Inside the proton, the ‘most complicated thing you could possibly imagine’ (2022)
- I've heard this quote before, and I don't get it. This article fails to show me just how complicated that is. When I think "complicated," I think of a multiplicity of interconnected chemical molecular processes like what must happen in the cell, or layers of recursively connected neurons in the brain. Not some mindless cloud of gluons. What they've described seems less "complicated" and more "confusing." "We don't understand this (yet?)" is a lot different than "it's possible to understand this, if your brain is really big."
- >using machine learning to infer the motions of quarks and gluons inside the proton in a way that sidesteps theoretical guesswork.
Doing away with theory and just keep the guessing. But seriously very interesting, though I barely understand anything.
by stevenjgarner
2 subcomments
- > The results suggested that in even higher-energy collisions, the proton would appear as a cloud made up almost entirely of gluons. The gluon dandelion is exactly what QCD predicts.
I find the proton as a gluon dandelion cloud enthralling
by SideburnsOfDoom
0 subcomment
- Previously:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39374020
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33262637
by d_burfoot
7 subcomments
- When I was a physics student, there were four forces: strong, weak, EM, and gravity. That picture seemed neat and clean. Strong kept the nucleus together, EM kept molecules and atoms together (or broke them apart), gravity kept astronomical bodies together, weak was some kind of momentum-accounting device.
Recently, GPT informed me that the strong force is really a tiny after-effect of the "QCD force" (in the same way that the Van der Waals forces are after-effect of EM). Also, more and more questions about "dark matter" seem to be building up, suggesting that the standard Newton-Einstein story of gravity is far from the complete picture.
25 years ago it seemed like physics was mostly complete, and the only remaining work was exploring the corner cases and polishing out all the imperfections. It doesn't feel that way anymore! The confusing part is that modern physics is so unbelievably successful and useful for technology - if the underlying theory was way off, how could the tech work?
by DonHopkins
0 subcomment
- Electrons are bits:
Minimal structure, maximal fungibility.
Protons are WASM modules:
Portable, sandboxed, rich internals, stable interface.
Neutrons are headless WASM:
Same runtime, no external API, harder to drive or inspect.
Nuclei are Kubernetes:
Orchestration, emergent behavior, scheduling, binding energy as overhead.
QCD is the runtime:
One spec, wildly different behavior depending on scale.
Experiments are profilers:
You never see the code, only traces, distributions, hotspots.
HN comments are undefined behavior and non-renormalizable noise:
Unconstrained interactions, long-range correlations, destroyed predictability.
by aetherspawn
1 subcomments
- So if we understand the internal differences between protons and neutrons, what’s the practical application? Turning neutrons into protons with low energies - alchemy?
- Reminds me of that silly string theory first surfaced (under my Christmas tree) some 51 years ago.
by vivzkestrel
0 subcomment
- because the article says that it is a haze of probabilities that only takes concrete form when observed, could it be a part of a larger neural network?
- [flagged]
- [flagged]
- How complicated is it?
"Definitely complicated enough for us all to keep getting paid for a long time."
read hhgttg
- > We’ve incorporated their animations into our own attempt to unveil its secrets.
And like the proton, this statement is somehow heavier than the entire article. What an absolutely bizarre, arrogant choice of words.
- The implication of this framing is that neutrons are considerably simpler.
I find that rather surprising.
by asmodeuslucifer
0 subcomment
- Thanks to reading The Three Body Problem, I can imagine.
https://three-body-problem.fandom.com/wiki/Sophons
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