Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

quantamagazine.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 591 posts

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

#311

Post by blueprint »

anon84873628 wrote: post #280
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…

I was ready to up vote until the third paragraph. Reading your other comments down thread doesn't paint you in a good light. Maybe your argument about laziness in language wasn't as cogent as you thought. Maybe you aren't as good at presenting arguments as you thought. In other words, maybe you need some humility.

yeah maybe

but if you knew for sure you'd be able to be sure of that and also show the proof

instead what you did is present the impression that you had which is a synthesis of what you encountered and what was in you from the past.

If you study much philosophy, you'll have to admit the fact that a large number of people turn away from what is true. It's not pleasant to you, I know. nor is it pleasant for you to see the product of the system that you want to close your eyes to talking to you in an unpleasant manner.

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

#312

Post by oldandtired »

nojvek wrote: post #238
Balgair wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The first thing to point out here is that the

> the speed of light

is not

> 299,798,452 m/s

It is quite inaccurate to say this. The correct way to phrase this is that the speed of light is 1/sqrt(permeability * permittivity) of the medium through which the light is traveling.

For a perfect vacuum, these two properties of that vacuum give a result as specified above. For other specified medium, you will get a different value, which could be greater than or less than the above figure.

Little technicalities matter in such cases, as it opens up the discussion. Part of that discussion is that solar space or interstellar space or intergalactic space will have distributions of matter that can alter what the speed of light is away from the assumed perfect vacuum speed of light.

Simple assumptions such as perfect vacuum are quite likely to affect how accurate our models of the universe are. The problem for us is that we are here and not out there making actual on location measurements of the permittivity and permeability of the relevant regions. The assumptions made in our models can come back and bite us in the long term.

Now as for the models we use currently for proton and neutron structure, there are assumptions here that could well be misleading us even though our models appear to work. There are alternate models available (since at least the early 20th century) which have, as far as I know, not been investigated with any detailed effort. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that these alternatives are actually viable, but we don't really know at this time.

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

#313

Post by blueprint »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #246
blueprint wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that may be true, but I'm already highly trained at that. But hey, what if you just ratchet up the difficulty to infinity. Then it will train people even better. Either that or it'll destroy the community because you dont have any criterion of right and wrong in your claim. It doesnt matter how correct people are. The more correct people are the worse they're treated. The better we get at presenting true arguments th…

What's the lie that needs to be admitted?

the lie i meant is if people claim to want to know what they dont yet. it usually happens without their realization.

look in the history of the greater philosophers

you see it in the mechanism of narcissistic abuse as well

you might also read up on the girardian scapegoat. the point is people like the comfort of falsehood so it tends to propagate more easily. few who were around masters wanted the actual teaching rather than some life quality improvements and basic answers. One of the merits certain people can get by hanging out around a real teacher is that those people can pretend that they were one of the people who wanted to know in front of those who don't know any better.

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

#314

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

without being localized, they remain a probability wave because the "universe" of information literally doesn't know enough about them anymore

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

#315

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#316

Post by gls2ro »

bugbuddy wrote: post #231
NegativeLatency wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Metaphysics can answer Why questions while Physics is more concerned with How and What questions.

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

#317

Post by oldandtired »

riwsky wrote: post #281
gizmo686 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explains why atoms have 0 charge, but not why protons, which are stable even without electrons, have a charge of 1. Put in terms of elementary particles, why is it that the ratio of electric charge between a quark and an electron is either 1:3 or 2:3?

A proton, electron, and a neutron walk into a bar…

After about 15 minutes, the neutron has changed into another proton and electron, so bar now has a bigger party on its hands.

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

#318

Post by trenchgun »

ajkjk wrote: post #309
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…

I don't know the actual answer, but from my understanding of QFT the answer is going to be roughly this shape: Charge is not actually a quantity on the real number line; it's more of a "count" of something. Not sure what exactly. The "topological defect" model of charges in 2d is a decent analogy though, in which a charge can be e.g. a count of how many vortices there are in a field which are oriented in a certain di…

Is there a reason why we say quarks have fractional charge instead of having just +-1 or +-2? And Then electron and proton would have -3 and +3?

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

#319

Post by blueprint »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #250
blueprint wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that may be true, but I'm already highly trained at that. But hey, what if you just ratchet up the difficulty to infinity. Then it will train people even better. Either that or it'll destroy the community because you dont have any criterion of right and wrong in your claim. It doesnt matter how correct people are. The more correct people are the worse they're treated. The better we get at presenting true arguments th…

I feel what you’re saying, but it’s incumbent on people who understand stuff to explain it to people who don’t in a way that they can comprehend The reality is that we’re all ignorant about most things, so having an attitude with someone around something you know - irrespective of how you know it - is a losing strategy and as you said leads to poor interactions Try to give people more grace and you’ll find people are…

I'll try to keep it in mind. thanks for your kindness.

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

#320

Post by trenchgun »

rolph wrote: post #105
gizmo686 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explains why atoms have 0 charge, but not why protons, which are stable even without electrons, have a charge of 1. Put in terms of elementary particles, why is it that the ratio of electric charge between a quark and an electron is either 1:3 or 2:3?

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,

>the unitary quantity is a conveinience.

Ah right, so basically its just a convenience notation? We could as well say that proton has 3 and electron is -3 charge?

Post reply on HN