Dimensions of Particles

Singularitarian said:
Is it the language of physics which is giving me a hard time. When someone says to me, ''something has a mass'' i immediately associate a ''structure'' to that mass.
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Your intuition is based on human-scale objects. Your intuition is totally wrong when you apply it to particles like electrons.

How can something which has a mass not have some kind of internal structure?
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Can you give any reason it ought to other than "it seems that way to me"?
 
That's the thing about math: it trumps physics because it can delve into what at least seem to be impossibilities. Take the square root of minus 1 for example, or infinity. Or zero -. But whether or not extraneous roots REALLY exist? Is that the foundation of string theory? Taking extraneous roots and running with them, making the theory more in the realm of math guys than the physicists?
 
Tumbleweed said:
That's the thing about math: it trumps physics because it can delve into what at least seem to be impossibilities. Take the square root of minus 1 for example, or infinity. Or zero -. But whether or not extraneous roots REALLY exist?
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When extra roots appear in an exact equation, they always mean something physically. Sometimes they appear in an approximate equation as an artifact of the approximation, and in that case they just tell you the approximation is breaking down.

Is that the foundation of string theory? Taking extraneous roots and running with them, making the theory more in the realm of math guys than the physicists?
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Not really. String theory is based on a single physical assumption: that fundamental "particles" are really 1-dimensional extended objects rather than point particles. The rest of it is the exploration of that assumption, using standard methods of physics and mathematics.

The assumption might be wrong, but I think if it's not the physical consequences as worked out by string theorists are probably correct.
 
Tumbleweed said:
That's the thing about math: it trumps physics because it can delve into what at least seem to be impossibilities. Take the square root of minus 1 for example, or infinity. Or zero -. But whether or not extraneous roots REALLY exist? Is that the foundation of string theory? Taking extraneous roots and running with them, making the theory more in the realm of math guys than the physicists?
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''"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ... But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. ...''

Albert Einstein
 
Singularitarian said:
Well yeh, i'd be happy about that. But it would mean that essentially, these conceptual things are being described by an abstractual mathematics which seems to either confuse the language we use, or it distorts the very rationality of what is being suggested.

Either way, it would seem the universe does not like to have its complexities reduced so easily.
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I like to think that abstract mathematics straighten things out in situations that everyday language is already confused about. I mean, no language was invented with discussions of sub-atomic physics in mind, so it's not that surprising that doing so leads to some degree of ambiguity and to some seeming paradoxes. Simply doing the numbers however, you get around all those assumptions of how things "ought", "rationally" to work—which really are just based on observations of the macroscopic world anyway.
 
sol invictus said:
Your intuition is based on human-scale objects. Your intuition is totally wrong when you apply it to particles like electrons.



Can you give any reason it ought to other than "it seems that way to me"?
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My intuition however is not as rigid as you are evidently making out. I have considered these things, but as i said also once before, ''Geometry at the fundamental level does not exist, and any space between two zero dimensional particles is not very rewarding. The matter still does not make a three dimensional self. It's only an illusion if this be the case.''
 
Singularitarian said:
'Geometry at the fundamental level does not exist, and any space between two zero dimensional particles is not very rewarding. The matter still does not make a three dimensional self. It's only an illusion if this be the case.'
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If you like, you can say that the space taken up by a bunch of 0-d particles in a 3-d space is just an "illusion", since their total volume is, after all, zero. I don't see what difference it makes to choose to call it that, however. For all practical purposes, they do manage to take up space.

Note that even if they turned out not to be zero-dimensional, that would not be the reason they manage to take up as much volume as they do. The sum of the particles' individual volumes in a large mass would be much less than that mass's volume. So you still would have to call it an illusion.
 
Then, if this is an illusion, the geometric space is not very considerable. In fact, the geometry of space does not depend always on matter. In Einsteins sense, yes - it always does. He has his little fluctuations curl the space around them. I remember reading a scientist once say ''the particles are like knots in spacetime, tiny little curvatures.''

In my sense, the geometry we have perception about, is not a pre-requisit then for a particle to exist. You could have a zero-dimensional particle for instance, existing on a one-dimensional line.
 
Singularitarian said:
Then, if this is an illusion, the geometric space is not very considerable. In fact, the geometry of space does not depend always on matter. In Einsteins sense, yes - it always does. He has his little fluctuations curl the space around them. I remember reading a scientist once say ''the particles are like knots in spacetime, tiny little curvatures.''
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I think you misunderstand what I meant. I meant that if all fundamental particles are 0-d, you can say "This litre of water appears to have a volume of 1 dm3, but that is an illusion. The sum of volumes of it's constituent particles is zero!", but I didn't really see the point of doing that. First of all, it will still have a volume of 1 dm3 for all effective purposes. Also, even if fundamental particles turned out to have a volume, you would still be able to say "This litre of water appears to have a volume of 1 dm3, but that is an illusion. The sum of volumes of it's constituent particles is only barely above zero!" if you wanted to.

How the geometry of space itself relates to this, I admit I'm not sure. Are you certain it is actually relevant to this thread?

In my sense, the geometry we have perception about, is not a pre-requisit then for a particle to exist. You could have a zero-dimensional particle for instance, existing on a one-dimensional line.
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Intuitively, I see no problems with any <n-dimensional particle in an n-dimensional space.
 
Geometry to us, makes a paradoxical three-dimensional world. The final theory, or a theory which can describe the origin of everything will depend not on a geometrical view, but one which must arise from the fundamental calculations. If what we percieve is an illusion, then the final theory will not care for the world we see when origins are taken into account.

The geometry of space was used as a way to discredit my question, ''how do two dimensional particles make a three dimensional object?''

Someone answered that it was the space between the points which made the three dimensions. For all considerable sake, there is no dimensions in question at the end of the line seperating the two points, nor is the geometry of spacetime a pre-requisit of the fundamental description itself.
 
Singularitarian said:
Is it the language of physics which is giving me a hard time. When someone says to me, ''something has a mass'' i immediately associate a ''structure'' to that mass. How can something which has a mass not have some kind of internal structure?
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Soo.....because you are confused, you are right? One of the biggest problems people have with physics seems to be that they try to use their everyday experience to express how physics "works". Your everyday experiences have nothing to do with physics.

How can something have mass without internal structure? Wha? Why would internal structure be a requirement for mass?
 
Singularitarian said:
Geometry to us, makes a paradoxical three-dimensional world. The final theory, or a theory which can describe the origin of everything will depend not on a geometrical view, but one which must arise from the fundamental calculations. If what we percieve is an illusion, then the final theory will not care for the world we see when origins are taken into account.

The geometry of space was used as a way to discredit my question, ''how do two dimensional particles make a three dimensional object?''

Someone answered that it was the space between the points which made the three dimensions. For all considerable sake, there is no dimensions in question at the end of the line seperating the two points, nor is the geometry of spacetime a pre-requisit of the fundamental description itself.
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I don't see how a three-dimensional world is paradoxical. There is nothing very strange about 0-dimensional objects being distributed in a 3-dimensional space. That they can form composite objects which have three dimensions is a bit trickier, but not really paradoxical either.

The rest of your post seems to be drifting away a bit from the original topic. Are you sure you do not want to start another thread raising your point there, once you have taken the time to formulate it clearly?
 
Dorfl said:
I don't see how a three-dimensional world is paradoxical. There is nothing very strange about 0-dimensional objects being distributed in a 3-dimensional space. That they can form composite objects which have three dimensions is a bit trickier, but not really paradoxical either.

The rest of your post seems to be drifting away a bit from the original topic. Are you sure you do not want to start another thread raising your point there, once you have taken the time to formulate it clearly?
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It is strange. For me, even a point has some kind of width. If it existed with no dimensions, how can it exist for real in something which is encompassed as a dimension?
 
RussDill said:
Are you just making some attempt to sound like Brian Greene? You are doing a very poor job. You've posted nearly 700 posts, and not a single one has made any testable prediction. Nothing you have posted has any impact on physics. What is your goal?
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Russ, this is not a lab. Perhaps i will be more vigourous in these assertions when a more reputable place is taken into account. I have no intentions eve replying to your last two posts niether, so don't hold your breath. You assume a lot, by assuming the way i operate. I never said science was wrong, nor have i ever stated that in any way. I said i believed that perhaps science could be wrong in its interpretaton.
 
A number of posts moved to AAH for off-topic and bickering. Please try to keep it civil.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Tricky
 
Singularitarian said:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/2000/08/13/NEWS1154.dtl

Maybe we have evidence it is possible already!
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Not really. This is a 9 year old science article. It and the press release (quoted here) mention ongoing experiments to confirm this. No sign of any results.

In fact Maris just calls the separated parts of the electron's wave function electrinos. There is no suggestion that these are actually particles. The wavefunction may be separated in the bubbles but as soon as a measurement is done the electron will be in one or other of the bubbles - not electrinos in both bubbles.
 
Doesn't rotation give rise to dimensions? Take a line extending on the x axis. Rotate it around point 0 and you have a circular plane. Rotate the circle around the x axis and you have a sphere and space/ volume is created. Now rotate the sphere and time is created as well as velocity. And since velocity has to do with time not squared and acceleration has to do with time that is squared, gravity has got to be created by doing something to that rotating sphere. Or is gravity and acceleration simply characteristics created by the spinning sphere and its creation of time, no further action needed. But how does a line arise from a point? Can't envision rotation there. And how is rotation initiated to create the dimensions, how is the sphere made to spin?
 
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