It also makes me wonder if everything is actually the same? I know it’s a silly question, but are all quarks the same (composition wise) if so, does that mean that at our smallest core, we are made up of the same thing? Does this also mean that if not, that there is always going to be variance even to our smallest level? I suppose this question is asking more about what exactly is the composition of the smallest possible particle, and is there really an end?
In: Physics
Don’t things become a bunch of probabilities at the Planck Length (hence the term ‘quantum foam’)? Does this mean that everything in the universe consists of (and exists in) a state of uncertainty?
it should be noted that we have actually proven the smallest possible things in energy (1 photon), in electrical charge (1 electron) and in size (the planck length).
it’s notable that a quark is 10^10 larger than a planck length, a proton is10^3 larger than a quark, and an average atom is 10^6 larger than an average proton.
As such it feasible to have 2 or 3 more “levels” of particles before we run out of room, but it is rather unlikely at this point.
To my understanding, if you try to pull a quark apart hard enough, you just end up with two quarks.
Two points seem worth making.
Firstly, if you were to keep going to smaller and smaller particles, you’d eventually hit the Planck length*, below which it’s fundamentally not possible to measure things, and it’s questionable how much sense it starts to make saying that “This thing is made of smaller components” once “smaller” no longer has a useful meaning.
Secondly, once we get down to quark level we seem to be at the point where virtual particles are constantly popping in and out of existence, and it’s getting a little tricky to say precisely what something is made of anyway. For example, when we look at what’s inside a proton, we apparently sometimes find things that only make sense if they’re virtual particles with extremely short lives (for example we sometimes find a charm quark – which has more mass than the proton itself).
Both of those seem to suggest that there are fundamental limits to how far you can keep pushing a neat, ordered heirarchy of “THIS is made up of THESE”. There’s a limit to how far you can go, plus reality seeems rather messier anyway. So even if quarks are made up of smaller things, sooner or later things are going to break down.
There’s a recent [PBS Space Time video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbzZIMQC6vk) on the structure of the proton that’s accessible, interesting and relevant. Well worth a watch.
*We’re still a LONG way from that – the Planck length compared to the size of a quark is on the scale of a grain of sand compared to the Sun – but the point still applies.
I would suggest having a read about preons. To cite wikipedia
>However, scattering experiments have shown that quarks and leptons are “point like” down to distance scales of less than 10−18 m (or 1⁄1000 of a proton diameter). The momentum uncertainty of a preon (of whatever mass) confined to a box of this size is about 200 GeV/c, which is 50,000 times larger than the (model dependent) rest mass of an up-quark, and 400,000 times larger than the rest mass of an electron
This could be fixed by extremely fine-tuned binding energy but is not very elegant. Additionally, we did not observe any resonances corresponding to existing states of quarks. This can also be solved by an extremely high binding energy, but that would also require extreme fine tuning
If the things smaller than a quark don’t interact with things that we can observe or measure, then there could be anything in there- be would it matter?
Latest Answers