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How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

quantamagazine.org

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Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#11

Post by rwmj »

jerf wrote: post #6
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #4

Not being a Physicist, I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing. Might there have been a point in time (long ago) where the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?

You don't have to wonder, because they are. They're manifestations of fields. I think it is a reasonable answer to tell people "if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for". That doesn't invalidate this question in general, though the number of different answers from people looking at the same thing suggests it may be underspecif…

To me that raises the opposite question, why are there so few fields? (Compared to what I'd imagine, infinite)

[Edit: I suppose I'm imagining waves or frequencies of waves, rather than fields, hence why in my imagination there would be an infinite variety]

Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#12

Post by GroksBarnacles »

Noaidi wrote: post #8
jerf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to wonder, because they are. They're manifestations of fields. I think it is a reasonable answer to tell people "if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for". That doesn't invalidate this question in general, though the number of different answers from people looking at the same thing suggests it may be underspecif…

> They're manifestations of fields. Or wave. Everything is a quantum wave. https://www.vlatkovedral.com/everything-in-the-universe-is-a...

A wave is already what we call a manifestation of a field, maybe I skimmed too quickly but I don't get the author's breakthrough point.

Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#13

Post by Filligree »

rwmj wrote: post #11
jerf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to wonder, because they are. They're manifestations of fields. I think it is a reasonable answer to tell people "if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for". That doesn't invalidate this question in general, though the number of different answers from people looking at the same thing suggests it may be underspecif…

To me that raises the opposite question, why are there so few fields? (Compared to what I'd imagine, infinite) [Edit: I suppose I'm imagining waves or frequencies of waves, rather than fields, hence why in my imagination there would be an infinite variety]

Not all fields interact with all other fields. You can think of them as a loosely coupled graph…

There might be any number of graph components with no connectivity to our fields at all, and we’d never know. Assuming, of course, that we’re including gravity in this logic.

There’s also might be any number of arbitrarily complex components which are only connected through gravity. That’s a decent candidate for what the dark sector actually is.

Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#14

Post by GroksBarnacles »

Noaidi wrote: post #9
colejohnson66 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the various string theory proponents start from. There's "too many" different subatomic particles, so there surely must be something smaller that they're composed of?

How long can you break something apart until you cannot any longer? The things we are breaking apart are illusions in a sense. There will always be a smaller particle because that is what we are looking for. When we understand that everything that we see is a manifestation of a probability wave, then we will understand everything is a wave and end these foolish experiments.

Do you have a meaningful quantitative explanation with some math we can start building tech on, or will that require some... experiments?

Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#16

Post by jiug »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #4

Not being a Physicist, I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing. Might there have been a point in time (long ago) where the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?

Even though "particle photon" and "wave photon" are used alternatively, they are just convenient ways of talking about the behavior of the same "photon field". The same way when we say "it is raining" we don't mean that there is a "it" that "rains", we should try avoid taking these descriptions too literally.

That being said, is difficult because we are using language to describe very-much-not-everyday stuff. We all need mental hooks to anchor new knowledge and most of our intuition is based on the classical (not-quantum) world aroud us.

Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#17

Post by Noaidi »

krapp wrote: post #10
Noaidi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long can you break something apart until you cannot any longer? The things we are breaking apart are illusions in a sense. There will always be a smaller particle because that is what we are looking for. When we understand that everything that we see is a manifestation of a probability wave, then we will understand everything is a wave and end these foolish experiments.

I'll be sure to inform all of the physicists that @Noaidi on Hacker News has solved physics and that they can go home.

https://www.vlatkovedral.com/about/

Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#18

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jerf wrote: post #6
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #4

Not being a Physicist, I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing. Might there have been a point in time (long ago) where the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?

You don't have to wonder, because they are. They're manifestations of fields. I think it is a reasonable answer to tell people "if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for". That doesn't invalidate this question in general, though the number of different answers from people looking at the same thing suggests it may be underspecif…

In QFT every particle type has its own field.

Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#19

Post by rwmj »

EwanG wrote: post #3

As usual, the hard problem is how you define "Elementary" which is why the posters always show 17, and then you get numbers that go as high as 995.5 (and the .5 is an interesting result as well).

Isn't it just a thing that cannot be broken into / explained as a combination of more elementary things? ie. as far as we know an electron is an elementary particle because it can't be split into smaller components nor is there any evidence that it contains something smaller (unlike, say, an atom or a proton).

Re: How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?

#20

Post by antonvs »

jerf wrote: post #6
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #4

Not being a Physicist, I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing. Might there have been a point in time (long ago) where the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?

You don't have to wonder, because they are. They're manifestations of fields. I think it is a reasonable answer to tell people "if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for". That doesn't invalidate this question in general, though the number of different answers from people looking at the same thing suggests it may be underspecif…

> if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for

Definitely. It's rather strange that the OP article doesn't even mention the word "field". It seems that people in general have a hard time letting go of the idea of particles as fundamental.

A good overview of this is "There are no particles, there are only fields" (https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616) by physics prof Art Hobson.

Fields collapse the zoo described in the article significantly, because particles and antiparticles arise from the same field, and similarly, spin, polarization, and helicity are properties of the same field. Taking this into account, the 118 particles number that the article reaches at one point drops to 37 fields.

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