Does this explain what generates gravity?

[geoffkait]

I think I deserve partial credit for staying on topic.

 

[gpauk]

Good sense of humour...

 

[Galu]

On the topic of humour:

 

[geoffkait]

You need one in my line of work.

 

[Galu]

Former NASA astronaut Frank Borman, who in 1968 led the first mission to fly humans to the moon, has died at the age of 95.

https://www.space.com/apollo-8-astronaut-frank-borman-obituary

 

[Galu]

Feeling festive yet?

The JWST has released an image of a colourful cluster of galaxies, 4.3 billion light-years away, that has been named the "Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster."

This festive display has been revealed courtesy of gravitational lensing.

There are even flickering "Christmas lights" in the form of 14 new "transient objects ":

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07579

 

[system7]

God Bless Frank Borman. Apollo 8, the moving Christmas Eve orbit of the moon. I watched it. Happily Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell are still around.

Buzz makes a cameo appearance in The Big Bang Theory Season 6, Episode 5:

While Raj plans Stuart's Halloween party at the comic book store, Howard annoys the rest of the gang by constantly talking about space, and Penny tries to take more of an interest in Leonard's work.

"The Holographic Excitation". It's about some high functioning Autistics who love Physics, Mathematics and Space, so just up my street. Except for Leonard and Penny, of course, who are essentially neurotypical. Naturally, I have the said episode.

Anywhoo, back on topic with Gravity.

This is a remarkable piece of empirical observation. Know the answer and find the function that fits it if you like. Kepler and Planck did this sort of thing too.

What is the calculated mass of the Proton?

http://www.zitterbug.net/

Maybe this:

The measured mass is 938.272 MeV/c^2, so that is pretty good IMO. h(bar) c / G is, as a child of ten knows, the Planck mass squared.

So we have an expression involving the mass of the electron m(e), the Planck mass and the fine structure constant alpha.

And the gravitational constant G plays a part too.

Alpha squared has some interesting interpretations too:

Now it does go slightly awry on the Neutron mass:

The measured value is 939.565 Mev/c^2, but I don't see that as a showstopper, because neutral particles can have peculiarities just like the Neutral Kaon, And W- Bosons are involved in Neutron decay by the weak interacion so anything could happen.

It's an interesting piece of work, which he extends to Quarks and even the Higgs. Hypothetical for sure, but not junk science. I shall mull it over.

Just for interest here also is the famous empirical Koide Formula speculation:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/starts...ng-beyond-the-standard-model/?sh=79f063553ac0

What I like about this one, is the 2/3 ratio, just like the charge on the up quark. And it seems to work.

 

[geoffkait]

The astronaut Pete Conrad Apollo 12 commander died as a result of a slow speed motorcycle accident out west somewhere some years ago which is kind of ironic. It’s also kind of ironic that the gravity waves observed by LIGO (has it really been 6 years ago?) have the amplitude of a proton’s diameter IIRC.

 

[wg_ski]

Buzz makes a cameo appearance in The Big Bang Theory Season 6, Episode 5:


"The Holographic Excitation". It's about some high functioning Autistics who love Physics, Mathematics and Space, so just up my street. Except for Leonard and Penny, of course, who are essentially neurotypical. Naturally, I have the said episode.

You mean “nerdotyoical” (And she’s stereotypical, dumm blonde). I’m not sure there is anything neurotypical about nerds - otherwise they'd be as cool as the cool kids. Counselors always say there is something wrong with us.

It would have been funny to see if Leonard and Penny’s kids turn out to be smarter than the rest of them, and invent warp drive or something equally breakthrough. Could you imagine the look on Sheldon’s face if his daughter got a B on her report card? GREAT idea for a series.

 

[Galu]

Buzz makes a cameo appearance in The Big Bang Theory...

 

[Galu]

What is the calculated mass of the Proton?

Here's Buzz Aldrin whiling away the hours on his way to the Moon by using a slide rule to calculate the mass of a proton. 😀

 

[Galu]

...the fine structure constant alpha.

I simple terms, the fine structure constant, alpha, is associated with the energy levels in the hydrogen atom and consequently the emission and absorption lines in its spectrum.

If you take the ratio of a ground-state electron's velocity compared to the speed of light, you get a very specific value which is called the fine structure constant.

Because the exact properties of hydrogen absorption lines depend on alpha, astrophysicists can use spectral analysis to probe the universe looking for any variations in alpha over space and time.

Spectral observations of distant quasars have so far shown that alpha has not changed over time, ensuring us of the constancy of the speed of light.

Ask Ethan: https://www.forbes.com/sites/starts...ne-structure-constant-and-why-does-it-matter/

 

[mchambin]

The fine structure constant is my favorite.
137 Dimensionless
I imagine the excitement when it was not found yet to be 1/137.036

 

[system7]

I found Ethan Siegel left me confused when I thought I knew what the Fine Structure Constant means. 🙁

The Fine Structure Constant was never likely to be exactly 137, IMO. Albeit that is a prime number, there's nothing interesting about it.

In fact it is defined in terms of other equally arbitrary looking constants at low energies:

I investigated the @geoffkait post about deceased space hero astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr.

He was the first astronaut to get red coloured Christmas lights on his memorial tree in the Johnson Space Center.

https://saroy.net/2019/12/when-you-cant-be-good-be-colorful/

The rainbow ones are for his best friend Alan Bean, the only artist who ever went to the moon:

Not bad, eh? 🙂

 

[Galu]

In fact it [alpha] is defined in terms of other equally arbitrary looking constants at low energies...

The expression for alpha which you have illustrated above is what you get when you use the CGS system of units as opposed to the SI system.

The fine structure constant, alpha, is also called Sommerfeld's constant.

Arnold Sommerfeld worked in electrostatic CGS units in which the unit of electric charge (e) is defined in such a way as to make the permittivity of free space (epsilon nought) equal 1, and therefore render it dimensionless.

 

[Galu]

Happily Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell are still around.

On this day in space: Nov 11, 1966: the launch of the Gemini 12 mission carried Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell into Earth orbit.

There, in preparation for the Moon missions to come, they practised docking with an unpiloted Agena booster that launched the same day.

Buzz, pictured below, undertook three spacewalks and spent more than five hours in space.

Jim lovell went on to become the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission.

I've just read about it here: https://www.space.com/39251-on-this-day-in-space.html

 

[system7]

Frank Borman tried to keep the crew quiet about his "challenges" on the Apollo 8 mission. "Don't tell Houston!". He had 24 hour 'flu and had vomiting and diarrhea shortly after takeoff. This had the unpleasant effect of filling the entire capsule with a thick mist of poo and vomit, which doubtless caused great unhappiness to the crew, who cleaned it up best as they could... I suppose they used their hankies and a bit of spit if they were like my mother... 🤔

Buzz Aldrin seemed to be unaffected by sometimes nauseous spacewalks, but succumbed to motion or space sickness on Appolo 11, He had terrible dizziness for days on the outward journey. 🙁

Thank you for raising the CGS/SI conversion of the Fine Structure Consant, Galu. I have learnt something,

It is a deep mystery why the physical constants and measured masses of particles are what they are.

The Mathematical types wonder if there is some simple numerical formula that describes Nature:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.1711.pdf

The obsessive Physicists keep beavering away at it too:

According to quantum electrodynamics (QED), the relativistic quantum field theory of the interaction of charged particles and photons, an electron can emit virtual photons that can then emit virtual electron-positron pairs (e+, e-). The virtual positrons are attracted to the original or "bare" electron while the virtual electrons are repelled from it. The bare electron is therefore screened due to this polarization. The usual fine-structure constant α is defined as the square of the completely screened charge, that is, the value observed at infinite distance or in the limit of zero momentum transfer. At shorter distances corresponding to higher energy processes or probes (large momentum transfers), the screen is partially penetrated and the strength of the electromagnetic interaction increases since the effective charge increases. Thus α depends upon the energy at which it is measured, increasing with increasing energy, and is considered an effective or running coupling constant. Indeed, due to e+ e- and other vacuum polarization processes, at an energy corresponding to the mass of the W boson (approximately 81 GeV, equivalent to a distance of approximately 2 x 10-17 m), α(mW) is approximately 1/128 compared with its zero-energy value of approximately 1/137. Thus the famous number 1/137 is not unique or especially fundamental.

https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/alpha.html

The forces supposedly merge at high energies too:

That's pretty hard to wrap your head round, But I think the idea is that due to the Quantum, when particles get VERY close to each other, energies increase, which is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle really.

The Bohr electron radius of the ground state of hydrogen is 5 x 10^ -11 m. The radius of the neutron and proton is approx 0.8 x 10^-15 m.

Which means that if the size of the atom is as big as the Albert Hall, the nucleus is the size of a peppercorn I think. Lot of empty space in an atom!

The electroweak energy corresponds to the radius at which W- bosons appear and is 2 x 10^ -17 m, corresponding to 81 GeV / c^2.

The Planck Length, FWIW, is 1.616255(18) × 10^ −35 m.

At which point the Fine Structure Constant is approx 1/128.

As far as I have got. No, I don't understand much of it either. One can only laugh at our ignorance. But if it all WAS solved, well we would have nothing to think about all day. 😎

 

[Galu]

Which means that if the size of the atom is as big as the Albert Hall, the nucleus is the size of a peppercorn I think. Lot of empty space in an atom!

The Scottish analogy is that if the nucleus was represented by a football placed on the centre spot at Hampden Park, the first electrons would be found orbiting around the heads of the spectators at the very back of the stands.

 

[Galu]

No, I don't understand much of it either.

You can delve too deeply into the fine structure constant. 😱

I went for a simple explanation as I don't understand the advanced treatments either.

What may be accessible is your reference to the "coupling constants" of the fundamental forces.

The strength of each of the four fundamental forces can be quoted in terms of a dimensionless coupling constant:

Strong nuclear force: 1
Electromagnetic force: 1/137
Weak nuclear force: 10^-6
Gravity: 10^-39

Note that the coupling factor of the electromagnetic force (1/137) is the same as the fine structure constant.

 

[geoffkait]

To employ another analogy that’s why massive black holes are oft the size of a grapefruit.