligence. You can't have a conversation with a proton.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#47

Post by bradrn »

SECProto wrote: post #41
aap_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge is quantized. You cannot have just any amount of electric charge. An electron has three elementary units of negative charge, quarks have -1 and 2. Whether it's a coincidence that proton and electron charge are of the same magnitude (and the neutron is neutral) is another question, but at the elementary level you don't have that much choice for what the charge of a particle is.

> quarks have -1 and 2. Wikipedia suggests the quarks that make up the proton have charge ⅔e and -⅓e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_quark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_quark

The post you’re replying to seems to be taking ⅓e as the basic unit of charge.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#48

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bigbillheck wrote: post #44
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> neutrons described as a union of a proton and an electron based on masses If you squish an electron and proton really hard, you'll get a neutron [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_degeneracy_pressure

And a neutrino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_capture

If I understand correctly, which I probably don't, this is what releases the final wave of neutrinos in a supernova.

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#49

Post by blackhaj7 »

I have no doubt quantum physicists know what they are talking about but when I read stuff like:

“changes its appearance depending on how it is probed"

"you can’t even imagine how complicated it is"

"the proton contains traces of particles called charm quarks that are heavier than the proton itself"

I always think it is the kind of excuse a schoolkid would give their teachers for their calculations being wrong

Re: Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’

#50

Post by metricspaces »

rimunroe wrote: post #37
andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #18

I just had a really stupid thought, after finishing reading the article. So, the electron is an elementary particle, right? Compared to the proton, the electron is "simple", yes? Despite this difference in complexity, an electron has a charge of -e and a proton has a charge of +e. They are exactly complementary regarding charge (if I am understanding right, I am not a smart person). my question is... why? why must pr…

So first off: charge is quantized. Glossing over some weird particles (like quarks) which can't exist by themselves an integer multiple of e as their charge. It's been a while since I finished undergrad so my knowledge is rusty, but I don't recall any isolatable particles whose charge wasn't -1e, 0, or 1e. If that's the case, the easiest explanation for why they have the same charge is that if they didn't have opposi…

clearly related to measure (in the abstract sense) and harmonics of natural numbers. what has fascinated me for years has been the sense that we need to rebuild number up using complex numbers and harmonic measures. what we get are still numbers but no longer this monotonic sequence which is a ‘lazy’ or ‘simple minded’ way of ordering N. when ordered by harmonic measures of primes, N itself has structure (beyond a simple incrementing list) but the order is strictly limited to measures provided (rational) with the prime roots of the measure. (an example is the ‘primorial’ harmonic measure of {2, 3, 5} - think rings).

in these harmonic measures, ‘gaps’ between various levels naturally would arise from simple (x) op. For non-relative prime members, the mapping n x n is all over the place but for relative prime members, n x n always results in another relative prime in the ring, so, naturally those ‘lines’ are ‘stable’ and ‘in phase’ so ‘manifested’.

in other words, there is stuff in the R realm — in between ‘quanta’ — but we’re not allowed, capable, ever, of seeing or measureing it.[edit: as in they ‘exist’ in the same realm that (sqrt -1) i exists in — an unseen realm we call ‘imaginary’..]

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