I must confess _this_ is WAY beyond me....

Mark

----- Original Message -----
From: "Russell McMahon" <apptech@CLEAR.NET.NZ>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 5:10 PM
Subject: Re: [OT]: Something for nothing <-- Gas Chromatography


> >>because,
> >>zero plus zero --- always equals zero
> >>
> >>weather you or anyone 'accepts' it or not
> >
> >imho you are absolutely right in this excepting for a small detail. The
> >void referred to is space, and not an abstract void. afaik we (humans) do
> >not have the means to determine that a given volume is indeed perfectly
> >void or not (due to Heisenberg's inequality I think). So the void (space)
> >is not really void, even if one disregards passing radiation used to
> >inspect the voidness, and, there is no way to prove it is void if indeed
> >it is (which is very unlikely imho). So I think that there is something
to
> >the idea that protons may be formed 'by themselves' from time to time.
>
>
> The positional accuracies introduced by the Heisenberg Uncertainty
> Principal are quite impressive. Around 1 cm !!! for  an electron whose
> velocity is measured to 1 cm per second and  5
> uM for a Proton for the same measurement (as it is much more massive).
This
> is still about a billion
> times larger than the diameter of the Proton (not that Protons really have
> diameters but we like to pretend).
>
> For a nice small laboratory instrument sized space I think we would have
> some trouble telling if an electron was in our chosen space if we could
not
> measure its position to within 1 cm! Also - vacuum fluctuation electrons
> have a lifetime of around 10E-21 seconds (10E-25 for Protons) so the
> measurements would be challenging even if they didn't turn out to be, as
> they are, impossible (at least according to Quantum Mechanics).
>
> >Especially since I seem to remember some high energy physics experiments
> >where particles were created from colliding beams (not sure if mass was
> >created from the collision of beams with massless particles - but E=mc^2
> >seems to indicate that anything that moves or contains some form of
energy
> >(and is thus detectable) has some kind of mass).
>
>
> Mass and energy are interchangeable for the purposes of the HUP.
>
> "Matter" has quite recently (last 2 years or so AFAIR) been "created" by
> focusing lasers into a suitably concentrated space.
> The energy equivalence of photons and other particles is well "known" -
the
> tools are just a little underdeveloped as yet :-).
>
> Photons are their own anti-particles! -  which makes them very nice for
> doing interesting things with if you have enough energy.
> Due to this property and the fact that they have NO rest mass and are
> completely non time-aware (and other reasons) one could regard them as the
> particle of choice for creating things from. You can most anything you
want
> by banging pieces of light together energetically enough, provided you
know
> what you are doing.
>
> This creation of other hadrons / bosons from photons or the reverse is a
> fairly standard part of particle physics theory. If you let there be light
> as a starting point then you can arrive at most
> other species.
>
> In a sure-to-never-be-completed SciFi story I have laaarge solar pumped
> lasers hanging in "low solar orbit" (like LEO but warmer) generating
> anti-matter to be used for compact propulsion systems elsewhere in the
solar
> system and beyond. Don't even ask about the technology for the shielding
> systems that allow you
> to operate in low solar orbit.
>
> You can go to Mars and back on milligrams of antimatter! A gram of
> antimatter is equivalent to about 20,000,000 kg of rocket fuel.
> You get about 2E14 joules per gram ! Breakeven point for propulsion is
> around $10 billion per gram but that will not happen for quite some time
(if
> ever). Dealing with the uncharged pions is the hard part although NASA
have
> a current proposal for efficient use, using the AMAT starter as a fusion
> promoter in otherwise uninterested fuels. Gives you a cost advantage
> multiplier for the fuel.
>
>
>
>
> Russell McMahon
>
> --
> http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
> email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body
>
>
>

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList
mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu