Title: Origins Science Scholars Program "From Atoms to Quarks" Speaker: Glenn Starkmann, PhD Location: campus, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio Date: March 28. 2012
It was my understanding that they rotate as they orbit the nucleus. He compared it to a solar system. Could be wrong though. Lots of information in this one. I got 7 pages of notes!
Quantum Entangled Twisted Tubules: When we draw a sine wave on a blackboard, we are representing spatial curvature. Does a photon transfer spatial curvature from one location to another? Wrap a piece of wire around a pencil and it can produce a 3D coil of wire, much like a spring. When viewed from the side it can look like a two-dimensional sine wave. You could coil the wire with either a right-hand twist, or with a left-hand twist. Could Planck's Constant be proportional to the twist cycles. A photon with a higher frequency has more energy. (More spatial curvature). What if gluons are actually made up of these twisted tubes which become entangled with other tubes to produce quarks. (In the same way twisted electrical extension cords can become entangled.) Therefore, the gluons are actually a part of the quarks. Mesons are made up of two entangled tubes (Quarks/Gluons), while protons and neutrons would be made up of three entangled tubes. (Quarks/Gluons) The "Color Force" would be related to the XYZ coordinates (orientation) of entanglement. "Asymptotic Freedom", and "flux tubes" make sense based on this concept. Neutrinos would be made up of a twisted torus (like a twisted donut) within this model. Gravity is a result of a very small curvature imbalance within atoms. (This is why the force of gravity is so small.) Instead of attempting to explain matter as "particles", this concept attempts to explain matter more in the manner of our current understanding of the space-time curvature of gravity. If an electron has qualities of both a particle and a wave, it cannot be either one. It must be something else. Therefore, a "particle" is actually a structure which stores spatial curvature. Can an electron-positron pair (which are made up of opposite directions of twist) annihilate each other by unwinding into each other producing Gamma Ray photons. Alpha decay occurs when the two protons and two neutrons (which are bound together by entangled tubes), become un-entangled from the rest of the nucleons. Beta decay occurs when the tube of a down quark/gluon in a neutron becomes overtwisted and breaks producing a twisted torus (neutrino) and an up quark, and the ejected electron. Gamma photons are produced when a tube unwinds producing electromagnetic waves.
I think this talk confused more people than it informed. More name dropping than actual learning what anything means. That part where he says something like, electron spin - they are not really spinning, but when they spin right or left - blah blah. Everyone went blank and stayed blank until the end of what must have felt like gibberish. Who cares who won nobels. Physicist love to give history lessons more than physics lessons. Like Feynman would say - you could know the name of every bird on earth and you know exactly nothing about birds. Second favorite part was were the old lady demands to know why none of the scientist were American. He handled that better than I would have :D
he says electrons don't actually spin, it's just convenient to think about it that way. if they're not actually spinning, what are they actually doing to make the rest of the magnetic field?
The description of electron spin having chirality is not convincing. The same charged unit can't move in opposite directions under the same prevailing electric field, without violating Maxwell's law of electromagnetic force. This seems to me to be highly "theoretical" interpretation of field data. Spin and movement of "particles" is inferred, when indeed there is every reason to suppose waves are at present, not particles. The atom itself is an artificial construct, a particle supposed to exist, despite it's volume being nearly entirely empty space. Now we are told that this construct is made up of yet further constructs. At some point, folks who discuss particles relentlessly, and who make grand inferences from such a dictatorship of perspective, and denying something fairly manifest about creation.
The concept of atom goes back to Leucippus and Democritus in ancient times. Alpha particles were discovered by Rutherford in an earlier experiment, when he placed a ray of radiation coming off of radium between electrically charged plates. The beam separated into three. The one deflecting towards the negative (and therefore positive) he named the alpha, the negative one he called beta, and the one going straight and therefore neutral he named gamma. Rutherford also showed that alpha particles are nuclei of the helium atom and consist of two protons and two neutrons, the beta are electrons, and the gamma are high frequency electromagnetic radiation.
