Elementary Particles
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Contents |
Starting point of Morphological Flows: Elementary Particles
As we saw in the introductory piece, morphologies flow up in the order of hierarchical complexity. So naturally at the bottom we expect to find the simplest of morphologies. And we do, they are elementary particles and they bind to form everything in the periodic table of elements as we will see in the next chapter.
| Of these particles, photon (the unit of light) has the simplest morphology. It consists of an oscillating electro-magnetic field. If the pattern of morphological flows are to hold, then we should expect more complex particles to be born from photons. And, that is exactly what we find. It is called pair production, for example we can observe high energy photons (gamma rays) splitting into electrons and positrons (see animation ). So, a photon, a particle without any charge or mass, splits into an electron-positron (matter, antimatter) pair, each with charge and mass. This simple morphological step leads to creation of matter (with mass and therefore gravity), charge (binding atoms and molecules) and space-time itself. To understand the last part, we must understand what happens when things move at or near the speed of light (relativistic speeds). | Photon Electro-Magnetic Diagram
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The Really Weird World of Photons
Photon is made up of kinetic energy, that is all of its energy is represented in its speed. That is why it is thought as an axiom that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. If all of the energy in light goes to build up its speed, there is no more kinetic energy left to add on to that speed. That being the case, our normal notion of time and space runs into a serious problem. Suppose I am moving forward at the speed of light, looking forward at a mirror. The only way for a photon leaving my face to reach the mirror is for it to move faster then the speed of light, i.e. the speed of itself. Well, if photon is all kinetic energy and there is no more energy to add to its speed, then the photon should sit stationary on my face and never move forward. But that wouldn't do either because for the photon to be a photon, its electrical and magnetic oscillations must induce one another at the speed of light. So the photon must leave my face going forward at the speed of light, and I am also going forward at the speed of light. For those statement to both be true, the tick of time must literally stop. If the tick of time stops, I can move forward at the speed of light and a photon can leave my face forward at the speed of light as well. That is only half of the problem. If from a photon's perspective it maintains its speed of say X meters per second, and there is no per second (there is no second, time dilates to infinity), then there must be no meters as well (space shrinks to zero). If this confuses the hell out of you, good, it is supposed to. I am getting to a point, bare with me. This paradox leads to some familiar examples, lets give one.
Lets consider the twins paradox. One twin (Jim) is on earth and his brother (John) travels on a spaceship at near the speed of light holding a clock and a yard stick. To Jim, John's yardstick shrinks and his clock's ticks expand(wikipedia:Time_dialation). In fact from Jim's perspective, at the speed of light, John's yardstick shrinks (wikipedia:Length_contraction) to zero and his time clock takes an infinity to tick (stops all together). So should John come back he'll find that his brother died forever ago, while he aged next to nothing. ( to see some animations covering Relativity Topics scroll down to bottom of this page )
These confusing examples are called paradoxes. Blame Einstein for them, I am just paraphrasing. Of course these paradoxes can't really happen because at the speed of light both I and John are all photons and no matter. And that is the whole point. From a photon's perspective, our concept of space-time is irrelevant.
Space-Time is Born, Creation of Matter/Antimatter
Sorry, but I have to confuse you just a little longer to make my point. Photon's energy, though all kinetic, manifested in speed, still varies. Radio waves have less energy than infra-red light, which has less energy than ultra-violet light, which has less energy than x-rays, which have less energy than gamma rays. In these cases the energy of a photon is manifested in its frequency, the higher the energy of a photon the higher its frequency. As the energy of a photon gets higher and higher in the gamma ray range, that is when it splits into particles and anti-particles (matter-antimatter). When say matter is born in such a manner, some of its mother photon's all kinetic energy manifests itself in its body as potential energy (gravity, charge) and the rest if left as its manifest kinetic energy (speed). But now its speed is smaller than the speed of light. At such a speed the tick of time can exist, the notion of a measurable space can exist. It is only when particles are created that their speed drops to below the speed of light. Only then space-time is born in earnest. But even then it is nothing like you and I know.
You see at those speeds and scales, particles live in a quantum world. In that world a particle is like a blob of energy that occupies a space-time range, not a fixed point. A particle is here and there, sooner and later, all be it in extremely small space-time scales. It is when particles bind to form atoms (proton-neutron-electron combinations) that the speed of the atom drops to something closer to ours. And as atoms bind to create molecules (the stuff all around us), speeds come in our ball park range, our familiar notion of space-time comes to form.
Ok all of that was the setup, here comes the punch line. These concepts sound out-of-worldly to us because they are! But space-time transform (known as Lorentz transform) is regularly used in particle physics calculations. And we owe every digital device to the knowledge of the quantum world (quantum mechanics). These concepts simply don't register within our notion of what we normally consider as physical, i.e. that which registers on our 5 senses. And that is the whole point: there is such a thing as Inherent Reality, the domain in which things exist of their own volition, regardless of whether we perceive them or not. That Inherent Reality, as we have seen, is abstract. Then there is our Perceived Reality, that is the portion of the Inherent Reality that registers on our minds and our senses. With that portion which registers on our minds we form (mental) abstractions. As we form abstractions (e.g. quantum theory) and corroborate them and do calculations with them and build devices with them (e.g. computers), then our notion of reality expands, our Aperture of Perception expands. So inherent reality is abstract, the subset of it that registers on our minds (and are commonly corroborated) and our 5 senses form our known reality, our Perceived Reality. In fact when we talk about reality, we are really talking about our perceived reality. We will cover our expanding aperture of perception and how that comes about organically in much more detail later (chapter 8: Evolution of the mind, 8.2: Aperture of Perception).
Elementary Particles Table
Ok back to the matter (pun intended) at hand. To the best of our understanding thus far, we have the following elementary particles table:
And in some detail we have:
|
||||
Leptons |
||||
Particle |
Symbol |
Mass (MeV/c2) |
Electric Charge |
|
Electron |
e- |
0.511 |
-1 |
|
Muon |
mu- |
105.7 |
-1 |
|
Tau |
Tau |
1784.1 |
-1 |
|
Electron neutrino |
nue |
<7.3×10-6 |
0 |
|
Muon neutrino |
numu |
<0.27 |
0 |
|
Tau neutrino |
nu |
<35 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quarks1 |
|
|
|
|
Down |
d |
5-15 |
-1/3 |
|
Up |
u |
2-8 |
2/3 |
|
Strange |
s |
100-300 |
-1/3 |
|
Charm |
c |
1300-1700 |
2/3 |
|
Bottom |
b |
4700-5300 |
-1/3 |
|
Top |
t |
91,000 |
2/3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Gauge Bosons |
|
|
|
|
Photon |
gamma |
0 |
0 |
|
Gluon |
g |
0 |
0 |
|
W-boson |
W |
80,200 |
1 |
|
Z-boson |
Z |
91,170 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Some Sample Hadrons |
|
|
|
|
Particle |
Symbol |
Mass (MeV/c2) |
Electric Charge |
Quark Content |
Positive pion |
Pi+ |
139.6 |
1 |
Ud |
Positive kaon |
K+ |
493.7 |
1 |
Us |
Proton |
p |
938.3 |
1 |
Uud |
Neutron |
n |
939.6 |
0 |
Udd |
Lambda |
Lambda |
1115.6 |
0 |
Uds |
|
For each of these particles, except the photon, gluon, and Z-boson, there is an antiparticle with the same mass and opposite charge. Because quarks cannot be isolated, the masses given for them are approximate. |
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Particles have mass, and therefore gravity. It is this force that binds matter in large scales to create galaxies and stars. Particles may have charge, as in proton (positive) and electron (negative). These electric charges give rise to electro-magnetic forces. It is the electro-magnetic force that binds electrons and protons (and neutrons) to create molecules. As atoms come in contact in stars, as we will see in the next chapter, the strong nuclear forces bind the nuclei of matter to create hierarchy of elements. Finally the weak nuclear force can break up radioactive nuclei. To the best of our current knowledge, these four elemental forces (plus one really weird one, read on), gravitation, electro-magnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces are responsible for the reactions that bring about galaxies, stars, planets, organic material, life, and us.
As we traverse the morphological flows in a hierarchical continuum complexity, we will follow the shapes (morphologies) and the forces that act on the morphologies thereby creating more complex morphologies. Simply put, morphological flows consist of shapes and forces that act on them to create further shapes in that hierarchical continuum.
Of all of the permutations of combinations of particles, the proton-neutron-electron combinations have proved to be stable enough to form massive hydrogen-helium gas clouds, the simplest atoms (as morphological flows would predict). As you see consistently through out all of the morphological flows that is the signature of creation and destruction. Lower morphological entities mix and match in a chaotic manner, the resulting forms that are stable perpetuate and the unstable ones decay into their constituent parts.
Continuing the tale, the hydrogen clouds condense to form galaxies. The stars in the galaxies go on to produce the basis of the matter in the universe that we see today (as you will observe in the next chapter). And that is the realm of cosmology, understanding the big picture. So lets cover that next.
Courses
Courses from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenCourseWare:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-02Electricity-and-MagnetismSpring2002/CourseHome/index.htm and http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-02Electricity-and-MagnetismSpring2002/LectureNotes/index.htm - MIT - 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism - Freshman Year Physics
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Chemistry/5-73Fall-2005/CourseHome/index.htm - MIT - 5.73 Introductory Quantum Mechanics I
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-04Spring-2006/CourseHome/index.htm - MIT - 8.04 Quantum Physics I
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-701Spring2004/CourseHome/index.htm - MIT - 8.701 Introduction to Nuclear and Particle Physics
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-033Fall-2006/CourseHome/index.htm - MIT - 8.033 Relativity
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-251Spring-2007/CourseHome/index.htm - MIT - 8.251 String Theory for Undergraduates
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-286Spring-2004/CourseHome/index.htm - MIT - 8.286 The Early Universe
1.1QA-Review - chapter Question Answer review
Links
(Note: to open a link in a new window (or tab) right click over the link)
For a deeper scientific review see these gateway sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon - Photon at wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particles - elementary particles at wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter - antimatter at wikipedia
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/Flash/#relativity - series of animation on relativity
http://ed.fnal.gov/projects/labyrinth/games/codecrackin/index.html - cool online games with particles from the good folks at Fermi Lab
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html - documentary (movie) from PBS - Nova : Elegant Universe - cool intro to string theory, particles and more.. watch it online
http://sol.sci.uop.edu/%7Ejfalward/elementaryparticles/elementaryparticles.html - A nice, readable, article on elementary particles
http://particleadventure.org/particleadventure/index.html - An entire site dedicated to elementary particles
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/9709/9709062.pdf - Super-string theory detailed- Acrobat PDF document
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/qg_ss.html - String theory's version of cosmology: M Theory
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html - A good primer on astrophysics, nuclear physics and quantum mechanics,among others
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