a proton, in the simplist version, is made of 3 quarks. two up quarks one down quark. down qwark is -1/3 e ; up quark is +2/3 e. they sum up to +1 e. neutrons are the opposite made of 3 quarks. two down quarks one up quark. and sum to 0e the unitary quantity is a conveinience. 1 e = 1.602176634×10−19 coulombs,
Yes, yes, I also understand this. But why are they in units of 1/3(e). Why are down quarks not -0.398390847895...(e) and up quarks not +0.6234098129034809234...(e). Why do they add up so damn neatly?
Because they are mathematical models built to describe a thing and thus their entire purpose as a concept is to add up “neatly”
First, I am not a physicist. That said, he's my attempt at an answer that satisfies me: Part of the reason is charge quantization. Neither could be some fractional charge. We also observe charge conservation and electromagnetic force laws as described by quantum electrodynamics (QED). These necessitate that the electron and proton charges be precisely balanced for the universe to function as it does.
But in fact, quarks are fractionally charged: +2/3 and -1/3. For this to work, there have to be as many quarks in the proton as the denominator of the quark charge fraction. (And what mechanism forces that?) And why should the charges on quarks be some nice low-number fraction of the charge on the electron? Why not sqrt(3) or something?
a proton, in the simplist version, is made of 3 quarks. two up quarks one down quark. down qwark is -1/3 e ; up quark is +2/3 e. they sum up to +1 e. neutrons are the opposite made of 3 quarks. two down quarks one up quark. and sum to 0e the unitary quantity is a conveinience. 1 e = 1.602176634×10−19 coulombs,
Yes, yes, I also understand this. But why are they in units of 1/3(e). Why are down quarks not -0.398390847895...(e) and up quarks not +0.6234098129034809234...(e). Why do they add up so damn neatly?
Could be a bit of anthropic principle at play. Universes where things don't work out with some stability might not support chemistry, and biology is especially finicky chemistry.
a proton, in the simplist version, is made of 3 quarks. two up quarks one down quark. down qwark is -1/3 e ; up quark is +2/3 e. they sum up to +1 e. neutrons are the opposite made of 3 quarks. two down quarks one up quark. and sum to 0e the unitary quantity is a conveinience. 1 e = 1.602176634×10−19 coulombs,
How does 2/3 - 1/3 not sum to 1/3? 2-1 is 1, right? What am I missing?
2 up quarks, so 2/3 * 2 -> 4/3. And then 4/3 - 1/3 = 3/3 = 1
That's a variation on the anthropic principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle Maybe a kind of observer bias. If the universe weren't seemingly-perfectly balanced to allow emergent complexity in matter, we wouldn't be here to point out how seemingly-perfect it seems. (If you subscribe to a multiverse interpretation, perhaps most of the infinitely many other possible universes are dead and void.)
An interesting point. How about the universe kept starting and collapsing/crashing in an infinite loop until by chance the electron and the proton had the exact charge and the universe as it is now could go beyong the initial stage and could continue? ( Ok this feels like a trial an error of somebody playing universe ).
How about the universe that quantum-emerges in a truly random sequence of quasistates which disintegrate immediately, and once in a while it happens to be the state that includes "your" "memory" of the previous ones. I mean chronologically from your perspective, they don't even have to appear in order.
By an amazing coincidence, this particular "frameset" is logically consistent and pretty boring, so you have no intergalactic empires, no magic, and no job.
Technically it requires faith to assert that the universe did not have its origin from some intelligent supernatural being, just as it does to assert the opposite. The only thing we can truly say based on the data is "we don't know for certain at this time".
No, it doesn't (at least not if you are adhering to the scientific method). This is a very common bit of religious propaganda, and it is 100% wrong. Intelligence has some very specific and readily identifiable characteristics. In particular, it has high Kolmogorov complexity [1]. This is what distinguishes intelligence from other forms of complexity, like chaos or the decimal expansions of irrational numbers. And the…
> at least not if you are adhering to the scientific method
All the information you have comes from your five senses. Isn't some kind of faith necessary to believe that the scientific method would lead to an accurate understanding of reality?
Maybe all the other instances crashed, but we got lucky and get to apply the anthropic principle. The real question is, are we running on bare metal, in a VM, or in a container?
> The real question is, are we running on bare metal, in a VM, or in a container? We can't be running on the bare hardware; there is clearly an OS enforcing the hardware abstraction (e.g. every electron is identical). But is each universe its own process? What happens if you fork()?
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
> I have no doubt quantum physicists know what they are talking about but...I always think it is the kind of excuse a schoolkid would give their teachers for their calculations being wrong. Just to emphasize how extreme this dichotomy is, not only is quantum mechanics correct (in that it's a predictive model), it's the most correct physical theory humans have ever devised in that the measurements there have more sign…
So many significant digits includes a level of self-consistency of the model, since we are assuming the model to some degree in order to measure it. Though in this case, it's not the calculations that are wrong, but the model, we hope is wrong. That is, a new perspective and a new way of thinking about things may reveal more. Of course, we are always fighting against the irreducible complexity camp. However, the fundamental lack of cohesion between quantum and relativistic theories demonstrates there is at least one big thing we are still doing wrong.
