“This elementary process is symbolically illustrated in figure 59c: A photon becomes an electron-positron pair; inversely, an electron and a positron can… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“There is field for every particle. If that field is concentrated in some spatial region, the particle of that field is likely… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“To date we know only two real media that offer almost no resistance to moving bodies. One such medium was discovered in… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“In the process, we might remember that the ground state, the vacuum state of our world, doesn't display all the symmetries of… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“This question about the reason we do not observe any quantum mechanical uncertainty in the appearance of flies or stars was never… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“When we cause two of one kind of particle- say, an electron and a positron-to collide, the final products might be totally… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The elementary particles are often dubbed the atoms of our day. That may or may not be correct. It might be an… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“To date, we don't know of any object that cannot, for certain, be subdivided. The chemist's atom consists of nucleus and electrons;… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“SYMMETRY BREAKING The preferential direction fixed by this spontaneous symmetry breaking will now determine which among the elementary particles will share in… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“What is important here is that for every given curvature there are precisely fixed masses. And since we recall that the virtual… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“To sum up: Electron and positron annihilate as a pair, in a particle-antiparticle collision. Their energy heats up the vacuum; when the… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“We have good reason to believe that space and time begin to merge into quantum mechanical uncertainty at distances this small; they… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“If they were as we described them, the existence of black holes would contradict the principles of thermodynamics. One of these principles… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“INTO AND OUT OF THE VACUUM To make real particles out of the virtual ones that are part of the vacuum fluctuations,… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The interpretation of apparent long-distance action by means of continuously propagating effects was vigorously asserted by Isaac Newton. In his wake, the… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The parameter we hold responsible for the ability or inability of a particle to move with a velocity other than that of… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“REALITY OF ZERO-POINT ENERGY The uncertainty relation implies that there cannot be a region in space totally devoid of electromagnetic fields. They… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“If there weren't any charges, there would be neither absorption nor emission nor any scattering. Light would not impact on the matter… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“Just as photons are scattered off the charged particle-antiparticle pairs fluctuating in the vacuum, electrical charges will interact with the virtual photons… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“THE GOLDSTONE THEOREM It doesn't matter for our discussion that the broken symmetry of our world chooses a particular direction not in… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“At a temperature of 10^10 degrees, the energy of the photons of the electromagnetic/thermal radiation becomes that needed for the creations of… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The quarks were originally introduced as mathematical symbols-the carriers of certain properties that would facilitate mathematical understanding of elementary particles. This very… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“Every object is embedded in the vacuum with which physics surrounds it. This means we don't observe the naked object-rather, we see… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“Real systems are, in this sense, "excitations of the vacuum"- much as surface waves in a pond are excitations of the pond's… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“There is no suchthing as absolutely empty space. All space contains fluctuating fields and particles. Even in the emptiest space that the… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“Protons and neutrons interact strongly with each other because their building blocks do so. The exchange particles of the strong color interaction… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“In microscopic systems-such as in an atom, a molecule, a crystal-this minimal energy means internal motion of its constituents. It is independent… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The energy that was hidden in the false vacuum is liberated in the course of this phase transition of the universe into… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The Higgs field originated as the universe cooled down after the Big Bang-a bit like the crystallization of ice as water cools… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“We don't really know whether there are black holes that emit observable amounts of Hawking radiation. Nevertheless, there is no way to… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“Recall our discussion of the pendulum. Its position at a given instant does not fix its subsequent behavior. Suppose a photograph shows the pendulum… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“Just as with sound waves, light waves emitted by a moving source show the Doppler effect. What we observe instead of the sound pitch… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The interpretation of apparent long-distance action by means of continuously propagating effects was vigorously asserted by Isaac Newton. In his wake, the interpretation of… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The quantity that physicists call the specific heat of a substance is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“To gain any intuitive understanding of the breakdown of this ultimate symmetry through vacuum effects at the critical 10^-44 seconds after the Big Bang,… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“To illustrate this relation, think of a game of table tennis. As the ball hits the table, it will bounce up and down. When… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“Before the particles that we observe today materialized, all matter in the early universe must have gone through this stage of a quark-gluon soup,… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“In physics terms, the reason for symmetry breaking is the instability of the symmetric state.” — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“What really transcends our understanding is the mechanism that permits these oscillations of abstract field quantities to carry energy. We know this is true;… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“Chaotic or disordered distributions are symmetrical on the average. An observer cannot conclude anything about his location from looking around him. An example is… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“The hotter a substance, the faster and the less ordered its molecular motion, and the larger the momentum with which molecules collide. Above 0… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
“This elementary process is symbolically illustrated in figure 59c: A photon becomes an electron-positron pair; inversely, an electron and a positron can combine into… — Henning Genz Copy Share Image
