Do you think that any particle will ever be declared the smallest particle, or will we always eventually detect a smaller particle in another. I know that we knew about atoms, then discovered protons, and electrons, and then we discovered quarks, and I think there might be something smaller than that. I believe that this smallness may go on to infinity, and that as our technology continues to advance, we will always find a smaller part.
The string theory is a good exercise in arithmatic, but it is not likely a superstring will ever be "detected" as was the criteria in the first post. But quarks have never been detected either. Faraday's fields have been right in front of us for well over a hundred years. I think it is generally accepted that any material thing can be reduced to magnetic fields with nothing left to further reduce. So, I still suspect that Einstein had it right.
if we found the smallest particle, that particle couldn't consist of anything. if it consisted of something, there would be smaller particles, and if it doesn't consist of anything, it is nothing and it doesn't exist. nothingness. that's the smallest "particle". if the smallness goes on to infinity, matter is an illusion.
If you want to think in terms of fields of force, they are just that; they are an area in which material things respond to their presence by changing. If you want to think in terms of quantum theory you have the photon. The photon would then be the final irreducible constituent of all physical reality. You can further divide the photon into virtual particles but they are only imiginary, not real. So I still don't see how you can get down to nothing. You can't get rid of the final field, or the final photon, whichever is your faith.
You're trying to apply the laws of semantics to something that falls more properly under the laws of physics. The word "small" implies that the thing to which it is applied can be measured. What it doesn't say is how we would measure it or in what units we would express the measurement. The smallest quantum of matter for which we have a name (and I'll let one of you scientists tell me which one that is) is presumably measured in some beyond-tiny unit of distance like femtometers or of mass like femtograms. The smallest quantum of energy is presumably measured in an equivalently diminutive unit like femtojoules. (Those are authentic words even if I happen to have arbitrarily chosen units too small to be meaningful and they never appear in print again.) Particles can become waves and vice versa, especially at the microscopic (femtoscopic?) level. So which unit do you use? It can all be deconstructed into strings, and perhaps in the future into something even more elegant. But do the strings "exist" as physical building blocks of matter/energy? Or are they just constructs of scientific language? Is this like asking if words "exist"? Or thoughts? If strings do exist do they have mass or energy? If not, in what units would you measure their size and how then would you compare the size of a string to the size of a quark? If you dig deep enough you end up mired in philosophy. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Would it be adequately brief and readable of Truly Yours to suggest that Sir Arthur Eddington's (endlessly large and small, 4-D space-time continuum) 'waveicles' are being re-encountered here? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Weren't DeBroglie & Schroedinger on or near the very same wave length(s)? Didn't Einstein say, 'There is no space empty of field'? And that 'the notion of discrete, discontinuous ('billiard-ball like') particles with distinct surfaces separating them from surrounding space, is based on prejudice'? (Paraphrased. IDEAS & OPINIONS, Pt. II: Contributions to Science.) When a circle representing a particle (which is actually a charge of electromagnetism without discontinuous boundaries) is divided into four 90o quadrants, and that circle is called a 4-D particle, and that particle has never been found (- even 'Particle Physics' has become a Standard of Reality that doesn't realistically qualify as anything more than an hypothesis. An entire Academic Cirruculum of Bachelor's, Master's and Ph.D's, majoring and post graduately laboring in a hypothetically conjured universe full of so called ('billiard ball like') 'particles' (having surfaces making them discontinuous from surrounding space - separating material from spatial - not one of which has ever been found after exhaustive expeditions in search of a truely defined 'particle', returning only with fuzzy - space-time generating - charges of electricity, having no distinct boundaries; which only become more dense as you approach their centers. The conspicuously incomplete menu is worth repeating: Particle physicists would serve up a reality sandwich: if they had two slices of bread and some ham?)... Isn't this an a priori standardization (based on subjective anthropomorphic senses) overruling empirically resolved experimental resolution, scientific heresy (dogma)? Don't the four 90o quadrants composing a consummate 'circle' (whether called a 'particle' or a charge', represent the four dimensions Einstein discovered in everything that was previously considered three dimensional? Is not the definition for physical dimensions the right angle motion (of whatever) out of the dimension preceding it? A=geometric point. A--->B=geometric point moving in (and thereby generating) a one dimensional Straight Line? When that one dimensional straight line A to B, moves at right angles to itself, B to C, does that not constitute the geometric progression from a dimensionless geometric point (A), to a one dimensional straight line (A-B), and does not that straight line B - C become a two dimensional Plane, when it moves at right angles (90o) to itself? The resulting two dimensional Plane, when it moves at right angles (90o) to itself, doesn't that generate a three dimensional space, occupied or unoccupied by matter? Does not every expedition in search of a 'particle', so far, return only with increasing evidence that there are only charges of electricity, emitting longer or shorter frequencies of electricity and magnetism, *always having the same value? *The shorter (ultraviolet related) waves being more dense, and the longer (infrared related) waves being more tenuous - and that 'there is no contact between physical systems', since such event requires the interaction of two or more discontinuous 'surfaces', and that such discrete, discontinuous boundaries continue to elude our - post hoc ergo prompter hoc - perception of what consistently proves to be ('surfaceless') 'contact' and 'collision': confined to an a priori subjective interpretation; without an objective leg, stool or platform to stand, sit or enjoy an encore upon? (Ph.D 'particle physicists': Quo Vadis?) 'No two particles ever come into contact. When they get 'too close', they move off'. - Bertrand Russell, THE ABC OF RELATIVITY. Charges of electricity that fulfill the formal definition for 'material particle'; that is, microcosmic entities that occupationally demand three or more dimensions of space, disallow the simultaneous occupation of it's space by any other 'particle' (surfaceless charge of electricity), and possesses negative and positive inertia... (Heavy and Inert Mass)... Didn't Einstein prove that 'three dimensional matter is actually four dimensional', and that the previously unrecognized (so called, 'incomprehensible', 'unimaginable') 4th dimension is somehow closely related to time and motion? Are not the above described progressions of dimensions generated by moving at right angles - ninety degrees - from the preceding dimension? Doesn't this geometric law of right angle moving, progressively generated dimensions, require all three dimensional entities to be moving at right angles to themselves: in one of two possible directions, either constantly growing smaller, or constantly growing larger (in either case, at right angles to the three recognized dimensions constituting any such entity) - in order to fulfill their Einsteinian and geometric proved identity as four dimensional entities? Is not the physical universe consistently found - while remaining unrecognized: as constantly growing larger - moving at right angles to all three of it's dimensions, fulfilling it's obligation to be four dimensional, or, constantly growing smaller - moving at right angles to all three of it's recognized dimensions. in either case, fulfilling its established(if 'incomprehensible' and 'unimaginable') identity as 4-dimensional? Doesn't this correspond to the four ninety degree quadrants making up a circle? And, if and when anything moves at right angles out of that four dimensional circle, isn't whatever that may be, obliged to be identified as the 5th dimension (moving at right angles out of four dimensional matter)? Isn't electricity in fact generated by four dimensional matter, and isn't it observed to be constantly moving at right angles out of four dimensional matter, and, doesn't that require the arbiters of scientific definitions and nomenclature to recognize and identify electricity as the 5th dimension: moving at right angles out of four dimensional matter? Wouldn't that 5th ninety degree quadrant be obliged to occur outside the four quadrants that fulfill and complete a circle? Might not the transition of a fifth ninety degree quadrant exponentially constitute what is otherwise the unexplained 'quantum leap', furthermore explaining why each such 5th ninety degree quadrant generated by and projected from the 4 ninety degree quad circle of 4-D matter it is an extension of; always has the same value - 'just like photons', i.e., Planck's Constant h factor? (Which is considered a contradiction of field physics, rather than an extensional consequence of it... ) Could not that so called 3-D 'particle' in this way be recognized as a 4-D charge of expanding electricity, emitting 'quantum leaps'; invariably having the same uniform values - the issued 5th ninety degree quadrant (obliged to occur outside of and be projected by the 4-D matter that emits it)? Moreover, doesn't magnetism invariably accompany electricity, and doesn't it invariably move at right angles to electricity, and isn't that a requirement for those 'professionals' in charge of paying attention to and interpreting such dynamics, to recognize and identify magnetism as the 6th dimension...? Since Einstein proved formerly perceived '3-D matter' is actually 4-Dimensional, and that the 4th dimension is somehow closely related to time and motion (modifying 'space and time', to 'space-time', because the 'two' <'space and time'> were then recognized as being inseparable), and the laws of geometric progression require 3-D entities to be moving at right angles to all three of their recognized dimensions, having one of two alternatives therefore, of constantly moving at right angles from themselves, growing ever smaller, as the '4-D space-time continuum', or, growing ever larger, as the 4-D space-time continuum. If: Einstein and the laws of the progression of dimensions are correct, and since objects released above the earth's surface don't 'fall upward' (which would prove a constantly contracting physical universe made up of ever shrinking charges of electricity), but instead, objects released above the earth's surface are observed to 'fall down'.... Doesn't this mean that the object (Newton's apple, for example) doesn't really move from A to B, but rather that the entire coordinate system - the physically expanding earth (and universe), in it's constantly ongoing enlargement, including the uniformly expanding observer and all of his instruments of measurement, are moving from B to A, creating the illusion of the (whatever) 'falling' object, by way of the ever expanding acceleration of the entire coordinate system earth, beneath the 'falling' object, creating the illusion that the object is moving 'downward', rather than that the earth (entire frame of reference) is rising up to meet it....? Wouldn't this explain what Einstein meant when he said that the apparent parabolically curved trajectory of a thrown baseball or fired cannonball for example, is not actually curved, but is actually straight - a 'geodesic' - because 'space-time curves' around the apparently descending object and generates the illusion of a parabolically trajectoried object...? Is not the explanation herein, why all objects, regardless of their mass value, 'descend' at the same rate of acceleration and strike the earth at the same time, when simultaneously released from the same height? Since, cannon ball and bb shot are not actually falling at all, but only appearing to do so, due to the ubiquitous uniform expansion of the entire frame of reference, including any and all observers and test object(s)? Revealing the illusion of an apparently falling object; with the earth instead rising-up to overtake, meet and strike it, rather than conversely? (Re: "Non-absolute space". And, "The universe is finite (*at any given moment in space), but unbounded." - Einstein (*KBR) Non mathematically and comprehensively explaining why inert and heavy mass 'coincidentally, cancel each other out', anomalously said to account for what Einstein called 'an astonishing coincidence'.. (and based his entire General Theory of Relativity upon) - otherwise a blatant contradiction of Newton's Laws of Gravity, which clearly require a proportionately increasing gravity generated by a correspondingly larger mass; therefore dictating a scenario of a greater mutual attraction between a falling cannon ball and the earth, than between a falling bb shot and the earth, resulting in what is certainly 'supposed to be' the inevitably faster rate of descent for correspondingly 'heavier' objects (Re: Aristotelian thought - which is reasonable enough, but in this case is - remarkably - inapplicable)... In this universal status quo, would not a so called 'black hole singularity' actually be a 3-D static object in a 4-D expanding universe; with the 3-D object becoming as small and dense as the ever mores swiftly expanding 4-D universe becomes large and uniformly tenuous around it, forever (squared)? Would this not leave the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy intact, since we are considering the same amount of uniformly expanding energy increasingly distributing itself over ever larger volumes of (metric functional, rather than non-metric absolute) space, where all constantly expanding physical charges (neutrons, protons, electrons, mu mesons, et al) remain relatively the same size and density, without the requirement of 'the spontaneous creation of hydrogen' which caused Bondi, Gold and Hoyle to abandon the otherwise entirely tenable 'Steady State Theory' (Now foregrounding a so called 'Big Bang' to 'explain' the - unexpectedly discovered, 1927 thru '32 spatially expanding universe.) Whereas, the astrophysical consensus on the structural dynamics of the observed spatially expanding ('beginning') universe proves out that there is no common ('big bang', 'ylem', 'cosmic egg') center from which the ('red shift') expanding universe, expands... That is, no matter where the observer is located in universal space, the expanding universe exhibits celestial systems, light sources, stars, galaxies, etceteras, to be moving away from the observer, in direct line of sight... Indicative of a repelling force (Einstein called it the 'Cosmological Constant', symbolizing it in his equations with the Greek letter Lambda (- /\ ) acting out of individual material systems, macrocosmically affirming Bertrand Russell's observation about microcosmic 'particles' (charges of electricity having no distinct boundaries, becoming increasingly more dense toward their centers): 'No two particles (macrocosmic systemic material celestial entitities) ever come into contact, when they get too close, they move off'. - Bertrand Russell THE ABC OF RELATIVITY. Is not the unexpected and 'unexplained' Relativistic discovery that physical matter contracts in the direction of its motion at a rate proportional to its velocity: because matter is an ever expanding-accelerating field, and that the successful *application by Einstein of the transformations of H.A. Lorentz (who developed the conversions exclusively for the description of field energy) *to so called 'particles', proves that the issued contraction of physical matter is actually 'Doppler effect', as exclusively applicable to field energy...? If so called falling objects are actually being overtaken and struck by the ever ongoing rising up (acceration @ 32' per " per ") of the entire coordinate system, creating the illusion of 'falling objects' (much as the axial spinning motion of the earth at 24,000 mph, generates the illusion that the sun and celestial vault revolve around it every 24 hours); doesn't this mean that the so called 'impelling (attractive) force' (F) of gravity is actually 'a repelling force' (as Newton offers that gravity may in fact be, *in those words, in his three page Preface to the PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA?) 'The idea that brute, inanimate matter can inexplicably act at a distance across space to influence other matter, is to me so great an absurdity that no man with a competent faculty for thinking could ever fall into it.' - Isaac Newton, On Universal Gravity. Please keep in mind that J.C. Maxwell had yet to discover and mathematically describe electromagnetic fields generated by mass and projecting through space (gravity was once thought to act at a distance instantaneously, when in fact it - non-coincidentally - is found to propogate at exactly the same speed as light, since that's what it is). Whereas, it was and is the cardinal objective of Einstein's (presently abandoned) Unified Field, to find gravity and electromagnetism two apparently unrelated phenomena, actually having the same causal identity... Einstein was persuaded to abandon the Cosmological Constant, with which he predicted an expanding - not a big bang - universe: eight years before it was discovered. He called it ‘the biggest blunder I ever made in my life’; which indeed this author humbly submits it was, insofar as it was a mistake for him to have allowed 'the (non-sequiturial) scientific community', to persuade him that what he had predicted - a spatially expanding universe - was caused by a 'big bang beginning' (perceived as being 'inevitable', when the observed expansion was 'back-tracked' to an assumed point of origin, where all of the receding light sources and celestial systems were assumed to converge on one point in space from which the expansion 'began'). Whereas, that is an archaic three dimensional restriction imposed on an allegedly 'acknowledged' 4-D universe; wherein the back tracking does not recede to a point of intersection, but rather where that would-be finite beginning intersection which is said to have contained all of the matter of the universe, generating pressures and temperatures resulting in an explosion, causing the observed spatial expansion as it is presently seen; moreover perceived as destined to result in a 'universal heat death', where the expansion will dissipate all of matter to a point of 'non-motion'. There are variations on the so called big bang theory, one of which purports a 'pulsating universe', that endlessly 'big bangs', spreads out to a point of stoppage, collapses on itself, big bangs, spreads out to 'heat death', collapses on itself, ad infinitum. In this law breaking departure from allegedly acknowledge 4-D reality, Newton's law that a body in motion remains in uniform motion, until acted upon by an outside force... Leaving the question of what 'resistance' - opposing action - is going to slow down the expanding universe; eventually obliging it to 'stop' expanding; thenceforth obliging it's (unidentified, so called) 'gravitational attraction' to pull it back together (back track to the point from which it originated, then and thereupon to reiterate the 'Big Bang', causing the spatial universe to expand, 'slow down', 'stop', recollapse on itself: squared. Such a 'scientific interpretation' also directly implies a 'theology' of hopelessness, since any evolutionary or other constructive process in the 'pulsating universe' is foreordained to be completely obliterated; leaving any and all life forms, certainly including humanity on earth; presciently committed to 'enlightened' philosophies of endlessly predestined destruction, leaving animate, sentiently evolving life forms, imparting artifacts, ironing the bugs out of DNA & RNA, and playing volley ball on the beaches of the world; writing the future and posterity in the sands of futility... The big bang 'theory' is not a theory at all, but rather (like 'particle theory') only a hypothesis, and a very poorly founded one, for which there has yet to emerge any tractable proof at all. Georges Henri Lemaitre ('Father of the Big Bang'), Edwin Hubble and many others since, upon being surprised to discover the spatial universe was expanding, were put upon to conjure an explanation for it; resulting in the ad hoc, ex parte jiffyfix of the so called big bang. Hawkings has the moment of intersection and the 'resulting explosion' - the moment of 'beginning'- down to a nano-gnat's caboose: chronologically and spatially applied to an event that did not happen. As this record has previously observed, Stephan Hawking's personal and political courage is not in question, here; whereas his 'refinement' of the big bang: fine tuning what is among the most grandiosely celebrated faux pax's in the history and evolution of science - which (oxymoronic, non-sequitural, and yes, sometimes prevaricating) 'community' today (schizophrenically) insists it 'acknowledges' the 4-D space-time continuum, while simultaneously excluding it from the big bang theory - which is intractable in a 4-D universe, where the so called 'inevitably limiting point of convergence and intersection' of all ('back-tracked') spatially expanding matter, 'runs out of space', only in three dimensions... Whereas, in four dimensions, the back-tracked spatially expanding universe only becomes infinitely smaller, squared. The 4th D proves that smallness is just as endless as largeness. Whereas, the 3-D restricted big bang is about as tenable (in the words of K. Kostner playing Jim Garrison in JFK) as an elephant hanging over a cliff, with its tail tied to a daisy... On the other hand, it seems that gravitational force on or near a massive coordinate system is a repelling force, whereas, it likewise seems to be an impelling force at great distances (refer, aquatic, terrestrial and atmospheric tides). Einstein reasoned that the Cosmological Constant was a parallel but opposite vector in tandem with and counteracting Newton's (ever causally unidentified) gravitational force of attraction; which even Newton himself candidly critisized - in the spirit of a true scientist - because he could not explain why a universe full of mutually attracting bodies did not collapse on itself. When it was learned that the spatial universe was expanding, Einstein's prediction was poo-pawd, superimposed with the ad hominem hustle of the big bang gang, all advocates of which schizophrenically 'acknowledge' the 4th D, while ignoring it as a disqualification of their elaborately pampered, groomed and well scrubbed 'democratic' dismissal of reality, for lack of evidence... Is not a good title for a series of observations like this: GRAVITY IS THE 4th DIMENSION (Electricity is the 5th dimension. Magnetism is the 6th dimension)? The Non-Mathematical Reinstatement of Einstein's Presently Abandoned Unified Field...? The question is not: 'Where, what and when is the 4th dimension?' The question is: 'Where, what and when is it not?' The challenge is not in the proving of it.The challenge is in the disproving of it. Everyone and anyone can see that the universe revolves around the earth every 24 hours; just as they can see that home run base-balls and spiral pigskin passes travel in parabolic trajectories, and that precipitating objects descend from A to B, rather than the entire systemic coordinate frame of reference ascending from B to A... The Inquisition is alive and well; only its methods have changed. __________________
THE SMALLEST THING THAT CAN EXIST... and does exist.. and is well known.. is a one dimensional line of spatial tension. nothing can be smaller. as only the zero dimension can be, and that IS NOTHING, literlly. -MT
Actually, the current theories don't posit any kind of structure for electrons. Protons and neutrons are made up of quarks, but electrons (and other related particles) are still point particles, as far as we can resolve.
With the word 'finite,' we can have a limit on how divide a material. If quarks are the most fundamental of objects, then we might be wrong, according to Hawking. There might be, as many scientists suspect, even smaller particles. There might be loosely-coupled particles called solitons. But how small can something be? There is indeed a limit on largeness, because if there wasn't, then we have a problem answering how we percieve the ''largeness'' of reality... for instance, why is it not any bigger or smaller than what it is...? If there is some limit on fundamentalism with matter and energy, then there is a finite and yet small box, or point for everything to come from. According to physics legend, it might be the Planck Length, which is in fact adopted by many scientists as being the smallest space that anything can manifest.
