Quantum Physics: its energy all the way down (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, November 09, 2017, 23:03 (2569 days ago) @ BBella

Mass and matter only exist as quantum fields rom the smallest energy particles

http://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/physics-has-demoted-mass?utm_source=Nautilus&...

"Whatever it is, we call it matter or material substance. It has a characteristic property that we call solidity. It has mass.

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"In the same units of MeV/c2 the proton mass is 938.3, the neutron 939.6. The combination of two up quarks and a down quark gives us only 9.4, or just 1 percent of the mass of the proton. The combination of two down quarks and an up quark gives us only 11.9, or just 1.3 percent of the mass of the neutron. About 99 percent of the masses of the proton and neutron seem to be unaccounted for. What’s gone wrong?

"To answer this question, we need to recognize what we’re dealing with. Quarks are not self-contained “particles” of the kind that the Greeks or the mechanical philosophers might have imagined. They are quantum wave-particles; fundamental vibrations or fluctuations of elementary quantum fields. The up and down quarks are only a few times heavier than the electron, and we’ve demonstrated the electron’s wave-particle nature in countless laboratory experiments. We need to prepare ourselves for some odd, if not downright bizarre behavior.

"And let’s not forget the massless gluons. Or special relativity, and E = mc2. Or the difference between “bare” and “dressed” mass. And, last but not least, let’s not forget the role of the Higgs field in the “origin” of the mass of all elementary particles. To try to understand what’s going on inside a proton or neutron we need to reach for quantum chromodynamics, the quantum field theory of the color force between quarks.

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"What this means is that the mass of the proton and neutron can be traced largely to the energy of the gluons and the sea of quark–anti-quark pairs that are conjured from the color field.

"How do we know? Well, it must be admitted that it is actually really rather difficult to perform calculations using QCD. The color force is extremely strong, and the corresponding energies of color-force interactions are therefore very high. Remember that the gluons also carry color charge, so everything interacts with everything else. Virtually anything can happen, and keeping track of all the possible virtual and elementary-particle permutations is very demanding.

"This means that although the equations of QCD can be written down in a relatively straightforward manner, they cannot be solved analytically, on paper. Also, the mathematical sleight-of-hand used so successfully in QED no longer applies—because the energies of the interactions are so high we can’t apply the techniques of renormalization. Physicists have had no choice but to solve the equations on a computer instead.

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"Recall that in Einstein’s seminal addendum to his 1905 paper on special relativity the equation he derived is actually m = E/c2. This is the great insight (not E = mc2). And Einstein was surely prescient when he wrote: “the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.” Indeed, it is. In his book The Lightness of Being, Wilczek wrote:

"If the body is a human body, whose mass overwhelmingly arises from the protons and neutrons it contains, the answer is now clear and decisive. The inertia of that body, with 95 percent accuracy, is its energy content.

"As we worked our way ever inward—matter into atoms, atoms into sub-atomic particles, sub-atomic particles into quantum fields and forces—we lost sight of matter completely. Matter lost its tangibility. It lost its primacy as mass became a secondary quality, the result of interactions between intangible quantum fields. What we recognize as mass is a behavior of these quantum fields; it is not a property that belongs or is necessarily intrinsic to them.

"Despite the fact that our physical world is filled with hard and heavy things, it is instead the energy of quantum fields that reigns supreme. Mass becomes simply a physical manifestation of that energy, rather than the other way around."

Comment: Quantum Energy is the basis of the universe's matter. It doesn't go back and forth. God works only at the quantum level to maker the universe