[HN Gopher] Decades-Long Quest Reveals Details of the Proton's I...
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Decades-Long Quest Reveals Details of the Proton's Inner Antimatter
Author : theafh
Score : 158 points
Date : 2021-02-24 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| frob wrote:
| The next two decades of nuclear science are going to be extremely
| exciting as the next-generation electron-ion collider is built
| and comes online in the US. Since electrons are not composite
| particles, electron colliders allow us to probe nuclei much more
| precisely than protons, neutrons, and other baryonic particles
| do. It's going to like going from a VHF tuner on a CRT to an 8K
| AR experience.
| king_magic wrote:
| It's incredible how something that's both so small and everywhere
| is so difficult to understand. Fascinating read.
| mabbo wrote:
| Once again I am impressed with Wolchover's consistently great
| writing. I think I could call myself a fan at this point.
|
| There's no bullshit. There's no more glossing over details than
| needed. The key finding is explained in as close to a layman's
| terms as you can get, given it's deep physics, yet with some
| human elements to it. And both sides of any debate are given a
| chance to give their side of the story.
|
| Science writing will never please everyone, but this has exactly
| the level of detail I enjoy.
| king_magic wrote:
| I completely agree. I find her writing very straightforward to
| understand.
| KingFelix wrote:
| also agree, great stuff
| avmich wrote:
| Quality of her articles - depth, precision, explanation power -
| rivals those of Martin Gardner, which is admittedly a high bar.
| I don't know anybody else today coming close.
| firebaze wrote:
| Not to deep into this topic, but Sabine Hossenfelder, both
| providing a critical insight and depth+precision is also
| something to consider as an outsider to physics. See
| backreaction.blogspot.com. Hits my sweet spot between maths,
| physics and layman guidance.
| codeulike wrote:
| I'm so pleased it doesn't start with stuff like _" It was a
| windy autumn afternoon in Geneva in 1991, and Carlo Broggini
| had no idea, as he sipped his coffee, that the results he was
| about to see on his computer would turn the physics world
| upside down"_
| sasaf5 wrote:
| You forgot to use "whimsical", "flabbergasted" and
| "discombobulated" ;)
| akdor1154 wrote:
| Came here to comment on the great article, great to see I'm not
| alone.
| dchichkov wrote:
| These systems do have a feel of cellular automatons. Questions
| like: why every proton is exactly the same? how particles
| interact? why are these clouds of particles? have much neater
| answers, if there is a correspondence of a "stable pattern" to a
| "particle".
|
| https://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Spaceship#2010s
| pas wrote:
| There are other particles made of quarks (generally called
| hadrons). Those with and odd number of quarks are called
| baryons. Mesons are those that have an equal number of quarks
| and anti-quarks.
|
| "All" protons we see are the same because the exotic
| configurations decay. (While protons are not yet known to
| decay.)
| klodolph wrote:
| Since the "SeaQuest" is from circa 2000, surely it is a reference
| to the TV show SeaQuest DSV, which aired on NBC from 1993-1996.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaQuest_DSV
|
| There are some fun episodes but the show is not very good and has
| not aged well.
| meepmorp wrote:
| There was also a seaquest game for the 2600. I don't know how
| well it's aged.
| KingFelix wrote:
| sealab 2021 is where its at
| jvanderbot wrote:
| The way we study the nucleus is kind of funny: Throwing stuff at
| it and seeing the distribution pattern of how it bounces off or
| breaks out pieces.
|
| It's like if Oumuamua[1] was thrown at us and some giant gas
| cloud entity that wanted to see if we had planets by measuring
| the trajectory anomalies as it came out. Or if meteor showers
| were to probe atmospheres.
|
| Alright, back to work.
|
| 1.
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/interste...
| mhh__ wrote:
| "It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at
| a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you." -
| Rutherford
| fnord77 wrote:
| so... could a "subatomic centrifuge" of sorts be built to
| separate the quarks and antiquarks (using energy of course to
| pull them apart)?
|
| Would antimatter make a good energy storage medium?
| _Microft wrote:
| Quarks cannot be separated. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_confinement
| lalaithion wrote:
| You cannot separate quarks and antiquarks. The force that holds
| them together increases, rather than decreases, the further
| apart you pull them, until the energy in that field is so
| strong it can spontaneously convert to matter in the form of a
| new quark and antiquark to bind to the now-separated old quark
| and antiquark.
| centimeter wrote:
| You can't pull apart quark pairs because the energy involved is
| so large it will create new quarks to pair up with the ones
| you're separating.
|
| Antimatter would make a great energy storage medium, if we
| could create it efficiently and in bulk.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> You can't pull apart quark pairs because the energy
| involved is so large it will create new quarks to pair up
| with the ones you're separating.
|
| What if baryons are electrostatic black holes? No quark can
| escape. Any infalling particle would slow down and never
| cross the event horizon as far as an outside observer could
| tell. Stuff like that...
| _kst_ wrote:
| It would be great if (a) you could safely prevent it from
| releasing its energy when you don't want it to ( _KABOOM!_ ),
| and (b) you could efficiently capture and use the energy it
| releases, which is going to consist largely of gamma rays.
|
| Now where did I leave that dilithium?
| fnord77 wrote:
| CERN manages to safely capture antiprotons and move them
| around
| _kst_ wrote:
| Sure, but not nearly enough for practical energy storage
| and retrieval.
| konjin wrote:
| I can safely move around three eggs at a time, moving 3e9
| eggs at a time is slightly more difficult.
| robocat wrote:
| A container ship loaded up with packaged eggs in
| containers could move 3e9 eggs.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/49v7ik/r
| equ...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship
| prox wrote:
| As an neophyte in QM, my mind boggles of the extraordinary
| energetic nature of these particles, and that this happens on a
| universe scale level, with laws of nature governing the same
| response everywhere.
|
| Also how many different levels of scale there are, from giant
| structures in space, to our solar system, to our human
| experience, to cells, atoms, quarks and I wonder if there are
| more such levels down to the planck scale.
| officialjunk wrote:
| i would bet there are more levels we are not currently aware
| of. could also be a fractal.
| centimeter wrote:
| Action quantization (colloquially "planck scale") suggests
| limits on how small these things can get (very small size =
| very high momentum, which is not observed).
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Assuming are understanding of physics is correct at the
| plank scale. We already have 2 different theories of
| physics that are not completely consistent with each other,
| and we have no empirical evidence of anything near the
| planck scale.
| brianberns wrote:
| But electrons are considered to be point particles, so they
| would have infinite momentum in this case?
| fungiblecog wrote:
| No. They are vibrations of the electron field. There are
| no point particles in the standard model.
| ben_w wrote:
| s_x * s_p h/2
|
| The product of the _uncertainty_ in each is always at
| least some constant. They can still be point-like without
| you knowing where they are; and also knowing exactly
| where they are regardless of if they are point-like or
| extended means there is no defined momentum rather than
| it is defined as infinite.
|
| That said: (a) you can't pick a number from the set of
| Reals with a continuous uniform distribution, so I guess
| you can't ever have perfect knowledge of the location
| ever even in principle, and (b) I'm self taught so likely
| only have a half-understanding.
| idclip wrote:
| The truth of all meditations .. there is only up, and down, The
| rising and falling of transient phenomena ... it seems to be
| sentient, too! To think, thought is so deeply rooted; matter
| giving form to matter ... sweat, tears, sadness and joy ... so
| interlinked with the lowest forms of the blocks that make us
| all up!
|
| Truly awe inspiring on a grand scale. Its no wonder the ancient
| greeks attributed gravity to Aphrodite's magic .. i honestly
| find it so fitting; its love all the way down!
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(page generated 2021-02-24 23:00 UTC)