Can there be a subquantum level?

[quiet]

Imagine that I want to create an animal that has, together, features of hare and goose character. Obviously I can not bring a hare and a goose to the operating room of a veterinarian Frankenstein. You can not create a viable animal by dismembering and reconnecting parts of both bodies. To achieve this, it is required to descend to the genetic level, because the genome of the hare and the genome of the goose are formed by the same basic set of molecules.

I was wondering if something analogous can happen in physics, that is to say, that all the formulable theories derive from laws belonging to a more elementary level than the quantum level, where the genesis of all the theories dedicated to the other levels takes place.

 

[phinds]

Imagine that I want to create an animal that has, together, features of hare and goose character. Obviously I can not bring a hare and a goose to the operating room of a veterinarian Frankenstein. You can not create a viable animal by dismembering and reconnecting parts of both bodies. To achieve this, it is required to descend to the genetic level, because the genome of the hare and the genome of the goose are formed by the same basic set of molecules.

I was wondering if something analogous can happen in physics, that is to say, that all the formulable theories derive from laws belonging to a more elementary level than the quantum level, where the genesis of all the theories dedicated to the other levels takes place.

Part of the history of physics is finding smaller and smaller "stuff" that everything is made up of and there have been times where it was believed that the smallest thingy had been reached, only to find later that there was something smaller. BUT ... quarks are AWFULLY small and it's getting harder and harder to believe that there is anything smaller, unless string theory turns out to be more than a mathematical diversion in which case STRINGS will then be the smallest "stuff".

 

[Ian Mitchell]

Well no. Even if you're going smaller than a quark, you're just looking at an even smaller quanta of matter. Even then, there probably isn't anything smaller than a lepton or boson.

 

[cosmik debris]

I think the concept of small is difficult. What do we mean by it?

Cheers

 

[phinds]

I think the concept of small is difficult. What do we mean by it?

? I think "small" is quite clear. Why do you not?

 

[cosmik debris]

? I think "small" is quite clear. Why do you not?

I think small means some sort of size, but particles are modeled as points and their interaction "size" depends on their energy. Alternatively small could mean low rest mass, so photons are very small.

Cheers

 

[phinds]

I think small means some sort of size, but particles are modeled as points and their interaction "size" depends on their energy. Alternatively small could mean low rest mass, so photons are very small.

Cheers

I disagree. I think "size" means dimension and is quite clear of MANY orders of magnitude including the very small:

 

[cosmik debris]

I disagree. I think "size" means dimension and is quite clear of MANY orders of magnitude including the very small:

OK, but which dimension?

Cheers

 

[phinds]

OK, but which dimension?

I give up

 

[quiet]

Perhaps it is the type of phenomenon and not the size that distingueshes the elementary level from all other. Today is admitted and, if I have understood correctly has been confirmed, that the mutual collision of two photons can gives, as a product, a particle/antiparticle pair. Small matter is formed using radiation as a precursor phenomenon. It is not size that distinguishes radiation from matter. And the creation from photons invite us to think that radiation is the elementary phenomenon.

 

[davenn]

Small matter is formed using radiation as a precursor phenomenon. It is not size that distinguishes radiation from matter. And the creation from photons invite us to think that radiation is the elementary phenomenon.

These comments of yours make me wonder if you know what the definition of radiation is or even what a practical example of it is ??

Dave

 

[_PJ_]

I think the question is perhaps a little "flawed" - no disrespect intended - due to the implicit assumption that "quantum" is related to size. Mostly, smaller scales are where quantum effects are more "significant"

A single photon being absorbed by an electron of an atom in a molecule of air will go utterly unnoticed and will not change the ensemble perception of the state of a room in a manner that makes any real difference to anything that human-scale interactivity requires.
Yet when considering the scale of the atom, that photon has changed entirely the energy of the atom system as a whole, the electrons will reconfigure and may even cause changes to the chemistry in terms of its related energy dynamics within the molecule

So in this regard, it's forgiven that there is notion of a "quantum scale" - this is further not helped with a lot of Pop science actually using that very phrase in this way.

Yet the 'reality' (for want of better word) is that the principles of quantum mechanics apply everywhere at all scales - and the extreme example is that of Black Holes whose event horizons can be immense.
________I know what the OP meant, but I wanted to clarify that "quantum" is not something confined to a particular scale range-

So with regards to "will there be a level of detail revealed that delves smaller than current?"

Well physicists are always trying to find models or structure that can describe in a manner which matches what observation shows - and this has inevitably lead to looking more and more closely (therefore on smaller and smaller scales) - Although in many ways we have reached a particular barrier -

As mentioned, on the small scales, quantum effects become significant. A photon absorbed by an electron can change that entire system dramatically. The more energy the photon has, the more drastic the change.
But we 'use photons' to 'see'. And to "see" at smaller scales, we need higher resolutions which is achieved by using shorter wavelengths* - Shorter wavelength photons carry more energy, though - so not only does this make such an attempt to "see" a system more disruptive to the system, but in producing the required energies takes an amount of energy. An approach to provide this energy is in accelerating nucleons to almost the speed of light and colliding them together which provides a considerable amount of energy and the resulting scatterings represent many potential ways to reorder that energy.
The LHC and its components represent the largest, most powerful such group of experiments and it takes something like 1.5 TW (Terrawatt = 1 000 000 000 000 Watts) energy consumption in a year.**

With these energies, we can 'see' evidence for Quarks and at least sizeable masses of "glueballs".

There's plenty of theoretical descriptions of process and objects on the "really small side", and these are very well formalised mathematically and a good deal of experimental data supports a good deal of the current standard model which reaches limits around things like neutrinos.

At this point, though, the nature of "size" becomes questionable, since the point particle model becomes less practical and gives way to the more accurate predictions and less problematic (with regards to particular contradictions with a point particle scenario at least) of QFT which actually increases the 'size' of the spatial extent of such 'entities' whilst simultaneously stamping out concepts of internal structure, since entities are essentially reduced to a collection of specific statistics.

That's not to say that, for example, an electron might actually be an ensemble of something, but the perception of a little ball with smaller things wiggling around inside is not applicable - in some theories, the wiggling itself, by pattern and timing is what gives rise to the measured properties of the "larger" entity.

In this way, some theoreticians have skipped a whole lot of size scales right down from quarks, electrons and neutrinos down to the very limits of what it might even mean to have length or "size". Whether there will ever be experiments even possible to support this or not is a huge undertaking. To even get anywhere near, you'd need an LHC the size of the solar system...
*
Imagine painting a picture using a decorating paintbrush compared to a fine artist brush - the finer artist brush with its narrower width can provide far greater detail in smaller regions of the canvas.

 

[quiet]

I have put in google the following: "two photons mutual colliision" create particle antiparticle . Many links appear, and too the following: physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2017/aug/18/light-is-seen-to-scatter-off-light

 

[_PJ_]

Sorry I hadn't read the OP detail properly and my earlier comment was a response simply to probing smaller and smaller scales.

_________With regards to the analogue with individiual genes in a given order will result in a hare in one case, or a goose in another specific order case, etc. then really, this is exactly the case in Physics.

The biological level of fertilisation, cell mitosis and so on can be described in closer detail on smaller scales as chemical interaction between molecules - All of which can be further described by thermodynamics (physics) of electromagnetic energies within molecules - which is further attributed to quantum process of the electrons.
Whether these quantum processes are themselves formed upon a foundation of a "deeper" set of laws and processes is absolutely possible - but as mentioned in my earlier post, given we are reaching (current) limits of observation - then there's very little to go on.

It's almost like trying to explain the physics of an internal combustion engine if you ONLY had a picture of a car.
So it would be rather more of trying to "invent something" for a purpose of trying to give reason behind the - kinda asking "why" as opposed to "how", which is not necessarily physics approach.

From the basis of human curiosity, it's understandable that there might be a desire to ask "why" something is the way it is, and seek explanations forever, but really, I think there will inevitably be a limit somewhere, but part of what makes us humans is challenging such limits!

 

[quiet]

Anyway, the remaining question is the first: is possible, or even necessary, the existence of a subquantum physical level?

 

[DrClaude]

Anyway, the remaining question is the first: is possible, or even necessary, the existence of a subquantum physical level?

As far as I can understand it, the question is at worst meaningless, and at best philosophy. Thread closed.