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Not being a Physicist, I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing. Might there have been a point in time (long ago)
by BobbyTables2 4mo ago
Not being a Physicist, I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing.
Might there have been a point in time (long ago) where the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things?
- colejohnson66 4mo agoThat's what the various string theory proponents start from. There's "too many" different subatomic particles, so there surely must be something smaller that they're composed of?
- Noaidi 4mo agoHow long can you break something apart until you cannot any longer? The things we are breaking apart are illusions in a sense. There will always be a smaller particle because that is what we are looking for. When we understand that everything that we see is a manifestation of a probability wave, then we will understand everything is a wave and end these foolish experiments.
- krapp 4mo agoI'll be sure to inform all of the physicists that @Noaidi on Hacker News has solved physics and that they can go home.
- GroksBarnacles 4mo agoDo you have a meaningful quantitative explanation with some math we can start building tech on, or will that require some... experiments?
- rolph 4mo agoplanck scale is the theoretical limit to disassembly.
- Noaidi 4mo agoIf something cannot be reduced, does it exist as an entity?
- rolph 4mo agosomething that cant be reduced would be the only entity, all other things are assemblages of that entity, the problem of variability occurs, if you can observe at the scale of absolute fundamental structure, how can difference occur?
- Noaidi 4mo agoMaybe it’s not the thing that is different, maybe it’s our minds that create difference? And by difference, I mean, establish boundaries between objects.
- rolph 4mo agoyou suggesting that there is a continuity of spacetime rather than a pixelation, which is perfectly valid, the whole problem with planck units is that they are extrapolations, just like the infinity or the point particle, they are mathematical extremes. the geometric structure of spacetime at planck scale is problematic, considering how you might visualise a planck polyhedron so that no space is defined in less than whole planck units i.e. all dimensions of length are whole numbers. you have to do some topological trickery to make a discreet planck volume that works.
- eggn00dles 4mo agoits only the limit we can probe things. just because we can’t measure something doesnt mean nature cant operate at that scale
- jerf 4mo agoYou don't have to wonder, because they are. They're manifestations of fields. I think it is a reasonable answer to tell people "if you're looking for the short list of simplest things, the number of types of fields there are is probably what you're looking for". That doesn't invalidate this question in general, though the number of different answers from people looking at the same thing suggests it may be underspecified.
- Noaidi 4mo ago> They're manifestations of fields. Or wave. Everything is a quantum wave. https://www.vlatkovedral.com/everything-in-the-universe-is-a-quantum-wave/ https://www.vlatkovedral.com/everything-in-the-universe-is-a...
- GroksBarnacles 4mo agoA wave is already what we call a manifestation of a field, maybe I skimmed too quickly but I don't get the author's breakthrough point.
- Noaidi 4mo agoYes, the field is the substrate. "I insist upon the view that 'all is waves'." Letter to John Lighton Synge (9 November 1959), as quoted by Walter Moore in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) ISBN 0521437679 It is not a breakthrough, it is just something we refuse to see, something that was known for a century. "All is a wave" is the unifying principle. I am no mathematician, but the math needs to start with that fundamental principle. The very notion of calling it "qunatum" physics is probably wrong since quantum is "a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents." And if everything is a wave there are no discrete quantities beyond our definition of what constitutes the end, or borders, of the wave.
- dpark 4mo ago> I am no mathematician, but the math needs to start with that fundamental principle. This is a weird sort of hubris. “I’m not qualified to do this job but I can certainly tell you how it needs to be done.” > And if everything is a wave there are no discrete quantities beyond our definition of what constitutes the end, or borders, of the wave. This is not true in multiple ways. First, it’s known that these particles exhibit quantum behavior. This is measured and confirmed over and over. Many measures are in fact quantized. Second, existing as a wave does not mean no discrete quantities. Even in everyday materials we observe situations like standing waves that are effectively quantized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave
- jiug 4mo agoEven though "particle photon" and "wave photon" are used alternatively, they are just convenient ways of talking about the behavior of the same "photon field". The same way when we say "it is raining" we don't mean that there is a "it" that "rains", we should try avoid taking these descriptions too literally. That being said, is difficult because we are using language to describe very-much-not-everyday stuff. We all need mental hooks to anchor new knowledge and most of our intuition is based on the classical (not-quantum) world aroud us.
- jiug 4mo agoEven if we use "wave photon" and "particle photon" alternatively, they are only convenient ways of talking about the behavior of the "photon field". The same way when we say "it is raining" we don't mean there is an "it" that "rains" we should try to avoid giving too much litteral meaning to these descriptions. That said, I get it is difficult, especially because we are using everyday language to talk about very-much-not-everyday stuff. We all needental hooks to anchor new knowledge and most of our intuition comes from the classical (not-quantum) world around us. As a physicist, I feel the art is in learning when to use what description, what Sean Carrol calls "poetic naturalism".
- antonvs 4mo ago> I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing. Someone else already mentioned that yes, they're manifestations of quantum fields. This is well established - the dominant theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, is a theory of quantum fields. In that context, a particle is simply the smallest excitation of a quantum field that can be detected. Fields can be "excited" (fluctuate) in many different ways, and the OP article is interpreting each one of those as a different type of particle. It's misleading.
- RobotToaster 4mo agoUnified field theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory
- slashdave 4mo ago> I have to wonder if all these particles are somehow manifestations of a simpler thing Yes, theorists have been working on a similar idea for decades. > the “wave photon” and the “particle photon” seemed like possibly different things? No. Wave vs particle is just a different description of the same thing.
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- aqula 4mo agoYou might be interested to look up the Williamson-Van der Mark model. It says that an electron is just light that loops in on itself and shows how properties like mass, charge and spin can emerge from such a geometry. It's fascinating because it opens up the question whether every particle could be described in terms of different ways light can loop in on itself.