Something to ponder on a wet Sunday.
- 28 February 2010 10:1441533Courtesy of our chums at NASA a little matter conundrum to solve:
Why doesn't matter just bunch up?
The same principle that keeps neutron stars and white dwarf stars from imploding also keeps people from imploding and makes normal matter mostly empty space.
The observed reason is known as the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
The principle states that identical fermions -- one type of fundamental matter -- cannot be in the same place at the same time and with the same orientation. The other type of matter, bosons, do not have this property, as demonstrated clearly by recently created Bose-Einstein condensates.
Earlier this decade, the Pauli Exclusion Principle was demonstrated graphically in a picture of clouds of two isotopes of lithium -- one cloud composed of bosons while the other cloud is composed of fermions. As temperature drops, the bosons bunch together, while the fermions better keep their distance.
The reason why the Pauli Exclusion Principle is true and the physical limits of the principle are still unknown.
Do I have the answer? Search me...
- 28 February 2010 10:2741535Mr Perkins You lost me on that one,to many long words.
- 28 February 2010 10:3541536Long night was it, Sid?!
- 28 February 2010 11:4341542seems like sid knows more long words than you bern.
- 28 February 2010 12:0041543Ask the scientist on the BBC2 morning programme, that will confuse him !Been nice knowing you :)
- 28 February 2010 12:1541545Wow Sid, I never thought I`d see quantum mechanics on here, one of my pet subjects over the years, and I still can`t grasp it. I`ve got plenty of books here I can recommend for you to read. An extremely interesting story from it`s discovery by Max Planck in 1900, (and spending the rest of his life refuting it), through Einstein, (who also fought against it all his life), Niels Bohr who championed it, Heisenburg and a handful of other`s. You wouldn`t have your electrical world of today without the quantum. Neils Bohr once said, the person who understands quantum mechanics, doesn`t understand quantum mechanics. Well done Sid.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered. - 28 February 2010 12:1741546Sid, might I take it that this is an opening gambit to get a particle accelerator built on the DTIZ site?
Per Ardua Ad Astra replacing Per Ardua Ad Asda?? - 28 February 2010 12:3341549Good idea there Bob, so long as you can get a loan from the world bank. (Just a few hundred billion). That new Hadron collider which opened last year on the Swiss/French border was contributed to in cost by 100 different countries, and the States, (in a cost cutting exercise), cancelled their one a few years ago.Tell them that I came, and no one answered.
- 28 February 2010 12:5341552Happy reading Sid, or anyone else. If you can`t split the atom at the end of it, at least you might have a good sleep.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered. - 28 February 2010 13:3641562I think I might have a splitting headache
Interesting stuff though.
- 28 February 2010 13:3841563Come on lads lets get back to"2+2=5"
- 28 February 2010 13:4341565Vic, which it does for large values of two.....
- 28 February 2010 14:2341568Mr Frost. you are at it now,you got me with that one.
