What do Bosons travel through?

[jaketodd]

Do Bosons travel just through each other, or through matter as well?

Thanks,

Jake

 

[ansgar]

a photon is a boson, a pion is a boson, helium is a boson... there are many bosons

 

[jaketodd]

a photon is a boson, a pion is a boson, helium is a boson... there are many bosons

On Wikipedia it says "bosons with the same energy can occupy the same place in space"

So is it only the same type of boson at the same energy that can pass through each other?

Can bosons occupy the same place in space only with other ones of the same type and same energy? Or, can different types of bosons at the same energy (if that's possible) occupy the same location in space? If so, does that apply to all bosons?

Thanks,

Jake

 

[ansgar]

same place in space is a bad phrasing since quantum particles have no definite position, what it should read is "same quantum state"

and different kind of bosons are of course different states...

 

[jaketodd]

same place in space is a bad phrasing since quantum particles have no definite position, what it should read is "same quantum state"

and different kind of bosons are of course different states...

Thanks ansgar.

 

[Vanadium 50]

a photon is a boson, a pion is a boson, helium is a boson... there are many bosons

As is an iron atom. A bar of steel is not likely to go traveling through much of anything.

 

[jfy4]

With the advent of General Relativity, our understanding of space-time changed and we eliminated a background space-time. In essence, we ended up with fields on top of fields, if you will. The gravitational field is proposed to be a massless gauge-boson field no? If we have fields on top of fields, then what are these gauge bosons moving through? certainly not space or time! I think the question is pretty deep, and as of right now or maybe ever, unanswerable...

 

[filegraphy]

I would think bosons travel through space. What do you guys think?

 

[GeorgCantor]

With the advent of General Relativity, our understanding of space-time changed and we eliminated a background space-time. In essence, we ended up with fields on top of fields, if you will. The gravitational field is proposed to be a massless gauge-boson field no? If we have fields on top of fields, then what are these gauge bosons moving through? certainly not space or time! I think the question is pretty deep, and as of right now or maybe ever, unanswerable...

I agree that the question is deep. It is made even deeper by the fact that there is no classical picture of what bosons really are either. It reminds me of RUTA's paper on the Relational Block Universe where they rightfully stated - we don't really know what both space and matter are.