The journey of light (A Possible Hypothesis)

[snoopy]

To CraigD

Oh right I see it now your explanation is a lot clearer that LittleBangs but I still fail to see the relevance. I cant help but shrug and say yeah so what ?
Not your fault of course CraigD just wish Littlebang could be a bit clearer thats all.

[Little Bang]

Snoopy your right, but since we were talking about fields generated by charged particles I thought that discussing how a proton changes into a neutron might help to shed some light on the subject.

Craig, the link you list, to me, shows two protons fusing to form one proton and one neutron, is the picture they show wrong?

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Little Bang

Craig, the link you list [Proton-proton chain reaction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia], to me, shows two protons fusing to form one proton and one neutron, is the picture they show wrong?

No. It is I who was wrong, completely and sloppily, when I wrote in post #28:

Originally Posted by CraigD

Note that the proton doesn’t just “emit a positron and neutrino to become a neutron” – it absorbs an entire proton first. After this step, the “other” proton that it “started the fusion process with” no longer exists.

The correct explanation (I hope I have it right this time – I did in Physics class 26 years ago!) is that the mass of a nucleus is less than the mass of 2 nuclei, the difference accounting for the mass/energy of the released positron () and electron neutrino ().

At first glance, this explanation doesn’t appear to make sense. The mass of a free neutron (about 940 MeV) is slightly greater than that of a free proton (about 938 MeV), so how could a consisting of a proton and a neutron mass less than 2 protons?

The answer, in detail, is among the most complicated ones in physics. In summary, it’s not too complicated. Here it is:

As is commonly known, protons and neutrons (nucleons) are made of quarks – an U + U + D for a proton, an U + D + D for a neutron. Less commonly known is that they are held together by gluons (the force-carrying boson for the strong nuclear force), and that the sum of the mass of the quarks in a proton or neutron is only about 1% its mass. The remaining 99% is due to the relativistic mass of a very complex “swarm” of virtual gluons, and a few more exotic particles. Even though the gluon has zero rest mass, like the photon, it travels at the speed of light, so has mass.

Gluons not only hold together quarks within nucleons, but hold together nucleons within atomic nuclei. Although one would expect a proton and neutron together in a nucleus to have more gluons, and thus mass more than the sum of the masses of a free proton and neutron, theory predicts and evidence supports that they actually “share” gluons to have fewer, and thus have the observed lower mass.

[Little Bang]

When I buy into an idea I find it very difficult to give up on the idea when people start shooting darts at it, but if enough darts hit the target I will drop it. Is it possible that we're like that about the standard model? The model is what, 40, 50 years old? We just keep tinkering with it hoping that it will work. Granted that it answers 99% of all the questions but if it's the truth it should answer all.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Little Bang

When I buy into an idea I find it very difficult to give up on the idea when people start shooting darts at it, but if enough darts hit the target I will drop it. Is it possible that we're like that about the standard model? The model is what, 40, 50 years old? We just keep tinkering with it hoping that it will work. Granted that it answers 99% of all the questions but if it's the truth it should answer all.

I don’t think, and don’t think many people who have studied physics think, that the standard model is “the truth” in any profound sense. I, and practically everybody with whom I’ve discussed the standard model, consider it accurate, but too empirical and ad-hock. Something more fundamental must underlie it.

There are a lot of theories contending to describe what that more fundament stuff is: preon theory, string theory, etc.

Once you get that deep, you begin to run into the problem of many very different theories making identical experimentally testable predictions. Deciding which is “true”, or even what “true” means when applied to such theories, is more of a seemingly unsolvable philosophical question than a scientific one. “Truth” and “beauty” start to get inextricably intertwined (IMHO ).

My personal feeling – “what I believe but cannot prove” – is that “the ultimate theory of everything” is a breathtakingly uncomplicated, but complex program of arithmetic operations performed on a single large integer, requiring a much deeper understanding of number theory than we currently have.

[snoopy]

Originally Posted by CraigD

I don’t think, and don’t think many people who have studied physics think, that the standard model is “the truth” in any profound sense. I, and practically everybody with whom I’ve discussed the standard model, consider it accurate, but too empirical and ad-hock. Something more fundamental must under

My personal feeling – “what I believe but cannot prove” – is that “the ultimate theory of everything” is a breathtakingly uncomplicated, but complex program of arithmetic operations performed on a single large integer, requiring a much deeper understanding of number theory than we currently have.

Yes I think that we need a deeper understanding of number theory too I like the ancient greek idea that the ultimate theory is an object. A mathematical object of course you rotate it one way you get the strong nuclear force rotate it another way you get the gravitational force etc. It would be nice if it were true it would have to be a multi-dimensional object but hopefully just not too many dimensions !!