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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’

#481

Post by feoren »

trenchgun wrote: post #320
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,

>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?

> We could as well say that proton has 3 and electron is -3 charge?

Absolutely! In fact that would have been much more convenient, since the "quantum of charge" appears to be 1/3 of the charge of the proton. All units of charge we've ever observed seem to be integer multiples of 1/3e.

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

#482

Post by jodrellblank »

jxdxbx wrote: post #374
jodrellblank wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AKA “God did it” with a sciencey sounding name. An answer which explains nothing, predicts nothing, satisfies no curiosity, and closes the book on any further questions.

the anthropic principle is why we find ourselves in such an unlikely place (a habitable planet) instead of somewhere that can’t support life. it’s not an argument for god. it’s not entirely trivial. if someone says “god did it” because we find ourselves on earth not mars the anthropic principle is a better explanation.

If somebody asks why Earth is more suited to life than Mars, we could talk about temperature, size, magnetic field, water availability. If someone asks but why Earth has all that and Mars doesn't, then "God did it" and "if it were the other way around you would be asking the other way around" both offer as little information (none), as little explanation (none) as each other.

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

#483

Post by Zondartul »

throw0101c wrote: post #471
neycoda wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how the field that allows vibration exists instead of just pure nothing that isn't a field that doesn't allow vibration or bending or virtual particles etc. Heisenberg's principle seems contingent on the void of nothing being a field that can wobble.

> Heisenberg's principle seems contingent on the void of nothing being a field that can wobble. Sadly (?) the word "nothing" seems to have become overloaded, so now—depending on who you talk to—you can have the word pointing to different concepts. See "seven types/levels of nothing": * https://rlkuhn.com/wp-content/uploads/Closer-to-Truth-Essays... * https://closertotruth.com/news/levels-of-nothing-by-robert-l...

A silly thought I had while reading that article: it presupposes that "nothing" is a noun. In doing so, it assumes that in the sentence "the " you can substitute "nothing" and it would mean " is an entity that does the " instead of " simply does not happen", and I feel that is a meaningful distinction.

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

#484

Post by roelschroeven »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #472
roelschroeven wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The work is done by the electric field, which is why we can have AC power where electrons don't have any net travel. One doesn't follow from the other. We can easily transport power by making things like a chain or a fluid move back and forth, without any net travel. In a setup with a loudspeaker and a microphone as just one example the air transfers energy from one to the other without any net movement. In those c…

Indeed! My points was that you aren't consuming electron charge, like you consume kinetic energy of water flowing through a stereotypical waterwheel. That is to say, I was giving a example, not claiming a rule.

Thanks for the clarification.

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

#485

Post by jodrellblank »

lm28469 wrote: post #441
jodrellblank wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AKA “God did it” with a sciencey sounding name. An answer which explains nothing, predicts nothing, satisfies no curiosity, and closes the book on any further questions.

> An answer which explains nothing, predicts nothing, satisfies no curiosity, and closes the book on any further questions. Which law of the universe guarantees the satisfaction of your curiosity again ?

The same one which guarantees you will understand my point before coming in with a smug putdown about something I didn't say. "We don't know" is a far better answer than the Anthropic principle. The anthropic principle is worse than an answer, it has negative value, it answers nothing but has the shape and feel of an answer, it's a fake.

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

#486

Post by lagadu »

Mauneam wrote: post #287
knightoffaith wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you're reading into my comment more than what I intended to say. In the context of fine-tuning arguments for God, we really are just arguing that an intelligent designer designed the universe. In isolation, this doesn't necessarily commit us to some mainstream religion, and in this context, God is just the intelligent designer of the universe, nothing more (though proponents of the arguments will go on, thr…

Saying "because God did it" as an answer to any question has the same value as saying "because pixel cooked the music". If you want to consider those two groups of words "explanations" go for it. They are grammatically correct, and if they satisfy the curious mind they are good enough.

You've been explained time and again how the anthropic principle explicitly doesn't need "God" or any sort of intelligent design and is simply the conclusion that can be drawn from a statistic calculation yet you continue bringing that up.

Repeating the same argument despite it having been refuted isn't conductive to further discussion, at a certain point you'll only get replies out of pity at best, like this one.

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

#487

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gwerbret wrote: post #177
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why must protons and electrons be perfectly complementary regarding charge? According to QED's spin origin of charge, it's because charge comes from spin. What values a particle's spin can take are restricted to certain integer or half-integer values.

> According to QED's spin origin of charge, it's because charge comes from spin. Children have the remarkable ability to see the world as it truly is, and so are able to ask the most profound questions. As adults, we learn to obfuscate our, ah, knowledge deficiencies in various ways, and so lose that ability over time. I'm of the opinion that great physicists are like children in being able to see through to the hear…

> saying "it's because charge comes from spin" is the sort of obfuscatory answer

If you refuse to ask further questions, yes. If you keep asking why, it opens the door to what charge fundamentally is.

> All charged particles have spin, but not all particles with the same spin and other similar properties are charged

Spin and charge are fundamentally connected. That said, I was answering according to SOC, which remains a hypothesis.

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

#488

Post by notahacker »

geye1234 wrote: post #468
notahacker wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't read The God Delusion or wherever the "god of the gaps" critique originated - what is this actually referring to? A rare point of agreement between Nietzsche and the evangelist Henry Drummond was that the Christian apologetic approach of "ah, but that hasn't been explained yet, so it must be God's will" to all the discoveries of the Enlightenment wasn't a very impressive one. Not least because of the tend…

> Augustine, since you're apparently a fan, was pretty confident that the problem of pestilence was the product of a literally occurring Fall involving two actual First People, which doesn't square very well with evolutionary biology. My understanding is that the current hypothesis says we are, in fact, all descended from one couple. I could be wrong about that though. In any case, there's no contradiction between Or…

I'm not sure about this current hypothesis about the first man and the woman who evolved from his rib before their apple consumption caused pain receptors to evolve, pathogens to acquire pathogenicity and reproduction to require sinful lust. Were they Homo Erectus, Homo Sapiens or Tyrannosaurus Rex? :-)

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

#489

Post by lagadu »

Razengan wrote: post #267
jodrellblank wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AKA “God did it” with a sciencey sounding name. An answer which explains nothing, predicts nothing, satisfies no curiosity, and closes the book on any further questions.

> AKA “God did it” + "Just for us" ^^ e.g. Earth is the only place where life could have formed. We have yet to set foot on even 1 another planet but we are pretty sure we are alone in the entire damn Universe.

> we are pretty sure we are alone in the entire damn Universe.

We absolutely are not sure of that in any way, shape or form. Quite the opposite, given our knowledge of the universe and conditions necessary for life forming, it's highly unlikely we're alone. There's a reason that we call a paradox the fact that we haven't found any extraterrestrial life yet: the Fermi Paradox.

Anyway, the anthropic principle says nothing about that.

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

#490

Post by lagadu »

okamiueru wrote: post #379
cocoa19 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The channel is definitely not targeted for the lay person. A counter example, Derek from Veritasium, he did a phd in physics education and it shows. Some of his videos are complex in content, but dumbed down so most people can understand. I enjoy PBS space time and listening to Matt O’Dowd, but I understand at the most 20-40% of what is covered on the videos. It is frustrating because I like the topics being discusse…

I'm not convinced. When he talks about things I understand, he does so in a way that I still find frustratingly convoluted. In these cases, it's not for a lack of education. It probably just means that this style of presenting topics just isn't for me, which is completely fine. Diversity in free education is great and commendable. But I think you touch on the part that I think is the reason why. Because PBS tries to…

I believe you're in error with the assumption that "there are countless universes" means multiverse in his description. It means that there are countless universe possibilities we can imagine, one for each permutation of the universal constants. Other than a small subset of them, one of which we exist in, nearly all of them would not be able to contain life because they wouldn't have conditions to do so. It doesn't imply that these other universes exist in some "physical" sense, only conceptual.
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