- #1
diogenesNY
- 229
- 240
Please forgive the thread title... it just kinda slipped out that way.
I am reading and enjoying Alan Guth's _The Inflationary Universe_. Dr. Guth is not only in command of a very lucid style of exposition, but he has a very subtle and penetrating sense of humor.
Anyway... He relates a conversation with Henry Tye. Essentially, they agreed, GUT implied the existence of magnetic monopoles. They noted that these were likely 10^16 GeV particles; it would take that much energy to create one. Guth estimates that using SLAC as a model, that sort of energy would require (using 1974 technology) a linear accelerator with a length of about 70 light years. It was also noted that this particle would be really heavy with a mass of about 10^17 GeV or about 10^17 times as massive as a proton.
Now on to my attempt at a scratchpad visualization.
Taking the mass of a Proton as 1.6726^-27 Kg, (multiple internet sites of reasonable provenance cite this figure), some simple math would place this hypothesized particle to have a mass of approximately 1.67^-10Kg.
I get that this is huge as a particle mass, but I am really a loss for a sense of scale here. I can write out the numbers. It does not appear macroscopic. Nevertheless, what, for example, weighs about 1.67^-10Kg? Just trying to wrap my head around this unusual, intermediate scale.
diogenesNY
I am reading and enjoying Alan Guth's _The Inflationary Universe_. Dr. Guth is not only in command of a very lucid style of exposition, but he has a very subtle and penetrating sense of humor.
Anyway... He relates a conversation with Henry Tye. Essentially, they agreed, GUT implied the existence of magnetic monopoles. They noted that these were likely 10^16 GeV particles; it would take that much energy to create one. Guth estimates that using SLAC as a model, that sort of energy would require (using 1974 technology) a linear accelerator with a length of about 70 light years. It was also noted that this particle would be really heavy with a mass of about 10^17 GeV or about 10^17 times as massive as a proton.
Now on to my attempt at a scratchpad visualization.
Taking the mass of a Proton as 1.6726^-27 Kg, (multiple internet sites of reasonable provenance cite this figure), some simple math would place this hypothesized particle to have a mass of approximately 1.67^-10Kg.
I get that this is huge as a particle mass, but I am really a loss for a sense of scale here. I can write out the numbers. It does not appear macroscopic. Nevertheless, what, for example, weighs about 1.67^-10Kg? Just trying to wrap my head around this unusual, intermediate scale.
diogenesNY