quote: Using a newly refined value for the top quark's mass, the Fermilab scientists now calculate that the Higgs' most likely mass is equivalent to an amount of energy about 20 percent higher than previously predicted. Even so, an existing accelerator and another one soon to be completed should be powerful enough to create the Higgs particle at the mass now considered most likely, say the Fermilab researchers, who are known as the DZero team.
quote: In the standard model of particle physics, the top quark is one of 16 particles that constitute matter and govern many of the interactions among matter's constituents. Scientists theorize that the only standard- model particle that hasn't yet been observed experimentally—the Higgs boson—performs a vastly important and mysterious service for its cousin particles: It somehow bestows mass upon them
I've never taken particle physics, but I had some questions. It says "In the standard model of particle physics, the top quark is one of 16 particles that constitute matter." There are 16 types of particles??? Do these include electrons, protons, and neutrons? What is a quark? Does it have electrical charge????
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I don't have a whole lot of time, but here are a few answers.
What is a quark? It is one more level down from sub-atomic particles like neutrons, protons and electrons. Three quarks make up a proton for example. It's simply another layer down.
Do they have electrical charge? Yes, they do. Since our current electical charge unit is baased on the electron, they don't have full charges for the most part. The quarks that make up the proton are charged this way: 2 are 2/3 positive electrical charge, 1 has 1/3 negative electrical charge.
A new particle accelerator is being constructed in Europe now at CERN, it will be the biggest ever, and in one year will create more data than the entire history of mankind will have put out since Adam stepped out of the garden (including things like speech).
posted
I really don't know much about this stuff, but a quark is smaller than an electron/neutron/proton. Electrons, neutrons, and protons are supposedly made out of quarks. Quarks are *really* weird.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quarks are so weird, in fact, that they don't talk about their properties in terms of actual properties anymore. Instead they talk about things "color" and "flavor" to emphasize the fact that they can't actually quantify the differences they are talking about, but merely record and observe them.
At first they thought there were three quarks: "up", "down", and "strange". These three can account for the three basic subatomic particles: the electron, the neutron, and the proton. Then they found three more and dubbed them "charm", "truth", and "beauty". I don't know what they've found since then, but I think "faith", "hope", and "love" should be nexxt in line, personally.
Edit to disagree with Kwea. Math could easily exist without speech... unless you are saying that math, as a fundamental language, inherently constitutes speech.
Ok, so that shows 5 types of particles, each with some type of charge. What about the other 11 types of particles?
Are photons considered one of these types of particles as well? As I understand, Photons are packets of light - so my guess is that they are not a unit of matter. Or maybe they are... Hmph.
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Photons are in the bottom left corner, under Gauge Bosons. And yes, they are both energy and matter. Or something like that.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
My father-in-law manages a department at Fermi, and it is quite an amazing place. He would be better suited to answer any questions than I would in this field.
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
its not that they're both energy and matter, its that matter and energy are really just macroscopic manifestations of the same sorts of basic "things". Sort of similarly to how neither particles nor waves as we think of them really exist -- just "things", which don't behave exactly like either.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I stand corrected... It's been 13 years since my last modern physics class, so my apologies for misremembering...
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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How would math, particularly higher math (to me anything beyond addition and subtraction), ever come about without man first learning to communicate? If we didn't communicate even our own basic needs, and find some way of expressing our needs to others, how the heck would we develop math to quantify things that we couldn't even understand?
say what you want about math being a "higher language" of its own, that fact is that without language and the ability to cooperate with others in social situations (think Neanderthal) we would never have lasted long enough to evolve to even learn how to count.
posted
That's an argument from psychology: that human brains can't learn abstract concepts without language. There's no reason it has to be universal, though. Think of all the sci-fi where humans and aliens learn of each other's intelligence through math long before they learn to communicate through language.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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