# Ask the particle physicist **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 22, 2009, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-particle-physicist/522186 "2009-12-22T11:51:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 100
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2010, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-particle-physicist/522186/100 "2010-01-02T03:12:50Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Two parts bug me: > > 1. The discrete part. That is to say, there is a concept of an “individual” particle (even if the behaviour of that “particle” is not localized to the tiniest conceivable region of space). And all current modeling seems to be based on a system that is essentially an accounting paradigm where one of the main goals is find an indivisible–discrete–smallest component. It seems to me to be a bit circular to simply assert that current paradigms require entanglement and non-locality for particle behaviour as if that demand somehow means the modeling which promotes the demand is correct. While that’s true, there isn’t any gut-level beauty for non-locality and it remains spooky–i.e. more than just counter-inutitive. While you can say a discrete behaviour collapses all at once everywhere, it’s not really an explanation for what that particle is, exactly. What we have is a rather clean description that matches reality. In this description, particles take on a simple mathematical form, and this form also happens to imply a few spooky properties, which is good since these spooky properties are indeed observed. However, IMHO, these properties are spooky only because we have been trained since birth to have a “local” intuition. But, nature didn’t ask us. This isn’t to say that particles _are_ what our description says. Indeed, we can never say what anything _is_; we can only construct descriptions that match whatever data we have and that are sufficiently useful for human use. > [@](#): > > 1. What is space? Right now, even there our paradigms want to make it some sort of soup composed of individual, but really tiny behaviours all squished together–conceptually an extension of the “particle” model. That’s the same paradigm writ even tinier, and that’s what I find dissatisfying: one more field of individual components so tiny they appear to be a single entity. What if space is absolutely smooth at a tiny enough level and what we call mass and energy are simply descriptions of how it behaves–i.e. neat accounting mechanisms to describe and predict in the same way taking ever smaller discrete slices of time for a pitched baseball describes and predicts its behaviour but doesn’t really get at what motion is? Ya’ lost me here, sorry! Space is currently taken to be smooth (except by some theorists exploring unified models), but your point seems to start with the opposite position… --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-particle-physicist/522186)._