juanrga

The free lunch cosmology does not say that our universe was born from nothing, but it was born from a quantum vacuum with zero energy. Yes, a known cosmologist confounds a physical vacuum with the philosophical concept of nothing and he wrote a book about how universe was born out from nothing (but his book has received strong criticism by both physicists and philosophers).

Theoretical particle physicists like to relate elementary particles with irreducible representations of the quantum Poincaré group. In more experimental terms an elementary particle is unambiguously defined by properties such as mass, charge, and spin. The spin of an elementary particle is a purely quantum property that has not classical counterpart (i.e. the quantum spin would not be confused with the classical concept of spinning motion. Quantum spin is something different). If you took a look to the IUPAC link given above you can see that the electron is described as a particle with mass me, charge e, and spin 1/2. All known elementary particles are described by mass, charge, and spin (e.g. a photon is a massless particle with zero charge and spin 1) Composite particles are defined by giving their composition, e.g. a proton is a collection of two quarks-u plus a quark-d. Although for problems where the internal structure of a composite particle is not important, one only considers its total properties such as total mass, total charge... For instance, in molecular physics and chemistry the proton is very often considered as if was elementary, because the details about its structure are not relevant for those problems. Other properties of the particles such as energy, momentum, etc. are obtained by the usual quantum mechanical methods. One writes down the quantum operator for the property and obtains its eigenvalues for a given set of quantum eigenstates. This is how we obtain the energy of an electron in a hydrogen atom for instance.

Higgs boson-like particle discovery claimed at LHC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18702455 1 July I reported in another thread the persistent rumours about what CERN would announce today. In #1 in this tread I reported about what CERN would be probably claiming today, and in #13 I reported about how Tevatron is providing data about the Higgs which is complementary to the data becoming from CERN. Therefore yes, you are completely correct: CERN and Tevatron are different and we were waiting announcement from the CERN.

Heat is energy in transit and the amount of energy in a finite volume is finite.

You can repeat it so many times like you want, but I do not care because I know that: Lecher lines will continue to be explained in terms of particles, because, as said to you before, EM wave theory is a well-defined approximation to a quantum theory of particles. The CERN site will continue to say that everything is found to be made of particles, because this is an experimental fact. Both CERN and IUPAC will continue to define the electron as a particle, because our more modern and sophisticated model of the world is a theory of particles.

All of this was answered above. The electromagnetic field is defined in a four-dimensional spacetime, with time being one of the dimensions. That definition is not from mine. It is a standard mathematicians definition. I do not know who invented it.

I did not appeal to authority, and when I cite references (which, at the other hand, is not something unusual in a scientist) I do because I do not want to waste time writing something already written somewhere. You regard Newton as having a greater authority than people working at CERN. I disagree. You must believe that "yet undiscovered particles or particle properties" are required to explain something so trivial as lecher lines, but that is completely untrue. As I already said in #40, EM wave theory is a well-defined approximation to the current quantum theory of particles.

Note: When we, physicists and chemists, affirm that everything is found to be made of particles, we mean everything. Everything includes atoms, molecules, nuclei, lecher lines, waveguides, distant stars, electrons in Young experiment, electrons in high energy accelerators, lions, volcanoes, the Moon... The wave particle duality is a myth, an old and persistent myth. Advanced and rigorous treatments do not even mention this myth, except maybe in the introductory chapter devoted to the historical roots.

In the first place I am always writing about particles, because elementary particle is a technical term with an unambiguous definition in physics and chemistry. 'Corpuscules' is not. In the second place, I already said in #10 that wave theory is an approximation. Textbooks explain how to obtain EM wave theory as an approximation to the underlying theory of particles such as the electron and the photon.

And by the same logic a particle behaves like a particle. This is the reason for which not only physicists at CERN affirm that the electron is a particle. IUPAC also defines the electron as a particle.

Yes, Tevatron scientists work at Tevatron. Tevatron scientists (and myself) do not use your definition of "nothing":

A proper and modern picture was given: Light is made of particles named photons. Under certain circumstances a collection of photons behaves, collectively, as something that we call a wave. The wave theory is an approximation to the underlying quantum theory of particles.

Tevatron scientists announce their final results on the Higgs particle http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/2012/Higgs-Tevatron-20120702.html This is very important because the LHC is not so sensitive to the bb channel which is relevant for showing that the Higgs couples correctly to fermions.

Nobody can give an exact answer, because such answer does not exist. Decay and other processes are not deterministic processes, You cannot say that all nuclei will decay exactly in a time span t. Moreover, there are uncertainties regarding the amount of each material in the Earth, uncertainties regarding the different transport coefficients involved. We are dealing with a complex thermodynamic process where you cannot use a single equation and extrapolate. As absolute zero is unreachable, the OP asked for "Almost Absolute Zero", but it depends on what one means by "almost" 0.01 K? 0.0001 K? 0.000000000000001 K? The time needed to achieve the first temperature is very different than the time needed to achieve the latter. There are many more complexities. What about fluctuations? When dealing with a macro system at 300 K during a relatively small span of time (small when compared to geological scales), people usually avoids fluctuations and only considers the average behaviour (average temperature). But near zero quantum fluctuations become more important (recall that the classical limit on partition functions can be obtained by taking the infinite temperature limit) and we also know that the probability for a giant fluctuation to happen is a function of time. In a very very large span of time it is likely that a giant fluctuation will happen invalidating any 'prediction' made using dynamical equations as the equation for the decay of a nucleus [math]\frac{dN}{dt}= -k N[/math] The best answer that I gave was about 102 days for the surface and geological scale of time for total planet (but uncertainty for this latter case is so high that I did not write an specific figure).

Dark matter isn't predicted by the standard model, and it's more than reasonable to think that DM may consist of particles. The above quote says "a quantum theory of particles". The Standard Model is only a subset of "a quantum theory of particles". What is more, the section "So far so good, but..." in the CERN link given by me before --in this same thread-- explains what are the limits of the Standard Model.

And just how many times in the past have scientists and thinkers made this claim that they know everything? Mendelev and his mates were wrong about the number of elements Kelvin was wrong about the cooling of the earth.... I suggest that anyone making such an extravagant claim is suffering from a severe case of bloaty head. Neither CERN scientists nor myself are saying that we know everything. We are saying something very different. We are saying that everything in our universe "is found to be made" from a small number of known particles. The link given above lists the known particles: electrons, quarks, photons, neutrinos, muons, gluons... Their glossary is also interesting http://public.web.ce...ossary-en.php#P The scientific fact is that all known phenomena up to the date can be explained with a quantum theory of particles. I repeat: the above CERN quote is about that we have found.

In his book "QED, The strange theory of Light and Matter" Feynman writes: Yes Feynman agrees, as virtually everyone else, that light is made of particles. Of course, as emphasized above by at least two posters, particle does not mean classical particle. The transition "classical particle" --> "quantum particle" is firmly rooted to the transition classical physics --> quantum physics.

Let us see. The above link to the CERN starts with the following quote (bold from mine): "Everything" includes atoms. Indeed atoms are made of particles such as the electron. The electron is a particle of the kind fermion. The electron is mentioned in the CERN link in the section "matter particles", third paragraph. What does happen in an atom? Consider an isolated atom (not an atom in a molecule nor in a solid), but a solitary atom. If we ignore nuclear structure and treat the nucleus as a classical point, if we assume that this atom is in a stable pure quantum state, and if we ignore spin and relativity, then the state of the atom can be described by a wavefunction, sometimes named electronic wavefunction because it only depends on electrons coordinates. Recall that the atom continues being made of particles! Assume that this same atom is in some stationary state (i.e., its physical properties do not change with time). Then its wavefunction will not depend on time. If further we consider that electrons in this atom are not-interacting (which is not true because electrons are electrically charged {*} and repeal between them) then that wavefunction can be split into a product of wavefunctions for each electron. The whole wavefunction is defined in a generalized space (not in ordinary space!). Only the wavefunction for each electron-j is defined in ordinary space [math]\Psi_j=\Psi_j(x,y,z)[/math]. This [math]\Psi_j[/math] is what you call "standing wave", but notice that it is not a wave (i.e. it is not a physical system with energy and momentum), but a mathematical function. The correct technical name is stationary wavefunction. This [math]\Psi_j[/math] only describes the quantum state of the electron approximatedly. In fact they are a very crude approximation to real atom. Moreover, the electron continues being a particle. In more advanced quantum treatments the electron continues being a particle, but its state is not more given by a wavefunction [math]\Psi_j[/math] but by a more general and complex formalism. {*} An exception is the Hydrogen atom because has only one electron.

Theoretically it would exist a temperature dependence, but it has to be extremely small. Current measurements in a span 20--300 K show not variation up to the 0.1% http://prc.aps.org/abstract/PRC/v80/i4/e045501

Yes and it was Lederman's editor who suggested that the change to "God particle" would sell more copies of his book.

The electromagnetic field is a field. A field is a physical system and carries energy and momentum. A dimension of a space or object is the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Electromagnetic field is defined in a four-dimensional 'space' named spacetime. The quantum field theory of photons is QED not QCD and yes QED say that photons are excitations of the electromagnetic field.

Particle wave duality is a myth, which arose in the early times of quantum mechanics when only classical particles or classical waves were known and the myth was born to try to explain the experiments where the objects under study did not behave as classical particles or classical waves. The idea that photons sometimes behave as waves and sometimes behave as particles is a recurrent, but completely incorrect, claim. A well-known joke about this is In modern physics the photon is defined as a particle, always. Everything around us is made of particles as CERN remarks: http://public.web.ce...rdModel-en.html An electron or a photon are always particles and all particles behave as particles. Danger! Particle does not mean "little-hard-sphere-following-Newtonian-laws". Are particles and waves somewhat related? Yes. An electromagnetic wave is a large collection of photons. Therefore a wave has momentum and energy. Note, however that the description of a collection of photons as a electromagnetic wave is only an approximation. Quantum optics is more general and requires a photon treatment.

Scientists 'will say they are 99.99% certain' the particle has been found http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167188/God-particle-Scientists-Cern-expected-announce-Higgs-boson-particle-discovered-Wednesday.html

Yes, you are right. I omitted to quote this part:

I think that your question was "In the absence of a heat source how long would it take for the earth to freeze solid?". Under the assumptions and limitations stated in my post my answer is