Quarks

[tansy]

I expect this is a nutty question, but I know they can split atoms. Do you think it would be possible to split a quark?
(Also how do they think up these weird and wonderful names..quarks, bosons, etc etc?)

 

[Penumbra]

I don't know. They can split atoms into Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons. Protons and Neutrons are further divided into quarks, which so far, are said not to be splittable. They are among the list of fundamental particles, which are by definition said not be be further divisible, unless the alternative is shown to be true.

There's a whole host of fundamental particles besides quarks in the Standard Model. There are quarks, electrons, neutrinos, muons, tauons, gluons, photons, and so forth. Plus there are things like positrons which are anti-matter. One of the frustrations of some physicists is the apparent arbitrary arrangement of an arbitrary number of particles. They expect elegant, simple answers instead of clunky models with an unnecessary large number of different fundamental particles.

So there have been attempts to unify the concepts. For instance, string theory proposes that all fundamental particles are a different vibrational frequency in the only true fundamental particle: an energy string. So one could say under this model that the quark is further divisible into simply a string that vibrates.

I'm interested in physicists discovering the fundamental relationships between the particles and spacetime, and if that includes finding new layers of smaller particles first, then so be it.

 

[Cabal]

I expect this is a nutty question, but I know they can split atoms. Do you think it would be possible to split a quark?
(Also how do they think up these weird and wonderful names..quarks, bosons, etc etc?)

Urgh, this is why I need to get my textbooks back, I used to know so much about the theory behind quarks - I can't recall exactly if quarks can be split as such, but yes, if string theory is correct, then the strings would be more fundamental again than quarks.

As for naming...

"In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in "Through the Looking-Glass". From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark", in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature." - Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of quarks

Bosons isn't exclusively a particle physics term, it's been used to describe particles that don't obey Pauli exclusion since the late 20s, the guy who put up the theory for how large quantities of them behave was Satyendra Nath Bose. Einstein helped him out with the maths and getting published, the statistics are known as Bose-Einstein statistics.

 

[Vermithrax]

I expect this is a nutty question, but I know they can split atoms. Do you think it would be possible to split a quark?
(Also how do they think up these weird and wonderful names..quarks, bosons, etc etc?)

Don't forget that there are six types of quarks. Up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange. Also, did you make your SAN roll?

 

[tansy]

Oops sorry, I've pressed the wrong quote button thingy for the first part of what I quoted..but I'll leave it the way it is, as I'm also babysitting at the same time, and am attention is divided..

I

 don't know. They can split atoms into Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons. Protons and Neutrons are further divided into quarks, which so far, are said not to be splittable. They are among the list of fundamental particles, which are by definition said not be be further divisible, unless the alternative is shown to be true

Thanks, that's what I thought.....I wonder though if there may not ultimately be any fundamental particle..that is, perhaps the make-up of everything might go back infinitesimally€

.

There's a whole host of fundamental particles besides quarks in the Standard Model. There are quarks, electrons, neutrinos, muons, tauons, gluons, photons, and so forth. Plus there are things like positrons which are anti-matter. One of the frustrations of some physicists is the apparent arbitrary arrangement of an arbitrary number of particles. They expect elegant, simple answers instead of clunky models with an unnecessary large number of different fundamental particles.

Ah right, this is interesting. To me (for no reason other than cohesion or orderliness, I suppose), that would seem to point to there being other stuff going on which somehow connects or inter-relates with the whole. Scientific investigation must be like trying to fit a gigantic jigsaw puzzle together..once you see where all the pieces go, it all makes sense..but until then..

So there have been attempts to unify the concepts. For instance, string theory proposes that all fundamental particles are a different vibrational frequency in the only true fundamental particle: an energy string. So one could say under this model that the quark is further divisible into simply a string that vibrates.

Yes I saw a documentary on tv about this ages ago. It was absolutely fascinating and semed to make sense (bearing in mind I hardly know anything about anything)
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[JustMeSee]

Good question Tansy. Many of us (lurkers) are learning new stuff from the answers given by the scientific knowledgeable here on CF.

 

[tansy]

Urgh, this is why I need to get my textbooks back, I used to know so much about the theory behind quarks - I can't recall exactly if quarks can be split as such, but yes, if string theory is correct, then the strings would be more fundamental again than quarks.

As for naming...

"In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in "Through the Looking-Glass". From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark", in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature." - Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of quarks

Bosons isn't exclusively a particle physics term, it's been used to describe particles that don't obey Pauli exclusion since the late 20s, the guy who put up the theory for how large quantities of them behave was Satyendra Nath Bose. Einstein helped him out with the maths and getting published, the statistics are known as Bose-Einstein statistics.

Thanks Cabal...what an interesting story about how quarks were so-named

 

[tansy]

Don't forget that there are six types of quarks. Up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange. Also, did you make your SAN roll?

Yes, the names sound almost esoteric LOL

What is a SAN roll ?

 

[tansy]

Good question Tansy. Many of us (lurkers) are learning new stuff from the answers given by the scientific knowledgeable here on CF.

Thanks..yes, it's great to be able to come here and ask questions one's always wondered about.

 

[BokuWaKurohyou]

.

 

[tansy]

Theoretically we think we can split quarks. Right now, quarks, leptons (half spin), and boson/force carriers (integral spin) are the elementary particles of the universe by the standard model. The way we see structure is we have to probe it with energy able to penetrate the structure and make a picture.

If we cover a tube with wax paper, we can see through it (somewhat) with light energy, but not with your voice/radio energy because light is more energetic than radio waves. Likewise, we can "dissolve" atoms, subatomic particles, and even sub-subatomic particles (protons, neutrons) into their components with the right energies.

This is why CERN "says" they are using the particle accelerator. They want to crash protons (made up of quarks) together to make hadron jets that are collinear with the directions of the scattered quarks, essentially breaking apart the proton. This project would be an "advancement" toward finding out if quarks can be split, but until we have enough energies to "dissolve" a quark, we may never know.

Essentially this goes into philosophy and metaphysics. God is infinite, but to be truly infinite you must also be infinitesimal. This is why some scientists name this singularity particle the "God Particle," or the Higgs boson. This is the singularity particle theorized by the Standard Model, but not experimentally proven to exist. It is also supposedly responsible for gravity i.e. it is the particle responsible for carrying the most elementary gravitational field. A group of these in different arrangement make the elementary particles of the Standard model, which make up atoms, molecules, people, planets, etc.

So, in short a quark can be split, but we "haven't gotten the energies/technology" to do so.

Thanks very much for your answers. Do you think, incidentally, that what God has created (the absolutely basic 'stuff', whatever that turns out to be) IS finite, or do you think that he may have created that 'stuff' to be infinite, in your personal opinion?
If the basic stuff IS finite, then I suppose it's, theoretically at least, possible to get to the bottom of everything..but then, if the 'stuff' (sorry don't know a better word) IS infinite, one might never get to the bottom of it?
Do you think that God Himself could be a form of energy, albeit totally different from anything we know? If so, then would it perhaps be possible eventually to scientifically prove God? (of course this is in the realms of total conjecture...I'm just typing as I'm wondering, and it does seem really out of the range of possibility)

 

[Cabal]

Thanks, that's what I thought.....I wonder though if there may not ultimately be any fundamental particle..that is, perhaps the make-up of everything might go back infinitesimally

Not necessarily - I have to say, I have absolutely no idea of the theory used to arrive at this conclusion, but...

Planck length - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Planck time - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Current theory suggests that space and time are quantised and there may be a lower limit on their possible scale.

Ah right, this is interesting. To me (for no reason other than cohesion or orderliness, I suppose), that would seem to point to there being other stuff going on which somehow connects or inter-relates with the whole. Scientific investigation must be like trying to fit a gigantic jigsaw puzzle together..once you see where all the pieces go, it all makes sense..but until then..

At the same time, our model of the universe is such that we're really only missing evidence of one key particle (the Higgs boson that the LHC or the Tevatron is hoping to find).

There are three generations of both quarks and leptons, it's demonstrable that there can't be anymore than three, so there is a well-defined upper limit of the number of fundamental particles that exist (at least, at that energy scale). Additionally, the heavier quarks (second and third generation, i.e. strange and charm, top and bottom) decay into up and down quarks with time anyway. Can't say for sure whether the same thing happens with leptons....

Additionally, three of the four forces have been unified, it's only gravity that's causing the hassle - string theory could overcome that, but it is as yet untestable, however, some of its tangential predictions could be tested with the LHC or experimental analogues.

Thanks Cabal...what an interesting story about how quarks were so-named

At heart all physicists are great big nerds with a hankering for terrible jokes, but particle physicists seem to top the lot

Barn (unit) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Penguin diagram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, the names sound almost esoteric LOL

iirc, the top and bottom quarks were going to be called "beauty" and "truth", very Keats-ish.

But (seeing as hadron particles like protons, neutrons etc are made up of three quarks), we can now have the entertaining combination of "up strange bottom."

 

[Cabal]

Theoretically we think we can split quarks. Right now, quarks, leptons (half spin), and boson/force carriers (integral spin) are the elementary particles of the universe by the standard model. The way we see structure is we have to probe it with energy able to penetrate the structure and make a picture.

If we cover a tube with wax paper, we can see through it (somewhat) with light energy, but not with your voice/radio energy because light is more energetic than radio waves. Likewise, we can "dissolve" atoms, subatomic particles, and even sub-subatomic particles (protons, neutrons) into their components with the right energies.

This is why CERN "says" they are using the particle accelerator. They want to crash protons (made up of quarks) together to make hadron jets that are collinear with the directions of the scattered quarks, essentially breaking apart the proton. This project would be an "advancement" toward finding out if quarks can be split, but until we have enough energies to "dissolve" a quark, we may never know.

Although given that the strong force acts in a different way, that will probably make things more complicated than splitting the atom.

Essentially this goes into philosophy and metaphysics. God is infinite, but to be truly infinite you must also be infinitesimal. This is why some scientists name this singularity particle the "God Particle," or the Higgs boson. This is the singularity particle theorized by the Standard Model, but not experimentally proven to exist. It is also supposedly responsible for gravity i.e. it is the particle responsible for carrying the most elementary gravitational field. A group of these in different arrangement make the elementary particles of the Standard model, which make up atoms, molecules, people, planets, etc.

So, in short a quark can be split, but we "haven't gotten the energies/technology" to do so.

I really don't think God has anything to do with the conceptualisation of the Higgs. Leon Lederman, who iirc coined the term "god particle", wanted to call it something else originally. I can't exactly explicitly say what it was, but it was a very similar name but with the inclusion of the word "damn"

Thanks very much for your answers. Do you think, incidentally, that what God has created (the absolutely basic 'stuff', whatever that turns out to be) IS finite, or do you think that he may have created that 'stuff' to be infinite, in your personal opinion?

Ultimately it's still going to have to be a finite packet of energy existing in a finite space, I don't see why a change of length scale of fundamental objects means there is "more stuff" so much that we're now talking about infinities now.

If the basic stuff IS finite, then I suppose it's, theoretically at least, possible to get to the bottom of everything..but then, if the 'stuff' (sorry don't know a better word) IS infinite, one might never get to the bottom of it?

Quantum uncertainty being what it is, we simply CAN'T know everything about everything anyway, the amount of matter is somewhat irrelevant after this fact.

Do you think that God Himself could be a form of energy, albeit totally different from anything we know? If so, then would it perhaps be possible eventually to scientifically prove God? (of course this is in the realms of total conjecture...I'm just typing as I'm wondering, and it does seem really out of the range of possibility)

I think if you're going down that route, defining God empirically as a physical quantity etc. then you may as well just accept Spinoza's definition of God and have done with it. Also, I can't see how energy is meant to have persona, emotion, etc. so it wouldn't really chime with the Bible in that sense.

Additionally, as I've said before, "proving God" would mean that acceptance of him would no longer be faith-dependent, in fact it would destroy faith. It would be illogical not to believe in him.

I'm a TE because it either leaves you with the option that the life is entirely naturalistic or you can choose to believe that God inspired the processes and their workings and results.

 

[BokuWaKurohyou]

.

 

[sfs]

There are three generations of both quarks and leptons, it's demonstrable that there can't be anymore than three, so there is a well-defined upper limit of the number of fundamental particles that exist (at least, at that energy scale).

As far as I know, there is currently no way of excluding the possibility of a fourth generation of quarks and leptons. Experimental results on the width of the decay of the Z do mean that there cannot be any additional light neutrinos (assuming that additional generations behave like the three we know about), but heavy neutrinos are not ruled out.

Additionally, the heavier quarks (second and third generation, i.e. strange and charm, top and bottom) decay into up and down quarks with time anyway. Can't say for sure whether the same thing happens with leptons....

Yes, muons and taus decay into electrons and positrons.

Additionally, three of the four forces have been unified, it's only gravity that's causing the hassle - string theory could overcome that, but it is as yet untestable, however, some of its tangential predictions could be tested with the LHC or experimental analogues.

This is correct in a sense, but the unification of the three forces is not really satisfactory. Two forces -- electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force -- have been unified so that they appear as different aspects of one fundamental, underlying field. The unified electroweak force and the strong nuclear force, on the other hand, are pretty much just stuck together into a single, consistent framework, but without any real connection between the two forces. Hence the attempt to find workable (and correct) grand unified theores (GUTs).

At heart all physicists are great big nerds with a hankering for terrible jokes, but particle physicists seem to top the lot

Well, some lack any sense of humor at all, but otherwise . . . correct.

 

[Vermithrax]

Yes, the names sound almost esoteric LOL

What is a SAN roll ?

Whenever confronted by Quantum Physics, make a sanity roll.

 

[pgp_protector]

Whenever confronted by Quantum Physics, make a sanity roll.

on a D10 or D20 ?

 

[Vermithrax]

on a D10 or D20 ?

Definitely a D20.

 

[Gracchus]

Science can absolutely prove God's existence, but you cant force people to believe.

Not what this thread is about. But feel free to start a thread showing how science can prove God's existence.

Sorry to go on a tangent ...

A tangent touches at one point. Your post never touches the subject.

(I did my thesis on quantum electrodynamics and condensed matter physics lol)

Would you like to discuss it? Start a thread.

by the way, I like to come up with physics apologetics for the existence of God, I will post some in the Christian Only sections

No doubt your thesis can be found in a church bulletin.

 

[BokuWaKurohyou]

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