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Beast
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I’ve been trying to find specifics about quarks and gluons, and it seems like not a lot is known.
If I’ve got things right Up quarks have a speculated mass between 1.5 and 4.5 MeV, and Down quarks a speculated mass of between 5 and 8.5 MeV. Gluons are considered to be massless. A proton is uud, and has a measured mass of 938, a neutron udd mass 940.
The mass discrepancy between uud max 17.5 and a proton 938 is in the form of the strong nuclear binding force, or quark colour charge. All stable or maybe even legal particles made of quarks are colour neutral.
An electron has no quarks, is considered indivisible, and has a mass of 0.51 MeV. So even if we add the mass of a proton and an electron we don’t get a neutron. There is some binding energy thus between the electron and the proton in a neutron that accounts for the mass discrepancy.
I have never seen any accounts of the number of gluons in an up or down quark. Or of the number of gluons in a proton, or neutron, or in deuterium. Or even a probability distribution for the number of gluons that a particle has.
Nor have I seen any suggestion about the speed gluons travel between quarks in the same hadron, or between quarks in a proton-neutron pair. I’ve read that gluons exchange often between quarks, but never found a hint of a frequency.
The limit of the strong nuclear force is about 3x10E-15 metres.
If you pull a proton-neutron apart to the limit of the strong force, you will add energy until the energy of pulling them to the limit of the force is enough to create a gluon anti-gluon pair, as the nuclear bond snaps, and a gluon goes to one of them, and an anti-gluon to the other.
Its almost suggested that we can’t talk about a gluon outside a quark because it has colour, (and anti-colour) and colour neutrality is the law.
However I notice that unstable particles involving the strong nuclear force have a life of about 10-23 s, so we could guess that gluons must travel within 10-23 s, between quarks.
Could an electron have an anti-gluon ? Could a quark’s colour charge simply be it’s number of gluons, with 0, and 4 being colour neutral, and 1,2,3 the colours. Gluon exchanges would then certainly change a quark’s colour.
Let’s say the Up quark, has 3 gluons, and the down 2. The protons have 5, and neutrons 3. A Deuterium atom would have 8, and Helium-4 16.
If a multiple of four is a “good” number of gluons in a nucleus such a model would explain why Neutrons don’t bind, and why even numbers of neutrons and protons make the most stable nuclei, and release the most energy from fusion. Two neutrons have 6 gluons with is 4+2. Two protons have 10 gluons with is 2x4 + 2.
Ok I want people to verify I’ve painted the known picture correctly, or correct it, and comment on my speculations.
If I’ve got things right Up quarks have a speculated mass between 1.5 and 4.5 MeV, and Down quarks a speculated mass of between 5 and 8.5 MeV. Gluons are considered to be massless. A proton is uud, and has a measured mass of 938, a neutron udd mass 940.
The mass discrepancy between uud max 17.5 and a proton 938 is in the form of the strong nuclear binding force, or quark colour charge. All stable or maybe even legal particles made of quarks are colour neutral.
An electron has no quarks, is considered indivisible, and has a mass of 0.51 MeV. So even if we add the mass of a proton and an electron we don’t get a neutron. There is some binding energy thus between the electron and the proton in a neutron that accounts for the mass discrepancy.
I have never seen any accounts of the number of gluons in an up or down quark. Or of the number of gluons in a proton, or neutron, or in deuterium. Or even a probability distribution for the number of gluons that a particle has.
Nor have I seen any suggestion about the speed gluons travel between quarks in the same hadron, or between quarks in a proton-neutron pair. I’ve read that gluons exchange often between quarks, but never found a hint of a frequency.
The limit of the strong nuclear force is about 3x10E-15 metres.
If you pull a proton-neutron apart to the limit of the strong force, you will add energy until the energy of pulling them to the limit of the force is enough to create a gluon anti-gluon pair, as the nuclear bond snaps, and a gluon goes to one of them, and an anti-gluon to the other.
Its almost suggested that we can’t talk about a gluon outside a quark because it has colour, (and anti-colour) and colour neutrality is the law.
However I notice that unstable particles involving the strong nuclear force have a life of about 10-23 s, so we could guess that gluons must travel within 10-23 s, between quarks.
Could an electron have an anti-gluon ? Could a quark’s colour charge simply be it’s number of gluons, with 0, and 4 being colour neutral, and 1,2,3 the colours. Gluon exchanges would then certainly change a quark’s colour.
Let’s say the Up quark, has 3 gluons, and the down 2. The protons have 5, and neutrons 3. A Deuterium atom would have 8, and Helium-4 16.
If a multiple of four is a “good” number of gluons in a nucleus such a model would explain why Neutrons don’t bind, and why even numbers of neutrons and protons make the most stable nuclei, and release the most energy from fusion. Two neutrons have 6 gluons with is 4+2. Two protons have 10 gluons with is 2x4 + 2.
Ok I want people to verify I’ve painted the known picture correctly, or correct it, and comment on my speculations.