4 ms·
Meanwhile there are quarks inside every regular atom moving at speeds like 0.99995c ...
by amelius 4mo ago
Meanwhile there are quarks inside every regular atom moving at speeds like 0.99995c ...
- gcanyon 4mo agoInteresting -- does that have any macroscopic/real world impact?
- moelf 4mo agowell, 90%+ of the mass of a proton comes from moving stuff, rather than rest mass of the quarks. so the real world impact is, having anything at all
- amelius 4mo agoAnd this mass is again an emergent property of Einstein's relativity ...
- prox 4mo agoI think I recently learned that the Higgs is actually not that much part of imparting mass for atomic particles. I thought it imparted all mass.
- ChrisClark 4mo agojust enough to keep electrons from staying at light speed like photons
- mr_toad 4mo ago> I thought it imparted all mass. It’s all relative; in the quarks frame of reference it does get all its mass from the interaction with the Higgs field.
- prox 4mo agoI really want to read more about this. It’s fascinating but also very difficult to wrap your head around. I did enjoy the Feynman talks.
- Jblx2 4mo agoIf the spatial extent of the proton is not infinite, this would imply that the charged quarks making up the proton are accelerating. Why aren't these quarks then emitting electromagnetic radiation, thus slowing down? I thought electrons were essentially standing waves around the nucleus, and thus not accelerating. Maybe there is a good youtube video explainer? Seems like there would also be an associated temperature and blackbody radiation of these quarks.
- CamperBob2 4mo agoQuarks don't have quantum energy states to transition between, hence they aren't subject to radiating photons due to acceleration. Similar to why the electron in a hydrogen atom doesn't keep emitting radiation and crash into the nucleus once it reaches its ground state... there's no lower state for it to jump to.
- Jblx2 4mo agoElectrons in an antenna aren't transitioning between quantum states and are still radiating.
- CamperBob2 4mo agoThat's a good point, I don't know what's up with that. Google just says, "A single oscillating electron does not continuously emit radio waves; it has a microscopic probability of emitting a single RF photon during a given cycle." It would be necessary to delve into the whole QED thing to get a better explanation, based on what I'm reading. Either way, quarks don't have an electron-like magnetic moment, so they aren't capable of coupling to the EM field.
- DHRicoF 4mo agoYes they are. They are transitioning through levels in the conduction band where you have plenty of them. Every time you see a macroscopic phenomena, you are looking at a stupidly high amount of quantum levels with very similar energies.
- 4mo ago