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The Proton Just Got Smaller
inflame writes "A new paper published in Nature has said that the proton may be smaller than we previously thought. The article states 'The difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that anyone, even physicists, would care. But the new measurements could mean that there is a gap in existing theories of quantum mechanics. "It's a very serious discrepancy," says Ingo Sick, a physicist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, who has tried to reconcile the finding with four decades of previous measurements. "There is really something seriously wrong someplace."' Would this indicate new physics if proven?"
Obviously, these people never heard of the "Squeezer" from John Varley's Red Thunder.
Living With a Nerd
... and now this! These scientists have no shame!
I swear !!
are they saying that the consequences of this information are, dare I say it, negative?
"His name was James Damore."
I think I'm going to name all of my children 'Ingo Sick'. What an awesome name.
"'The difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that anyone, even physicists, would care"
Does this sentence bother any one else? Just me?
Just remember, dear protons:
Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is Physics, and a powerful ally it is.
Have they tried re-doing the math in Base 13?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It's always flawed as it is only an approximate model of the real world. And as a formal theory physics could never be simultaneously complete and consistent due to Gödel's theorems.
This paragraph from TFA has the most salient information:
4% sure does seem significant. But more interesting is that the measurement is thought to be much more precise because of the method of measurement. Doesn't it seem more likely that it's just not possible to get an accurate measurement with the electron -- like measuring a grape with a yardstick instead of a micrometer?
And of course, there's that stupid cat-in-a-box thing... you can't measure something without affecting it, so maybe muons interact in some strange (lol) way with protons that doesn't happen (or happens differently) with electrons. But as a non-physicist, even throwing those terms out there puts me far outside my league.
Of course, these more prosaic explanations don't lead to nearly as many cool sci-fi plot threads. FTL drive powered by a process that squeezes protons to black hole density, perhaps? That would be awesome. Or, perhaps the expansion of the universe is actually reducing the size of subatomic particles -- so in a few billion years, all matter will simply wink out of existence. Or, there's a time dilation effect as well, so that time drags longer and longer, especially on Mondays.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
In fact, the correction is about 2% (from 0.8768(69) fm to 0.84184(67)fm; one femtometer is 10^{-15} metres). Yes, the absolute magnitude of the difference is small compared to everyday things, but that's meaningless. More importantly, this difference is more than 5 standard deviations, so this is unlikely to have happened by chance.
A hellaphysicist will be pretty mad is the proton is a hellometer smaller.
>> The Proton Just Got Smaller
The price is the same, the box is the same, but now there's less proton.
this is why i never listen to scientist.
they're always lying, and making me pissed.
fucking protons, how do they work?
THL phish sticks
or is it the taxpayers again?
I'm sorry, unless you have published at least one paper at the Ph.D level on quantum theory, how about you shut up about what you think is ridiculous on this topic.
.
Do you know what the difference is between a useful scientist and not-so-useful scientist?
The not-so-useful scientist thinks like you. The useful one is the source for TFA.
"If you see a man on a horse, he is likely an enemy. Kill the man and eat the horse."
A year ago one would have been labeled an amateur wannabe for even suggesting this. Now it's the new truth. Science is like that.
I'm not a physicist but this is exactly what my intuition told me.
I think you're right on here.
I shrunk the proton. The kids are fine, though.
Hey, I've been working on a new Proton Filter. Everything was going fine. Now I have to contact my Chinese factory engineers and retool for a smaller seive. Damn it all to hell. No one wants a proton filter that will let proton through. What am I going to do with 45k faulty proton filters?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It's how many electrons you attract that are in orbit around your awesome self.
Besides, if you know the size, you don't know the wave. You can have one, but not both.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's more likely that our ability to measure has improved.
You're conclusions are only going to be as accurate as your ability to weigh, or measure.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Physicist here.
What's the diameter of the earth's magnetosphere?
About 10 Earth radii, defined as the point where the Earth's magnetic field is stronger than the solar wind and thus becomes the dominant force on electrical particles.
Similarly, we define the proton's radius in terms of its charge distribution. See how easy that is? It only takes a simple definition to make a word like 'size' meaningful.
And in the case of the proton is *is* meaningful, because you are incorrect about the proton being a singularity. The proton is composed of three quarks, each with their own charges and charge fields.
The quarks inside a proton are held together by strong force interactions. So any change in the measurable size of a proton is a change in what we know about the strong force. This is significant. Either the strong force is 4% stronger than our calculations predict, or there is another mechanism that is squeezing that proton's charge field down. Another force? Another particle? It'll be exciting to find out, now that we know there's something there to find.
The journalists who write about science often use bad, confusing, or just plain nonsensical terms. But it's almost always the journalists, and you can't really fault them for dumbing down their story to appeal to the largest group of readers. Whatever you do, don't blame the scientists. They are doing good work. It's not their fault if journalists relate it improperly, nor is it the scientists' fault if you don't understand the explanations.
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Since a low energy muon usually decays into an electron and couple of neutrinos, it may not be a point particle like an electron. The calculation may not have accounted for this.
And the diameter of the sphere of earth's gravitational pull I supposed is defined, too; even though the earth literally attracts every other particle in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
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You are in error. First, how do you know the GP hasn't published a physics paper? Second, you commit the logical fallacy of appeal to authority. After all, these physicists claim that the experiments performed by their predecessors (who would almost certainly qualify as being experts and who have themselves published physics papers) were in error. Think about what you're saying.
Since mass is a result of drag on the Higgs field, is also affected by the expansion of the field. Earlier measurements took place in an infinitesimally denser universe, producing infinitesimally more drag on the Higgs field. In a later universe, the field has become less dense due to expansion, so particles have less mass because they're dragging the Higgs field less. Viola! Can I have my Nobel Prize now? ;-)
No, such a size is not defined. But it could be, if it were a useful measurement. It would have to be defined in relation to the gravitational fields in the neighborhood, which would make it around the same radius as the L1 Lagrange point. Voila, we have defined a gravitational 'size', and it can even be represented graphically.
Nothing exists unless someone has defined it; by the same token, anything can be defined in some way.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Yes! You're catching on. :)
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"For my ally is the Strong Nuclear Force, and a powerful ally it is."
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
is already being detected to cause changes in the very fabric of our existence. See! More proof!
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Well seeing is believing, calculations can always be wrong ;) Show a real picture of a proton and I am convinced (please no photoshopping on that picture grrr).
Are we talking mass or volume?
And is it a perfect sphere, or does it bulge in the middle like the earth does. Protons have spin right? (Except when they are on O'Reilly's show I guess)
I knew the day would come when that pesky little Pentium FPU error would come back to haunt us.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
There's never a theoretical particle physicist when you need one. (Never thought I'd say that phrase)
Protons change size depending on which lepton they are "orbited" by.
cd
And the diameter of the sphere of earth's gravitational pull I supposed is defined, too; even though the earth literally attracts every other particle in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
somebody has been listening to weird al today...
Darth --
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European?
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And the diameter of the sphere of earth's gravitational pull I supposed is defined, too; even though the earth literally attracts every other particle in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
I believe that only holds true under the assumption that gravity isn't quantized.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
they give the size of the proton in two or three diff units, and the diff in two or three units, but never have a simple explanation,old x femtometers, new y femtometers stupid mba journalists who don't know science
Would this indicate new physics if proven?
Maybe, but it would really shake up the scientific method...
How exactly are you encoding arithmetic in "physics", as a formal theory? If the universe is finite, Godel's theorem doesn't apply.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I'm sure our wonderful technology has a margin of error that includes that small of an amount. Even if the equipment and math are perfect, I figured they used something oh-so-predictable and constant like gravity to measure it It turns out they didn't when you read the article but be sure to read this little part:
"and since the 1960s physicists have made hundreds of measurements of the proton's size with staggering accuracy. The most recent estimates..."
Oops, they made a typo. They should have said estimates twice but they accidentally called it a measurement in the first sentence. That's right, SURPRISE, they're estimating.
This is yet again an example of how exciting stupidity is published and real science is ignored. Which would you publish or report on in the news? There's a discrepency so the measuring must be a little off OR there's a discrepency so all we know about physics is wrong and everything is turned upside down and the sky is falling! It's just like how people who say dark matter must be regular matter that isn't emitting or reflecting detectable radiation get ignored and people who say dark matter is a mysterious, interdimensional, quantum, magic substance get an hour long special on TV because that sounds more interesting.
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The journalists who write about science often use bad, confusing, or just plain nonsensical terms. But it's almost always the journalists, and you can't really fault them for dumbing down their story to appeal to the largest group of readers.
Sure I can. Because it breaks the story, making it false. This confuses the readers further and makes the story have less value than not running the story at all. Yes I know the REAL job of newsies is to attract eyeballs to sell to advertisers. But they pay for the eyeballs by offering information, so "dumbing down" the story until it's worse-than-useless is outright fraud. (And it's a big part of why the old news media are dying.)
English is a very expressive language. It's usually possible to come up with wording that can get the meaning across just as clearly and just about as tersely. For instance, in this case the proton didn't just "get smaller" i.e. suddenly change size. "New measurement technique finds protons unexpectedly smaller." is my first attempt - and I'm NOT an expert in such composition. News writers are SUPPOSED to be experts in this, so there's no excuse for them.
Slashdot had an article and discussion on this - and science popularization - a few days ago.
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This will lead to the Great Debate, and Scientists the world over will be faced with a challenging decision: whether to reclassify these particles as a "Dwarf Proton". Or, possibly, simply "Kuiper-belt Protons".
The prior glory days of the positively-charged Proton's full status as a subatomic particle are over. The Proton will soon be relegated to the back-room annex containing exhibits for miscellaneous classes of odds and ends, fragments and freaks of the Standard Model, like the protino, the strange-quark, and the hapnion, in the Museum of Subatomic Physics, instead of the Main Hall of subatomic particles, where crowds of spectators will see the great favorites like the Neutron, and the Electron, and even the Positron.
But we should not feel so sad for the poor Proton. At least they haven't turned it into some form of "string". Yet.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
a "gap" in existing theories...??
LOL sounds more like there are "gaps" in existing atomic nuclei!
So what does size actually mean for a proton. For macro scale objects we measure with some physical item that has an electrostatic interaction with the item being measured. Previously all the measurements were being made using an electron. The new measurement is using a muon. Seems like they just redefined what "size" means, i.e. muon based vs electron based. What am I missing?
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
This is just caused by evaporation, which is caused by Global Warming. As the universe is heated up by all those SUV's, the poor protron is forced to sit around in its underwear and sweat heavily just to keep cool. Most of the loss is probably just the loss of most of its clothes.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Appeal to Authority is only a logical fallacy when the authority in question is not qualified to speak on the subject. An experimental physicist would certainly be qualified to have this discussion, say his predecessors may have been wrong, etc.
Also, you're an idiot.
Whatever you do, don't blame the scientists. They are doing good work. It's not their fault if journalists relate it improperly, nor is it the scientists' fault if you don't understand the explanations.
Hosanna Heysanna Sanna Sanna Ho
Sanna Hey Sanna Ho Sanna
Hey scientist guy, we know you would never lie,
Sanna Ho Sanna Hey Superstar!
I feel you missed the good chap's point a little.
When the article says "size" it is being fairly vague and more than a little lazy, you are quite right. But what they actually mean (charge distribution inherited from its composite quarks) is an important something, flashy name or otherwise. And it's considerably different from what the standard model predicts it to be. And that is a big deal.
So I see you're a theoretical physicist... ;)
How about, instead of "exists", "measured or usefully discussed"?
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
My name is Ingo Sick. You cast doubt on the Standard Model. Prepare to die!
When we get physics stories like this, the jokes outnumber the people who deal with or even understand it. Hi Matt! (Can I get an upmod for not treating IT and CS as the same thing?)
Nope. It's still a fallacy of the form "John is an expert, John says X is true, therefore X is true." What if both John and Jane are experts, yet Jane says that NOT X is true. Which of the experts is correct? And that is precisely the situation. So, you don't have to be an expert to have an opinion on the matter, especially considering that the experts themselves get it wrong sometimes. You merely weigh the opinion accordingly.
Also, you commit the fallacy of ad hominem. Have a nice day.
The muon orbitals are much more closely localized around the nucleus than those of the electron. Given that the nucleus is not homogeneous, this would tend to induce a rotating dipole moment (or stark effect if you must) keeping the positive quarks closer to the muon and pushing the negative to the far side, increasing the effective radius of the nucleus since the center of charge is always between the center of mass and the muon. I am not sure enough is known about the strong force to accurately model this, but it seems too obvious to not have been accounted for...unless there is something silly with my logic.
Oops. The measured radius is actually smaller. Well food for thought anyway...I'm getting back to work.
All I need now is 30 years worth of hundreds of mathematical physicists, and this hypothesis of mine will be just as good as String Theory. But if I'm right, nobody will be around to see it.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
...when science says they know something it means they know it provisionally. Think how long the weight of a Proton has been "settled science". And now? Not so settled. Think about some other things people might talk about as "settled science".
This is not a knock on science, science is supposed to consider everything it knows provisionally and test it constantly. What it is a knock on is people who fail to consider the provisional nature of scientific knowledge when it comes to setting social and government policy.
There is another sentence that doesn't make sense either,
"Would this indicate new physics if proven?"
Physics doesn't get "proven", mathematics gets proven. It's akin to proving reality - it doesn't make sense. AFAIK, the cornerstone of physics is the experiment. If the experiment shows something, then that's it. There is no debate except maybe about the procedure employed. There is never argument if something is "real" - it's right there.
If the proton is shown to be smaller than what QM predicts, then the universe is basically showing that QM is not complete and there *must be* new physics and that's a *huge* result. Frankly, I don't think the submitter really understands either how physics works or how science works.
From the abstract,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7303/full/nature09250.html
And that's a *huge* result. 5 standard deviations is not a little change - something doesn't add up.
I lost 4% of my body weight in just one week, but it was just .0000000040 megatons, so not significant
First the Neutrino has mass, then they can't find the Higgs Boson and now
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory
Heim theory also calculated the mass of the proton as greater than measured previously!
Actually, Mr. Yankovic's theory only applies to pancreases. It's been suggested that it may be generalized to all matter, but to date no parody artist has produced a general theory.
This is one of the comments from the article.
"A shrinking proton could possibly be explained by an alternative model of the proton, where it simply consists of a looping EM wave. Adding energy to the system (by replacing the electron with a muon) could reduce the wavelength of the looping EM wave – and thus also the diameter of the proton. Such a proton is elaborated on at http://classicalatom.blogspot.com/2008/09/simple-model-of-electrons-protons.html" Posted by: Simple Particle
Pinky, Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering? I think so Brain, but "instant karma" always gets so lumpy.
I believe the definition you're looking for is "Hill Sphere". The area around a gravitional object where its gravity dominates.
Gödel's theorem does not apply to the universe (be it infinite or finite), it applies to physics which uses arithmetics and natural numbers.
There is quite interesting Stephen Hawking lecture "Gödel and the end of physics".
Perhaps some of the proton's 'mass' shifted to the muon, maybe a gluon.
Godel's theorem applies to mathematical formal systems that are sufficiently complex and powerful. 'Sufficiently' here is reached by formal systems far, far simpler and less powerful than the real number system. The only way Godel's theorem wouldn't apply to our models of the universe is if all the calculations used in all related physics could be encoded in a system much simpler than first year algebra or trig. You might get around it if you could describe all physics using only formulae that cannot under any circumstances what-so-ever generate an irrational number or any undefined value, that never require infinitesimals or infinities, and that can't even imply a potential need for imaginary numbers. Yes, Godel's theorem is that powerful.
Who is John Cabal?
And I thought the universe was expanding
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
They've been banging around for a dozen billion years or so, and you expect them to have no wear? Ok, that particular one is a couple of attometres off spec, but stars still work and galaxies haven't exploded. The dark matter leaks a bit but that's easy to fix. Besides, nobody will notice if you use electrons like everyone else.
On whether thy used Excel to do their calculations. The difference they report in the article is very near where the IEEE 754 specification (and hence Excel) stops, ie. 10^-15 digits of precision. See here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/78113.
Here are two systems to which Godel's problem does not apply:
1. The system of math of all integers less than Graham's number (a number large even by size-of-the-universe standards).
2. The system of non-computable reals (infinitely long "decimals" without a pattern), as might be correct for time and distance measurements.
Similarly, the halting problem doesn't apply to any computer you can actually build, but only to a computer with infinite memory. As long as you're dealing with finite sets, or purely infinite sets (no finite integers allowed), you don't have the problem. Imaginary numbers are fine IIRC, if composed of bounded finite integers (not sure what you'd use a system like that for). A system like imaginary numbers except with triplets has no trouble with Godel (because it's surprisingly weak - you can't make a field IIRC, and this is partly why theres no 2D solution to the wave equation).
Even so, I'm not sure how much physics you could do before Godel's Theorum became an issue - these example systems are more restrictive than they might appear. On the other hand, a lot of work has been done to show how powerful Godel's Theorum ism but relitively little to explore how useful of a system one might construct without it being a problem.
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I thought we were supposed to choose the prefix so that the number was between 1 and 999.9999999999? If so, then it shouldn't be specified as 0.87 femtometres, but instead as 870 attometres. The difference is about 30 attometres. That sounds so much bigger than the 0.000 ... 003 millimetres the journalist quoted. :-)
I think 30 attometres is more readable (although I'll accept 30 x 10**-18 metres as easier for those who can't find their Google with both hands...)
I'm sorry, I think the problem here is that you and I also have different definitions of meaningful.
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I've been saying this for years...
what a relief, now in light of this new information, what's the definition of an obese person?
We have protons inside of use, those protons were being measured wrong, right?
And in the case of the proton is *is* meaningful, because you are incorrect about the proton being a singularity. The proton is composed of three quarks, each with their own charges and charge fields.
So ... if I have got this right, when you listen to protons, all you can hear is "Quark quark quark"?
I am anarch of all I survey.
What actually happens is that you get 4.16p % more protons :P
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
God here. I just upgraded the universe server to PhysicsOS 1.1. Some users may notice a change in proton size due to the new quantum mechanics engine, but unless your working with the OS directly, this shouldn't be a problem for you.
The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.
Physics is not a formal system.
entropy happens
Fail! You forget the holographic principle and Bekenstein bound, which are largely accepted in physics today. You can only have a finite number of distinguishable quantum states in a bounded region of space. It directly follows that real numbers cannot have a direct equivalent in the physical universe because they allow a violation of this bound, since a real number allows you to encode an infinite amount of information (most real numbers require an infinite number of digits to express, it's infinite precision). Another thing that follows is that even in an infinite spacetime extent universe, there can only be countable infinities. It follows further that any machine in the universe is at best a linearly bounded automata (not even a full Turing machine, since any system is spacelike bounded by its light cone, which does not in practice arbitrarily expand in the future, since as time approaches infinity, quantum uncertainty guarantees that the probability that a critical failure will occur in the system approaches unity).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
There is no amount of physics you can do to need to worry about Godel--see my reply to the parent.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I challenge you to find physical application to Godel's theorem, even a Gedanken Experiment. I don't think it is possible, but if someone find one, it would give a very interesting view on the limitation of physical theories.
Such an experiment should be impossible, for the same reason that even the biggest computer in the world fails to be a Turing machine - it has a finite memory.
even though the earth literally attracts every other particle in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
We don't actually know that, but it's probably something that only appears to be true on a macro scale.
Regardless, I don't understand why you're expending so much anger, when curiosity is a much better way to approach science.
... would be quite a feat. You'd have to overcome an enormous amount of EM repulsion. Close-packed would likely be close enough for strong force effects to come into play, but without some neutrons present, not sufficient to hold the protons together in a "nucleus". I guess what I'm saying is that either you have a really thick-walled liter bottle, or else you're talking about a really diffuse "gas" of protons. You'd probably want to keep your bottle in a hard vacuum, too, because a litter of dense-packed protons is going to be carrying a LOT of coulombs - it would suck all the electrons out of anything it came in contact with.
If you're talking about hydrogen atoms, that's another story, but even if you managed to make a liter of metallic hydrogen, that's a lot less protons - hydrogen atoms are a LOT bigger than bare protons.
The notion that a real number encodes an infinity of information is an important oversimplification. "Computable reals" don't - they can each be represented by a finite formula (e.g., sqrt(2)), or a finitely expressible converging series (e.g., pi). The "non-computable reals" are just an arbitrary infinitely precise value. IIRC, the non-computable reals are not a field - you can only have one operator over them (but now I can't remember why).
Does the holographic principle really imply that distances between particles are computable reals? That would be fascinating!
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So you can't have zeroes - or if you do, you can't possibly have division. So really Godel's theorem already applies to your math knowledge before you reach third grade.
The computable reals is a countable set, whereas reals are not, and thus essentially all reals are not computable. Note that computable reals are necessary to have a true Turing machine, but the problem is that quantum uncertainty will break any infinite time algorithm--the probability that your computing system fails goes to 1 as time goes to infinity. So we are still stuck with linearly bounded automata being the most powerful information processing machines (or brains, for that matter) that can be constructed in practice.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."