3 ms·
> momentum - and energy - are only conserved across a long enough timeframe > In order to have conservation of anything, one has to make a vector integration o
by DougMerritt 11y ago
> momentum - and energy - are only conserved across a long enough timeframe
> In order to have conservation of anything, one has to make a vector integration over a sufficiently long time frame
My understanding was that the time frame was strictly a matter of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle -- if the time is less than specified by HUP for the situation, then conservation generally does not hold, but if time is greater than that, then conservation is strictly held.
The simple model of virtual particles involved in Feynman diagrams is that they are precisely the ones that take time less than HUP.
Unless you're talking about relativistic effects where adjustments are needed, but after those adjustments, it's back to the above again.
- PeterWhittaker 11y agoWell, awesome that to be the case, that conservation does not hold at time less than Thup. That leaves an awful lot of interesting physics happening to cause conservation to emerge at macroscopic scale. HC SVNT DRACONES, no?
- DougMerritt 11y agoTo some extent, but mostly this is long-explored territory with few dragons. It's not often put this way, but you could say that the virtual particles < HUP establish the wavefunctions that have effects fully evaluated by the time of > HUP, such as the phase cancellations that cause light to take the path of least time, which is otherwise puzzling.