Friends of the Spirit of the Earth
There are remnants of life seemingly trapped inside of power stones. When you glimpse their personality, it seems as though you recognize the person or creature as someone you either know or could know. In every instance, touching these stones leads to a smile, laugh, frown or question. They carry a power all their own. We recognize them as one of us. It is one of the most convincing aspects of shamanism that rarely requires an explanation. These stones seem to bring with them an acceptance that they are what they appear to be but also are so much more.
Friends of the Spirit of the Earth
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The battle between the philosophies of Heisenberg and Schroedinger to try to explain the randomness at the smallest level of the universe, i.e. in quantum mechanics, and to try to reconcile it with the orderliness of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity; is a well known battle between trying to take a purely naturalistic approach and one theat in cludes Eastern Mysticism. At the heart of the debate is an understanding of Quarks. In physics, Quarks and Leptons are the building blocks which build up matter, i.e., they are seen as the "elementary particles". In the present standard model, there are six "flavors" of quarks. They can successfully account for all known mesons and baryons (over 200). The most familiar baryons are the proton and neutron, which are each constructed from up and down quarks. Quarks are observed to occur only in combinations of two quarks (mesons), three quarks (baryons), and the recently discovered particles with five quarks (pentaquark).
Quark Symbol Spin Charge Baryon
Number S C B T Mass*
Up U 1/2 +2/3 1/3 0 0 0 0 360 MeV
Down D 1/2 -1/3 1/3 0 0 0 0 360 MeV
Charm C 1/2 +2/3 1/3 0 +1 0 0 1500 MeV
Strange S 1/2 -1/3 1/3 -1 0 0 0 540 MeV
Top T 1/2 +2/3 1/3 0 0 0 +1 174 GeV
Bottom
B 1/2 -1/3 1/3 0 0 -1 0 5 GeV
*The masses should not be taken too seriously, because the confinement of quarks implies that we cannot isolate them to measure their masses in a direct way. The masses must be implied indirectly from scattering experiments. The masses quoted for the U and D are about 1/3 the mass of a proton, since we know the proton has three quarks. But in other combinations they contribute different masses. In the pion, an up and an anti-down quark yield a particle of only 139.6 MeV of mass energy, while in the rho vector meson the same combination of quarks has a mass of 770 MeV! The masses of C and S are from Serway, and the T and B masses are from descriptions of the experiments in which they were discovered.
Each of the six "flavors" of quarks can have three different "colors". The quark forces are attractive only in "colorless" combinations of three quarks (baryons), quark-antiquark pairs (mesons) and possibly larger combinations such as the pentaquark that could also meet the colorless condition. Quarks undergo transformations by the exchange of W bosons, and those transformations determine the rate and nature of the decay of hadrons by the weak interaction
Structure Evidence from Deep Inelastic Scattering
In the energy range up to 0.06 GeV, the cross section for elastic scattering of electrons from carbon nuclei drops dramatically since it becomes more and more improbable for the carbon nucleus to remain intact under such energetic bombardment. The cross section for inelastic scattering in which the carbon nucleus breaks apart remains surprisingly near a constant value. This suggests that the electron is scattering off something within the nucleus which is structureless in this energy range. That scattering center is known to be a proton, and this scattering evidence for the existence of the proton forms a model for looking for even deeper structure. When the square of the electron energy is increased by a factor of about a hundred, then even the proton begins to show evidence of structure. The elastic scattering cross section drops precipitously while the overall scattering cross section of events which produce other particles (mostly mesons) remains almost constant. This suggests that the electron is scattering off of something within the proton which is structureless at these energies. The smaller scattering centers within the proton came to be called quarks. This kind of scattering result is one of the steps which led to the current picture of the proton as being composed of two "up" quarks and a "down" quark.
From early experiments in which electrons were scattered off nuclei, it could be implied that the scattering was from some charged particle within the nucleus which remained intact while the nucleus itself broke into pieces. This could in that case be verified directly by knocking out a proton and measuring its properties. The same kind of evidence in the high energy scattering of electrons off protons can be similarly interpreted: there is a smaller charged particle inside which remains intact even as the proton breaks apart. The direct verification of the existence of such a particle (a quark) is not so simple, since the nature of quark confinement is such that we cannot isolate a quark for analysis.
The illustration and comments follow the excellent discussion by Chris Quigg. Lets get the Large Hadron Colider fixed and learn more.
Faith is the belief in the unseen realities through which mystical grace is emmanated. But it calls on us to be in a community of celebration. People talking to each other is the best method to learn.
Ed again.
The battle between the philosophies of Heisenberg and Schroedinger to try to explain the randomness at the smallest level of the universe, i.e. in quantum mechanics, and to try to reconcile it with the orderliness of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity; is a well known battle between trying to take a purely naturalistic approach and one that in cludes Eastern Mysticism. At the heart of the debate is an understanding of Quarks. In physics, Quarks and Leptons are the building blocks which build up matter, i.e., they are seen as the "elementary particles". In the present standard model, there are six "flavors" of quarks. They can successfully account for all known mesons and baryons (over 200). The most familiar baryons are the proton and neutron, which are each constructed from up and down quarks. Quarks are observed to occur only in combinations of two quarks (mesons), three quarks (baryons), and the recently discovered particles with five quarks (pentaquark).
Quark Symbol Spin Charge Baryon
Number S C B T Mass*
Up U 1/2 +2/3 1/3 0 0 0 0 360 MeV
Down D 1/2 -1/3 1/3 0 0 0 0 360 MeV
Charm C 1/2 +2/3 1/3 0 +1 0 0 1500 MeV
Strange S 1/2 -1/3 1/3 -1 0 0 0 540 MeV
Top T 1/2 +2/3 1/3 0 0 0 +1 174 GeV
Bottom
B 1/2 -1/3 1/3 0 0 -1 0 5 GeV
*The masses should not be taken too seriously, because the confinement of quarks implies that we cannot isolate them to measure their masses in a direct way. The masses must be implied indirectly from scattering experiments. The masses quoted for the U and D are about 1/3 the mass of a proton, since we know the proton has three quarks. But in other combinations they contribute different masses. In the pion, an up and an anti-down quark yield a particle of only 139.6 MeV of mass energy, while in the rho vector meson the same combination of quarks has a mass of 770 MeV! The masses of C and S are from Serway, and the T and B masses are from descriptions of the experiments in which they were discovered.
Each of the six "flavors" of quarks can have three different "colors". The quark forces are attractive only in "colorless" combinations of three quarks (baryons), quark-antiquark pairs (mesons) and possibly larger combinations such as the pentaquark that could also meet the colorless condition. Quarks undergo transformations by the exchange of W bosons, and those transformations determine the rate and nature of the decay of hadrons by the weak interaction
Structure Evidence from Deep Inelastic Scattering
In the energy range up to 0.06 GeV, the cross section for elastic scattering of electrons from carbon nuclei drops dramatically since it becomes more and more improbable for the carbon nucleus to remain intact under such energetic bombardment. The cross section for inelastic scattering in which the carbon nucleus breaks apart remains surprisingly near a constant value. This suggests that the electron is scattering off something within the nucleus which is structureless in this energy range. That scattering center is known to be a proton, and this scattering evidence for the existence of the proton forms a model for looking for even deeper structure. When the square of the electron energy is increased by a factor of about a hundred, then even the proton begins to show evidence of structure. The elastic scattering cross section drops precipitously while the overall scattering cross section of events which produce other particles (mostly mesons) remains almost constant. This suggests that the electron is scattering off of something within the proton which is structureless at these energies. The smaller scattering centers within the proton came to be called quarks. This kind of scattering result is one of the steps which led to the current picture of the proton as being composed of two "up" quarks and a "down" quark.
From early experiments in which electrons were scattered off nuclei, it could be implied that the scattering was from some charged particle within the nucleus which remained intact while the nucleus itself broke into pieces. This could in that case be verified directly by knocking out a proton and measuring its properties. The same kind of evidence in the high energy scattering of electrons off protons can be similarly interpreted: there is a smaller charged particle inside which remains intact even as the proton breaks apart. The direct verification of the existence of such a particle (a quark) is not so simple, since the nature of quark confinement is such that we cannot isolate a quark for analysis.
The illustration and comments follow the excellent discussion by Chris Quigg. Lets get the Large Hadron Colider fixed and learn more.
Faith is the belief in the unseen realities through which mystical grace is emmanated. But it calls on us to be in a community of celebration. People talking to each other is the best method to learn.
Ed again.
Sorry about the duplicate comments. I was trying to correct a spelling error.
Ed
I was trying to make the connection between supernaturalism and naturalism that began to unravel in the Renaissance. The ability to have experiments that repeat themselves from which we may then move forward to things like the use of electricity in homes and the internal compustion engine has led to the separation of the supernatural from the natural. Which in my view is only a separation in word. Naturalism taken to its extreme, i.e. scientism, would declare that all observed reality must be explained by naturalistic causes. And this does seem to be important.
If we allow for a "god of the gaps" to explain what we cannot yet explain in naturalistic terms we leave ourselves open for embarassment, once the natural explanation is discovered.
However, two points:
Because of its inductive method the naturalistic paradigm can never be taken as absolute certainty. That is, what if sometime in the future, the laws of physics change.
Second, those who devise a naturalistic explanation can always devise a theory to explain what they observe, as can a supernaturalist. Both can never be judged a failure because neither has an ultimate test for failure.
The fact that cosmological physics has been driven to explain the apparent design in the univese to the "many world hypothesis" is a good example of science's blind spot, it not only commits science to anti-realism, but is forever untestable.
Ted Peters a professor from Pacific Lutheran University who has long had an interest between the natural and supernatural has just published *Anticipating Omega: Science, Faith, and our Ultimate Future.
A couple of quotes to chew on:
"God creates from the future, not the past."
This allows for "the invasion of the present by the power of what is yet to come."
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