Looking over the Neutrinos thread started by ERISLOVER,
CHRONOS stated that the neutrino has a mass of 3 electron volts. I infer that 1 eV is the smallest possible unit of weight…correct?
If so, how many eVs make up one Planck Mass?
(I havent found a good site with a conversion table).
BTW…one quark volt=1/3 eV ,right? Or does that not work, since individual quarks can’t be isolated?
I think you are mixing up charge and energy. An electron volt isn’t anything special, it is just a convient unit on the atomic scale. It represents the amount of energy required to move an electron through a potential of one volt. You could certainly move an electron through a potential smaller than one volt, so energies of less than one electron volt are possible.
Quarks are much more massive than 1/3 eV, although quarks do have fractional charges in thirds. Quarks have masses in the millions to billions of electron volts. An electron is about 510,000 eV. I doubt there are any particles we could detect that are less massive than a neutrino. It is so close to zero that it was assumed for some time to have no mass.
However, I don’t know of any theoretical lower limit on mass, except for the Standard Model. The model, when perfected, will give a map for all particles and explain why they have the mass they do. The least massive particle in the model will have the lowest mass possible, simply because no particles exist that are lower.
I read in a newspaper a few days ago that an neutrino detection experiment had cast doubt on the Standard Model. Knowing the ability of the media to talk bollocks when it comes to science, and having read this article, I’m none the wiser. I’ve no great understanding of the SM (read none), so what gives? Is it dead, in need of modification or does it explain these results?
(Sorry for the hijack)