Could ME thrusters be used to produce torque?

[93143]

Isn't gluon energy quantized?

[paulmarch]

Isn't gluon energy quantized?

As far as I can tell the strong force between quarks and gluons in hadron/baryons like protons and neutrons is modeled as a constant 100,000 Newton pull strength between the gluons and quarks, so yes they are quantized in a way, but it is NOT quantized like electron motions around an atom are per QED. Instead they follow their own weird set of Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD) rules as noted below.


See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interactions

"The strong force acting between quarks, unlike other forces, does not diminish in strength with increasing distance, after a limit (about the size of a hadron or 1x10^-15 m) has been reached. It remains at a strength of about 100,000 Newtons, [citation needed] no matter how far away from each other the particles are, after this limiting distance has been reached. In QCD, this phenomenon is called color confinement, implying that only hadrons can be observed; this is because the amount of work done against a force of 100,000 Newtons is enough to create particle-antiparticle pairs within a very short distance of an interaction. Evidence for this effect is seen in many failed free quark searches."


OK, I see your point now. If the force between these massless gluons is constant over their range in a baryon like a proton or neutron, then their relative kinetic energy can’t change, and therefore they can’t vary their overall rest mass. However, and again this is SPECULATION on my part, the residual strong force AKA nuclear force that binds together the baryons in a nucleus DOES vary with distance between the baryons with a negative exponential power of distance attraction function called the Yukawa Potential. Since this exponential function is continuous over the range of interest, then the nuclear forces between hadrons for any given nucleus save hydrogen, can be modeled as a set of springs attached to a set of spheres that are vibrating around a common point in spacetime. Therefore the overall nuclear binding energy between the components of a nucleus can vary around a malleable mean value and thus could be an energy source for the M-E wave.

Next point, what happens if what the M-E does is slowdown the rate of time in the cosmos when locally extracting energy in an M-E device? How would we ever know that is occurring unless we could lift our measurement devices out of our 4-D spacetime and measure our time rate from an external frame of reference like that provided by the latest 11-D Brane based String theories?? Things to ponder…


“The behavior of the residual strong force (nuclear force)

A residual effect of the strong force is called the nuclear force. The nuclear force acts between hadrons, such as nucleons in atomic nuclei. This "residual strong force," acting indirectly, transmits gluons that form part of the virtual pi and rho mesons, which, in turn, transmit the nuclear force between nucleons.

The residual strong force is thus a minor residuum of the strong force which binds quarks together into protons and neutrons. This same force is much weaker between neutrons and protons, because it is mostly neutralized within them, in the same way that electromagnetic forces between neutral atoms (van der Waals forces) are much weaker than the electromagnetic forces that hold the atoms internally together.
Unlike the strong force itself, the nuclear force, or residual strong force, does diminish in strength, strongly with distance. The decrease is approximately as a negative exponential power of distance, though there is no simple expression known for this; see Yukawa potential. This fact, together with the less-rapid decrease of the disruptive electromagnetic force between protons with distance, causes the instability of larger atomic nuclei, such as all those with atomic numbers larger than 82."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukawa_potential

"A Yukawa potential (also called a 'screened Coulomb potential') is a potential of the form (equation)

Hideki Yukawa showed in the 1930s that such a potential arises from the exchange of a massive scalar field such as the field of the pion whose mass is m. Since the field mediator is massive the corresponding force has a certain range due to its decay, which range is inversely proportional to the mass. If the mass is zero, then the Yukawa potential becomes equivalent to a Coulomb potential, and the range is said to be infinite.

In the above equation, the potential is negative, denoting that the force is attractive. The constant g is a real number; it is equal to the coupling constant between the meson field and the fermion field with which it interacts. In the case of the nuclear force, the fermions would be the proton and another proton or the neutron."

[TallDave]

TallDave,

According to Feynman's concept of Space-Time we are affected by the future, the past, and things going faster than light speed (slower too of course).

So space could very well be larger than observed space. And the Lorentz equation if looked at geometrically argues for at least one more dimension. At right angles to the current three.

Consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation

I tend to fall in with chris on this one. Everything is moving at the speed of light if you consider all dimensions. "Real" motion in observed space means slower motion in the invisible dimensions.

Of course it could all be something else even stranger. Or I haven't had enough coffee.

Well, we "know" space is larger than observed. That's strongly implied by the homogeneity of observed space. Most cosmologists believe the universe is at leasts tens of orders of magnitude larger than the visible universe, and perhaps infinite (open or closed).

Lorentz transformations ignore metric expansion. It's a fine way to look at special relativity though. The extra dimension in Minkowski space is just time. No problem there.

I refuse to accept any theory that violates causality (future affecting present) or admits causality violations. Wavefunctions do not uncollapse. That's why I think relativity will be modified in my lifetime.

[MSimon]

TallDave,

According to Feynman's concept of Space-Time we are affected by the future, the past, and things going faster than light speed (slower too of course).

So space could very well be larger than observed space. And the Lorentz equation if looked at geometrically argues for at least one more dimension. At right angles to the current three.

Consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation

I tend to fall in with chris on this one. Everything is moving at the speed of light if you consider all dimensions. "Real" motion in observed space means slower motion in the invisible dimensions.

Of course it could all be something else even stranger. Or I haven't had enough coffee.

Well, we "know" space is larger than observed. That's strongly implied by the homogeneity of observed space. Most cosmologists believe the universe is at leasts tens of orders of magnitude larger than the visible universe, and perhaps infinite (open or closed).

Lorentz transformations ignore metric expansion. It's a fine way to look at special relativity though. The extra dimension in Minkowski space is just time. No problem there.

I refuse to accept any theory that violates causality (future affecting present) or admits causality violations. Wavefunctions do not uncollapse. That's why I think relativity will be modified in my lifetime.

You are beginning to sound like Einstein who didn't like the implications of his theory.

What if time only has an arrow in the macro world? Which is how the thermodynamics folks look at it.

[MSimon]

TallDave,

Watch these videos (about 6 hours) and get back to me. The theory is good (currently) to about 14 or 18 orders of magnitude.

http://vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8

[TallDave]

What if time only has an arrow in the macro world? Which is how the thermodynamics folks look at it.

I guess I'm not sure it would matter. Any admittance of causality violation leads to infinite feedback loops and other nonsense. And wavefunction collapse is irreversible.

Personally, I like the Leibniz/Kant view that time doesn't exist at all. After all, entropy is just a statistical observation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time

I'll try to get in those lectures at some point. Six hours is a pretty big investment now that I have 4 jobs again. Maybe background while I cook...

[EricF]

The residual strong force is thus a minor residuum of the strong force which binds quarks together into protons and neutrons. This same force is much weaker between neutrons and protons, because it is mostly neutralized within them, in the same way that electromagnetic forces between neutral atoms (van der Waals forces) are much weaker than the electromagnetic forces that hold the atoms internally together.
Unlike the strong force itself, the nuclear force, or residual strong force, does diminish in strength, strongly with distance.

This is good stuff right here. So, let me see if I am reading this right. The gluons hover around inside the nucleus from quark to quark (or do they simply hover around their own quark? a gluon cloud similiar to an electron cloud?)
And their range extends slightly outside the immediate area of the quarks within the nucleus, which causes them to attract other protons and neutrons via slight attraction to the gluons within other hadrons if the distance is close enough, but not strong enough of an attraction to cause a gluon exchange with other particles, just enough to cause the hadrons to want to stick together?

Since the field mediator is massive the corresponding force has a certain range due to its decay, which range is inversely proportional to the mass.

Theres that expression again! along with

Unlike the strong force itself, the nuclear force, or residual strong force, does diminish in strength, strongly with distance. The decrease is approximately as a negative exponential power of distance,

[/size]

The residual strong force and field mediator have a lot in common with the expressions Feynman used to describe gravity.

[blaisepascal]

This is good stuff right here. So, let me see if I am reading this right. The gluons hover around inside the nucleus from quark to quark (or do they simply hover around their own quark? a gluon cloud similiar to an electron cloud?)

The strong force is mediated by gluon exchange, so two quarks are always involved. Quarks have a "color" charge (with the charges called red, green, blue for quarks and anti-red, anti-green, anti-blue for anti-quarks), and gluons have a charge-anticharge pair. Color charge in conserved. A red quark interacting with a blue quark will interact with a red-antiblue gluon, for instance.

And their range extends slightly outside the immediate area of the quarks within the nucleus, which causes them to attract other protons and neutrons via slight attraction to the gluons within other hadrons if the distance is close enough, but not strong enough of an attraction to cause a gluon exchange with other particles, just enough to cause the hadrons to want to stick together?

Maybe... In the analogous Van Der Walls force case, the charge-separation of the negative electrons and positive nucleus causes the electron/nucleus attraction between two different molecules to be slightly greater than the electron/electron+nucleus/nucleus repulsion between the same two molecules.

Also take a look at dipole fields -- equal strength positive and negative electric fields superimposed with a slight offset. Close to the dipole (relative to the dipole separation) there can be large, even very large, field strengths and gradients. Far away, the field strength falls off fast (I believe it's an inverse cubed relationship), even faster than the inverse squared relationship you'd see from a single electric field.

With nucleons, the same sort of "residual field" remains outside of the nucleon. Gluons react strongly to separated color charges to bring them together, so within a nucleon gluons will work hard to keep the red, blue, and green quarks attracted to each other. But from a distance a nucleon looks "white", and the color separation that gluons interact with is very weak.

Since the field mediator is massive the corresponding force has a certain range due to its decay, which range is inversely proportional to the mass.

Theres that expression again! along with

Unlike the strong force itself, the nuclear force, or residual strong force, does diminish in strength, strongly with distance. The decrease is approximately as a negative exponential power of distance,

[/size]

The residual strong force and field mediator have a lot in common with the expressions Feynman used to describe gravity.

Where did Feynman describe gravity in such terms? I don't recall anything from him which sounds familiar.

The idea of a massive force mediator being short-range (which gravity is not) is based on the idea that forces tend to interact via so-called "virtual particles", which show up on Feynman diagrams quite a lot. Virtual particles don't have to obey mass/energy conservation laws as long as (a) all real resulting particles obey mass/energy conservation, and (b) the violation of the mass/energy conservation rules follows Heisenberg's Uncertainty equations regarding their lifetime (i.e., dE*dT < h). A photon, having no mass, has no range limitation. A Z boson (mediating the weak nuclear force) has a mass, and therefore has a short lifetime.

[MSimon]

What if time only has an arrow in the macro world? Which is how the thermodynamics folks look at it.

I guess I'm not sure it would matter. Any admittance of causality violation leads to infinite feedback loops and other nonsense. And wavefunction collapse is irreversible.

Personally, I like the Leibniz/Kant view that time doesn't exist at all. After all, entropy is just a statistical observation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time

I'll try to get in those lectures at some point. Six hours is a pretty big investment now that I have 4 jobs again. Maybe background while I cook...

Not necessarily. Depends on the probabilities. Proof? The numbers can be calculated to very large accuracy. And the accuracies calculated are confirmed by experiment.

[TallDave]

I guess the above should read "six hours is a pretty big investment of a statistically observed increase in entropy."

I'm not sure what your point is there. Are you talking about the QM measurements?

What I don't like about time travel is that it doesn't really make sense to speak of the same event happening twice. Once the wavefunction collapses, that's it, no do-overs; they aren't time-reversible. I think the time travel confusion arises because relativity uses the convenient approximation of treating time as a dimension. As with other aspects of relativity, that runs into problems at the QM level.

[MSimon]

I guess the above should read "six hours is a pretty big investment of a statistically observed increase in entropy."

I'm not sure what your point is there. Are you talking about the QM measurements?

What I don't like about time travel is that it doesn't really make sense to speak of the same event happening twice. Once the wavefunction collapses, that's it, no do-overs; they aren't time-reversible. I think the time travel confusion arises because relativity uses the convenient approximation of treating time as a dimension. As with other aspects of relativity, that runs into problems at the QM level.

TallDave,

I think that an investment of six hours over a month or two is very worth while for an understanding of the subject by a master of explanations.

Feynman explains how the calculations are done and they include all the faster than light paths. All the paths from the future and the past. You may not like it. Doesn't matter. It works.

[TallDave]

Feynman seems to be talking about superposition, which is fine as far as it goes. But decoherence is irreversible, so you can't really talk about future influence past that point.

I suspect this means if you tried to communicate with someone several hundred billion light years away, you would not be able to pass tomorrow's lottery numbers back to yourself through your distant intermediary as relativity suggests is possible. At best, you would pass them to some other worldline, and they would turn out to be wrong because that worldline would unroll differently past that point.

That might actually be a nice test of the many-worlds hypothesis. Too bad I don't have any friends beyond the visible universe...

[alexjrgreen]

Too bad I don't have any friends beyond the visible universe...

How do you know?

[chrismb]

Too bad I don't have any friends beyond the visible universe...

They're the voices we all can hear in our heads.

(We do all hear voices, don't we??....)

and perhaps are also the little people that visit at night....

[MSimon]

Too bad I don't have any friends beyond the visible universe...

They're the voices we all can hear in our heads.

(We do all hear voices, don't we??....)

and perhaps are also the little people that visit at night....

Mild schizophrenia is vastly underrated as a job qualification in creative pursuits.