down qwark is -1/3 e ; up quark is +2/3 e.
they sum up to +1 e.
neutrons are the opposite made of 3 quarks. two down quarks one up quark. and sum to 0e
the unitary quantity is a conveinience.
1 e = 1.602176634×10−19 coulombs,
But why are they in units of 1/3(e).
Why are down quarks not -0.398390847895...(e) and up quarks not +0.6234098129034809234...(e). Why do they add up so damn neatly?
Mathematically it works out that way because the standard model is build up from symmetry groups. The hand wavy explanation is that the symmetries observed in nature wouldn't be reproduced if the charges differed by random irrational numbers.
The same is also generally true of other conserved quantities in the SM. Noether's theorem unifies symmetries and conservation laws as the same thing.
As far as a more fundamental explanation as to WHY the universe is this way, ask your god i guess.
We can test your theory: if the entire purpose of the mathematical model was to "add up neatly", and that's the reason why charge(proton) / charge(electron) is a nice round -1, then that should be true for other properties, right? What is mass(proton) / mass(electron)? It's 1836.1526734... Is that nice and neat? No, it's not. And yet physicists didn't decide to adjust their theory because that number offended them, as you suggest. Turns out you're spreading anti-science disinformation for absolutely no reason.
The purpose of the theory is to describe reality. In the case of charge, it is reality that adds up "neatly".
No idea what you’re getting at with that conspiracy theory comment, or rather I do and think you need to touch grass and stop projecting some boogey man onto people for stating an objective fact. These are predictive models not divine truth and if you think this is a conspiracy theory you either havent studied much math yourself or your are seriously brainwashed. This is not a fringe view and is a core debate within the philosophy of mathematics with no definitive answer.
If you keep asking why eventually you'll reach a ratio between two values: constants and you can't really go further deeper than that. Even if the values we have now end up not being the most fundamental, eventually you'll run into the fundamental ones and still have the same question unanswered.
I’m sure a universe could work with those constants varied but that’s the one we have in our universe.
There could be hypothetical universes with protons being half of electron and atoms would have twice the protons.
However the fundamental constants are just that. A number that allows us to reason about how the universe works.
As to why the number is that, gotta ask your God why they chose that specific value.
> the speed of light
is not
> 299,798,452 m/s
It is quite inaccurate to say this. The correct way to phrase this is that the speed of light is 1/sqrt(permeability * permittivity) of the medium through which the light is traveling.
For a perfect vacuum, these two properties of that vacuum give a result as specified above. For other specified medium, you will get a different value, which could be greater than or less than the above figure.
Little technicalities matter in such cases, as it opens up the discussion. Part of that discussion is that solar space or interstellar space or intergalactic space will have distributions of matter that can alter what the speed of light is away from the assumed perfect vacuum speed of light.
Simple assumptions such as perfect vacuum are quite likely to affect how accurate our models of the universe are. The problem for us is that we are here and not out there making actual on location measurements of the permittivity and permeability of the relevant regions. The assumptions made in our models can come back and bite us in the long term.
Now as for the models we use currently for proton and neutron structure, there are assumptions here that could well be misleading us even though our models appear to work. There are alternate models available (since at least the early 20th century) which have, as far as I know, not been investigated with any detailed effort. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that these alternatives are actually viable, but we don't really know at this time.
It's actually the speed of causality / information transfer.
No, because those constants are entirely arbitrary.
The curiosity here is that you have multiple numbers lining up, only separated by small integers.
Physicists have been searching for the Grand Unified Theory since forever, and so far, no real luck. The closest is something i'm not too familiar with called M-theory (which is a derivative(?) of string theory).
At scale of things in space (asteroids, planets, satellites, stars, galaxies) - We only need two constants (speed of light, and gravitational constant). The spacetime fabric bending explains everything we see at the scale. Things are very deterministic and have been verified with tons of experiments for decades around the globe.
At the quantum scale, gravity is an extremely weak force but it is still there. We have planks constant (h), elementary charge (e), speed of light.
You are right, that someday we may derive gravitational constant from another elementary particle constant.
I am not so sure about speed of light though.
EDIT: after reading the great Wikipedia article above, and a connected one [1], I think I can restate: the only place we can look for these particles is in atoms, so it shouldn’t surprise us that they come in convenient forms to support atom formation.
I mentioned this recently, in the context of the laziness in language, leading to the miseducation of those who don't know better, and was heavily downvoted and ridiculed
keep it up, hn, you'll see idiocracy soon enough and then no one will trigger you
Reading your other comments down thread doesn't paint you in a good light. Maybe your argument about laziness in language wasn't as cogent as you thought. Maybe you aren't as good at presenting arguments as you thought.
In other words, maybe you need some humility.
but if you knew for sure you'd be able to be sure of that and also show the proof
instead what you did is present the impression that you had which is a synthesis of what you encountered and what was in you from the past.
If you study much philosophy, you'll have to admit the fact that a large number of people turn away from what is true. It's not pleasant to you, I know. nor is it pleasant for you to see the product of the system that you want to close your eyes to talking to you in an unpleasant manner.
It doesnt matter how correct people are. The more correct people are the worse they're treated. The better we get at presenting true arguments the more you will resent us and the more you have no choice but to react with violence (being unable to admit your lie), as HNers do now with trap counterarguments and gaslighting. No wonder suicide is on the rise.
"particles" are just what we call particular kinds of excitations in quantum fields
doesn't in any way answer, or obviate, or otherwise demystify the question of
why the electric charge associated with one sort of "particle" should be exactly 3x the electric charge associated with another.
So your comment is not only gratuitously rude, it's also either (1) wrong or (2) missing some essential explanation.
On a side note: are there any models that assume that there are fields/shapes that are constanly bombarbed by neutrinos and other stuff. Thks bombardment seems to be always ignored
or any isolated quantum systen
Ah right, so basically its just a convenience notation? We could as well say that proton has 3 and electron is -3 charge?
Absolutely! In fact that would have been much more convenient, since the "quantum of charge" appears to be 1/3 of the charge of the proton. All units of charge we've ever observed seem to be integer multiples of 1/3e.
OP's article has a full paragraph dedicated saying that "The proton is much more than three quarks"
