If a particle is created & decays almost instantly, does or can the wavelength from the created particle carry on kinetically?

If it can, does it also decay or can it contribute to a knock on effect?

I'm thinking of Ke traveling through water after a landslip into that body of water.

23 hours ago, Imagine Everything said:

I'm afraid I'm left wondering if I am asking silly questions sometimes, I see no one replied to the above.

It would be nice for someone to even say that to me as it would help me understand a bit more perhaps.

I won't bite if you think I'm being crankish

No it is not a silly question but then it is also not a simple question (looks can be deceptive) .

I did not answer before partly because of this and partly because a lot of things have been happening in my world just lately, not least including computer failure.

The questions are actually quite deep and you would and a person would only need the answers if he was going to study the subject more widely.

It would also require some preliminary work, but since you have come back and asked again perhaops you are up for that ?

A good place to start would be to compare the normal distribution function with one half cycle of a sine function as they seem so similar at first glance.

But they are actually quite different.

The sine function is cyclic (important new term)

The normal dist function is not cyclic.

(exchemist is not quite right as the 'tails' stretch from negative infinity to positive infinity though it is almost never used in that way)

41 minutes ago, studiot said:

No it is not a silly question but then it is also not a simple question (looks can be deceptive) .

I did not answer before partly because of this and partly because a lot of things have been happening in my world just lately, not least including computer failure.

The questions are actually quite deep and you would and a person would only need the answers if he was going to study the subject more widely.

It would also require some preliminary work, but since you have come back and asked again perhaops you are up for that ?

A good place to start would be to compare the normal distribution function with one half cycle of a sine function as they seem so similar at first glance.

But they are actually quite different.

The sine function is cyclic (important new term)

The normal dist function is not cyclic.

(exchemist is not quite right as the 'tails' stretch from negative infinity to positive infinity though it is almost never used in that way)

Yes quite right, being in a hurry I chose my words clumsily. What I had in mind is that the sine wave repeats its wave pattern indefinitely, whereas the Gaussian is just the one bump.

Thanks @studiot , I will have a look at that.

I guess I started the debate about not being answered because I was waiting 3 weeks ish & still nothing.

I know it was Christmas & I wasn't criticising, it just leaves me wondering whether I'm being silly whilst also frustrating for me because I simply don't know if I have asked stupid questions.

I don't expect you guys to answer everything & perhaps people like that Jacek character put you all off a bit from answering others, I can understand that.

Poor old Mordred came back from a busy rl & walked straight into him or her. For what it's worth I learnt a great deal from the way @Mordred responded to him or her.

I question myself, the things I do or say, more than I do all of you or anyone else.

I still question myself over why I got so dissapointed at perhaps being thought of as possibly crank ish by @MigL in my other post.

I should have embraced that in hindsight, even being wrong is a way to learn.

It feels similar to my thought pattern that what a person says is as important as what someone doesn't say. But in that case, it was me who perhaps said the wrong thing.

The things I've talked about here with you all are very strange to me. This vision thing is very strange to me yet I seem compelled somehow to follow it still, as much as I can anyway.

Anyway, time for me to go look up

56 minutes ago, studiot said:

one half cycle of a sine function

Through normal distribution, when you observe each & every measurement of x, do the individual measurements/observations mean anything to you other than just a single part of the normal distribution?
Is the overall normal distribution the only things that matters?

Hope I said that right.

Also hope you got your computer sorted out, I know how annoying that is.

Edited January 7Jan 7 by Imagine Everything

4 hours ago, Imagine Everything said:

If a particle is created & decays almost instantly, does or can the wavelength from the created particle carry on kinetically?

The created particle will have a wavelength, but is not an entity in and of itself, so asking if the wavelength can carry on is awkward phrasing.

Fir example - a neutron decays into a proton, positron, and neutrino. Each will have a wavelength, because they have momentum and kinetic energy, and they all can interact

4 hours ago, Imagine Everything said:

If it can, does it also decay or can it contribute to a knock on effect?

I'm thinking of Ke traveling through water after a landslip into that body of water.

Decay products can cause secondary ionizations in materials; charged particles can cause quite a few since they don’t need to undergo a direct collision. That’s how the decay products generally lose their energy.

2 hours ago, Imagine Everything said:

I know it was Christmas &

In addition, the forum was offline for a bit, which affected traffic even after it came back online

16 hours ago, swansont said:

The created particle will have a wavelength, but is not an entity in and of itself, so asking if the wavelength can carry on is awkward phrasing.

Fir example - a neutron decays into a proton, positron, and neutrino. Each will have a wavelength, because they have momentum and kinetic energy, and they all can interact

Thanks @swansont , that's very interesting.

On 1/7/2026 at 9:56 AM, Imagine Everything said:

Poor old Mordred came back from a busy rl & walked straight into him or her. For what it's worth I learnt a great deal from the way @Mordred responded to him or her.

You run into ppl like that. Its one of the reasons I try to supply reference papers for statements I make. However some ppl fail to even look at those reference papers or fail to understand them. However I always consider adding them useful for other readers of the thread as well.

Glad to hear you learned something from that thread.

On 12/17/2025 at 5:45 AM, Imagine Everything said:

Thanks @studiot

Whats the maths equation for that please? It might be useful later on.

And the error could be or is decay/creation interaction?

Just a thought but this almost looks a bit like half a wavelength to me.

Is there an opposite bell curve too?

You asked earlier on this normal distribution. As it is a probability density function you won't have a negative curve. All probability functions regardless of type are positive norm.

However I should note some terminology is a little loose. For example the Dirac Delta function used to describe point mass isn't a true function but a measurement distribution. As such it's handled a little differently via Lebesque integration.

Example here

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.11639

Edit forgot to note a simple function has a finite range this isn't the case with Dirac Delta functions

Edited January 13Jan 13 by Mordred

55 minutes ago, Mordred said:

You asked earlier on this normal distribution. As it is a probability density function you won't have a negative curve. All probability functions regardless of type are positive norm.

However I should note some terminology is a little loose. For example the Dirac Delta function used to describe point mass isn't a true function but a measurement distribution. As such it's handled a little differently via Lebesque integration.

Example here

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.11639

Thanks @Mordred, that was heavy & reminded me of how much out of my depth I am.

Whilst I do not understand the maths still, perhaps over time I might understand a little more than I currently do.

I appreciate the response.

Forgive my terminology too please, I didn't mean to imply that you are poor or old, it was just a term of endearment. You didn't say anything but I second guess myself a lot & have pondered on that since I wrote it.

One thing I do a lot is watch how people behave or react, I've had to for a long time, perhaps I might loosely call this my own observations.

It helps me to possibly foresee what might proceed certain behaviours in people.

53 minutes ago, Mordred said:

You run into ppl like that. Its one of the reasons I try to supply reference papers for statements I make. However some ppl fail to even look at those reference papers or fail to understand them. However I always consider adding them useful for other readers of the thread as well.

Glad to hear you learned something from that thread.

You asked

No worries one detail when dealing with probability distributions or multi measurements over an ensemble of measurements. The area of the distribution ie highest distribution is what becomes relevant.

For example if you take 100 samples and 20 of those samples are in close proximity to one another while the rest are scattered in without a discernible pattern. The area of those 20 samples is your higher probability region

Here is a simple example of gaussian distribution.

https://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/python/appendix_gaussian/

Edited January 13Jan 13 by Mordred

1 hour ago, Mordred said:

Here is a simple example of gaussian distribution.

https://introcs.cs.princeton.edu/python/appendix_gaussian/

Pretty useless dam if it only lasts 50 years with at 30% chance of flooding.

Must have been designed by a university maths dept.

😀

Edited January 13Jan 13 by studiot

13 minutes ago, studiot said:

Pretty useless dam if it only lasts 50 years with at 30% chance of flooding.

Must have been designed by a university maths dept.

😀

Yeah, you need to know how the theory will stand up to reality, and that's what engineers are for.

Lmao

26 minutes ago, studiot said:

Pretty useless dam if it only lasts 50 years with at 30% chance of flooding.

Must have been designed by a university maths dept.

😀

@StringJunky beat me to the punchline

On 1/7/2026 at 3:53 PM, studiot said:

The questions are actually quite deep and you would and a person would only need the answers if he was going to study the subject more widely.

It would also require some preliminary work, but since you have come back and asked again perhaops you are up for that ?

A good place to start would be to compare the normal distribution function with one half cycle of a sine function as they seem so similar at first glance.

I would like to know more please, @studiot , if you have a link to a brief overview for now, that would be interesting, thanks.

I've also been learning a little about wave particle duality.

I only heard or read that the photon & electron were maybe the only 2 particles that behaved like this, however I watched a couple of lectures, the hosts were saying that everything is wave particle duality including us.

Is this true of all particles as far as you know & understand? Does it matter if they are massless or not?

9 minutes ago, Imagine Everything said:

I've also been learning a little about wave particle duality.

I only heard or read that the photon & electron were maybe the only 2 particles that behaved like this, however I watched a couple of lectures, the hosts were saying that everything is wave particle duality including us.

Is this true of all particles as far as you know & understand? Does it matter if they are massless or not?

Everything has a wave nature, but we rarely notice it for anything that has mass above the atomic level. DeBroglie wavelength is given by h/p. h is small, and for massive objects p is proportional to mass. Even for an atom, you have to look carefully to see effects of wave behavior

Quantum superposition of molecules beyond 25 kDa (Published: 23 September 2019)

Yaakov Y. Fein, Philipp Geyer, Patrick Zwick, Filip Kiałka, Sebastian Pedalino, Marcel Mayor, Stefan Gerlich & Markus Arndt

Abstract

Matter-wave interference experiments provide a direct confirmation of the quantum superposition principle, a hallmark of quantum theory, and thereby constrain possible modifications to quantum mechanics. By increasing the mass of the interfering particles and the macroscopicity of the superposition, more stringent bounds can be placed on modified quantum theories such as objective collapse models. Here, we report interference of a molecular library of functionalized oligoporphyrins with masses beyond 25,000 Da and consisting of up to 2,000 atoms, by far the heaviest objects shown to exhibit matter-wave interference to date. We demonstrate quantum superposition of these massive particles by measuring interference fringes in a new 2-m-long Talbot–Lau interferometer that permits access to a wide range of particle masses with a large variety of internal states. The molecules in our study have de Broglie wavelengths down to 53 fm, five orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of the molecules themselves. Our results show excellent agreement with quantum theory and cannot be explained classically. The interference fringes reach more than 90% of the expected visibility and the resulting macroscopicity value of 14.1 represents an order of magnitude increase over previous experiments.

(The remainder of the article is behind a paywall)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0663-9

15 hours ago, swansont said:

Everything has a wave nature, but we rarely notice it for anything that has mass above the atomic level.

I'd forgotten that, thanks @swansont. That was actually quite an interesting point.

Can I consider the universe as made entirely of particles?

If so, can I then consider that if the universe is finite then it too will have it's own wavelength, observable only when the universe, meets it's finiteness?. (just curious on this one)

It was one of the things I saw in this 'vision' thing I had. A universal wavelength.

Thanks also @KJW

1 hour ago, Imagine Everything said:

Can I consider the universe as made entirely of particles?

If so, can I then consider that if the universe is finite then it too will have it's own wavelength, observable only when the universe, meets it's finiteness?.

If one has two particles of mass m₁ and m₂ and their corresponding single-particle wavefunctions, then the two-particle wavefunction is the tensor product of the two single-particle wavefunctions, and as such is a wavefunction corresponding to mass m₁+m₂, noting that exp(ζ)·exp(η)=exp(ζ+η).

1 hour ago, Imagine Everything said:

I'd forgotten that, thanks @swansont. That was actually quite an interesting point.

Can I consider the universe as made entirely of particles?

If so, can I then consider that if the universe is finite then it too will have it's own wavelength, observable only when the universe, meets it's finiteness?. (just curious on this one)

It was one of the things I saw in this 'vision' thing I had. A universal wavelength.

Planck’s constant is 6.63 x 10^-34 J-s

A 1 kg mass moving at 1 m/s will have a wavelength of 6.63 x 10^-34 m (around 18 orders of magnitude smaller than a proton)

The earth has a mass of 6 x 10^24 kg. Moving at 1 m/s, its wavelength would be 10^-56 m

To the extent that you could consider the universe to have translational motion and this a momentum (which really doesn’t make sense), it would be quite small

1 hour ago, KJW said:

the two-particle wavefunction is the tensor product of the two single-particle wavefunctions,

Does the tensor product have a unique tensor wavelength?

m1λ+m2λ = T3λ

T3λ = m1λ+m2λ

T being tensor.

Hope I said & wrote that right.

4 minutes ago, swansont said:

To the extent that you could consider the universe to have translational motion and this a momentum (which really doesn’t make sense), it would be quite small

Because the universe is expanding rather than moving? Does expansion have a λ? ,

What do you mean by small?

A gentle 'bump' with hardly any detectable 'motion' almost flat?

Almost or perhaps only 1 slight crest trough over time?.

Edited yesterday at 02:33 PM1 day by Imagine Everything

13 minutes ago, Imagine Everything said:

What do you mean small by small?

Many orders of magnitude shorter than the 10^-56m (for 1 m/s) wavelength earth would have. (Our galaxy has a mass of about 10^18 times that of earth) and what wave effects would you look for? What is it going to interfere with, or what would it do to diffract?

38 minutes ago, Imagine Everything said:

Does the tensor product have a unique tensor wavelength?

m1λ,m2λ = m3λ

m3λ = m1λ+m2λ

Hope I said & wrote that right.

Each particle will have a wavelength, and the pair of particles itself will also have a wavelength (corresponding to the sum of the momenta of the two particles). But note that momentum is a vector, and each component of the momentum vector has its own wavelength.

Let Ψ₁(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁) be the wavefunction of particle 1 and Ψ₂(x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂) be the wavefunction of particle 2. Then the two-particle wavefunction of particles 1 and 2 is the tensor product:

Ψ(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁,x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂) = Ψ₁(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁) Ψ₂(x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂)

Note that if the Ψ₁(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁) and Ψ₂(x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂) exist in four dimensions, then Ψ(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁,x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂) exists in eight dimensions. One significance of this is that macroscopic objects exist in very high dimensions as the tensor product of the wavefunctions of the many individual particles that make up the macroscopic objects. And the higher the number of dimensions, the more likely it is that two arbitrarily chosen vectors will be orthogonal. There is no interference between orthogonal vectors (wavefunctions), thus providing an explanation why there is no observed interference between classical (macroscopic) objects.

I should remark that if particles 1 and 2 interact with each other, then the two-particle wavefunction can no longer be decomposed as the tensor product of two single-particle wavefunctions, and the two-particle wavefunction is said to be entangled.

Edited yesterday at 03:17 PM1 day by KJW

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Many orders of magnitude shorter than the 10^-56m (for 1 m/s) wavelength earth would have. (Our galaxy has a mass of about 10^18 times that of earth) and what wave effects would you look for? What is it going to interfere with, or what would it do to diffract?

That is a huge question & this would indeed seem like the inside of a golf ball if I understand things correctly so far. Very very complex.

What wave effects etc? I do not know @swansont, I am simple compared to you folks. I'm surprised I understood what @KJW wrote. I think I did anyway.

If you could step outside of our universe & measure its wavelength, then would it be right to say it's wavelength would be the universal tensor for every single wavelength within, regardless of how the wavelengths within interfered or diffracted or for any other reason/law came to be? & that this wavelength would be in constant change until the universe died, if it did/does.

1 hour ago, KJW said:

Each particle will have a wavelength, and the pair of particles itself will also have a wavelength (corresponding to the sum of the momenta of the two particles). But note that momentum is a vector, and each component of the momentum vector has its own wavelength.

Let Ψ₁(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁) be the wavefunction of particle 1 and Ψ₂(x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂) be the wavefunction of particle 2. Then the two-particle wavefunction of particles 1 and 2 is the tensor product:

Ψ(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁,x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂) = Ψ₁(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁) Ψ₂(x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂)

Note that if the Ψ₁(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁) and Ψ₂(x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂) exist in four dimensions, then Ψ(x₁,y₁,z₁,t₁,x₂,y₂,z₂,t₂) exists in eight dimensions. One significance of this is that macroscopic objects exist in very high dimensions as the tensor product of the wavefunctions of the many individual particles that make up the macroscopic objects. And the higher the number of dimensions, the more likely it is that two arbitrarily chosen vectors will be orthogonal. There is no interference between orthogonal vectors (wavefunctions), thus providing an explanation why there is no observed interference between classical (macroscopic) objects.

I should remark that if particles 1 and 2 interact with each other, then the two-particle wavefunction can no longer be decomposed as the tensor product of two single-particle wavefunctions, and the two-particle wavefunction is said to be entangled.

Thank you @KJW 🙂

Edited yesterday at 05:03 PM1 day by Imagine Everything

On 1/6/2026 at 6:05 PM, Imagine Everything said:

Thanks @exchemist

So what's your point?

If it's insight, then I'm a god, if it's coincidence, then I'm lucky???

On 2/26/2026 at 10:02 AM, Imagine Everything said:

What wave effects etc? I do not know

Heisenburg uncertainty principle for starters. The inherent uncertainty that the more you determine the particle position the less certain you are in the momentum and vice versa.

Prelude to understand the QM Schrodinger equation.