Odd for a lurker like me to post 3 questions in a day. But anyway, what is the space between atoms composed of? Or is it just nothing?
I think mainly nothing… but according to some theories, gravity/electromagnetic/strong/weak (phew, is there an abbreviation for that?) forces work by exchanging particles like gravitons (I think), among others. I’d say thos particles and nothingness.
Virtual particles and the particles that carry fields of force exist everywhere, even between atoms.
I think gravitons are ‘virtual’ particles and don’t exist in a literal sense in that you caould grab a bunch and stuff them in a bottle. I think they are used as a useful creation when dealing with quantum mechanics and its ‘quantized’ nature (i.e. forces act via discreet packets of a force carrying particle).
I am reasonably certain there is literally nothing between an electron and the nucleus. It is this aspect of nature often used in sci-fi/fantasy to ‘allow’ a character or thing to pass through solid objects as the vast majority of a solid object is empty space.
Just don’t say “air,” as a number of my former chemistry students did on a quiz I gave. :smack:
How old were they? 7?
I thought that graviton theoretically existed the same way as the photon. Were the photon is the force particle of the electromagnetic force, the graviton is the force particle of gravity. The other force particles being the gluon (strong nuclear) and weak gauge bosons (weak nuclear). All these particles are massless (except the bosons) but are real, not virtual, particles. However, I could be wrong.
A slight threadjack :
If the photon is the force particle of the EM force… Does it mean that if I have two charged balls at some distance from each other then there are lots of photons going between them and causing the attraction(or rejection)?
No, phtons are not generated by a static electric field, they are generated by a moving electric field.
Yes Gravitons are meat to be virtual particles, don’t ask me too much 'bout them though.
The space in between atoms is composed of space and all the stuff that goes with that (virtual particles, em fields, gravitational fields and the like).
I may be totally wrong here ( so hopefully someone will correct me if I am), we can’t know if any point in space is empty. There is no way to observe a point in space without distrubing it.
Also I’m sure if empty have any meaning at the quantum level.
Yes your just about right Major Kong, virtual particles come from the fact that Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle means that the law of conservation of mass and energy can be broken by amount ΔE for time Δt where ΔEΔt ≤ h/4Ï€ which means a vaccuum cannot be said to be empty.
But are virtual photons generated? What “carrys” the magnetic repulsion/attraction?
Yep, static em-fields generate virtual photons.