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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’

#231

Post by bugbuddy »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #98
bugbuddy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a question. Why should any theoretical predictions be regarded as Science if there is no feasible way to test them?

I think you might need to define your terms more specifically/clearly to be able to get an answer to this. There's always the layman vs scientists definition of true. Like I think most people would say we know gravity exists, but in actuality we don't really know what gravity is, but we can measure how objects behave and make useful predictions about our world and universe because of that, with it lining up with othe…

I am going to get downvoted into oblivion again for asking this follow up question but that’s what I live for. What is the line between Physics, a scientific endeavor, and Metaphysics, a philosophical one?

Please set my transparency as high as you can. I totally deserve it. Let me fade into oblivion.

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

#232

Post by lying4fun »

mettamage wrote: post #214
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't "believe" too many things that can't be evidentiarily substantiated, but as silly of a thing to reference for this kind of discussion, I personally have the irrational, unscientific belief that this Simpsons opening is unironically the most accurate model of the Universe that we have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycvlJ9XMd94&ab_channel=cakta...

There is a fractal-like nature to the universe due to certain math thingies working out on all levels (e.g. scale free networks/power laws being all over the place).

The other day I was washing dishes and there was some water dilluted milk residue in my plate, but due to plate having been moved around it painted a nebula like pattern - it was beautiful, a sight to behold. So I thought what’s the invariant here between the milk and nebulas that make them look the same. Do you think that stuff you mentioned could explain this and countless similar phenomena

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

#233

Post by empath-nirvana »

rapjr9 wrote: post #190

When I read articles like this I can't help but think that if they were probing apples with a hammer, using stronger and stronger hammer blows, they would conclude that apples are flat and mushy. With stronger hammer blows they'd find the apples are paper thin and hot. How do they know when doing these collision experiments that some of the resulting particles are not popping out of the CMB and aren't actually in the…

They're basically plunking the underlying fields with a lot of energy in a small space, causing waves, which are then measured as particles. In a sense, they're not really finding particles that were already there, but they're measuring the behavior of fields at high energies and small scales.

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

#234

Post by gus_massa »

hughesjj wrote: post #12
Tagbert wrote: post #4

Then there are neutrons that are like protons with just a little bit more. It's sort of like infinity + 1. Is it bigger or is it equal? (I know, infinity is not a number, really)

Wat? Neutrons are (primarily) UDD while protons are (primarily) UUD. Although I do wonder if this charm+anticharm ghost exists in other hadrons

> Neutrons are (primarily) UDD while protons are (primarily) UUD.

Yes, this is correct.

> Although I do wonder if this charm+anticharm ghost exists in other hadrons

Yes, neutrons and all the other hadrons have virtual pairs of char-anticharm quarks. (And some of them have actual charm or anticharm quarks.)

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

#235

Post by blueprint »

rvba wrote: post #213
blueprint wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you understand quantum theory correctly, you will realize that particles don't exist by themselves. They are a temporary localization. this means that the number of quarks inside a proton is not actually fixed. when a particle becomes disentangled with the system, that localized it, there's no longer a particle I mentioned this recently, in the context of the laziness in language, leading to the miseducation of…

What do you mean by "temporary localization"? That protons move? That they can poof? They dont seem to self destruct. On a side note: are there any models that assume that there are fields/shapes that are constanly bombarbed by neutrinos and other stuff. Thks bombardment seems to be always ignored

no, we're talking about quarks

or any isolated quantum systen

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

#236

Post by DonHopkins »

jiggawatts wrote: post #94
blackhaj7 wrote: post #49

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

Quantum mechanics is a religion with mathematics instead of just holy texts. Several studies have been done into whether practicing theoretical physicists using QM in their everyday work agree on the most basic tenets of the field. Spoiler: they disagree on every aspect while simultaneously assuming that their opinions are correct and that everyone else agrees with them. That’s how religions work, not how science doe…

[flagged]

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

#237

Post by empath-nirvana »

dvsfish wrote: post #209
rapjr9 wrote: post #190

When I read articles like this I can't help but think that if they were probing apples with a hammer, using stronger and stronger hammer blows, they would conclude that apples are flat and mushy. With stronger hammer blows they'd find the apples are paper thin and hot. How do they know when doing these collision experiments that some of the resulting particles are not popping out of the CMB and aren't actually in the…

I literally was just having a foggy version of this exact same thought whilst reading the article. Especially > "Researchers recently discovered that the proton sometimes includes a charm quark and charm antiquark, colossal particles that are each heavier than the proton itself." You articulated my feeling better than I could. Surely this is something the researchers have accounted for and there's a good explanation…

https://profmattstrassler.com/2022/09/09/protons-and-charm-q...

It's explained better here.

tl;dr; is that they are virtual particles and don't have the same mass as a "real" charm quark.

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

#238

Post by nojvek »

Balgair wrote: post #126
rolph wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It’s essentially asking why is the speed of light 299,798,452 m/s or the gravitational constant 6.67x10-11 Nm2/kg2

I’m sure a universe could work with those constants varied but that’s the one we have in our universe.

There could be hypothetical universes with protons being half of electron and atoms would have twice the protons.

However the fundamental constants are just that. A number that allows us to reason about how the universe works.

As to why the number is that, gotta ask your God why they chose that specific value.

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

#239

Post by wruza »

p1mrx wrote: post #198
wruza wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's "rather than" in this idea. You surely will perceive every state that is perceivable at all, but time and continuity have no meaning here. Specific history is just an image that always exists only for an instant. Eventually that universe might enumerate all states, so they'd form all sorts of sequences, but that's coincidental.

Sure, such a universe would create all states, but if perception from chaos were possible, then there would be overwhelmingly more chaotic states to perceive than sensible ones, so you would expect to find yourself perceiving chaos. I think perception cannot exist without a robust evolutionary history to build upon, which is why you perceive something sensible.

It depends on what we see as "perception". Imagine in our regular universe model, the "perceptor" quickly switched between all creatures just like a CPU core switches between all busy processes. That wouldn't invalidate any of the creatures/processes "experience" and wouldn't mix them (ignoring cache, processes aren't that isolated really). All these processes are transient states of the same physical CPU core.

Back to the chaotic universe, the "perceptor" switches between the states, every state is a complete picture. Yes it does see more chaotic states, but they don't leak into each other, including through expectations. There's no memory outside of a state that it could accumulate and experience continuously. Eons of state changes pass between two attoseconds, but there's no way to remember.

That's what I mean by perception. In-frameset perception obviously has to be continuous to make (or not make) sense.

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

#240

Post by strogonoff »

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…

Don’t take things described by physical models (proton, electron, the idea of “charge”, etc.) at too much of a face value.

All it is is a web of predictions: we do A then B seems to happen, reliably. We then transform it into a story of sorts, to categorize and classify, find patterns and correlations—that’s just how our minds work—and those models are useful, as they create shortcuts for more useful predictions—but it’s all too easy to start thinking of entities these models describe as if they were real, concrete things (that’s also how our minds work).

I recommend to maintain a sort of Schrödinger’s treatment (they exist if convenient, but otherwise they don’t really) for things described in physical models, because none of the above-mentioned categorization and classification is set in stone. None of it can be proven to be objectively true, unless you have some sort of exclusive access to the fabric of underlying reality that bypasses your consciousness.

With that in mind, you would see that the weird coincidences are not that problematic. It just means there is a better model out there, and that will always be the case.

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