Posted on 05/21/2018 5:54:58 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Until I hit 71, mine were up quarks.
“Basically , they found that the pressure conditions at the center of a proton were 100 decillion pascals – about 10 times the pressure at the heart of a neutron star. ”
Which leads to the obvious question: what is the pressure at the center of a proton at the center of a neutron star?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Like the universe thunk itself up.
I don’t think so, thank God.
Except for charge, protons and neutrons are very similar, so Id’s say the pressures would be similar, too.
It’s amazing that we can even attempt to measure the pressures inside a proton.
The first measurement of a subatomic particle’s mechanical property reveals the distribution of pressure inside the proton.
NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Inside every proton in every atom in the universe is a pressure cooker environment that surpasses the atom-crushing heart of a neutron star. That’s according to the first measurement of a mechanical property of subatomic particles, the pressure distribution inside the proton, which was carried out by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.
The nuclear physicists found that the proton’s building blocks, the quarks, are subjected to a pressure of 100 decillion Pascal (1035) near the center of a proton, which is about 10 times greater than the pressure in the heart of a neutron star. The result was recently published in the journal Nature.
“We found an extremely high outward-directed pressure from the center of the proton, and a much lower and more extended inward-directed pressure near the proton’s periphery,” explains Volker Burkert, Jefferson Lab Hall B Leader and a co-author on the paper.
Burkert says that the distribution of pressure inside the proton is dictated by the strong force, the force that binds three quarks together to make a proton.
“Our results also shed light on the distribution of the strong force inside the proton,” he said. “We are providing a way of visualizing the magnitude and distribution of the strong force inside the proton. This opens up an entirely new direction in nuclear and particle physics that can be explored in the future.”
Once thought impossible to obtain, this measurement is the result of a clever pairing of two theoretical frameworks with existing data.
First, there are the generalized parton distributions. GPDs allow researchers to produce a 3D image of the proton’s structure as probed by the electromagnetic force. The second are the gravitational form factors of the proton. These form factors describe what the mechanical structure of the proton would be if researchers could probe the proton via the gravitational force.
The theorist who developed the concept of gravitational form factors in 1966, Heinz Pagels, famously observed in the paper detailing them that there was “very little hope of learning anything about the detailed mechanical structure of a particle, because of the extreme weakness of the gravitational interaction.”
Recent theoretical work, however, has connected GPDs to the gravitational form factors, allowing the results from electromagnetic probes of protons to substitute for gravitational probes.
“This is the beauty of it. You have this map that you think you will never get,” said Latifa Elouadrhiri, a Jefferson Lab staff scientist and co-author on the paper. “But here we are, filling it in with this electromagnetic probe.”
The electromagnetic probe consists of beams of electrons produced by the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. These electrons are directed into the nuclei of atoms, where they interact electromagnetically with the quarks inside protons via a process called deeply virtual Compton scattering.
In the DVCS process, an electron enters a proton and exchanges a virtual photon with a quark, transferring energy to the quark and proton. A short time later, the proton releases this energy by emitting another photon and continues on intact. This process is analogous to the calculations Pagels performed for how it would be possible to probe the proton gravitationally via a hypothetical beam of gravitons. The Jefferson Lab researchers were able to exploit a similarity between the well-known electromagnetic and hypothetical gravitational studies to get their result.
“There’s a photon coming in and a photon coming out. And the pair of photons both are spin-1. That gives us the same information as exchanging one graviton particle with spin-2,” says Francois-Xavier Girod, a Jefferson Lab staff scientist and co-author on the paper. “So now, one can basically do the same thing that we have done in electromagnetic processes — but relative to the gravitational form factors, which represent the mechanical structure of the proton.”
The researchers say the next step is to apply the technique to even more precise data that will be available soon to reduce the uncertainties in the current analysis and begin working toward revealing other mechanical properties of the ubiquitous proton, such as the internal shear forces and the proton’s mechanical radius.
Finally an explanation for Poprocks that even I can understand!
Of course what these scientists are calling pressure may not even equate with the definition of pressure, ala gravitational crushing.
That is a most interesting theory.
But what if black holes were actually bigger inside than they appear to be from the outside? Like a TARDIS? We observe it and it appears to be this finite object (or area of space) within the vast space of our ever-expanding universe. Very small in comparison. But for an observer inside the black hole it appears to him as an incredibly vast ever-expanding universe every bit as vast as ours appears to us.
Due to that special nature of the event horizon (for lack of a better description) we cannot see the universe inside of it and he cannot see the universe outside, our universe.
You theory doesn’t sound so crazy now does it? lol
To me, it’s so incredible. I would never have dreamed the concept of pressure even applies to the interior of a proton. It would have been like asking me what the pressure is inside a moment of time. Probably why I’m not a physicst.
Isn’t it interesting that as time goes on, and we learn more about the elemental functions of the Universe, the less we actually understand ?
Are you sure ?
On the assumption that the Big Bang Theory is true, it should be easy to determine the center of the Universe. If so, then where is it ?
It’s like an infinity onion.
Who cares?
Inside the big black hole.
And the whole thing smells.
Well, It makes me tear-up. When I spend too much time thinking about it.
Scientist: How big is the Universe?
Mechanic: In SAE or METRIC ?
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