This is something I've been wondering for a long time.

Let's take a neutron. It's made of ....stuff. It's spherical.

Is it theoretically possible to, say, cut it in half? Would it be possible to cut it into different shapes?

From what I know, it isn't *really* spherical. It approximates a point particle, but like all things small it actually only exists as a cloud of probabilities.

Despite it being a single point, it's actually made up of three quarks (two down and one up iirc). So if it were possible to somehow cut it apart, then you'd get a couple of quarks. But there has never been a free quark detected so...

In any case, if string theory is right, each quark is actually a vibrating one-dimensional loop. A loop of what? Who knows, string theory makes no goddamn sense but I'm sure the answer is something like "that question is meaningless" kind of like "What happened before time began?"

So these models and pictures they used to represent atomic nuclei in science class was 100% WRONG eh? Huh.

I keep imagining the nucleus looking like a bunch of red and blue colored grapes.

It's just so weird to think of it like that.. I mean, if I got in a tiny little spaceship and flew toward an atomic nucleus, I wouldn't hit matter? I'd just keep flying through these weird 1 dimensional loops of nothingness? How come I can't walk though walls then?

Yeah quantum physics tells you that everything you learned as a kid is wrong and that the universe is really ****ing confusing and that the quarks and neutrons and electrons and muons and etc etc in your brain are ****ing themselves because they don't understand it either

You just have to time it right.

Technically you can walk through walls if you either wait long enough or go fast enough. It's just a matter of increasing the probability that all of your particles will be on the other side of the wall.

Also, you couldn't really fly through those loops of nothingness. According to string theory they are the smallest possible unit of length in the universe, so it's a moot question.

one physicist on pbs said if you walked into a wall and kept walking for 1000 years you'd end up on the other side.

spheres and pretty much everything we percieve whether visually or otherwise is just a graphical representaion to put into context that which we do not understand nor can we concieve of. once we actually understand these things then we will be able to graphically represent them because we will be able to grasp the concepts.
it was speculated that natives in the carribean didn't actually see the boats of the first european explorers because they could not concieve of such a thing therefor they could not percieve such a thing. which brings to bear, are we surrounded by objects right now that we can't concieve of, therefor can't percieve, right now?

Moving faster than the speed of light should do it.

If you got into a tiny little spaceship you'd be ripped into tinier littler pieces by atomic forces.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_Exclusion_Principle <- this should help

At the lowest level, everything we call 'matter' is just an energy fluctuation.

Calling them wrong would be a little harsh, instead they are simplified models that are statistical accurate in reproducing effects that are seen in atomic reactions at the level of detail required.

Most (if not all) chemical reactions do not occur at high enough energies to be able to come close to splitting the neutron apart and hence reconstructing interactions with neutrons/protons with a quark sub structure when you are looking at the atomic level would have no benefit.

Also Kyle was perfectly right in that there are 3 quarks inside a neutron, the same goes for a proton and a bunch of other particles we called baryons. However recent data coming out of the Hera experiment in germany points to the inside of these baryons being a "sea" of quarks and gluons.

I'll first explain what gluons are as I'm guessing a few people are scratching their heads right now...

Quarks are held together by a force called the "Strong Force", appropriately named because it is far stronger than the other 2 forces that occur at the quark scale, the Electromagnetic and Weak Force. Each of these forces have a particle that transfers its force from one particle to another or which holds particles together. For the strong force this particle is the gluon, for the weak force it is W and Z bosons and for the electromagnetic it is the photon. Gravity is thought to be the Higgs.

Anyways, when for instance a baryon interacts with another particle it is now thought that it can interact both with the quarks within this baryon or with the "sea" of gluons that are inside the baryon. This is especially the case when you go to higher and higher energies and hence are probing deeper into the particle you are firing around the accelerator.

Another lovely outcome of this and the uncertainty principle is that at any one time there may actually be more than just three quarks within a baryon, but hundreds, all floating around and being interconnected with gluons and when you probe the quark you then force it into a certain state.

Anyways, thats enough talk of physics.

Yeah, I saw that movie too :p And it annoys the heck out of me every time anyone cites it, because that [like almost everything else in that] was /completely/ baseless and unfounded and had almost no citation or credible sources.

That story in particular doesn't appear to exist anywhere outside of the producer of that movie's imagination, and is really ridiculous to even think about, given how virtually any coastal culture /has/ ships, and European boats wouldn't be so different [hull, mast, concept] as to be inscrutable.

Yes, there are stories of say tribes who lived in dense jungles all their lives when they left the forest for the first time were unable to make out distant objects or confused eg buffalo herds with clouds, but that's simply due to habitual myopia instead of any actual cognitive dissonance.

Little say, it's completely untenable in the first place; I mean, I see lots of things all the time that I've never seen before or are unprecedented, trips to the zoo or science museums or art exhibits or such, and the fact that I haven't seen anything like foo bar baz or qux before doesn't mean I can't see it.

[/rant]

The interesting word here is 'stuff'.

What is 'stuff'?

There is a chair upon the floor. As you all know, it is the gravitational pull of the Earth that keeps the chair upon the floor. But what keeps the chair from falling through the floor and continuing to the centre of the Earth?
It is the electrostatic repulsion of the atoms that make up the floor upon the atoms that make up the chair. On the microscopic level, the atoms are not 'touching' eachother, they are repelling eachother. You can think of it like you have very carefully balanced two very strong magnets, and one is hovvering above the other.

The microscopic world is characterised by electromagnetic interactions (and various other quantum properties), and all the macroscopic 'stuff' we see (like chairs resting on floors) is a result of that. But the concept of 'stuff' loses its meaning when you are at the level of the neutron.

Thank you Dor, I was actually arguing with a friend of mine about that exact same thing. He tried to expand it to basically "So, like, if someone were to see an alien spacecraft, they wouldn't, like, see the alien spacecraft, maaaaan." I'm pretty sure that the human brain, just as really any brain really, is designed to accept new data and store it immediately for use in future problem solving. Saying the natives couldn't actually consciously see the European ships, whether or not the natives (most likely) had seen watercraft before, is like saying an infant can't see a tree the first time its parents expose it to one.

Or just trying again and again and again.

I'm assuming this wall would be microscopically thin?

Now there's an option: if the walls were made out of bosons.


...


It's called a strobe light.

Yes you could cut it in half because it is a round object like any other particle. [/Alice_Shade]

Wait wait wait.

The particle is like any other object whose force is governed by its velocity. So you could catch it with a fancy glove. [/Friend 14]

But... JG... physics... science...

dor and roach, i think, or as i understood it, the producer was trying to simplify a concept. animals in zoos are animals. like an alien spaceship, you can't use them as examples to rebut the idea that we may not be able to percieve things we cannot concieve. we know what a spaceship is so if we saw one in any form existing in the 3 dimensions we percieve we would see it.
if a space ship were to appear in a dimension we cannot comprehend then we won't be able to percieve it until such time we evolve to a point where we are intelligent enough (?) to understand the dimension the spaceship exists in.

You realize that the movie was produced by a cult led by a lady who believes she's channeling a 35000 year old Atlantean war god, right? And that many of the interviewed 'scientists' are either members of her cult, or real scientists like David Albert who was severely edited and misrepresented.

More here: http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2004/09/16/bleep/index_np.html

More like: What the bleep do we know about journalistic integrity.

I'll look like an idiot for asking, but what effects would moving at the speed of light have on your body?

None that I know of. The problem is that it's impossible to accelerate anything to the speed of light according to relativity. It's a misinterpretation when people say nothing can go faster than the speed of light, you just can't accelerate to it. So if you could magically pop in at or faster than the speed of light maybe you could get away with it.

which is why warp drive is still the most plausible FTL technology.

I mean it's ludicrously impossible but it's still the best option right now.