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---------------------------- - 2290 - The Universe of Fundamental Particles
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- Quarks is the name of all strongly interacting particles that comprise the more familiar names of protons and neutrons. Leptons is the name of all light or weakly interacting particles with familiar names of electrons and neutrinos.
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- Explaining the Universe in terms of these two fundamental particles and the four fundamental forces, Gravity, electromagnetic, and the Weak and the Strong nuclear forces, is the realm of “Particle Physics“.
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- All particle creation started with the Big Bang where the energies were:
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-------------------- 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 electron-volts.
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- One electron-volt is the electromagnetic force between the negative electron and the positive proton in an atom. The Big Bang started with 10^28 electron-volts of energy. At that high energy physicists believe all four of the forces were one force. From that point on the Universe began expanding and cooling. The four fundamental forces cooled out at these temperatures after the Big Bang:
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-------------------------- Gravity 10^32 degrees Kelvin
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-------------------------- Strong Force 10^27
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-------------------------- Weak Force 10^13
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-------------------------- Electromagnetic Force 10^13
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- During the first second of expansion matter and anti-matter annihilated each other with a little bit, about 1 billionth, of matter left over. The Quarks and Leptons in this matter were so charged and energized by the intense heat that no light photons could escape.
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- The neutrinos, however, escaped within 1.2 seconds. After another 1,200,000 seconds (380,000 years) the expansion cooled enough so quarks and electrons could form neutral atoms. This allowed the photons to escape and the Universe first became transparent to light.
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- This is the same light we see today cooled down to the Microwave Background Radiation, which is a cool 2.7 degrees Kelvin.
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- There are still many hot spots left in our Universe, but, it is still expanding and cooling. We are familiar with atoms being made up of Protons and Neutrons in our everyday world, but if we heat them back up, adding energy, we can go backwards in time towards the world of the Big Bang.
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- What happens is that Protons and Neutrons turn out not to be fundamental particles. They are made up of three Quarks each. The Proton is two Up-Quarks and one Down-Quark and the Neutron is two Down-Quarks and one Up-Quark. Today, we believe our mostly cool everyday world is made up of these four fundamental particles, or, two particles if you call them quarks and leptons:
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------------------ Up- Down- Electron Electron-
----------------- Quark Quark Neutrino
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----EV:-------- 10^-2.5 10^-2 10^-3 10^-12
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- EV: is the energy in electron-volts.
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- Notice that the Quarks are higher energy and therefore more massive particles. The lighter particles are electrons and neutrinos, called Leptons, and the have lower energy, and lower mass.
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- Using particle accelerators and studying cosmic rays we can find hotter and denser spots in our everyday world that are closer to the conditions that existed back in time toward the Big Bang. What we find is that these four particles have four more similar particles that are heavier, containing more energy.
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-------- Up Down Electron Electron-
-------- Quark Quark Neutrino
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-------- Charm Strange Muon Mu-
-------- Quark Quark Neutrino
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--- EV 1 0.1 0.1 10^-11, or 0.00000000001
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- Notice that the energy is higher in electron-volts. These particles are even more massive. Heavier particles are often radioactive, meaning they tend to decay, or transform, back into the lower energy particles of our everyday world. Most of these particles have very short lifetimes.
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- When we go back closer to the Big Bang, when things were hotter and denser still, we find another set of four particles repeated one more time.
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-------- Up Down Electron Electron-
-------- Quark Quark Neutrino
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-------- Charm Strange Muon Mu-
-------- Quark Quark Neutrino
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------- Top Bottom Tau Tau-
-------- Quark Quark Neutrino
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---EV: 100 5 1.6 10^-10, or 0.0000000001
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- Now, we have a total of 12 fundamental particles that make up our Universe. These are all point-like particles behaving as both particles and waves. Each has unique properties of energy, mass, charge, spin, and color.
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- Today’s theory says that this is all the fundamental particles there are in the Universe. At least that we know about and have been able to recreate in particle accelerators. (The Higgs Boson was another particle discovered later.)
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- We believe that all of the four forces were one force in the beginning. By creating ever higher energies we have demonstrated that the electric force, the magnetic force and the weak nuclear force are truly manifestations of the same force. That still leaves us with the Strong Nuclear Force and the Force of Gravity as forces that have not been tied together with today’s theories.
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- Electricity and Chemistry are concerned with the movement of electrons. The electrons have a negative charge. The magnetic force is created with the movement of any charged particle, including the electron‘s movement.
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- The electric and magnetic forces appear to be quite different in our everyday world but they have proven to be manifestations of the same electromagnetic force. Light is one of these manifestations, but so is the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays.
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- The carrier for these electromagnetic forces is the photon. The photon is massless and always travels at 300,000,000 meters per second. You can think of the photon as either a particle with no mass, or as a wave, or as a jiggle of a force field. The jiggle, or oscillation, propagates at the speed of light, 300,000,000 meters per second. The other three force carriers have this same property being massless and also traveling at the speed of light.
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---------- FORCE FORCE CARRIER RELATIVE STRENGTH
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---------- Gravity gravitons 1
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---------- Electromagnetic photons 10^36
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---------- Strong Nuclear gluons 10^38
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---------- Weak Nuclear Weak Bosons 10^33
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- Electrons with a negative charge are orbiting around the nucleus that has a positive charge. It is the electromagnetic force that holds electrons in orbit, keeping them from flying away. Photons are carrying this force.
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- The Strong nuclear force holds the protons and neutrons together, overpowering the electromagnetic force that is trying to repel like-charged particles. Protons in the nucleus are carrying the same positive charge. Gluons are the force carriers for the Strong force. Note from the above table that gluons are 100 times stronger than photons.
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- Protons are made up of two Up-Quarks and one Down-Quark and have a positive charge of +1. So, the quarks must also have an electric charge:
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------------------- Up Down- Electron Neutrino
------------------- Quark Quark
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- Charge:------ +2/3 -1/3 -1 0
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- The electric charge is relative to the electron, so, a +2/3 charge means it is 67% as strong as an electron’s with the opposite polarity, since it is positive. The proton is made up of two Up-Quarks and one Down-Quark , +2/3 +2/3 - 1/3 = +1. The neutron is made up of one Up-Quark and two Down-Quarks, +2/3 - 1/3 -1/3 = 0. The neutron is neutral.
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- Inside the atom the electromagnetic force using the photon carriers are holding the atom together. Inside the nucleus the Strong force using the Gluon carriers in holding the positive protons together. Left to the Electromagnetic force the like positive charges should repel each other and come flying apart. The Strong force overpowers the Electromagnetic force using Gluons that act like rubber bands.
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- This the opposite way Electromagnetic and Gravity forces work. Normally we expect that the further distance charged particles or masses are apart the weaker the force, weaker by the square of the distance. The Strong force gets stronger as you try to separate the positive charged protons. The further apart they are the stronger the force. The Gluons are stronger with distance separation and weakest when the protons are closest together. If protons try to separate they snap back like rubber bands.
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- The Weak force controls radioactive decay, for example when a neutron decays into a proton. The carriers for the Weak Force are called W-Bosons and Z-Bosons. A boson is a particle with an integer spin, 1,2,3,etc. ( Fermions are particles with ½ spin, 1/2, 3/2, 5/2, etc.)
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- Spin can be thought of as angular momentum of a rotating particle. Left-handed spin is counterclockwise. Use your left hand and point your thumb in the direction of a particle moving away from you. Your fingers wrap in the counter clockwise direction.
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- You would expect particles to rotate equally well in either direction, clockwise or counter clockwise. However, nature seems to prefer left-handed spin in 0.3% of the cases. This is believed to be the reason matter won out over anti-matter during the first instants after the Big Bang.
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- The Weak Force carriers, W and Z Bosons, should be massless, like the photon and gluon force carriers. However, they are not massless, they are massive, about 100 eV. This contradiction cannot be explained. However, there is a theory. The theory is that there is another particle yet to be discovered. It is called the Higgs Boson.
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- Photons are massless and travel at the speed of light. They are everywhere. It is amazing to look outdoors and see photons coming at us with the finest resolution and detail of reflected light on everything around us. These photons travel from the Sun in 8 minutes and reflect off everything we see.
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- There are photons that we can not see covering the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays, but they are there and everywhere. The theory is that the Higgs Boson particles are similar to photons and they are everywhere, occupying all of free space, even the empty space in the atom between the electrons and the quarks.
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- The theory is that these particles are very high energy and they have the effect of interacting with the W and Z Bosons, slowing them down and making them appear massive when they are actually massless like the photon and gluon. For this theory to work the Higgs Bosons must be extremely massive, 900,000,000 eV. We need very powerful particle accelerators in order to create and detect these Higgs particles.
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- The Standard Model Theory is that the 12 fundamental particles, the three fundamental forces, and the four force carriers are all that make up the Universe as we know it. The math for this theory accurately predicts the mass and energy of each of these particles. It is one of the most proven theories of all of physics.
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--------------------- Now to: Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Supersymmetry, and String Theory:
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- Force is mass * acceleration. Acceleration is velocity squared. Energy is the ability to do work and work is a force moving over a distance. Therefore, energy is mass * velocity squared moving over a distance. But energy is limited because any force regardless of how strong can not move a mass faster than the speed of light. So Energy is limited to mass * (300,000,000 meters/second)^2.
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----------------- Energy = Mass * 90,000,000,000,000,000
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----------------- E = m * c^2
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---------------- Energy = kilograms * meters^2 / seconds^2
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- If we take this math to its limits we only can account for 10% of all the mass and energy in the Universe. We call the remaining mass and energy that we can’t see, Dark Energy and Dark Matter.
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- This causes us to question our list of 12 fundamental particles. Obviously there is more we do not understand. We know there are 12 more particles in the equivalent anti-matter. Each particle has its own anti-particle. That brings the list to 24. But, if anti-particles were out there they would be annihilating each other.
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- There is another theory called Supersymmetry that predicts an equivalent 1/2 spin particle for each integer spin particle and an equivalent integer spin particle for each 1/2 spin particle.
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- For example, a Quark with an integer spin of 1/2 would have an equivalent particle boson with a spin 1. Called a Squark. A Photon boson spin 1 would have an equivalent Fermion, called a photino, with spin 1/2. ( Fermions get a preceding “s” and Bosons get a suffix “ino” for all the 24 particles ).
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- These super symmetric particles are very massive and we need energy levels up to a trillion eV to see them. If Supersymmetry is correct that would bring the total number of fundamental particles up to 48.
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- There is still another theory called String Theory where all these point like particles are considered little strings instead of points. The lengths of each of these strings is 10^-35 meters. That is so small that they may as well be points. 10^-35 meters is to the size of a proton as the proton is to the size of the Earth.
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----------------------------- The Earth is 1.2^10^7 meters in diameter.
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----------------------------- 10^-35 meters is to 10^-14 meters as 10^-14 is to 10^7 meters
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- However, mathematically “points” and “strings” behave much differently. Mathematically, the little super strings can be viewed as vibrating strings at different frequencies and folding back on themselves forming loops. Using different combinations of these string conditions mathematics can recreate all the 48 particles that we have developed. Now, instead of 48 particles we have the ultimate in simplicity, one super string behaving in different ways to recreate all the particles and force carriers in nature.
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- Another amazing thing about String Theory is that the math predicts the existence of Supersymmetry particles. It also predicts the general theory of relativity. This all makes the theory very believable except for one thing.
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- To make the math work you also have to have 10 spatial dimensions instead of the three that we are used to. We have never seen these six extra dimensions. The theory is young and it still has the potential of being the greatest ever revolution in physics.
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- Could it be that Dark Matter is made up of these Supersymmetric particles, or strings?
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- Could it be that the Higgs Field created Inflation in the early Universe after the Big Bang. Like the forces condensed out of the expansion, the Higgs field may have transformed from one state to another. Like water vapor condensing into a liquid releasing energy as it transforms from one state to the other.
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- The energy released could be what powered the rapid expansion in the early universe called Inflation. Releasing energy in this way is much the same as spraying mist over the vineyard on a cold night so when the water freezes it releases energy keeping the grapes warm and saving the crop for harvest.
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- The recent discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe may mean another transition of the Higgs Field is occurring today causing the galaxies to fly apart at an accelerating rate.
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- The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible, so says Albert Einstein.
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- Symmetry seems to be absolutely fascinating to the human mind. We like to look at symmetrical things in nature, ….. However, it is not the symmetry of the objects in nature that I want to discuss here, it is rather the symmetry of the physics laws themselves, so says Richard Feynmann.
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- Richard Feynmann was raised in New York. Received the Nobel Prize for his quantum theory of light. He invented the Feynmann diagrams that are simple cartoon sketches representing the quantities math for the fundamental particles and forces. His insightful interpretation of the high energy data from the Stanford University Linear Accelerator later became known as Quarks. He died in 1988.
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- March 3, 2019. 56
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--------------------- Sunday, March 3, 2019 -------------------------
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