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Physics Articles For Hackenslash

arg-fallbackName="Dragan Glas"/>
Greetings,

There were a couple of other articles but they were rather off-the-wall, so I didn't clutter the thread with them.

Kindest regards,

James
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
I'm already well behind, so thanks. :D

That last one was interesting. I'll have to delve deeper when I have time.

I'm currently pondering vector analysis...
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
Dragan Glas said:
Greetings,

New Evidence for Controversial Theory That the Electron Is Composed of Two Particles
Click to expand...
This has been niggling at me for days. I've been considering what it would take for the electron to be a composite, and I've come to the conclusion that it has to involve never-before-seen species of particle.

Here's my reasoning:

The fundamental question, of course, is how is the charge distributed?

Most particles are made of quarks, which have fractional charge, and that determines the charge of the product particles. A down quark has -1/3 charge and an up quark has +2/3 charge. A proton is made of two ups and a down quark and has +1 charge, while a neutron is made of a down and two ups and is electrically neutral.

How does an electron work, then? An electron has -1 charge. We would need a candidate particle with -1/2 charge, but all known particles have 1/3, 2/3 or integer charge.

And its mass? The mass of the electron is tiny. The only particles with smaller mass in the standard model are two species of neutrino, neither of whose masses either independently or in combination can add up to the mass of an electron or even close with only two of them, and worse, neither of them carries charge.

I mean, this is huge.

This could - dare I say it? - open a new door for strings. I'm not aware of any work having been done in this area.

I haven't read the paper yet, only scanned the article while my mind has been on other things, but it hasn't stopped niggling.
 
arg-fallbackName="Dragan Glas"/>
Greetings,

hackenslash said:
This has been niggling at me for days. I've been considering what it would take for the electron to be a composite, and I've come to the conclusion that it has to involve never-before-seen species of particle.

Here's my reasoning:

The fundamental question, of course, is how is the charge distributed?

Most particles are made of quarks, which have fractional charge, and that determines the charge of the product particles. A down quark has -1/3 charge and an up quark has +2/3 charge. A proton is made of two ups and a down quark and has +1 charge, while a neutron is made of a down and two ups and is electrically neutral.

How does an electron work, then? An electron has -1 charge. We would need a candidate particle with -1/2 charge, but all known particles have 1/3, 2/3 or integer charge.

And its mass? The mass of the electron is tiny. The only particles with smaller mass in the standard model are two species of neutrino, neither of whose masses either independently or in combination can add up to the mass of an electron or even close with only two of them, and worse, neither of them carries charge.

I mean, this is huge.

This could - dare I say it? - open a new door for strings. I'm not aware of any work having been done in this area.

I haven't read the paper yet, only scanned the article while my mind has been on other things, but it hasn't stopped niggling.
Click to expand...
Like yourself, Hack, I haven't read the paper.

My first thought - given I don't have your knowledge/understanding of physics - was that it might explain the Uncertainty Principle, ie., why we can't pin-down both the electron's position and velocity.

If there were two particles/aspects of the electron, one could only focus on/measure one - or so I thought.

But then, this doesn't explain the HUP's application to any other particle - not to mention that the HUP also applies to theory, not just practical measurements.

So much for my Nobel Prize-winning idea...:rolleyes:

Kindest regards,

James
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
Dragan Glas said:
My first thought - given I don't have your knowledge/understanding of physics - was that it might explain the Uncertainty Principle, ie., why we can't pin-down both the electron's position and velocity.
Click to expand...
My personal feeling is that the explanation for the uncertainty principle has already been given in the form of quantum mechanics.

It doesn't gel easily with middle-world intuitions, but the uncertainty principle is in fact one of the more easily understood aspects of QM. I'd guess that you haven't seen the sort of explanation of it that drives that wedge into your thinking, and I know it can't be for want of trying.

Have you ever read my piece on the observer effect? It delivers, in terms that anybody with even a passing grasp of how waves work, a complete explanation of the observer effect and, by corollary, the uncertainty principle. Late iterations of the double-slit experiment do the same, but the route to teasing out detail in an intuitive way is much longer. The observer effect is QM in a nutshell, which is why it's always pained me that it's so horribly misunderstood. It's obvious, once you see it in the right light.

Just in case you haven't read it...

www.hackenslash.co.uk

Did You See That?!!

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone ...
www.hackenslash.co.uk www.hackenslash.co.uk
Dragan Glas said:
If there were two particles/aspects of the electron, one could only focus on/measure one - or so I thought.
Click to expand...
That only applies to entangled particles. This is because the nature of entanglement is such that the entangled particles are aspects of the same system, and you can only perform one measurement on a system.

Incidentally, solid experiments have been done in entangled particles, specifically to resolve the EPR paradox. While you could conduct observations on the individual elements of the system, the limit of resolution, it turned out, is \(\dfrac{\hbar}{2}\); the Uncertainty Princple.
Dragan Glas said:
But then, this doesn't explain the HUP's application to any other particle - not to mention that the HUP also applies to theory, not just practical measurements.
Click to expand...
It doesn't only apply to electrons, either. It applies to everything.
Dragan Glas said:
So much for my Nobel Prize-winning idea...:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Not an ignominious death, by any means.
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
I meant to add, if you really want to see mind-bending shit in QM, see my piece on paradoxes, where I talk about the EPR paradox in some detail. When you encounter Bell Inequality violations, your entire notion of causality will be fucked up.

www.hackenslash.co.uk

Paradox! A Game For All the Family!

This sentence is a lie. That might seem a strange way to open a post, but I want to have a little bit of fun and dedicate some space to a ...
www.hackenslash.co.uk www.hackenslash.co.uk
 
arg-fallbackName="Dragan Glas"/>
Greetings,

I have a feeling I've read the first one some time ago but, as I read a lot across multiple subjects, I'm afraid I may have forgotten it. Thanks,

The second one put me in mind of a recent article that claims a(nother?) solution to the Grandfather Paradox.

A minor quibble: from my educational upbringing, the difference between a contradiction, and a paradox, is the that the latter is a apparent contradiction.

Kindest regards,

James
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 619"/>
My classical education was minimal, to be charitable about it.

In my lexicon, a paradox is simply a contradiction made manifest.

I'm no mathematician, however, as I've always been at great pains to point out.
 
arg-fallbackName="Dragan Glas"/>
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