Are subatomic particles jealous?

[xchrom]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/atomium/2012/2012010805.html

KISTRYN (Jagiellonian University in Krakow): Can anthropomorphism help us understand the irreducible three-nucleon force?

Anthropomorphism – thinking of inanimate objects as human beings – helps us understand complicated, quite often unimaginably complex, natural processes. Such simplifications are particularly helpful while discussing objects that cannot be observed directly. When we speak of a virus ‘attack’, ‘antibodies rushing to help’, or the ‘protective barrier’ of medicines, we try to illustrate, in an almost comics-like way, complicated biochemical processes that even contemporary science understands only vaguely.

Let us use that ‘human-friendly’ approach to understand some aspects of the physics of subatomic particles. Although no one has really seen an atom, there is universal agreement that all matter consists of molecules, which in turn consist of atoms—the basic building blocks of every chemical element. The educated majority knows that an atom resembles ‘a small planetary system’ in which electrons orbit the atomic nucleus, which is a few thousand times smaller than the atom itself but accounts for almost all of its mass. Although a gross oversimplification of the atomic theory, this picture nevertheless conveys some features of the atom as a physical object and, moreover, responds to our deep need to describe invisible things in terms of familiar analogies—not that anybody has ever seen a planetary system.

At the next level of our knowledge, we recognize that atomic nuclei are composed of two kinds of quite similar particles, the positively charged protons and the electrically neutral neutrons, together called the nucleons. Let us stay at this level, although contemporary physics knows that nucleons themselves are composed of yet more elementary objects, namely quarks and gluons. However, the theory (called quantum chromodynamics) behind those really elementary blocks of matter is not advanced enough yet to propose a full description of even a single nucleon, and nuclear physics continues to study the interactions between nucleons. Such forces are referred to as nuclear forces.

Our present-day knowledge of nuclear interactions is fairly well advanced. Theoretical models, developed experimentally over many decades, can very precisely account for the properties of forces acting between a pair of nucleons. These so-called nuclear potentials were proposed long ago, and it is now commonly accepted that the interaction takes the form of exchange of an intermediate particle between interacting partners, somewhat like two people playing with a ball or a Frisbee or throwing a boomerang. The intermediate particles that nucleons keep exchanging between themselves are called mesons.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. They're jealous of charm and beauty, of course (nt)

[xchrom]

2. well i know they're jealous of MY charm and beauty.

it's a burden -- but i'm learning to live with it.