[HN Gopher] Proton's mass radius is apparently shorter than its ...
___________________________________________________________________
Proton's mass radius is apparently shorter than its charge radius
Author : raattgift
Score : 164 points
Date : 2023-04-03 23:33 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| drdeca wrote:
| The article refers to a gravitational something tensor, and, I'm
| wondering whether that is because this is actually dealing with
| gravitational effects, or whether it is just called that because
| it is the same tensor (or basically the same, or analogous in
| some way) to the stress energy tensor?
|
| It also isn't obvious to me what "mass radius" ought to mean...
|
| I guess like, the average distance from the center of the mass,
| but like...
|
| Idk, I guess that makes sense..?
|
| But I guess I'm not sure what the "meaning" of that quantity
| would be? Like, what makes that a relevant quantity for
| describing the system? Is it in case you are hoping to describe
| some gravitational effects? Or...?
|
| Hmm... well, I guess one could ask the same question about the
| "charge radius"... but that one to me sounds like it would have
| clearer uses? Like, if you are describing the EM forces on/from a
| charge, then the charge being distributed over a region would
| have different results than if it were at a single point I'd
| think.
|
| Though, "the center of the proton" also doesn't have one single
| position either.. but I imagine one could kind of separate those
| two things, comparing "what if we had a point particle with the
| charge and mass of a proton (which of course would be in a
| superposition over a range of positions)" to "what if we had a
| proton, with charge distributed about the center (and the center
| distributed over a range of positions in the same way as the
| hypothetical point particle)"
| joe__f wrote:
| Quoting from the article (which quotes from the paper):
|
| "Note that I am not even attempting to find an analogy for the
| gluonic gravitational form factors that would help you
| understand them. They're described in the paper as "the matrix
| elements of the energy-momentum tensor of the proton"
|
| The energy momentum tensor is the same as the stress energy
| tensor.
| evanb wrote:
| A good cartoon is that a form factor is the function that
| describes how an object deforms when exposed to an outside
| influence with a particular momentum. The form factor is a
| function of momentum.
|
| There are many different kinds of outside influence. They can
| be scalar (think: just increasing the pressure uniformly),
| vector (put in an electric field), tensor (zap with a
| gravitational wave), pseudovector (magnetic field),
| pseudoscalar (zap with a pion).
|
| Of course, you can apply a scalar outside influence and a
| vector at once. But the scalar, vector, tensor, pseudovector,
| and pseudoscalar labels denote different representations of the
| Lorentz group [lorentz].
|
| What's more: the Wigner-Eckhart theorem [wigner] basically says
| [cheat] that the response can be factored into three pieces:
| the strength of the external influence, a factor that depends
| only on the representation of the external influence, and a
| factor that depends only on the property of the thing you're
| talking about (a proton, in this instance).
|
| So people _call_ it the gravitational form factor because if
| you exposed the proton to a gravitational wave, it 's the thing
| you need to know about the proton to know how it deforms.
|
| Note that because of the factorization you don't actually have
| to zap the proton with a gravitational wave! You can measure it
| by zapping the proton with other stuff, as long as you can get
| that stuff to have the right rotational properties or measure
| the response to many different perturbations and sum the
| responses the right way to mock up a tensor operator. The
| experiment at JLab doesn't use gravitational waves, it uses
| these latter approaches.
|
| Roughly speaking at zero momentum the form factor is the
| _charge_ of the object you measure if it 's just sitting there.
| So the electric form factor evaluated at zero momentum is the
| electric charge, the gravitational form factor evaluated at
| zero momentum is the mass.
|
| What are radii? Express the form factor as a function of
| momentum^2 [possible]. In units that physicists like to work in
| (where c=1, hbar=1), the units of momentum are 1/length. Expand
| the form factor as a Taylor series in momentum^2 and you will
| get form factor(p) = charge + # radius^2 p^2
| + ...
|
| where # is a known dimensionless number.
|
| The above story is a cartoon but can be made more-or-less
| precise depending on how much quantum field theory you learn.
|
| lorentz:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_theory_of_the_L...
|
| wigner:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%E2%80%93Eckart_theorem
|
| cheat: this is a little bit of a cheat, it's only true to
| leading order in a taylor series in the strength of the
| external influence.
|
| possible: it's always possible to arrange this, or at least to
| separate the momentum dependence into a factor dictated by the
| rotational symmetry properties and another factor dictated by
| the object, just like in the Wigner-Eckhart theorem.
| hibbelig wrote:
| It would have been nice to get some idea about the relative
| sizes.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| It's really really tiny and rather incredibly small.
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.00110
|
| " Collaboration data to extract the r.m.s. mass radius of the
| proton Rm=0.55+-0.03 fm. The extracted mass radius is
| significantly smaller than the charge radius of the proton
| RC=0.8409+-0.0004 fm. "
| hibbelig wrote:
| So the charge radius is about 150% of the mass radius. Thank
| you.
| gus_massa wrote:
| So 0.55/0.84 = 0.65, i.e. 35% smaller.
| plank wrote:
| If charge is surface* effect, and mass a 'volume' effect,
| you might expect a ratio of 1.0/(0.5^[1/3]).
|
| This is 1.26 (or 0.79). Does not seem to fit experiment,
| even when fiddling with error bars. OK, so no volume vs
| surface effect then. *Suppose that both gluon and quarks
| are really in the exact same region, but that the
| 'effective' behaviour is "on the surface" for one of them,
| while "in the whole volume" for the other. In three
| dimensions, the "effective" radio would differ, in one it
| would be a factor (0.5)^(1/3) smaller.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Charge radius is 53% bigger, got it.
| pacaro wrote:
| It's almost as if the charge radius is in miles and the
| mass radius is in kilometers. It's imperial vs metric all
| the way down
| jcims wrote:
| For scale, the mass radius of the proton is roughly to one
| millimeter as one millimeter is to the diameter of the sun.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is very helpful to understanding the sheer magnitude
| of the scale. I previously had no concept of the size of a
| ten thousandth of a femtometer.
| jcims wrote:
| (Not a big deal but the .03 is the tolerance not the
| power.)
| narag wrote:
| _The proton is a collection of quarks and gluons moving at
| relativistic speeds around a central point._
|
| What? Moving at relativistic speeds? I had never heard that.
| arethuza wrote:
| _" Each of these particles, or "nucleons," is composed of a
| dense, frothing mess of other particles: quarks, which have
| mass, and gluons, which do not. Yet the quark masses only add
| up to a mere 1% of a proton or neutron's mass, with the bulk of
| the proton mass coming purely from the motion and confinement
| of quarks and gluons."_
|
| https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/118
| narag wrote:
| So the interior of baryons is analogous to the interior of
| atoms, with gluons instead of electrons dancing
| frantically... weird.
|
| Also the part about mass being generated by motion and how it
| seems to be an established fact.
| nimish wrote:
| Not really. The "roiling sea of particles" is a metaphor
| for perturbation series, which very specifically does not
| work for the strong force at low energies.
|
| Take anything involving virtual particles as just that,
| virtual. They're an aid for computation and cannot be
| observed directly. They aren't necessary either; lattice
| gauge theory is always applicable if not practical.
|
| The mass(-energy) being from the strong interactions is
| still true. And the residual bit of the strong force
| between protons and neutrons works with the virtual
| particle/perturbation theory approach pretty well, using
| pions.
| tines wrote:
| I'm glad you brought this up, because I've been reading
| some stuff lately that makes it seem like virtual
| particles actually have visible effects, like this one:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/12/y
| es-...
|
| So is it that these articles are wrong, or that I'm
| reading them wrong, or that the idea that virtual
| particles are just for calculations is outdated?
| antognini wrote:
| My impression is that the notion of "virtual particles"
| is a bit of an outdated concept. There isn't really as
| much of a physical distinction between "real" and
| "virtual" particles as there is sometimes made out to be.
| All particles are excitations of some underlying field.
| Generally speaking, these excitations can have some
| resonance that allows them to persist for long durations.
| This resonance occurs when the particle is "on the mass
| shell" in the jargon --- that is, it has a rest mass that
| is equal (or at least extremely close) to the observed
| mass of the particle. Excitations that are "off the mass
| shell" decay exponentially. But these other excitations
| do have real observable effects. The Casimir effect is
| the most famous, but they're also responsible for the
| Lamb shift and Hawking radiation which have also been
| observed.
| nimish wrote:
| No, it's a pretty well-defined concept when you stick to
| its technical definition as an aid in interpreting terms
| of a perturbation series as Feynman diagrams.
|
| > these other excitations do have real observable effects
|
| Yeah, that's the major thing: virtual particles explain
| observable effects in a sort-of intuitive way.
|
| But you could (to my knowledge) get the exact same
| results without involving any virtual particles, via
| lattice gauge theory. Since you get the same observable
| results without them, virtual particles, IMO, shouldn't
| be considered fundamental to any effect, even if they
| make the explanation a lot easier.
|
| Anything involving complicated interactions with
| relativity like Hawking-Unruh stuff has an even bigger
| issue since the notion of a particle/vacuum is observer
| dependent.
| l33tman wrote:
| All post-classical effects in quantum field theory arise
| from various "corrections" that come from what you could
| define as virtual particles, whether it's from the
| perturbative treatment or a numerical lattice gauge
| calculation. In the latter, you need to (formally) sum
| over all possible field configurations, the majority of
| which will contain half-witted weird off-shell
| "particles" and the entire spectrum between stuff you'd
| never see as a particle and the classical resonances.
|
| It is more clearly visualized in a perturbative
| expansion, for sure, but it's a bit disingenous I think
| to argue that there are no virtual particles in a lattice
| calculation.
| Chabsff wrote:
| Hawking radiation has been observed? When did that
| happen?
| antognini wrote:
| It's been observed in sonic black holes, which are
| mathematical analogs of gravitational black holes in
| fluids (though to be fair the experiment has been
| disputed, so the evidence is not absolutely unambiguous):
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3863.epdf
| Chabsff wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification.
|
| I don't have the background to be confident about this,
| but aren't the predicates on which Hawking Radiation is
| based on part of the equivalency framework between sonic
| and "real" black holes?
|
| If so, then while the observation of Hawking radiation in
| the model is certainly interesting, calling it an
| observation of Hawking radiation with regards to real
| black holes sounds like a stretch.
| so-and-so wrote:
| Yeah, the 'Standard model of particle physics' actually
| states that particles don't exist and there are only
| fields around.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| What a bad piece of journalism, intent on confusing
| instead of explaining.
|
| Virtual particles were invented because they have
| measurable effects. Physicists don't go around inventing
| invisible things for no reason. What they are not is
| "particles". The particle facade is only there because it
| fits the math.
|
| (The article seems to be describing an experiment that
| measured energy-time uncertainty.)
| tadfisher wrote:
| We discovered the mesons by photographing their tracks on
| plates exposed to the sky. They're real, just extremely
| short-lived.
| cwillu wrote:
| Incomplete analogy that's probably a better starting
| point: if the tone of a bell is a particle, then the
| other movements of the bell that don't resonate are
| virtual particles. Now, imagine we called the thermal
| motions of that bell "virtual tones", and you have an
| idea why physicists always sigh and emphasize that
| virtual. particles. are. not. particles.
| nine_k wrote:
| If virtual particles "fit the math" the same as real
| particles, what makes them not real? What do they _not_
| fit?
| nimish wrote:
| You don't _need_ them, and IIRC _can't_ (in general) use
| them if you deal with non-perturbative effects, unless
| you do stuff like re-summing infinite series of diagrams
| and that really makes interpreting the ultimately
| observable effect in terms of virtual particles
| interacting difficult.
| burnished wrote:
| An example that comes up in semiconductor is the 'hole'
| virtual particle. It is the absence of an electron. It is
| not a real and independent phenomenon. But you can treat
| it like a particle just fine
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Electron holes are quasi particles, not virtual
| particles.
| evanb wrote:
| What makes particles travel long distances as lumps is
| that they are on-shell. Virtual particles are not on
| shell.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_shell_and_off_shell
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You meant gluons instead of photons? Because the things
| analogous to electrons and the nucleus are the quarks.
|
| Anyway, the similarity is only on the level of "it's a
| bunch of moving things locked together by a force". Those
| things are about as similar to themselves as they are to
| planetary motion.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > Also the part about mass being generated by motion and
| how it seems to be an established fact.
|
| That's what they mean by relativistic speed. When effects
| from special relativity become large enough that you need
| to account for them in your math and measurements. There is
| a difference between invariant mass (aka rest mass) and
| relativistic mass, which depends on the object's velocity
| relative to the observer.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_speed
| Melatonic wrote:
| I have no good background in this but could it not be that
| from an outside observer view the motion appears as mass
| but when thought of modeled within it is instead
| energy/motion ?
| ProAm wrote:
| The Strong Force and Strong Nuclear Force are so utterly
| fascinating to read about. Gluon Flux Tubes! Seems like pure
| science fiction and imagination.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| This article was around recently: "Inside the Proton, the 'Most
| Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine'"
|
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-the-proton-the-most-co...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33262637
| daveguy wrote:
| I think that just means "moving fast enough that relativity is
| significant and has to be accounted for". It doesn't mean they
| are right at the speed of light (although they could be, I
| don't know). You could call a rocket "moving a relativistic
| speeds" because relativity has to be included in the
| calculations for accurate missions within the solar system.
| frutiger wrote:
| Gluons are massless so they must move at the speed of light.
| However they are strongly interacting with quarks and
| themselves so their worldlines will be a crazy mess of
| intersections.
| bgirard wrote:
| I wonder what the cut off speed is for relativistic speeds.
| If you think about it, it's not only a matter of speed but
| also how much precision you want in your calculations. Even
| if something was moving very slowly, you need to account for
| relatively if you want very accurate calculations.
| shagie wrote:
| You also get some relativity with some elements. Gold is
| the one that I recall most readily.
|
| Relativistic Effects and the Chemistry of Gold - https://li
| nk.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/BF03215471.pdf
|
| > In atoms of high nuclear charge (Z), as a consequence of
| a relativistic effect, the s electrons of an atom become
| more bound and their orbitals smaller than if this effect
| were absent. Simultaneously, the d (and f) electrons are
| less bound because of this effect, which scales roughly as
| Z2. Gold exhibits a large relativistic effect. This
| accounts for gold being more resistant to oxidation than
| silver. It also accounts for higher oxidation states being
| more accessible in gold than in silver. These effects are
| illustrated by some fluorine chemistry of gold and silver.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistr
| y
|
| > Relativistic quantum chemistry combines relativistic
| mechanics with quantum chemistry to calculate elemental
| properties and structure, especially for the heavier
| elements of the periodic table. A prominent example is an
| explanation for the color of gold: due to relativistic
| effects, it is not silvery like most other metals.
| quchen wrote:
| A rule of thumb in classical mechanics is that 0.1c is when
| you should start taking (special) relativity into account,
| I think it's 0.5% contribution then.
|
| For general relativity I don't know such a cutoff rule of
| thumb. Astronomy-wise, Mercury is the only planet that is
| obviously general-relativistic (its orbit is not an ellipse
| because it's so close to the sun). On Earth, we don't have
| strong/inhomogeneous enough gravity, so unless you're
| synchronizing satellites or atomic clocks, GR is not
| something to worry about.
| thfuran wrote:
| Some of the most precise clocks can actually measure
| precisely enough that a few feet of elevation change
| makes a measurable difference, which I expect also means
| that what you've placed under the table it's on also
| could.
| vkou wrote:
| Mercury's orbit is absolutely an ellipse. It is
| _incredibly_ elliptical, with an apogee of 69.8 million
| km, and a perigee of 46 million km.
|
| The relativistic effects on Mercury concern its
| _precession_ - the way that elliptical orbit rotates [1]
| around the sun. And it 's not caused by Mercury's speed
| (Which is only ~59 km/s at its maximum, compared to the
| Earth's 30 km/s). It's caused by spacetime being curved
| by the immense gravitational field of the sun.
|
| If Mercury had a circular orbit, it would have no
| precession.
|
| [1] Precession is akin to spinning a hula hoop around
| your body - with the hula hoop representing an orbit.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsidal_precession
| joe__f wrote:
| I think a good rule of thumb is 'check what accuracy you
| need your answer to, and then include all effects
| relevant to that precision'. If you needed an answer
| accurate to four significant figures, then you'd include
| relativistic effects for v < 0.1 c
| bawolff wrote:
| I don't think that fits the definition of rule of thumb.
| asah wrote:
| As a rule of thumb, I like to define my definitions
| first. /s
| thfuran wrote:
| Even if something isn't moving at all (relative to your
| reference frame of choice), you might still need to care
| about local gravity's effect on time.
| archgoon wrote:
| For a back of the envelope calculation we consider the
| uncertainty principle
|
| Dx*Dp >= /2
|
| Dp = D(m _v) >= /(2_Dx)
|
| m = 9.1 * 10 ^ -31 kg (mass of electron)
|
| x ~= 1 * 10^-15 m (radius of proton)
|
| = 6.6 * 10 ^ -34 kg m^2 / s (plancks)
|
| Dv >= 31 524 512 m /s
|
| Which is about 1/10 the speed of light. There isn't a true
| cutoff for "relativistic speeds" but in general, 1/10th counts.
| pharrington wrote:
| The specific composition of baryons is fairly niche physics.
| Assuming you're not educated in quantum physics, there's as
| much reason to expect to know about that as there is to expect
| a non-programmer to know about the minutia of different manual
| memory management strategies.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| TL;DR: Most of the mass comes from the energy of the strong force
| interactions of the gluons, not from the quarks. The gluons are
| not charged; the quarks are. The quarks sometimes go beyond the
| region of most of the gluons, which gives the proton a larger
| charge radius than mass radius.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _The quarks sometimes go beyond the region of most of the
| gluons, which gives the proton a larger charge radius than mass
| radius._
|
| This is one hypothesis, but not a stated fact in the article.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Fair. On the other hand, the charge can't be coming from the
| gluons, nor from the strong force itself, so it kind of _has_
| to be coming from the quarks. (Um, unless it 's inducing
| virtual pair production out there, and the destruction
| mechanism involves the pair getting destroyed by interaction
| with the quarks, and it takes one of the pair longer than the
| other... something like that could lead to charge out there
| farther than the quarks actually go.)
| blueplanet200 wrote:
| nit: gluons aren't electrically charged. They carry strong
| charge.
| phkahler wrote:
| Why are gluons needed to hold quarks together. If the 3 are in
| a line, equally spaced, with the oddball charge in the middle,
| they will attract quite strongly.
|
| +2. -1. +2
|
| If these charges are equally spaced, the attraction of the
| middle one in stronger than the repulsion of the outer two.
| dguest wrote:
| Good point! But it's also an unstable system: the -1 will get
| attracted to one of the +2 charges and (from a distance) look
| like a +1, and the other charge will fly off to infinity.
|
| I guess we could design a bunch of picometer-scale scaffolds
| that hold everything in place and this might work, but that
| doesn't seem to be the way nature put things.
| phkahler wrote:
| Sure, but what if they're orbiting the center charge at
| relativistic speeds? Now they also create a magnetic field.
| My guess is that somehow it ends up being dynamically
| stable. Also that the strong force holding the nucleus
| together is actually mostly magnetism.
|
| I would also posit that just maybe there is such thing as
| an electrostatic black hole. When matter is accelerated
| gravitationally to speed c, you reach an event horizon.
| Same should happen if the acceleration is due to charges,
| but will happen at a scale similar to the size of baryons.
| I'd say there is a lot of room for some theoretical
| developments in this area.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Stuff will only keep an orbit if it has nothing else to
| do, i.e. if it is dynamically stable.
| blueplanet200 wrote:
| It's not necessarily a questions of "need". Physicists are
| just measuring what protons ARE. Whether or not gluons and
| the strong force are necessary to form an object that looks
| like a proton is a separate point from what protons actually
| look like in our universe.
|
| To your point on if such an arrangement would be possible or
| not ignoring the strong force, it would not. The "net-charge"
| viewed from the +2 quark would be repulsive, resulting in an
| unstable arrangement of matter, even if you could construct
| it in an equilibrium state it would be the unstable kind.
| 988747 wrote:
| [dead]
| ArchieMaclean wrote:
| The strong force is much stronger than the Coulomb (charge)
| force.
| sharikone wrote:
| In fact gluons have a QCD charge, they just don't have a QED
| (electric) charge. That QCD charge is basically one color and
| one anticolor, minus the trace. So there are 8 different basis
| vectors that define the space for what the charge of a gluon
| is.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| This is not surprising given my own (presumably horribly wrong)
| mental image of what a proton is. Is it surprising given current
| theoretical models?
| mannykannot wrote:
| In your your mental image, was the mass radius necessarily
| smaller than the charge radius? If so, then your model has
| survived an empirical challenge. If not, then you have learned
| something new that was not fully determined or explained by
| your model.
| etrautmann wrote:
| I feel that it's important to point out that a scientific
| result doesn't need to be surprising in order to be important
| and grounding for future work. I agree this aligns with my
| intuitions (to the extent that I have any for subatomic
| particles), but it seems important to document and measure
| these properties.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| It looks like the questions about electron's mass at the end of
| the XIX century.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_mass
| bbarnett wrote:
| Some help for you, citizen.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fjFaKD9BuOc
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| I don't see the relevance of your comment, would you mind
| explaining?
| peterfirefly wrote:
| It's "19th century" in English. Many (all?) Romance
| languages + a few of the other ones in Europe use Roman
| numerals for centuries.
| nine_k wrote:
| I think it's styled "XIX" and not "19" to make it look
| archaic.
| int_19h wrote:
| In those languages it is used in all contexts and for all
| centuries. It's just a formatting convention that is
| occasionally helpful in e.g. history textbooks.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Thanks, English is not my native language, today I
| learned something!
| teovall wrote:
| I really wish articles about physics or mathematics, especially
| ones aimed at non-experts like this one, would include the
| English name or pronunciation of symbols and terms. Not all of us
| know Greek or advanced mathematics and I need something to say in
| my head as I read along. How do you say J/ps meson?
| archgoon wrote:
| Jay-sigh
| garyrob wrote:
| [flagged]
| Groxx wrote:
| Message boards are currently being inundated by low-effort,
| low-value, "yeah Google surfaces that Wikipedia page too,
| much faster, and has for years" drive-by advertisements for a
| paid service.
|
| It's not really surprising that people aren't excited about
| that.
| garyrob wrote:
| OK. My guess was that the person I was responding to didn't
| know that for $20/mo they could get all the answers they
| want to questions like the one they were asking (even if
| not always perfect), and do so immediately and
| effortlessly, and so pointing it out could be useful to
| them.
|
| I say that because I know that if I was unaware of the
| cost/benefits and somebody told me that, that might have
| motivated me to try it, and it might make a big difference
| to me. Someone could have added to my productivity and
| helped my stress level by pointing it out.
|
| In any case, I don't think I'll post about the cost/benefit
| of ChatGPT on HN again! Thanks for the explanation. I
| appreciate your taking the time to give it rather than just
| voting me down. It was kind of you.
| mort96 wrote:
| They weren't asking a question. They were critiquing the
| article. And the criticism is perfectly valid. Shilling
| for an OpenAI subscription is wholly unnecessary here.
| Groxx wrote:
| To be clear, I (and I suspect many others) _do_
| appreciate the "this is from chatgpt [and therefore may
| not be correct]" notes. Because posting it without that
| _and without verification_ is what some are doing, and
| that 's just plain malicious karma farming. Yours isn't
| that.
|
| But personally I'd like it better if it weren't used
| period, outside "ai is useful / produces trash"
| discussions where its output is directly relevant. If I
| want a machine's answer, I know how to get it, but I'm
| here for discussion with humans.
| bgirard wrote:
| It would become redundant very quickly I think. Reading stories
| about quantum computing feels this way. The first 3 paragraph
| include the same 'qubits can exists as a 0, 1 or a
| superposition' over simplification followed by a single
| paragraph of explanation of the new discovery.
|
| IMO it's much easier for you to answer your specific question
| with an easy search than it is for article authors to
| anticipate every question and keep answering it in every
| article.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| You'd just have to define the pronunciation once per article,
| like we do with acronyms.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Don't know why you're downvoted, this is exactly what
| they're asking for. You don't have to explain the details
| of the J/ps meson, just the first time you write it in the
| article put "J/ps meson (J/Psi meson)
|
| For the qubit example, they're not asking for the article
| to always describe what a qubit is, just if you're going to
| only write it as "a|0> + b|1> " it would be helpful to put
| (qubit quantum state) the first time you do so in the
| article.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Someone use GPT to automatically annotate articles with
| domain specific knowledge so that I can highlight
| words/sentences/symbols/formulae/etc. and have it explain it
| to me.
| gtop3 wrote:
| This feels like the type of thing I want human expertise
| on. GPT can be too inaccurate for something like this. I'd
| also be concerned it was trained on writings from people
| that misunderstand the science.
|
| There's already tons of expert written and reviewed content
| designed to teach science. Go buy any textbook on the
| subject. You can usually get them very cheaply if you don't
| mind older editions. Libraries will also have these types
| of books you can checkout for free. Once you've exhausted
| information found in textbooks you can start actually
| reading the scholarly journals these pop-sci articles are
| written about. Once you've read enough scholarly journals,
| you might have your own questions that aren't answered yet.
| Then, you can conduct your own science......
|
| Books are great for looking up quick tidbits of information
| too. Chapter titles and indexes are great for jumping to
| relevant information.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I'm not a physicist, so keeping around a good deal of
| reading material (not to mention seeking out a good
| explanation) to understand the odd reference or two seems
| horribly cumbersome.
|
| Google is way lower friction, but even that requires some
| manual sorting through.
|
| Seems like exactly the thing a good language model would
| be great at. If they can't do that, where the stakes are
| low and the task is exactly the domain of LLMs, then I
| don't see how they'd be useful for anything.
| gtop3 wrote:
| I'm optimizing for accuracy and depth of understanding.
| Your optimizing for lower friction.
|
| I think I'm optimizing for the correct variables.
| bgirard wrote:
| There was a news site that did something like that, I don't
| recall which. It was incredibly distracting and I think
| they started annotating ads in their popovers as well.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| This is why it's have to be a separate lyer from the page
| itself. Otherwise it would become yet more add real
| estate.
| Teever wrote:
| In the /r/SpaceX subreddit there is an acronym bot that will
| scan articles or posts for acronyms and make a post that
| explains the acronyms that it found.
|
| Such content doesn't need to be right in the beginning of an
| article, it could be linked to or at the bottom of the page.
| bgirard wrote:
| That's a good example. I found it handy when I was new to
| the subreddit and it's easily ignored at the bottom of the
| thread.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Play the audiofile here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet#Letter_names
| meindnoch wrote:
| On macOS: select letter "ps" - right-click - "Look Up" - it is
| pronounced "psi"
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The real scourge is articles that use embedded images for the
| greek symbols or other equations.
| otikik wrote:
| You can always retaliate by using the wrong name on purpose:
| the Jason meson, the Fork meson.
|
| It will drive them crazy.
| giardini wrote:
| The J is pronounced as an English "J" ("jay").
|
| ps - psi - pronounced "psaai" (as in "top side") or "saai" (as
| in "side").
|
| from "Pronunciation of the Greek alphabet in English":
|
| https://jakubmarian.com/pronunciation-of-the-greek-alphabet-...
| mLuby wrote:
| Interesting link, though I question some of those: taw &
| p'saai--it's not p'sai'onics right?
|
| And I wonder how useful symbols like ae @ ^ are to people
| asking how to pronounce Greek.
| eindiran wrote:
| There is an international, widely-recognized standard
| alphabet for precisely specifying the pronunciation of
| things in arbitrary languages, and you are unsure of why it
| would be useful for people trying to figure out how to
| pronounce something? Visit the wiki page for each IPA
| symbol and there will be recordings and examples and you
| can learn how to read it instead of complaining that people
| are using the correct tool for the job. The real problem
| with the linked page is that it is only using IPA half the
| time...
| int_19h wrote:
| It's even worse - in English, "psionics" would be normally
| pronounced something like /saI'on.Iks/.
|
| Generally speaking, the Great Vowel Shift did quite a
| number on anything originally Latin or Greek.
| raattgift wrote:
| See also <https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-
| posts/largehadron...> (2011)
|
| Preprint of Nature paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.05212
|
| HTML5 version: https://ar5iv.org/abs/2207.05212 ("x"->"5" opens
| up ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org).
| yonixw wrote:
| Wow! What a rabbit hole finding a proton is not just 3 quarks!.
|
| Suggesting these 2 articles:
|
| 1] Experimental results of proton collision as of 2013 (3
| quarks is an observation, but for low energies) :
|
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/81190/whats-insi...
|
| 2] Another article from the same author (Matt Strassler).
| Suggesting to read his answers for the comments of: Harry
| Bostock, Bob Anderson, and the 2 top comments of "aa. sh." (for
| more history and Neutron decay)
|
| https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/largehadron...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-04 23:01 UTC)