quarkylife

[quarkylife]

I watched a video by The Royal Institution on YouTube named "What are Pentaquarks and why are they so rare?" which was uploaded 3 years ago. And it was really good at simplifying quantum chromodynamics and what quarks are!! However, I struggled to understand some of the stuff about the data but I think I get some of it!! :D soooooo ill do my best to summarise it ((as if I can ever be concise lmao))

The main answer to the question posed by the title of the video was a solid we dont know what exactly Pentaquarks are and why they're soooo rare buuut scientists at the LHC are working on it!!

Quarks and leptons are the fundamental particles. Quarks in particular are always linked together by te strong nuclear force to form hadrons - you can't EVER find them singularly due to quark confinement ((energy needed to separate two quarks forms mass forming another quark)). However quarks are usually found in quark triplets or quark antiquark pairs!?!?!?! WHY!?!? It could be due to the quarks property colour charge limiting some possibilities. The colour charge is associated with the strong force ((force keeping quarks together)), similar to how the electric charge is linked to the electric force. It acts as a source for the force to act on. The three types of colour charge are : red, green and blue. All together make white. In hadrons, the colour charges cancel out / make white so overall the object is neutral and doesnt experience the strong force. So the only caviat here for other particles containing quarks is the colour charges need to cancel, so it's not really much of a reason why particles containing quarks other than quark triplets and quark-antiquark pairs are soooo rare.

Scientists have been working on this issue....aaannnddd in 2008 tetra quarks (4 quarks) were discovered!! Aaannnd in 2015....drumroll please!! Pentaquarks (5 quarks) were discovered!!! However, they're not stable so decay quickly so cant be directly observed. Thus scientists look for pentaquarks by finding the particles they decay into - psi mesons and protons. And the lack if knowledge we have on pentaquarks shows we really dont know a lot about the strong nuclear force (what forms them) as we dont even know if they're formed of the fusion of a meson and baryon or the fusion of five singular quarks......but yuh...they exist and it's a start!!

[quarkylife]

Almost a month since I last posted!!?!?!? Oh mah gawd!?!? I need to fix that!!

I watched a podcast by SixtySymbols on YouTube, posted 22/8/23 - "The Interesting Physics of Robert Oppenheimer (not the bomb)" , on 22/8/23. So now imma share it with you so I actually remember the lore.

So we've all heard of the Barbenheimer conspiracy....but do you really know about Oppenheimers achievements which didnt lead to death!?!? I bet you don't!!

In 1927, Oppenheimer worked with Max Born to work on molecular quantum mechanics. They tried to apply Schrodingers equation to molecules and used the approximation that nuclei are heavier than electrons so the nuclei are stationary whilst the electrons are moving. This simplified the equation A LOT as now there were less things moving. Schrodigers equation was solved for the electronic energy levels which depended where the molecules where. This answer was then imputed back into the equation but this time the nuclei were moving!! And when an answer was found for that it was put back into Schrodingers equation AGAIN for the whole system in motion to find the spectra of the molecules!! This formed the Born-Oppenheimer approximation which is SOOOOO important to chemistry theres a whole branch of chemistry trying to ignore it!! You know you're important when people actively try to pretend you dont exist!!

In 1930, our boi Oppenheimer was at it again...and almost predicted the existence of the positron, the first anti particle!! Buuuut he didnt quite go through with it /doubt . You see Dirac had created a relativistic equation for the electron but it had more than one solution....one with positive charge. Scientists at the time thought the other solution was the proton. Oppenheimer was like helll nawwwr, that's wrong!! And proceeded that when you scatter light against an electron the way the light scatters should be the same for the proton if the other particle is the proton but this doesnt happen as they have different mass. Thus there has to be another particle with the same mass but opposite charge as an electron. Then, he dropped it. Sooo close!! Another interesting thing is Anderson is credited with discovering the positron, but Blackett discovered it first but published it after...

And you wanna know what else Oppenheimer did in 1930!?!?! He was ratio'd by one of his partners....Wolfgang Pauli ((one of the fathers of quantum mechanics)). Pauli said "Oppenheimers physics is always interesting but his calculations are always wrong." Pauli and Oppeneheimer worked together on the idea of an electrons 'self energy' which they thought couldnt be plausible. The electron was thought of as a point-like object which moves in an electromagnetic field as it has charge. But Pauli realised that the electron produces it's own electromagnetic field. According to classical physics this meant the electron will have infinite energy from its electromagnetic field as it stretches to infinity ((virtual photons be like)). However, the electron also doesnt behave like it has infinite energy.....we got a problem. Oppenheimer used Diracs theory to treat the problem like quantum mechanics ((with the help of Pauli)). Oppenheimer found that when he went to high order approximations of electron energy levels of hydrogen, then there was an infinite contribution of energy. If only we could harness the power of electrons....oh wait that's kinda electricity.

In 1939 Oppenheimmer switched his focus to astrophysics and began to work on the structure of neutron stars. He realized there was a maximum mass a neutron star could have for it to be stable and in equilibrium....so he did what anyone does and was like WhAt If I aDd MoRe MaSs!?!?!?! The neutron star would collapse into a black hole. He was the first person to find that out. He also took a spherical star, with constant density and realized the geometry inside the star was the same as a contracting universe, so the star will eventually collapse and become a black hole...but umm remember the bit where inside the star is the same as a contracting universe!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Insane. And he even suggested that if someone was watching a person fall into a black hole from a distance, it would take an infinate amount of time!! So to that person they would never fall into the black hole...but to the person in the black hole, they're spaghetti.

[quarkylife]

Let's learn about the absolute boyo Micheal Farady!! I said as I read an article on Britannica, written by L.Pierce William's.....named Micheal Faraday.....and boy did he do a lot!! I mean I went to his museum so I should know but I didnt!!

So here's a list of some of his achievements!!

He discovered benzene!!

The first to liquify a gas that was thought to only be a to be in the gaseous state

The first to produce an electric current from a magnetic field

The first to produce an electric motor and dynamo

The first to produce compounds of carbon and chlorine

He discovered diamagnetism

...and a lot more to do with the foundation of electricity!! Buuuut il geeett more into his discoveries when I actually understand them so for now, enjoy my photos from the Faraday museum!!

[quarkylife]

Leading off from yesterday's article about quantum chromodynmaics, I read a couple articles on H. David Politzer, both of the same name......H. David Politzer...heheheh. One from Britannica and the other from Jewishvirtuallibrary

Politzer was born on August 31 in 1949 won a Nobel prize with David .J. Gross and Frank Wilczek in 2994 for their (independent) discovery regarding the strong nuclear force. They discovered quarks couldnt be separated into individual particles but the closer quarks are, the weaker the strong nuclear force. When quarks are verrrrry close, the strong force is soo weak quarks can behave as free particles. This is called asymptotic freedom.

In essence as distance increases, strength of the strong nuclear force increases (until about 3 fm).

Politzers work led to quantum chromodynamics (giving gluons colours and suggesting they can create more gluons) and his work contributed to the standard model (all physics regarding the electromagnetic force and strong nuclear force).

Politzer, with the help of Applequist also predicted the existence of charmonium (charm + anticharm quark pair) which is also known as the J/ particle.....it feels like a prank but it's true!!......not /j

[quarkylife]

Guess what time it's for!?!? Quantum Chromodynamics!! Yippee!!

The article I read was on Britannica, called Quantum Chromodynamics, written by Christine Sutton.

Anything to do with Quantum Chromodynamics is in relation with the strong nuclear force (you know the thing that stops protons from repelling each other so the atom doesnt collapse). And we know electromagnetic interactions of charged particles, governed by photons (its exchange particle photons carry the force). Well what if I said there was another, stronger, better, faster electric charge!?!?!?!

COLOUR!!!

In 1973, Harald Fritzsch, Heinrich Leutwyler and Murray developed the concept of colour. They took field theory (where exchange particles can radiate further exchange particles) and said what if the strong nuclear force did this and with colour!!

They predicted gluons (exchange particle of the strong nuclear force) and suggested they had three base types of charge (colour) : red, green and blue. The primary colours which together make a naturally coloured (charged) particle as red, green and blue make white light. There are two types of colour neutral particles : baryons (quark triplets) with one of each type of colour and mesons (quark antiquark pair) with a colour and its corresponding anticolour. There are 8 types of gluons, each with a mixture of colour and anticolour.

Quantum chromodynamics suggests gluons can interact with themselves (field theory), making the strong force different from the electromagnetic force (ignoring electromagnetic force only applies to charged particles). Quantum chromodynamics is used to explain why the string force isnt infinite and to explain quark confinement.

[quarkylife]

As I mentioned yesterday I read an article on quark gluon plasma as the article yesterday mentioned it and I was like wha!?!? Me need know!! So I read an article on it!!

The article was : news.MIT.edu, Explained : Quark-Gluon Plasma, Anne Trafton, 2010

It stated that quark-gluon plasma was the state of the universe before protons and neutrons had been formed, so has only existed for a millionth of a second.

Relatively recently, in 2005 quark gluon plasma has been recreated at the Realistic Heavy Collider by smashing gold atoms at approximately 4 trillion degrees!! Yeesh!! That's hot!!

When created, it was discovered quark-gluon plasma was a liquid rather than the gas scientists hypothesized however, has properties similar to a gas at near zero temperatures. Ngl this is just making my brain go SUPERCONDUCTORS lmao like what makes a material near absolute zero lose all resistance and what are gases reaction to a current?? What if you put electricity through quark-gluon plasma?? We dont really know a lot about it apart from it follows quantum chromodynamics....buuut what's quantum chromodynamics??

Sooo many questions!!

[quarkylife]

This is making me wanna revise materials XD

So let's learn about stress and strain babey!!

When a material is subjected to a pair of opposite forces it may deform. If the forces squash the material its compressive and if they stretch, its tensile.

Tensile stress is the force applied per crossectional unit of area.

Tensile strain is the change in length in ratio to the original length

As a greater tensile force is applied to a material, the stress increases (more force per unit area) so the atoms are being pulled apart from each other. Eventually the stress is too much and the atoms split apart, this is their breaking stress!! ((They anngy now)) And it appears spiderweb has a verrry low breaking stress whereas steel has a much higher one!!

Spiderweb = 0.45-2.0 Gpa ((inchemistryaccs.org))

Steel = 400 Mpa ((corrosionpedia.com)) ((4Gpa))

Is spider silk being as strong as steel another lie from childhood? Bc you're able to break it pretty easily on accident. Genuinely asking.

spider silk IS actually significantly stronger pound-for-pound than the same amount of steel, but only in one direction! and coincidentally, it's the same exact direction that got a bunch of people killed in a submersible last month.

see, when people talk about the "strength" of spider silk versus steel, they're specifically talking about tensile strength:

which is specifically the measure of the strength of a material when two forces are pulling at it from the ends, like when a steel cable is holding up a bridge support, or crane cargo:

or like when a strand of silk is supporting the entire spider.

that's tensile strength, baby!

but there's another type of strength that's very important to take into consideration when you're actually building things like bridges and submersibles, and spider silk and similar materials like carbon fiber are absolutely garbage at it! and that's compressive strength.

this is basically the inverse of tensile strength, where instead of being yanked at from both ends, the forces are crushing inwards at the material from both directions instead.

you can expect to see these kinds of forces involved in road surfaces, vehicle engines, and again, submersibles.

now steel and its more competent cousin titanium are fucking GREAT at compressive strength! the harder the outside forces are compressing them, the stronger the metals get.

NOT TODAY, FUCKERS

but strand-based materials like spider silk and, again, carbon fiber, are fucking garbage at this. they can take a certain amount of pressure, but each round with compressive forces snaps some of the strands that makes up the material! and those don't grow back, so basically you're just gradually reducing your poor overstressed carbon-fiber hull into a completely useless shell of shattered thread fragments over time as the strands of fiber that actually give it strength die off one by one.

and eventually, something's gotta give! and then people die about it.

this is why, even though spider silk IS stronger than steel in one specific way, we're never going to stop using steel in industrial applications and switch over to spider silk or carbon fiber full time. these materials all have their areas of use, and steel just covers a wider base of applications.

and don't even get me started on shear strength. we'll be here all damn day.

[quarkylife]

I read an article by Ceri Perkins for Sciencefocus.com about CERN!! 'CERN: Everything you need to know' published June 2022.

The things which stood out to me were:

CERN was established in 1954 to prevent the brain drain of European scientists leaving for America, which I think has worked well since over 10,000 scientists work there and is quite famous and is in pop culture - e.g Steins Gate

In 1983 W and Z bosons were discovered at CERN

Tim Berner Lee helped create the world wide web at CERN in 1983, something which has greatly changed all of our lives!!

Anti hydrogen was created!?!? Hydrogens anyiparticle?? Tho I'm not entirely sure what this is ToT I guess it's just an antiproton and an antineutron with an antielectron?!?! Imma have to look it up ;-;

QUARK GLUON PLASMA!?!?! WHATS THIS!?!? A NEW STATE OF MATTER NAMED AFTER MY BOYS QUARKS!?!?

Also the particle collider itself is created by superconducting magnets!! And they're cooled to -271.3°c so about 10K ish....you know what super conductors are!?? They're conductors which are cooled below a critical/ transition temperature where the conductor gains a resistance of zero!! Its verrry efficient!! Hence why it's used here!! However its verrry expensive so the real question is whether its cheaper to use super conductors or to have resistance? But with superconductors the current could effectively move forever and the energy transfers would be 100% efficient but the cost of cooling it?? What do you think?