Is matter infinitely divisible or not ?
what do you think and what is your general philosophical/theological background ? curious if religious people have a different opinion about this
This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
Sandcastler · 26-30, M
Hello I am a theoretical particle physicist! Matter is definitely not infinitely divisible! This is because our theory of quarks, the smallest possible particles, called quantum chromodynamics (or QCD for short), has a so-called "beta-function" which is negative! This means that the amount of energy it takes to separate a quark into two quarks (i.e. divide it) is more than the amount of energy it takes to create a quark. So by trying to split it in two you would end up with at least one of the separated quarks at least as big as the original, therefore there can be no particles smaller than a quark!
Sandcastler · 26-30, M
@Sandcastler By the way! This phenomenon is very famous and called the "Mass Gap", because there are no quarks with mass/energy lower than this limit (so there is a gap in the spectrum of possible quark masses between zero and this lower limit mass). Fully mathematically explaining the mass gap phenomenon is part of an open problem whose solution is worth 1 million dollars. It is called the Yang-Mills millennium prize problem!
JimboSaturn · 56-60, M
@Sandcastler I'll pretend I understand that. :P Actually I do lol. I feel at this subatomic level, being divisible is a quaint notion and not really relevant.
Sandcastler · 26-30, M
@JimboSaturn oh no divisibility in the sense I outlined above is very much relevant and actively studied
This comment is hidden.
Show Comment