[Q] Quantum Fluctuations - Does it violate energy conservation?

[Jayinater]

In my physics class at school, we have recently been discussing the uncertainty principle, in relation to energy and time. Apparantly, for the spontaneous generation of very short lived particles (femtoseconds), there is an uncertainty in the energy of the particle. For example, by colliding two "x" particles, you can come up with a very short lived "y" particle that has an uncertainty of +/- 2 MeV for each trial collision. Does this violate the law of conservation of energy?

[freeztar]

I must preface that I'm not strong in the knowledge department concerning particle physics. Yet, your question is one that can be answered by physics in general.

 

Energy is conserved.

 

It is quite strange with particles though. Finding where the energy goes is the whole puzzle. I remember reading an article a while back that was describing a Bose-Einstein condensate that was losing energy mysteriously when blasted with radiation (iirc). They were able to account for almost all the energy through the various particle measurements, but there was an unaccountable loss nonetheless. For energy to be conserved, we have to find out where this loss is occurring. I'll try to find the article for you. It's a good read.

 

EDIT: A quick search found that the "missing energy/mass" problem is related to the search for the Higgs boson (and potentially an answer to what dark matter is). Fingers crossed for the LHC!

 

Many beyond the standard model theories include a stable dark matter candidate that yields missing or invisible energy in collider detectors. If observed at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, we must determine if its mass and other properties (and those of its partners) predict the correct dark matter relic density. We give a new procedure for determining its mass with small error.

CiteULike: Accurate Mass Determinations in Decay Chains with Missing Energy

 

It's important to note that last sentence, particularly the "small error" part. :D

[Jayinater]

I guess all we have to do now is wait until the repairs to the LHC are done...

 

It makes sense to propose that missing energy would be related to dark matter. We can't detect the missing energy, because dark matter really cannot be directly observed. Hmm...

[connor1200]

yeah it is interesting to see in the future if we will have technology to further research this topic