So the neutrons in the nucleus “catalize” so to speak the bond between protons, right?
Stabilize, certainly. I can think of no nuclei that have no neutrons, except of course for the proton itself. My trusty CRC bears me out on this one. What happens if you bring too many protons together is that it’s lower in energy for some of those protons to turn into neutrons, with a positron and neutrino coming off (in the simple case of two protons, this is the first step in the “proton-proton chain” which powers the sun). You’d get a nucleus with both protons and neutrons instead of one with just protons.
I don’t know for sure what would happen if you turned off the weak interaction, which is responsible for p -> n + e[sup]+[/sup] + [symbol]n[/symbol], but I’d put money on a bound state of two protons existing in the absence of the weak force.
You can make a game out of it. Scientist who knows what he is talking about gives interview to reporter who doesn’t understand any of it, but then proceeds to write about it. The challenge is to back out what the scientist might have actually said, based on what the reporter wrote. Great fun!
For the case of the doughnut-shaped proton, Eyer8 may have got it with the spherical harmonics. I had never thought of it before, but it does make sense that a proton could be in an excited state, since it is a composite particle.
A second possiblity is that the scientist was describing a doughnut-shaped superconducting magnet used to examine the internal structure of protons, and the reporter really mucked it up.
It’s also possible the NYT reporter was talking with (crank alert) these guys or these guys.
That’s an incredibly asinine statement to make. You are more or less acussing the Times of writing false or misleading articles, which goes against everything that journalism is about.
And spare me your stories about whats-is-name, as that has no relevence to the Science section of the Times.
Payton’s Servant, Chronos and g8rguy are trained physicists who are quite capable of determining whether an article is scientifically accurate or not. I suggest you post your credentials before you make a statement like that, especially in GQ.
I should also have included ZenBeam in the above. I’m not certain he’s a physicist but he most certainly knows his stuff.
I don’t know that this is going to work; I believe it’s accurate to say that, generically, to each bound state of three quarks corresponds a separate baryon, so that an excited state of uud would be some separate particle. I could be wrong about this, however; it wouldn’t be the first time.
As far as the false or misleading journalism… I’m sorry, but Chronos is absolutely correct. It’s not that journalists try to write false or misleading articles, it’s simply that normally, when it comes to matters of science, neither the reporter nor the general public has anywhere near the background necessary to actually understand what’s going on. There is, after all, a reason that one takes years and years to finish up the old PhD. And the upshot is that the scientist will give a simplified version to the reporter, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that the reporter simplifies a little more, and the end result is that one quite often gets oversimplified nonsense.
(Hi all, I’m new to the SD. Physics major graduating in a month!)
Ale, the quarks that make up protons and neutrons (and more) are attracted via the “strong force.” That is, they have an attraction to each other. Why? Well, as well as electric charges, quarks have strong charges. It’s analogous to postive and negatively charged particles except that there are more than 2 possibilities (+/-), there are 3 posibilities called “colors”–red, green, and blue (or actually 3 colors and 3 anticolors)–that ALL attract. Any stable particle must be “color neutral”, i.e. 3 quarks, one of each color, or 2 quarks, a color and its anticolor. This strong force binds the quarks together, and just like atoms can be bonded into molecules from residual electic forces, protrons and neutrons are bonded together from residual effects of the strong force. Quarks in one (proton e.g.) are attracted to quarks in another, and this attraction overcomes the proton-proton Coloumb repulsion.
Now it gets interesting. The strong force INCREASES with distance between the quarks. So if you try to separate 2 quarks eventually the energy in the field is big enough to CREATE a quark/antiquark pair via E=(gamma!)mc^2, and the two original quarks become now two sets of two quarks. Thus we believe it to be impossible to ever see a quark truly alone.
Perhaps the scientist talking to the Times described the “inseparability” of quarks due to the strong force (which is “transmitted” by gluons) like the inescapable pull of a black hole. Maybe that’s where the energy of gluons and black holes got put together in the mind of the reporter. But come on, even top-notch reporterrs are JOURNALISTS, not scientists. Besides, they’ve got pressure to make everything astonishing yet vaguely understandable to the masses. Truth or $$$?