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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’

#71

Post by y04nn »

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'm not an expert, but e is the smallest possible charge, so you can't have a fraction of it, probably related to to Plank constant.

Edit: after verification, the smallest possible charge is e/3 (the quantum charge), e is the elementary charge.

A relevant link to for the question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_charge?useskin=vect...

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

#72

Post by hazbot »

SECProto wrote: post #41
aap_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charge is quantized. You cannot have just any amount of electric charge. An electron has three elementary units of negative charge, quarks have -1 and 2. Whether it's a coincidence that proton and electron charge are of the same magnitude (and the neutron is neutral) is another question, but at the elementary level you don't have that much choice for what the charge of a particle is.

> quarks have -1 and 2. Wikipedia suggests the quarks that make up the proton have charge ⅔e and -⅓e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_quark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_quark

OP assigned -3 units of charge to the electron, so all works out.

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

#73

Post by bugbuddy »

femto wrote: post #64
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…

In the same vein, a neutron can decay into a proton, an electron and a neutrino (Beta decay), so in some sense the neutral neutron is the combination of an electron and proton. (A connection is there?) In a simplistic way, I see a neutron star as just being a lump of regular (atomic) matter where the high pressure has forced all the electrons into the protons. Question for someone who might know: Was pressure so high…

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

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

#74

Post by buildbot »

retrac wrote: post #29
anon84873628 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one knows. That's part of the great mystery. But also in some sense "it has to be that way," since without charge balance atoms wouldn't exist as we know them, and thus neither would all the chemistry that creates the macroscopic world we inhabit.

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.)

This made me think - is a concept like most even defined for infinity?

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

#75

Post by itishappy »

bmartin13 wrote: post #43

[flagged]

What if the rules of the universe are themselves a form of God-like intelligence?

They're omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Their true form exists somehow outside of reality and cannot be (currently) comprehended by us mortals. Their touch can be found wherever we look, but their intent and motivation remain mysterious.

I believe this idea is called Pantheism.

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

#76

Post by yifanl »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #63
lazide wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the universe is old, then how do you expect atoms to exist if this was not the case?

Couldn't there be a different physics where protons had a charge of 0.5 and, therefore, every atomic nucleus would have twice as many protons as electrons? Or pick any other ratio you like. Or course, I don't mean to hand-wave away the potential implications of this. Maybe there would be no atomic nuclei in such a universe, for all I know. But if not, why not?

How would we ever distinguish what half-a-proton is in a universe where all protons ever are _always_ paired off?

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

#77

Post by ccozan »

retrac wrote: post #29
anon84873628 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one knows. That's part of the great mystery. But also in some sense "it has to be that way," since without charge balance atoms wouldn't exist as we know them, and thus neither would all the chemistry that creates the macroscopic world we inhabit.

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 ).

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

#78

Post by missingET »

OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #5

Is it surprising there are signs of the heavy quarks? The diagrams that include them have tiny but nonzero values. Hearken back to Hitchhiker's - it is not impossible, just highly improbable.

What’s interesting is that there’s a net charm content: there are more charm quarks to be found than anti-charms.

Given that charm quarks are heavier than the proton, you’d expect to only find them in deep inelastic collisions when they are produced in pairs with an anti-quark, so it is surprising that there’s an asymmetry.

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

#79

Post by dboreham »

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…

Something...something...gauge theory.

Or perhaps -- it's a constant in the simulator source code.

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

#80

Post by WXLCKNO »

ForIveSyntax wrote: post #21
Smoosh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why do you ask? Are you hoping to ROWHAMMER a parallel universe? Genuinely curious if there’s any scientifically useful direction to this question

I'd watch a movie with that premise.
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