Physicists Discover 'Doubly Strange' Particle

[Tonington]

Definitely more than I can imagine

 

[karrie]

not entirely true. Collisions between particles are very different to collisions between cars. Particles are very nearly point-masses, and very nearly incompressible, so you don't have the issue that you have with the car, which is that some components will be compressed into the wreck and not be ejected. Along with that, of course, is the fact that you definitely won't find a wrench small enough to take apart a proton.

I see your point, it is a fairly brutal and primitive method to divine the contents of these particles, but without it we wouldn't have discovered the muon, the gluon and the six types of quark. There may be more we can discover in the same manner

Personally I would have thought that trying to figure out the inner workings of eggs would have been a better analogy. lol.

 

[hermanntrude]

Personally I would have thought that trying to figure out the inner workings of eggs would have been a better analogy. lol.

also a flawed analogy. the insides of subatomic particles are not fragile like the yolk and albumin of eggs. Also the outsides are a LOT stronger. And again, there are other, better methods available for egg-examination, unlike the examination of subatomic particles.

 

[Tonington]

Particle physics and collisions are more like geologists breaking apart rocks. They're breaking up something larger like a rock(particle) to find the component parts like minerals(sub-atomic particles). Though even that analogy is wonky.

That`s how particle physics works, which has been pretty quiet for the past few decades. They experiment by breaking things apart to see what`s inside. Sometimes they need to invent new machines to see what spills out, like the LHC.

 

[Scott Free]

not entirely true. Collisions between particles are very different to collisions between cars. Particles are very nearly point-masses, and very nearly incompressible, so you don't have the issue that you have with the car, which is that some components will be compressed into the wreck and not be ejected. Along with that, of course, is the fact that you definitely won't find a wrench small enough to take apart a proton.

I understand that is the common perception but I don't think it is necessarily true.

I see your point, it is a fairly brutal and primitive method to divine the contents of these particles, but without it we wouldn't have discovered the muon, the gluon and the six types of quark. There may be more we can discover in the same manner

I wasn't disparaging the method, what else could we do really? I just think it's a long and cumbersome method. That's all I meant.

 

[darkbeaver]

Particle physics and collisions are more like geologists breaking apart rocks. They're breaking up something larger like a rock(particle) to find the component parts like minerals(sub-atomic particles). Though even that analogy is wonky.

That`s how particle physics works, which has been pretty quiet for the past few decades. They experiment by breaking things apart to see what`s inside. Sometimes they need to invent new machines to see what spills out, like the LHC.

Sometimes they invent gods, like the great BB which used to be almost the size of nothing but which sprang into everything because because well it just did eh. :lol: