4 ms·
He conjectured that each particle is composed of other particles, and those others are held together by exchanging the first particle in a process that conveys
by quadcore 9y ago
He conjectured that each particle is composed of other particles, and those others are held together by exchanging the first particle in a process that conveys a force. Thus, particles’ properties are generated by self-consistent feedback loops.
Can someone rephrase that to me?
- qubex 9y agoHe basically posited that particles self-validate themselves recursively: particle A is made up of components B and C tied together by the exchange of streams of... particle A.
- quadcore 9y agoVersus particle A is made up of components B and C tied together by the exchange of streams of ...?
- qubex 9y ago...as opposed to hadrons (and other composte particles) made up by trios of quarks bound together by streams of gauge bosons (gluons that also recursively interact with themselves, generating more gluons), W and Z gauge bosons, and electromagnetic gauge bosons (photons). That sounds a bit confusing, I’m sure, but aside from the gluons creating other gluons, there’s no recursion. In Chen’s view, it was alternating “turtles all the way down”...
- quadcore 9y agoWhat about size in all that? Say a boson has a size? What about the particles in Chen's view? Also, can we differentiate a boson, say A, from a boson B? How (specifically, how sure are we that's two different objects)? In Chen's view? Finally, how does space and time look like in boson's world, roughly?
- qubex 9y agoFundamental particles are pointlike and dimensionless. They have wave-particle duality and have characteristic wavelengths however on the order of 10^-16 m or so for hadrons and quarks are about 2000 smaller.
- ars 9y ago> Finally, how does space and time look like in boson's world, roughly? Fundamental particles don't really have a size. The size of a particle depends on what force you use to examine it. Remember that particles can only interact by the fundamental forces, so your typical expectation of a "size" is incorrect. If two particles don't have any forces in common they can pass right through each other - i.e. they don't have an edge that says "I'm here". So looked at gravitationally or electromagnetically particles have infinite size, and their "existence" (to each other) is not binary "I'm here/I'm not here", but rather they are partially there, in ratio to how strong their interaction is. Their size as measured by the strong force will be different from their size measured by the weak force. Composite particles are different - they are made of fundamental particles in some particular spacing. The fundamental particles they are made of have no size, but the spacing between them does have a size, so that's the size they are given. It would help you to stop thinking of particles as objects, but rather as areas of force, which get weaker the farther away you are. Like a kind of fuzzy ball that fades out, but never goes to zero.
- olleromam91 9y agoWow. Your explanation just helped me SO MUCH to visualize all this stuff. Thanks
- quadcore 9y agoIf two particles don't have any forces in common they can pass right through each other - i.e. they don't have an edge that says "I'm here". Your explanation was so much fun. Thank you. What are the types of force? Gravitational, electromagnetic, what else? What forces is made a quark of?
- 9y ago
- tbrownaw 9y agoParticles are figments of their own imaginations.
- jandrese 9y agoI was having flashbacks to the end of Final Fantasy X. So I'm the son of a dream of myself made by a dead civilization about its own death?
- EtDybNuvCu 9y agoTime is an illusion; you are a facet of an incredibly complex mathematical object which happens to hold within it a distorted reflection of the rest of the object, like an incomprehensibly-complex fractal for which time is only one dimension.
- qubex 9y agoFunny, I was thinking of Turing’s Theta fixed-point combinator.
- dak1 9y agoTerry Pratchett would have thoroughly enjoyed that concept.