What Is a Particle? (2020)
quantamagazine.org
What Is a Particle? (2020)
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Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#2I'm reading "The Big Picture" (Sean Carroll) right now.
I'd love to have a real physicist explain this, but:
When we think of what a particle IS, we often think as though it were dirt, or a billiard ball, or something. As though there were some other substance of which it's made. At least I do.
But the definition is as low as you can go. It's hard to wrap your head around that. Unless you're trained to do so, I guess.
Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#3A particle is a thing you can "look" at, and say "that's a particle". It is whatever one says it is. They're not exactly discovered, they're invented. Fundamental in this context is not so much a word as it is an analogy.
And, don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean particles don't exist. They do. But, a particle is whatever we say it is.
Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#4I'm honestly surprised that more people don't go mad in certain fields. If I ponder for 10 minutes the inexplicability of the universe's existence, or the vastness of space, my mind starts to breaks down.
Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#5I'm reading "The Big Picture" (Sean Carroll) right now. I'd love to have a real physicist explain this, but: When we think of what a particle IS, we often think as though it were dirt, or a billiard ball, or something. As though there were some other substance of which it's made. At least I do. But the definition is as low as you can go. It's hard to wrap your head around that. Unless you're trained to do so, I guess…
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Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#6A particle is a thing you can "look" at, and say "that's a particle". It is whatever one says it is. They're not exactly discovered, they're invented. Fundamental in this context is not so much a word as it is an analogy. And, don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean particles don't exist. They do. But, a particle is whatever we say it is.
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Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#7I have another definition, or at least this is how I think of it. I’m not sure many people would buy into it. In the standard model, the fermions are particles, like the electrons, quarks, neutrinos. Electroweak, strong force, gravity are fields. This means the photon is not a particle, but just a field excitation. I know people can think of fermions as fields, I just think of them as particles.
Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#8I have another definition, or at least this is how I think of it. I’m not sure many people would buy into it. In the standard model, the fermions are particles, like the electrons, quarks, neutrinos. Electroweak, strong force, gravity are fields. This means the photon is not a particle, but just a field excitation. I know people can think of fermions as fields, I just think of them as particles.
Checkout energywavetheory.com. It's essential the Aether, but really makes you think.
Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#9I'm reading "The Big Picture" (Sean Carroll) right now. I'd love to have a real physicist explain this, but: When we think of what a particle IS, we often think as though it were dirt, or a billiard ball, or something. As though there were some other substance of which it's made. At least I do. But the definition is as low as you can go. It's hard to wrap your head around that. Unless you're trained to do so, I guess…
> we often think as though it were dirt, or a billiard ball, or something
The problem lies that it is hard to imagine something that does have zero dimensions. You can get the example of ant walking into 2D and it is unaware of third dimension to explain we are have something similar for space-time 4D (although not the same picture exactly as time is different from spatial dimensions). But we don't have an idea how to approximate a mental picture of what a zero dimension could be. So you have something that does not occupy a volume in space (Talking strictly about elementary particles here) in the classical sense.
This does not mean they are abstract concept. According to QFT -Quantum field theory- you would think (by training) of particles are excitations or quanta of their respective fields. Fields are there always (vacuum is just filled with fields) and particle appears when they are excited (more complex processes occurs). So you would think of each particle as a manifestation of a quantum field that permeates the universe. What is interesting (and probably confusing to most people) is that these fields are not zero-dimensional, instead, they exist everywhere in space and time. But the quanta (particles themselves) are considered point-like with no spatial extension.
In practice physicists will think about particles properties (i.e charge, mass, interactions, spin) ..etc instead of what this particle actually is from that point of view. This is often for practical reasons. You are a working physicist and you learned from your training that you shut up and calculate (or implement if you are doing experimental particle physics as you spend most of your time coding) by this stage.
Re: What Is a Particle? (2020)
#10A particle is a thing you can "look" at, and say "that's a particle". It is whatever one says it is. They're not exactly discovered, they're invented. Fundamental in this context is not so much a word as it is an analogy. And, don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean particles don't exist. They do. But, a particle is whatever we say it is.
We're not asking questions about human constructs like what is moral or what is the ideal form of government. We're trying to understand what the most fundamental building block of reality is, which is something objective. Something independent of whether of not people ever existed.
So no, countless people around the world aren't wasting their lives researching particles when the answer is simply, it's whatever we say it is.