Do Quarks Move Faster Than Light?

Just some hypothetical questions for the experts...

If there IS a particle that is able to travel faster than light, would it be detectable? Also, if there IS such particle, which would be its probable properties and consequences of its discovery?

And... is it possible that quarks move faster than light? Cause so far we had never been able to see a quark and by the speed the universe expended a quark should be much faster. Also, a quark should be faster simply because it is smaller as it appears that as things get smaller they get faster (molecules slower than atoms, slower than subatomic particles and so on...). Of course, as the mass is smaller and the energy greater, it should be able to move faster. So as smaller the mass of a particle gets, as greater is its potential energy...?

It would be like...: "m~1/E"...?

PS: I forgot the simbol for proportion... is it "~"?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

There cannot be any such particle in the boundaries of known physical laws. If you'd like to work outside the boundaries of known physical laws, be aware that logic and proof do not exist there yet -- as a result, you could answer such questions in any way you'd like, and no one could argue with you. It's pointless.

See above.

What does it mean to 'see a quark?'

Any particle can be made to travel at any velocity (within the bounds of relativistic mechanics). It is absolutely not true that less massive particles are somehow inherently faster than more massive ones.

- Warren

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

To "see a quark" is to detect one. Quark is only a hipothesis.... we had never seen one in a bubble chamber or whatever...

What then? It is just a coincidence particles with less mass travel faster?:bugeye: And this is not only true in the microscopic world, but also in the macroscopic. Have you ever seen an animal the size of an elephant flying? No...:bugeye: Unless it would be very fast, like airplanes...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Totally, laughably, incorrect.

Given the same average thermal energy, less massive particles will have higher average velocities. This does not imply there is some fundamental rule that makes massive particles 'slow.' You can certainly apply any amount of energy you want and achieve any velocity you so desire.

- Warren

 

Are you saying that we now actually HAVE proof of the existence of the quark beyond hypothetical basis of existence?

If that is what you are saying, I would very much like to see this information.

Could you please point me in the direction od an article or something I can read that outlines what that proof is?

Thanks.

 

Pretty much every particle physics experiment done with hadrons in the last 15 years. Start with APJ.

- Warren

 

such particles have been hypothesized. they are called tachyons. they would certainly be observable. for example, if they were charged, they would be easily detectable by Čerenkov radiation. there have been proposed experiments to detect neutral tachyons as well. one weird property that a tachyon would have would be that as it loses energy, it speeds up. it can never travel slower than light, so once a tachyon, always a tachyon. in a quantum treatment of tachyonic fields, you find that they are not stable: if there were such a particle, it would cascade to lower energy states at infinity, creating an infinite release of energy.

there have been serious papers discussing these options, and attempts to detect them. none has ever been detected.

one more word about tachyons: one of the most serious flaws of string theory, early in its history was the prediction of tachyons. this is a problem because any theory that includes tachyons does not describe the world we live in. to resolve this issue, string theorists were led to the introduction of supersymmetry. supersymmetry, while predicted by string theory, can be applied to the regular standard model. it is currently the best hope for new physics outside the standard model.

read more about tachyons here

no. quarks are massive, they never travel faster than light.

 

lethe,

Thanks for that. I was waiting for some more atualized information... But... are quarks really massive...?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

yes, quarks really are massive, i promise you.

actually, quarks make up more than 99% of the mass of ordinary matter. so almost all of your mass, truthseeker, is from quarks (well, and their binding energy).

 

Symbol

Truth Seeker,

The symbol for Proportional is "Alpha". I don't have it on the keyboard but it looks something like 2/3 of an infinity symbol.

"~" in the form of an equal sign means approximately equal.

 

Re: Symbol

Truth,
I had a couple profs that used ~ as a proportionality sign, but it's generally only used in geometry.

 

Speed of light in a vacuum

I know this is a weird sounding question, but what constrains the speed of a photon in a vacuum? Is it the nature of the vacuum itself and the way in which a photon must move through it?

The question is hard to phrase properly. Simply, why is the speed of light what it is?

 

There is perhaps no answer to that question -- the universe simply is the way it is.

We may eventually find some mechanism responsible for making the speed of light constant for all observers, but that mechanism would rest upon even more fundamental axioms.

At some level, there will be fundamental axioms which simply have no 'reasons.'

- Warren

 

Cali,

Welcome to sciforums.

I'm not a conventional scientist, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

I believe that there are two things that limit a photon's speed:

1) The force that accelerates the photon.

2) The force, or forces, that try to limit the speed of the photon.

It appears to me that there is a force that is always pushing the photon to c. This force is greatest when the photon is travelling slowly and decreases the faster the photon moves. When the photon reaches the speed of c, the force becomes 0. I don't know the nature of this accelerating force, but I believe that it is related to gravity.

I also believe that there are forces that try to limit the speed of photons. These forces, I believe, have to do with the interaction between the photon's electric and magnetic fields, and the electric permitivity, and magnetic permeability, of the material that the photon is travelling through. So for example, this would explain why light travels at speeds of lower than c when it is passing through dielectric mediums like water or glass. However, there are people that believe that light always travels at c, but due to absorption and re-emittance, it only appears to be travelling slower than c in dielectrics.

Tom

 

Tom

they never travel slower than c, never faster. From the instant they are created, they are traveling at c. They do not require a force to create them, but in some cases be imagined to be the conservers of energy and momentum, as they account for the power lost in say a light bulb due to the high resistance of the filament.

There is no reason to see why photons propogate at c, but I would suggest it has to do someting that couples the transverse electric and magnetic fields that are the light.

 

Always

ryans,

?: It was perhaps 5-6 years ago I ran across a paper that claimed to have found a brief acceleration of light from its origin until v = c was achieved. I've never seen anything more on that issue so it may have been bunk.

Ever hear of it?

 

hehe... i got owned.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

photons never travel faster or slower than c. wave packets that are composed of a large number of photons can have an average speed that is slower, due to interaction with matter; absorbtion and reemission of photons by atoms. however, the photons involved never travel faster or slower than c.

 

ryans,

I don't think I agree with you. If an object emits a photon, and the object's speed is 0 and the emitted photon's speed is c, how is it possible that the photon reaches c without having to go from 0 to c? Are you implying instantaneous acceleration, or are you claiming that the emitted particle doesn't become a "true" photon until it reaches the speed of c?

Tom

 

lethe,

I don't agree with absorption/re-emmision explanation for why photons appear to be travelling slower than c in certain materials.

Let's take glass as an example. In order for the absorption/re-emmision explanation to be correct, the silicon dioxide molecules in the glass would have to absorb and re-emit photons of all wavelengths without any change in the frequency of the original photons. I would assume that the the molecules of silicon dioxide would be inert to certain wavelengths of light.

One more thing, anyone working with lasers would know that there is a relatively large delay between when an electron is pushed to a higher state and when the electron falls back to a ground state releasing a photon. If glass absorbs and re-emits all light according to the absorption/re-emmision explanation, then the delay between absorption and emmision would have to be unusually small.

Tom