Qm & The Standard Model

[Little Bang]

And you guys get your feathers all ruffled when I complain about them.

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727764.100-void-that-is-truly-empty-solves-dark-energy-puzzle.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20727764.100

[Little Bang]

Right now science requires magic to explain the Universe. The need to have particles pop in and out of existence from some place we can't see, is that not magic? If we can't put together an understandable picture of how the Universe works, with our minds eye, we will never understand it. When someone outside the mainstream comes out with a new theory and invents imaginary items to make it work the mainstream would drum them right out of existence. The mainstream applies rules to others that it doesn't apply to itself.

[Qfwfq]

Right now science requires magic to explain the Universe. The need to have particles pop in and out of existence from some place we can't see, is that not magic?

It depends on what you mean by magic.

 

There's a wealth of phenomenology which does occur. If you see it happening, do you disbelieve it? We don't know what particles really are, so why should we discredit things such as pair production or synchrotron radiation?

 

If you want an image, shoot a stone at a bell with a slingsot. If your stone strikes the bell, a sound, that wasn't there before, "pops into existence from some place we can't see" and it can be thought of as a huge number of phonons, just like a flash of light can be thought of as a huge number of photons.

[Little Bang]

I don't discount pair production Q. I disagree with the explanation of pairs popping into existence via virtual particles. For hundreds of years sailors have been telling science that giant waves exist and science told them they couldn't exist and now science knows that small waves can combine to add up to giant waves. All space is full of radiation and we know that under certain conditions it can produce pair production. Why wouldn't this be a more reasonable and logical explanation?

[Qfwfq]

All space is full of radiation and we know that under certain conditions it can produce pair production. Why wouldn't this be a more reasonable and logical explanation?

Than what?

[Little Bang]

Than using virtual particles as the explanation for the sudden popping in and out of existence of electron pairs.

[Qfwfq]

Than using virtual particles as the explanation for the sudden popping in and out of existence of electron pairs.

Virtual particles are not an explanation for it, they are just an instance of it. They are called virtual in cases where criteria such as conservation laws would not be met. Some aspects of the quantum field theory description are simply as if there were these particles and this is relatable to the Heisenberg principle. Some cases may be interpreted as a virtual particle becoming a real one when a further interaction alters it. This means it can even be an outcoming line (asymptotic state) and is observable, rather than just a mere term in the math.

 

Personally I think there is an excessive trend to take virtual particles literally, like several things in theoretical physics. Unfortunately this happens among researchers too, though a great deal of it is a reult of divulgation. The theorists however tend to see them as a mathematical tool, terms in equations that translate into internal lines in a Feynman graph.

 

In the case of pair production, a diagram with a single EM vertex can't conserve energy-momentum; one single real (and hence massless) photon, even with sufficient energy, can't turn into a pair with both being real; the simplest diagram for the whole process is two incoming photons, two vertices with a virtual fermoin between them and two outcoming lines for the pair. One of the photons, however, can be a virtual photon in the strong field of a heavy nucleus as described here.

Edited September 9, 2010 by Qfwfq
slight improvements