From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Jun 24 1998 - 02:53:39 MDT
"James" <james@lloyd-hughes.clara.net> writes:
> Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> said on
> Tue, 23 Jun 1998 00:44:44 -0700:
>
> >... and little fleas have even smaller fleas,
> > and so on ad infinitum...
> >
> >So, sub quarks will be smaller, and more massive.
> >and sub sub quarks heavier still, till
> >the FINAL PARTICLE
> >
> >has the mass of the entire universe....
>
> Sorry if I'm wrong, but how can something smaller
> than what it makes up be more massive than it?
Well, stranger things do occur in physics. Although in this case I
think Hara Ra is exaggerating slightly in order to close a neat
metaphysical loop :-)
Thanks to Heisenberg, virtual particles with large mass can emerge if
they vanish fast enough (Delta E * Delta T >= hbar). So theoretically
the "universe particle" could appear and disappear. But it doesn't
strike me as a likely constituent of stable matter. Maybe one could
postulate "screening effects" like those surrounding charged particles
that would make stable universe particles appear as low-mass
particles, but it doesn't sound likely.
As for quark contituents, people have discussed the idea for quite
some time. I have an old issue of SciAm where an article suggests that
quarks are made up of 'rishons' in two flavors. As far as I know, the
theory haven't found that strong support.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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