Thread: Mass of elementary particles

I have always wondered why elementary particles are "identical" to one another. (Why you cannot paint an electron red, for example). I have this idea that elementary particles might really be tiny black holes whose individual characteristics have all been sucked into the hole, making them identical as viewed from the outside. It's a crazy idea.

Originally Posted by rainbow

I have always wondered why elementary particles are "identical" to one another. (Why you cannot paint an electron red, for example). I have this idea that elementary particles might really be tiny black holes whose individual characteristics have all been sucked into the hole, making them identical as viewed from the outside. It's a crazy idea.

IMO they are identical because they have the same frequency, are all standing waves, and the outgoing waves from all particles become the incoming waves of others. See the thread spherical standing waveform of matter in space

You can't paint a particle because paint is made of more particles and you end up with a big blob. Apart from which an electron is not staying in orbit once painted. :-)

Particles cannot be gravitational black holes. Their masses are far to small for that. A proton would need 10^40 times more mass to be a black hole. However, the charge force is 10^40 times stronger than the gravitational force, so a proton could be the charge equivalent to a black hole. That seems to really be what it is. So that idea was not quite so crazy.

Yeah, Ray, the part about standing waves sounds right. You can't just attach a property to a standing wave the way you would attach paint to a board. You can't just take the vector that represents a quantum state and add another dimension to it, such as the color of its paint. That's the theory of quantum mechanics.

So, the critical mass for a proton, 10^40 times mp, you calculated that based on its size? I think that is 10^-15 meters? It sounds like you know what you are talking about. Thanks for your reply.

Originally Posted by rainbow

Yeah, Ray, the part about standing waves sounds right. You can't just attach a property to a standing wave the way you would attach paint to a board. You can't just take the vector that represents a quantum state and add another dimension to it, such as the color of its paint. That's the theory of quantum mechanics.

So, the critical mass for a proton, 10^40 times mp, you calculated that based on its size? I think that is 10^-15 meters? It sounds like you know what you are talking about. Thanks for your reply.

Yes Rainbow, the radius of a proton and its (Compton) wavelength are both around 1.3 * 10^-15 m.

Originally Posted by RayTomes

You can't paint a particle because ...

I'm glad you can't paint them; heck, I have a hard enough time painting a wall let alone window trim...

Originally Posted by rainbow

I have this idea that elementary particles might really be tiny black holes...

If they were, they wouldn't last very long. A black hole with a mass of 500,000 lbs (250 tons) would last just 1 second due to Hawking Radiation, and in that 1 second would release energy equivalent to 5 Million Megatons of TNT. If you thought the Cold War's arsenal of 50,000 nuclear weapons was scary, this would release more than 10 Million times as much energy.

Fortunately, the smaller the black hole, the faster it decays. A black hole with the mass of a proton would last on the order of 3.9E-97 seconds, which is far, far less time than Planck time (5.4E-44 seconds and the smallest divisible unit of time). On the face of it, I seriously believe it's far too small to create in the first place.

So, whatever a proton is, it's not a micro black hole.

More than likely, a proton is simply a baryon type of hadron composed of three quarks, two up and one down, bound with the strong force as mediated by gluons. (shrugs)

Hmm...something just came to mind. Is mass or substantiality really an illusion? I mean, what's inside of a proton if it is a standing wave pattern? Quarks you say mugs, but are they just smaller standing wave patterns held together as a proton by their complementary forces? What is inside of a quark? Is there truly such a thing as substance or is everything just overlapping fields of attractive and repulsive forces?

Originally Posted by Pyraxus

Hmm...something just came to mind. Is mass or substantiality really an illusion? I mean, what's inside of a proton if it is a standing wave pattern? Quarks you say mugs, but are they just smaller standing wave patterns held together as a proton by their complementary forces? What is inside of a quark? Is there truly such a thing as substance or is everything just overlapping fields of attractive and repulsive forces?

Ahh... Is there really such a thing as an elementary particle, or merely successively smaller kinks/knots in the fabric of space-time? The deeper we've dug, the more layers we've found! However, the standard model has been mathematically flipped around six ways to Sunday, and it's believed, nee', shown mathematically, there can be no further subdivisions. Still, both preon and acceleration theory postulate otherwise.