Large Hardon Collider

[Woozie]

Meson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There's a table in this page that his top/antitop, charm/anticharm, and bottom/antibottom. I don't really know how/why this works @_@ Maybe someone else can explain.

[bigrougabagel]

I hate to derail, but with the jesus vs satan thread and this one here my philosophical side has come out of hibernation.

I know a lot of you are math majors as well because math just works so well with physics, it is 100% necessary to have a grasp of math to be able to follow physics, in any form. Why is this the case? Why can we describe some of the most complex happenings in our world with math? Posing those questions, I am getting to... Is math a human invention, or is it inherent in the universe and a real part of existence? When we have a new mathematical formula or method, did we create it or discover it?

thoughts?

[Kryssan]

Math is the universal language. It pretty much dubs down in its simplest form to that. Given a set of constraints on a given system anyone can take your theorem and utilize it for their own purposes, presuming they have the requisite understanding of the language.

[Alleya]

I'll throw in my 2c. I'm not a physics/math person, but this question pertains to me as a psychologist, so it'll be interesting to hear how the distinction breaks down between disciplines.

The way I see math is an extension of language. It describes things just like words do, just with extreme precision. It gives form to the universe that we can grasp in our middle-world. A lot of scientists have made the argument that if we were the size of quarks, the world of quantum mechanics and such would be intuitive to us. Since we're products of a medium-sized existence, we can't really intuitively understand what goes on at such a small level, so we have math that describes it instead. Math isn't "inherent" to the universe any more than morals and civilization are.

[zoobernut]

I always thought of math being the one true language and being intuitive to the universe because math does not change depending on where you go or what you do or your point of observation.

I felt like language mimics math but on a higher more abstract level. To give an analogy computers use different types and levels of language to perform their actions and communicate. Math would be the equivalent of Binary to a computer, and language would be like scripting or code to a computer. They both serve similar functions but one is more abstract than the other.

[Neosutra]

You guys dont watch enough Fox news, English is the one true language of the Universe.

[Kuya]

Question about this energy turning into quarks. How does that happen exactly? Do we just understand it mathematically or do we actually have a conceptual understanding of the process that brings these particles into "existence"? How does energy become a quark?

And the argument about whether math is a metaphyisical truth or an intepretation goes back as far as (as far as i know) to Plato and Pythagoras. Both of them believed in a world of absolute truth that was represented by math. Naturally, there's no way that i'm aware of that you can prove math is the "language" of the universe and not just an interpretation created by humans.

[Kaylia]

I hate to derail, but with the jesus vs satan thread and this one here my philosophical side has come out of hibernation.

I know a lot of you are math majors as well because math just works so well with physics, it is 100% necessary to have a grasp of math to be able to follow physics, in any form. Why is this the case? Why can we describe some of the most complex happenings in our world with math? Posing those questions, I am getting to... Is math a human invention, or is it inherent in the universe and a real part of existence? When we have a new mathematical formula or method, did we create it or discover it?

thoughts?

To answer your first question, I would say that yes, you need a very good understanding of mathematics to be able to understand physics. Your "grammar" don't need to be perfect, far from it, but you need to be familiar enough with it to be able to interpret it. Most of the informations pass through mathematical model, and if you can't read it, you can't understand it.

Is mathematics a human invention? Like people said before, it's just a language. It's the most accurate language to describe something, organize it, classify it..etc. by itself, it means absolutely nothing, it only get a meaning when you associate a domain with it.

[Max™]

Math is a system by which you can define relationships in not merely a falsifiable manner, but a positively provable one.

It is a language, but it is not one we made, it is one we found.

Math is all around you, physics is trying to understand the Universe, and when you attempt that, you find math is woven into the very fabric. Hell, the fabric is woven of math.

The fascinating thing is that we can extrapolate the math which we discovered in our environment, and describe other environments which don't exist in any way we can determine.

A body of statements describes it's components, and describes the relationships between them. You can make rules which describe relationships between sets of statements, and even between sets of sets overall.

This emerges naturally, the likelihood of any person left alone in a room their entire life producing English is nil, but they would almost certainly discover mathematical concepts, even simple ones such as counting.

When you grasp the mathematics used in physics, you begin to see it as a window, and you understand how to look through it at the processes it is describing.

As for spin, Dirac summed it up best.

Feynman paraphrased it well.

You can get a sense of it yourself.

Hold your right hand in front of you, palm facing upwards like you're holding a plate.

Your elbow should be pointing down, and bent like a V with your shoulder on one end, and your hand on the other.

Now turn your hand to the right while keeping your palm level enough that you wouldn't drop the plate.

Feel free to raise or lower your arm, you'll need to twist your shoulder and whatnot.

After one rotation, you could get your palm back into the starting position, but your elbow would now be pointing the other way. /\ upside down.

Just to relate to another concept, note that with your left hand in the starting plateholding position, and your right hand twisted with the elbow up, you can rest the back of your right hand in your left palm. Try and see.

Now, keep rotating your hand around like you did to get your elbow upside down, this time your hand will cross under your arm, and return to the starting elbow down position.

Try to rest the back of your right hand in your left palm with both hands like that.

Your elbows get in the way now.


It took 720 degrees of rotation to reach the same orientation, so that is Spin 1/2 behavior.

Spin 1/2 particles don't share their position with other spin 1/2 particles unless they're in a different orientation. That is Pauli's Exclusion Principle, this is why you can't compress electrons and atomic nuclei until you squeeze all the room out of atoms.

These are Fermion's, Electrons, Protons, Quarks, they obey the rules of Fermi statistics.

Do the starting palm up plate holding position, but imagine the plate is glued to your palm.

Now you can rotate it outwards, let it flip so your palm is facing down after half a rotation, and bring it back to the starting position. That is not EXACTLY what happens in the case of a Spin 1 particle, but it's about as useful an approximation as you will find to understand how after 360 degrees it looks the same.

Light particles, photons, are known as Bosons, they happily share their states with other Bosons, and operate according to a different set of statistical rules, Bose-Einstein Statistics.

[Max™]

For the record, a completed theory of physics which fully describes the Universe would be the proof that mathematics is indeed embedded in reality.

Part of it, at least.


Regarding quarks and asymptotic freedom, I like to think of quarks as the curved parts at the end of a simple bow knot, pulling on them makes the knot tighter, til it snaps.

Where that metaphor breaks down is that the broken ends rejoin so you're left with two knots.

[Woozie]

Question about this energy turning into quarks. How does that happen exactly? Do we just understand it mathematically or do we actually have a conceptual understanding of the process that brings these particles into "existence"? How does energy become a quark?

Hmm, I can't think of a good non mathematical explanation for this, but I'll try.

Basically, in particle physics, there's a bunch of properties that particles have that need to be conserved. The energy is conserved which is why you need a lot of energy into the system to create two masses. Charge and such are also conserved. But then there's a bunch of quantum properties like isospin/strangeness/color/etc that also has to be conserved. But if a particle pair creation can conserve all of this, there's nothing stopping that particle pair creation to occur.

Higher energy means bigger particles can be created. That's part of the idea behind the LHC: if we bash particles together harder (more energy), then we can create things that we couldn't see at the lower energies.

As for the exact mechanism behind the quarks, the only way to really understand it is through quantum chromodynamics, which I hardly understand as of now. I'm still studying field theory. I don't want to try to go into more detail about it until I understand it a little better myself.

[Delant]

Came into this thread thinking it said "Large Hard On Collider," Have been reading now for an hour and got hard back somewhere at page 5 with all the pictures.

Don't have much else to say from my philosophy background, but shit, you guys do a good job of explaining your stuff. Kudos.

[Mizango]

Came into this thread thinking it said "Large Hard On Collider," Have been reading now for an hour and got hard back somewhere at page 5 with all the pictures.

Don't have much else to say from my philosophy background, but shit, you guys do a good job of explaining your stuff. Kudos.

Much appreciated, sometimes it takes us a while to explain it in simple terms. Like Woozie said, usually you can rip off a post in 2 mins flat, but with this it takes a while to say it in the proper context so its not just completely over everyone's head.

I personally am glad that you all are enjoying reading it and can get a grasp on it so to speak, that makes it totally worthwhile. I just wish we had more threads like this more often, I really enjoy this.

[zoobernut]

I had a thought this morning while I was taking a crap and I wanted to see if I was approaching this from the right direction. I am still contemplating how matter is put together and all the different pieces. I understand the abstract concept of the 'spin' and the intrinsic angular momentum that the particles have.

Is that why the bubble trails that particles leave in a collider are curved? It seems like if the quarks had no angular momentum then as the particles were smashed together and broken up the pieces would fly off at straight angles. But since they have that component they curve off. That would lead me to believe that the direction they spin off at is also connected to their spin property.

[Max™]

Again, we've never observed a free quark.

I personally do not think there is such a thing as a free quark, not any more than you find a free elbow or hip lying around.


Spin is a measure of symmetries, more or less, the ways in which you can distinguish something after it has been rotated are important.

Consider a smooth sphere, a concave disc, and a straight rod.

Any way you rotate the sphere, it looks the same, Spin 0.

A disc which is connected to other things has to be rotated twice before it returns to its original state, Spin 1/2.

A disc which is not connected in a particular manner to other things is indistinguishable from itself after a single rotation, Spin 1.

A rod which is not connected to other things is indistinguishable after half a rotation, Spin 2.

Do not get confused, Quarks and Electrons and such can and generally do have angular momentum, and Spin affects the quantum operator assigned to angular momentum, but they are different things.

I often think Spin should have been called Twist.


An important note to remember about QCD, Woozie, it is not specifically postulated that quarks are actually objects, merely that protons/neutrons are not fundamental structures, and they possess features with finer structure which fit the description and behavior of quarks.

It isn't exactly like saying there are three little point-like objects tied together rattling around inside of each Proton, though.

[Max™]

I've been meaning to ask, what are your thoughts on Time, everyone?

What do you think it is?

Why do we move along that direction?

Why can't we stop moving downstream towards the future, or change the way we're facing in relation to it?

[zoobernut]

I think that we cannot change our orientation or our direction because neither exist with respect to time. I believe that time exists as a singularity moment. Our perception of time as being fluid and having dimension is a product of the fact that we have a memory. Our memory strings all the singular moments together.

[Mizango]

I have some interesting thoughts on Time, brb writing a book....

[bigrougabagel]

Its because we dont BELIEVE!!

No, seriously, go to church.

From my lay perspective, time seems to be simply a means to which our brains organize events. So, the only way for us to change that is for something to happen in the future that actually happened in the past. So, you would need to be driving to work one day and run straight into a civil war battle.

Tho, the way we experience time changes with our velocity as cited before in this thread. We really dont have a good concept of what happens at c, as far as i know. For a photon travelling the speed of light, the journey from a galaxy 10 billion light years away is instant. 10 billion years instantly, thats pretty insane, for us anyway. It appears that time can only be slowed or sped up pre-c. Once we reach c .. I am talking way over my head and outta my ass. /end

[Mizango]

Oh and before I get started, I shared this article with Woozie about a year ago and it seems relevant to our discussions regards the marriage between Math and the Universe. Search this guy and read on his thoughts on it, some of you may find them interesting.

Is the Universe Actually Made of Math? | Math | DISCOVER Magazine

Discover Mag. also has alot of neat things regarding the LHC and Particle physics, I don't go to the site much since I have a subscription to them. Browse it, you guys will find alot of neat articles in there.