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Old 08-29-2004, 04:41 PM   #41 (permalink)
Zdragva
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Location: Highlands of Scotland
BTW Mr SelfDestruct theres actually a thing called 'plancks constant' which actually prohibits anything smaller than a certain size existing, if it does it undergoes plenty of strange effects etc. but do read up a bit, our universe is fractal in nature but it is not A fractal, this means that although we can see signs of fractal patterns in it, it does not endlessly repeat forever in both directions as you imply. (If the universe was totally fractal then any massive object would be made up of infinate numbers of smaller massive objects and even the smallest mass times infinity leads to infinate mass, which is bad in our universe). Also the table for quarks and 'relatives' goes something like this:
Up quark - symbol u - (electron) charge +2/3 - Mass (GeV/c2) 0.33
Down quark - symbol d - charge -1/3 - Mass 0.33 (roughly)
charm quark- sybmol c - +2/3 - 1.58
strange - s - -1/3 - 0.47
top - t - +2/3- 180
bottom - b- -1/3- 4.58
This is the current list of all known and/or predicted quarks in existance, these however are but one group of a whole host of (seemingly) indivisble subatomic particles, including the electron but not the proton or neutron . +2/3 of an electron charge simply means the quark has 2/3rds of the opposite charge to an electron. and GeV/c2 is simply a way of working out mass (M) from E=MC2 and means 'Giga electron Volts divided by the speed of light squared'. the problems with breaking down quarks into 'whatever theyre made from' is that there doesnt appear to be enough energy in creation to crack that particular egg. The big bang itself is supposed to have gone thru a state of being a 'quark plasma' right after the singularity exploded. no one knows what these objects are, why they have these properties they have, or where they came from, only that they seem to be the smallest tangible objects in existance (and there are objects used in science today that 'technically' dont ever exist but still carry out functions, i.e gluons and gravitons). also it would seem that blowing them apart to see whats inside its a definate no as scientists agree that A there are the bottom of the pile of 'things' we call matter, and even if they wernt the kind of power needed is impossible, an if it wasnt impossible it would be fatal to our universe to use it.
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