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Author Topic:   The resilience of matter's fundamental components
Tony650
Member (Idle past 4023 days)
Posts: 450
From: Australia
Joined: 01-30-2004


Message 1 of 46 (208256)
05-14-2005 11:06 PM


Ok, time for another of my customary dumb layman's questions.
During a recent web stroll I came across a page titled "Writing Words on an Atom." At first, I really wasn't sure what to make of the title. The only thing I could come up with was that it must mean somehow "engraving" words on an atom. But once I started reading I realized pretty quickly that I was on the wrong track.
American Institute of Physics writes:
This computer simulation of a hydrogen atom shows an electron cloud sculpted to read the word "optics," a feat that is within the realm of possibility in the near future by using lasers to manipulate electrons within atoms.
[Emphasis mine]
So, obviously, my initial reaction was wrong. This got me wondering, though, if such a thing is even possible. Not with atoms, but with the fundamental quanta of matter. That is, when dealing with a truly elementary particle with no smaller parts, would it be possible, even if only in principle, to "engrave" it, in any real sense?
To be clear, I am not so much concerned with whether or not we could actually articulate words on it, as whether or not it is physically possible to cut, groove, dent, bend, squash, stretch, crack, etc a particle which is made of nothing more fundamental. Is our everyday intuition that matter can be manipulated this way simply wrong?
In our everyday experience, things can be broken, ripped, compressed, split, and so on. However, at the microscopic level, none of this actually happens. When you cut an apple in half, for example, you aren't really cutting anything. All you're doing is separating all the particles on one side from all the particles on the other side. You don't actually cut through any matter; in essence, you cut between it. That is, you don't end up with a heap of sliced quarks on either side when you're finished. And yes, I understand that no blade is sharp enough to do that anyway, but I'm going somewhere with this.
Now, this is all pretty straight-forward but my question (one of them) regards the nature of matter's most fundamental particles, and whether or not they can be manipulated in the way macroscopic objects can. Or are they, in some sense, invulnerable? In other words, would it be possible, say, by colliding them in an accelerator, to "damage" quarks in some way? Could they be cracked or dented or broken in half or anything else despite having no composite structure? Or are they indeed physically impregnable?
If they are totally impervious to physical manipulation of any kind then this would seem to impose a practical limit on certain events, would it not? For example, I've heard that it is possible, in principle, for a black hole to collapse indefinitely. But if there is a point beyond which matter will be moved no further, a point where all of the intervening space is gone and the singularity is literally a volume of "absolute" mass (i.e. containing no empty space within its fundamental structure), then is it not an impassable limit for any imploding matter? If matter's most basic components absolutely will not be compressed then once the space between them is gone they have nowhere left to go, do they? So would this not halt any collapse?
I understand that atoms, themselves, were so named because the Greek root means "that which cannot be divided" (as was believed of atoms, at the time). So, regardless of what the fundamental components of matter actually are, whether we now know them or there is something even further down making up quarks, electrons, and so forth, is it true that the most basic "parts" of matter are, in fact, not malleable the way that matter appears to be on the macroscopic scale? Would it be correct to say that, at the most basic level, you can't actually do anything to matter, beyond manipulating the relative positions of its fundamental "pieces"?
Or am I all turned around here? Can matter's fundamental quanta indeed be manipulated this way? Could we collide quarks and split them open? Would the matter in a singularity continue to collapse after all of the empty space had been filled; would it simply proceed to compress the quarks, relentlessly, into oblivion?

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by SirL, posted 05-15-2005 7:31 AM Tony650 has replied

  
AdminBen
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 46 (208257)
05-14-2005 11:07 PM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Replies to this message:
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Tony650
Member (Idle past 4023 days)
Posts: 450
From: Australia
Joined: 01-30-2004


Message 3 of 46 (208286)
05-15-2005 2:41 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by AdminBen
05-14-2005 11:07 PM


Ah! Thanks, Ben.
AdminBen writes:
I can move it to "Coffee House" if that's not what you want...
No, Big Bang and Cosmology is fine. As I said, it really doesn't bother me where it goes. As long as it's where you think it belongs. If you're happy I'm happy.
Thanks for helping me clean up my post, too.

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SirL
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 46 (208310)
05-15-2005 7:31 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Tony650
05-14-2005 11:06 PM


Tony650 writes:
So, obviously, my initial reaction was wrong. This got me wondering, though, if such a thing is even possible. Not with atoms, but with the fundamental quanta of matter. That is, when dealing with a truly elementary particle with no smaller parts, would it be possible, even if only in principle, to "engrave" it, in any real sense?
Engraving is really just scraping off a few atoms. So it can't be done at any lower level. It is of very high concern in semi-conductor technology, where we are fast approaching this limit: around 30nm for CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductors). That's with an insulating layer down to a single nanometer, which would have a number of atoms you could count on a leper's hand.
Below which, from an engineering standpoint, matter starts acting funny, and I think engraving would lose all meaning.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Tony650, posted 05-14-2005 11:06 PM Tony650 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 5 by AdminJar, posted 05-15-2005 12:16 PM SirL has not replied
 Message 7 by Tony650, posted 05-16-2005 1:40 AM SirL has not replied

  
AdminJar
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 46 (208355)
05-15-2005 12:16 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by SirL
05-15-2005 7:31 AM


Welcome SirL
We're glad you found your way here.
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This message is a reply to:
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madarab
Inactive Member


Message 6 of 46 (208411)
05-15-2005 4:36 PM


Every particle is going to have an associated set of quantum states. These people are not so much splitting particles or engraving them in any way as they are manipulating quantum states to encode information.

Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by Tony650, posted 05-16-2005 1:47 AM madarab has not replied

  
Tony650
Member (Idle past 4023 days)
Posts: 450
From: Australia
Joined: 01-30-2004


Message 7 of 46 (208526)
05-16-2005 1:40 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by SirL
05-15-2005 7:31 AM


SirL writes:
Engraving is really just scraping off a few atoms. So it can't be done at any lower level.
Yes, that's what I suspected.
Once again, I'm not concerned specifically with engraving, just whether or not you can do anything to matter short of simply moving it. "Splitting an atom," for example, doesn't actually split anything, as such. All it really does is separate some particles from some other particles. So what sense can it make to speak of "splitting" (or cracking, breaking, denting, compressing, etc) particles which have no smaller components to manipulate?
This is how I came to the conclusion that the only thing you could really do to them is move them around. You can't alter their actual form in any way because...well...they have no form. They have no internal structure that you can manipulate to affect their overall shape, size, etc. In essence, they are the basis of form. Is this correct?
SirL writes:
Below which, from an engineering standpoint, matter starts acting funny...
Yes, I knew this would become an issue. I'm speaking of fundamental particles as if they are golf balls, but always in the back of my head is the knowledge that things just don't "work" the same way at that level. This does confuse things, no doubt, but I'll press on, all the same.
If, then, we've established that fundamental particles cannot be manipulated in any way, save for being moved around, then does this impose a limit on the collapse of black holes? Or is there perhaps some quantum-mechanical loophole that allows a singularity to deplete all empty space within its structure and still continue to collapse?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by SirL, posted 05-15-2005 7:31 AM SirL has not replied

  
Tony650
Member (Idle past 4023 days)
Posts: 450
From: Australia
Joined: 01-30-2004


Message 8 of 46 (208527)
05-16-2005 1:47 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by madarab
05-15-2005 4:36 PM


madarab writes:
Every particle is going to have an associated set of quantum states. These people are not so much splitting particles or engraving them in any way as they are manipulating quantum states to encode information.
Yes, I understand that the article I cited is not talking about engraving anything. That was just my initial assumption, which I quickly realized was wrong.
But it made me wonder if it could be done. And again, not just "engraving" a particle, but doing essentially anything to a particle. It seems to me that if a given particle is truly a fundamental quantum of matter then it should be impossible to break it, bend it, squash it, stretch it, and so on. I am thinking that the ability to do so would imply that it has some kind of internal (or rather, more fundamental) structure which is being manipulated. I don't see how any of this could be done to a particle with no smaller "pieces."
This, of course, leads into my other questions. As above, one of my main curiosities is whether or not this means that the collapse of a black hole is fundamentally limited by how much empty space it contains. In essence, is the totality of its collapse limited by the "density" of its quarks? Does that make sense?

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 Message 6 by madarab, posted 05-15-2005 4:36 PM madarab has not replied

  
Tony650
Member (Idle past 4023 days)
Posts: 450
From: Australia
Joined: 01-30-2004


Message 9 of 46 (208858)
05-16-2005 10:02 PM


Bump?
Hmm...anyone?
For those of you just joining us, here is the highly abridged version.
At this point the question is, essentially, if matter's fundamental quanta cannot be manipulated (split, chipped, squashed, stretched, etc) is there a practical limit to how far a black hole can collapse?
That is, does the singularity reach a state of "absolute mass" when its most fundamental particles are compressed to the point where no empty space remains between them? Does this state represent an impenetrable limit to how far the mass can collapse?

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by Sylas, posted 05-16-2005 11:03 PM Tony650 has replied

  
Sylas
Member (Idle past 5250 days)
Posts: 766
From: Newcastle, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2002


Message 10 of 46 (208888)
05-16-2005 11:03 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Tony650
05-16-2005 10:02 PM


Re: Bump?
I do not think there is any limit on how far collapse of a black hole can proceed. The real limit is rather on how far you can sensibly use the notions of size or distance at all.
It is not that collapse of a black hole runs up against a point that it can't compress anymore. It is that the collapse runs up against conditions in which the notions of space and time break down altogether.
The major lack in modern physics is a combination of gravity with the three other fundamanental forces. Basically, this will require some combination of quantum physics and relativity. There is no good match up at small scales.
This match up is definitely not going to save all the common day intuitions people bring to the table. We tend to rebel at the notions of unbounded collapse in size; and to a strong bound on durations. In a classical treatment of the black hole, for example, every world line terminates at the singularity. It is not even a case of "stuff" falling into the hole and remaining thereafter in an infinitely compressed state. There is no "thereafter" in the singularity either.
If we do develop a unified physics able to manage all fundamental forces and reconcile relativity and quantum physics at every level, then formal descriptions of the black hole may change. I consider it a fairly safe bet that any such theory will replance the currently unintuitive notions with stuff that is even further removed from our normal experience.
Cheers -- Sylas
This message has been edited by Sylas, 05-16-2005 11:04 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Tony650, posted 05-16-2005 10:02 PM Tony650 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Ben!, posted 05-17-2005 12:21 AM Sylas has replied
 Message 13 by Tony650, posted 05-20-2005 1:59 AM Sylas has not replied

  
Ben!
Member (Idle past 1389 days)
Posts: 1161
From: Hayward, CA
Joined: 10-14-2004


Message 11 of 46 (208913)
05-17-2005 12:21 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Sylas
05-16-2005 11:03 PM


Re: Bump?
Sylas,
Yes:
- I'm speaking out of my ass
- It's been over 6 months since I read about it
- I didn't understand it much WHEN I did read it
BUT
I think Dr. Frank Wilczek claims that quantum chromodynamics can account for 93% of graviational mass.
I'm not throwing this out there for any reason except to ask you how familiar you are with the theory, and if you are, how that weighs in on this topic.
By the way, if it sounds like I don't know what I'm talking about, clearly it's because I don't know what I'm talking about. Time to listen to that talk again...
Thanks.
Ben
AbE: I'm listening to the video again. I'll try to extract better thoguhts from it directly--sorry for posting so imprecisely before.
In the meantime, Tony, I think you should give it a listen. I think it addresses your question (about "infinite" collapse) a bit. I'm thinking specifically of material presented from 39:00-40:00 (but you'll probably have to listen to the rest of the talk to understand that part).
Wilczek talks about the different particles that exist, and that they're basically quasi-stable states of quark interaction (he uses the analogy of the hydrogen atom, which is a stable state of proton-electron interaction. were it not for QM, the proton and electron would sit on top of each other. same deal is going down for quark interaction, which produces these funky particles)
This message has been edited by Ben, Tuesday, 2005/05/17 03:49 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Sylas, posted 05-16-2005 11:03 PM Sylas has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 14 by Tony650, posted 05-20-2005 2:12 AM Ben! has not replied

  
Sylas
Member (Idle past 5250 days)
Posts: 766
From: Newcastle, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2002


Message 12 of 46 (208928)
05-17-2005 2:04 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Ben!
05-17-2005 12:21 AM


Re: Bump?
I'm not throwing this out there for any reason except to ask you how familiar you are with the theory...
Zilch. Particle physics is not my strong point. Over to you again...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Ben!, posted 05-17-2005 12:21 AM Ben! has not replied

  
Tony650
Member (Idle past 4023 days)
Posts: 450
From: Australia
Joined: 01-30-2004


Message 13 of 46 (209901)
05-20-2005 1:59 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by Sylas
05-16-2005 11:03 PM


Re: Bump?
Sylas writes:
It is not that collapse of a black hole runs up against a point that it can't compress anymore. It is that the collapse runs up against conditions in which the notions of space and time break down altogether.
Yes, this makes things quite difficult. I have a ton of questions along these lines that are bouncing around in my head at the moment and I'm not really sure how to phrase any of them, or even organize them into coherent thoughts.
Ok. Let's see.
I realize that once a mass has collapsed to a certain size the concept of distance itself becomes kind of fuzzy. But what if it reaches the state of "maximum compression" before it's small enough for things like quantum indeterminacy and the Planck limit to be of any consequence? Is this possible? Wouldn't it be, essentially, a question of mass?
That is, could a great enough mass collapse to a stage where all of the empty space within its infrastructure was gone, yet its overall size was still on the macroscopic scale? I don't mean necessarily large, incidentally; just large enough that the mass is not, as a whole, subject to quantum effects. In a nutshell, it would be a body of matter (containing no empty space) whose size is sufficiently large that, overall, it should obey the familiar "everyday" laws of physics. Is this possible, even in principle?
I'm thinking that, if quarks have a definite size, would it not simply be a matter of having enough in one place? This, of course, may be a practical impossibility but I'm only speaking hypothetically. For all I know, this may be one of those scenarios that requires more matter than exists in the universe but, in principle, could it happen? Given a massive enough body of matter, could it reach a state of being completely void of empty space, yet still macroscopic in its overall size?
If so then would this object be up against the barrier that I mentioned? Would it be trapped in a state of being unable to collapse any further, due to the lack of available space for its quanta to retreat to as its overall size decreases?
I realize that I'm thinking about this in a very "intuitive" way, which isn't the way to think when dealing with anything on the quantum scale, but I am in no way well-versed in this so I'm not sure how else to proceed.
I know that quarks aren't actually little balls of matter the way I'm portraying them in my example; I'm just trying to get my head around the nature of mass in such a highly condensed state. Essentially, I'm trying to understand what happens when you take gravitational collapse to its greatest extreme.
Now, my understanding may be flawed to begin with, but my basic train of thought is this: The volume of the mass, at the atomic scale, begins as almost entirely empty space. Then, during gravitational collapse, the particles comprising the matter press ever closer together, filling more and more of that space. As its overall size decreases, all of the space is eventually occupied by the body's constituent particles.
As in my hypothetical above, if a body contained enough matter for its innards to reach this state while its overall size remained above the level at which quantum processes dominate, what exactly would its properties be? Would its collapse be halted? And if not then what would this mean for the matter comprising the body? If such a mass did continue to collapse then what exactly is "happening" to the matter within? I know what is happening to it (I think) when it has more space to which to retreat, but what of this scenario?
Can we even know the answer to this, or is the model I'm suggesting just a meaningless thought experiment?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Sylas, posted 05-16-2005 11:03 PM Sylas has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by SirL, posted 05-20-2005 1:34 PM Tony650 has replied

  
Tony650
Member (Idle past 4023 days)
Posts: 450
From: Australia
Joined: 01-30-2004


Message 14 of 46 (209907)
05-20-2005 2:12 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Ben!
05-17-2005 12:21 AM


Re: Bump?
Ben writes:
In the meantime, Tony, I think you should give it a listen.
I did. The whole thing. Whew!
Thanks for the link, but man...I'm feeling a little overwhelmed here! I'm no physicist, by any stretch of the imagination. I do believe I understood some of what was discussed but I'm afraid that much of it went over my head. Thank you, though. It was fascinating, none the less.
Ben writes:
Wilczek talks about the different particles that exist, and that they're basically quasi-stable states of quark interaction (he uses the analogy of the hydrogen atom, which is a stable state of proton-electron interaction. were it not for QM, the proton and electron would sit on top of each other. same deal is going down for quark interaction, which produces these funky particles)
Yes, I recall that. Does this mean, then, that it is not actually possible for quarks to be pressed together to a degree where no empty space is left between them? That a state of "absolute compression," where the quarks comprising a material body are packed tightly together, is actually a state that is physically impossible for them to assume, under any amount of gravitational pressure?
Do I understand this correctly? If so then doesn't this just push the question back a level? Namely, what happens when the quarks within a collapsing body reach their lowest (i.e. occupying the smallest volume) stable state?
Whether or not they can be pressed all the way together is kind of irrelevant to the overall question. I am assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that they have a state of least volume beyond which they cannot go. Regardless of what that state is, my question is what happens once they get there?
From what I've heard, black holes would seem to pass right through this barrier. But if so then what is actually happening to the matter inside them? Is this only possible because, once it reaches microscopic size, the singularity itself becomes subject to quantum effects?
If this is the case then what about my hypothetical scenario, in my above reply to Sylas, in which a body is at its greatest state of compression, yet is still macroscopic in overall size and therefore not hindered by the spatial and temporal "fuzziness" of the quantum realm?
Something else I remember gleaning from that lecture regarded mass itself. I don't recall the details so I may have this wrong, but the upshot of it (I think) was that an overall body can have mass even if its fundamental components have no mass of their own.
Now, I don't know if I'm recalling that correctly, but if I am...how in the universe does that work? I can understand particles with a vanishingly tiny, yet non-zero mass, accumulating to give an overall body substantial mass. How, though, can a body composed of massless components, overall, have mass? How could even infinite massless particles add up to anything but zero total mass?
I'm sure this was explained in the lecture, but it seems that I didn't grab enough of it to understand what was being said here. I actually listened to that portion a few times but I just couldn't figure it out.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Ben!, posted 05-17-2005 12:21 AM Ben! has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by sidelined, posted 05-20-2005 3:54 PM Tony650 has replied

  
SirL
Inactive Member


Message 15 of 46 (210022)
05-20-2005 1:34 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Tony650
05-20-2005 1:59 AM


Re: Bump?
Tony650 writes:
I'm thinking that, if quarks have a definite size, would it not simply be a matter of having enough in one place?
Elemental particles, including quarks, are considered point objects: that is, they have neither volume nor any internal structure as far as anyone can tell.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Tony650, posted 05-20-2005 1:59 AM Tony650 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 17 by Tony650, posted 05-21-2005 10:12 AM SirL has not replied

  
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