"We normally picture a nucleus as this fixed arrangement of particles, when in reality there's a lot going on at the subatomic level that we just can't see with a microscope," said Argonne physicist John Arrington.
Arrington and his colleagues used one of the Jefferson Lab's large magnetic spectrometers to look at the behavior of nucleons in some light atoms—deuterium, helium, beryllium and carbon. Physicists had long believed that "short-range correlations"—the interactions within nuclei that produced high-momentum nucleons—would largely reflect the density of the atom's nucleus, as they did in heavier nuclei.
This hypothesis largely held true, except in the case of beryllium. Unlike the other atoms under investigation, beryllium contains two clusters of nucleons, each resembling a helium-4 nucleus. These nucleons, in turn, are bound to one additional neutron. Because of this somewhat unwieldy configuration, the nucleons in beryllium experienced a relatively high number of collisions despite being one of the least-dense nuclei.
The nuclear "speed boost" observed by the researchers may have resulted from the interaction between the quarks that compose the nucleons that come into contact with one another. Each proton and neutron consists of three quarks that are bound extremely tightly to one another. When nucleons get too close together, however, the forces that usually constrain quarks can get disrupted, modifying the quark structure of the protons and neutrons or possibly even forming composite particles from the quarks of two nucleons.
"Because the interaction between two closely spaced nucleons is responsible for both changes in momentum and quark behavior, I think it's imperative that scientists continue to study the phenomena that take place there," Arrington said. "Our next measurement will try to examine this question directly by taking a snapshot of the quark distributions at the moment when the nucleons are close together."
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Proton's party pals may alter its internal structure
Husky
1.5 / 5 (8) Mar 02, 2012Noumenon
4.2 / 5 (10) Mar 02, 2012You can't separate quarks from each other, such is the nature of the strong force. In fact if you tried to "pull" two quarks apart it would require so much energy, you would just end up creating new particles.
Kinedryl
3.7 / 5 (6) Mar 02, 2012thermodynamics
4 / 5 (4) Mar 02, 2012Has anyone really thought in these terms since their first course in quantum mechanics? High momentum is the result of the uncertainty principle as distances shrink.
Deesky
3.5 / 5 (8) Mar 02, 2012Wow. You really think that many posters on this site have actually attended a course in quantum mechanics?
Turritopsis
3 / 5 (6) Mar 03, 2012Quantum mechanics is about measuring, not thinking. Influence and measure effect. Quantum theories visualize reality (model). Models are tested through physical (mechanical) experimentation and results are measured (quantized).
Quantum mechanics are always true. 100% certainty.
Theories can only be proven realistic. In other words they approach certainty.
Has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, just an outdated (disproven) atomic theory. Atoms are all energy. The inner core of the atom contains positive and negative charges (quarks) the outer shell of the atom contains negative charges (electrons). You cannot ask where an electron is in the atomic shell. The electron is the atomic shell. To see it you must interact with it, but then the electron wave breaks and the electron becomes the point of observance. The observer creates particle by taking measurement
Turritopsis
2 / 5 (8) Mar 03, 2012Time measurements destroy physicality. At lightspeed all physical matter is a wave. The wave takes x time to cover distance d. Wave.
Particle wave duality.
Only in the moment is it particular in nature. Outside of the moment you can measure the moments length. Time is the rate of change of the physical. The physical only exists in time.
Particles are the creation of the observer breaking the wave pattern that is energy in time.
TabulaMentis
1 / 5 (3) Mar 05, 2012From article:
I do not understand how they claim the nucleons can travel FTL. Can anyone please explain? If that is true then quarks and electrons may very well be higher-dimensional micro black holes.
CardacianNeverid
3.4 / 5 (10) Mar 05, 2012Exceeding 1/4 of the speed of light does not mean FTL!
antialias_physorg
5 / 5 (2) Mar 05, 2012It's really a hard sell to the layman. Humans tend to want to make analogies that we can relate to from everyday experiences (waves, particles, field 'lines', electrons and nucleans as balls with defined places and speeds, etc. )
It's really hard to let go of that and realize that what we use as analogies are emergent effects from more fundamental stuff - and therefore we cannot use them as analogies in this fundamental stuff.
I really love how Feynman expressed this:
I think it's at the end of this video, but I have no sound on this machine to verify that it's the correct one :-/
http://www.youtub...PId_6xec
Callippo
1 / 5 (2) Mar 06, 2012Shane_Fink
not rated yet Mar 12, 2012