Re: The Flaw in High Energy Physics
From: Aidan Smoker (Aidan.William.Smoker_at_cern.ch)
Date: 08/18/04
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Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 17:53:11 +0100
Dear Hserfop,
You pose an interesting question.......
Hserfop wrote:
> The Flaw in High Energy Physics
>
> When it comes to particle physics a question arises. High Energy
> experiments have led to a plethora of short-lived high-energy products. As an
> example, a proton and an anti-proton, each having a mass equivalent energy of 1
> GEV are accelerated to a velocity so close to that of light so that they each
> contain kinetic energy of hundreds of GEV. These particles are then induced to
> collide and, in so doing, produce short lived high-energy products having
> observable mass equivalent energies of hundreds of GEV. Where did the energy
> they represent come from?
The answer though has been with us for almost exactly 100 years. The
energy does indeed come from the kinetic energy of the accelerated
collision particles, in this case as you remark a proton and an
anti-proton. It seems almost unnecessary to point out that Einsteins
famous mass energy relation is the key. It essentially allows us to
dispense with referring to the mass of particles in these interactions
because they amount to an equivalent energy. In fact particle physicists
regularly quote a particle's mass as such-and-such MeV or GeV which is a
measure of energy. The energy that the p/anti-p gain in the accelerator
is directly available then to produce particles of equivalent
rest-energy with the remaining energy going into the kinetic energy of
the products.
I thouroughly agree with you on posing the question though, however I
would have taken a different approach. I think the curiosity here (I'm
uninclined to call it a flaw) is WHY exactly mass and energy are
equivalent, and what indeed is mass? These are questions more to the
point if you ask me, and are the mainstay of modern particle physics.
Regards,
Aidan Smoker
Particle Physics Lab.
University College Dublin
Ireland
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