quark-gluon, uh, fluid
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Brookhaven announced it has found a quark-gluon plasma, only its more like
a liquid than a gas, thereby opening up whole new frontiers in mathematical plumbing and cobordism fitting and giving Maxwell's Daemon something more to think about. http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=05-38 Nice animation at: http://www.bnl.gov/video/files/aniliquid_v3.mpg (this is the same one as in Nature online). Fizzy. Curious quote from the article: "However, unlike ordinary liquids, in which individual molecules move about randomly, the hot matter formed at RHIC seems to move in a pattern that exhibits a high degree of coordination among the particles -- somewhat like a school of fish that responds as one entity while moving through a changing environment." We of course don't know anything about such things. :-) carl |
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The quote sounds indeed interesting ;-) If they are right, it would be a kind of swarm intelligence or flocking. Self-Organization on the scale of elementary particles. Fascinating. Yet I am a bit sceptical about this news, particle physicists have tried to produce quark-gluon plasma for a long time. Now they think they have found "an elusive state known as the quark-gluon plasma". Do they observe what they _want_ to see ? http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-10/p48.html What they report in these Nature and BBC articles is quite different from what they really observe, which actually looks more like this http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/images/ev2_front1.jpg http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/images/ev2_side.jpg They say themselves "if quark-gluon plasma is formed in a collision it will last less than 0.00000000000000000000001 seconds". Not much time to observe :-) The colorful animation is nice, and the article on the BNL site shows many very important persons and ends with a remark about funding. Do they need more funding or have they really observed something new ? Since Gell-Mann invented the Quarks, no one really made an important progress. Particle physicsts try to observe Quark-Gluon plasma for over ten years and longer now. Theoretical physicists meanwhile got lost in string theory and its 26 dimensions. At the CERN they are looking for the Higgs particle. The Higgs mechanism was postulated by the British physicist Peter Higgs in the 1960s. That was nearly half a century ago. It is time for some really new, path-breaking ideas. Maybe the "sciences of complexity" have something to offer here.. -J. -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] Im Auftrag von Carl Tollander Gesendet: Mittwoch, 27. April 2005 06:55 An: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Betreff: [FRIAM] quark-gluon, uh, fluid Brookhaven announced it has found a quark-gluon plasma, only its more like a liquid than a gas, thereby opening up whole new frontiers in mathematical plumbing and cobordism fitting and giving Maxwell's Daemon something more to think about. http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=05-38 Nice animation at: http://www.bnl.gov/video/files/aniliquid_v3.mpg (this is the same one as in Nature online). Fizzy. Curious quote from the article: "However, unlike ordinary liquids, in which individual molecules move about randomly, the hot matter formed at RHIC seems to move in a pattern that exhibits a high degree of coordination among the particles -- somewhat like a school of fish that responds as one entity while moving through a changing environment." We of course don't know anything about such things. :-) carl ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9:30a-11:30 at ad hoc locations Lecture schedule, archives, unsubscribe, etc.: http://www.friam.org |
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> -----Original Message----- > From: Jochen Fromm [mailto:[hidden email]] ...> Since Gell-Mann invented the Quarks, Invent or discover? ;-) |
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You are right, of course he invented the theory (QCD) or model and discovered the Quarks :-) I think he also coined the name 'quarks' in reference to the line 'three quarks for Muster Mark' in James Joyce's book 'Finnegan's wake' from 1939. The full quote goes like this "Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark." I do not know how this sounds to a native English speaker - to me it sounds somewhat scurrile, weird and odd. The other names for the fundamental units of matter are more systematic: "Atom" is from the Greek word for "indivisible". The "monads" from Leibniz come the Greek word ?????, which means "one", "single" or "unique". By the way, I wonder if his "monads" are similar to emergent properties of evolutionary processes ? A monad is according to Leibniz something unique and abstract with no parts. An emergent property has no parts and no extension: it is either there or not there, and if we dissect the system, it vanishes like a ghost or spirit, and there is no trace of the emergent property. Like monads, emergent properties can not be dissected. They are irreducible and abstract. Although his notion of "monads" looks as strange and weird as the name quark, it is quite interesting. Leibniz's "Monadology" is very short, see http://eserver.org/philosophy/leibniz-monadology.txt http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/mattey/kant/MONADOLO.HTM If you think for example of "Process Physics" http://www.physicsdaily.com/physics/Process_Physics http://www.scieng.flinders.edu.au/cpes/people/cahill_r/processphysics.html where space-time self-assembles itself out of a sea of randomness and reality is modelled as self-organizing information, Leibniz' Monads are not completely on the wrong track, if you consider them as emergent properties of an evolutionary process. -J. > -----Original Message----- ...> Since Gell-Mann invented the Quarks, Invent or discover? ;-) |
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I have to differ. He invented the model and we would like to think he
discovered something to the degree it offers predictive value. Has the solipism/model/reality argument been fully explored to everyone's satisifaction as yet? Is there an orthodox meme that is a part of the social fabric here? Sorry if I missed it. David Jochen Fromm wrote: > >You are right, of course he invented the theory >(QCD) or model and discovered the Quarks :-) >I think he also coined the name 'quarks' in reference >to the line 'three quarks for Muster Mark' in James >Joyce's book 'Finnegan's wake' from 1939. > > |
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