What is the Universe expanding into..

Do you think there was anything before the big bang?

  • I don't think there was anything before the Big Bang

    Votes: 56 12.5%
  • I think something existed before the Big Bang

    Votes: 200 44.7%
  • I don't think the big bang happened

    Votes: 54 12.1%
  • I think the universe is part of a mutiverse

    Votes: 201 45.0%

  • Total voters
    447
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I'm a proper built drywaller
So, a prime candidate to be fired out of my cannon at 25m/s (56mph)! :mischiev:

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Why ask me? :boggled:

I was blissfully unaware of the properties of axions until Steve mentioned the darned particles! ;) :D

:D

‘The First Three Minutes’ got me interested in these Axion things. And rho-mesons as well with a lifetime of c. 10^-18 secs.

Ok. Time to hook into YouTube for an expose. I’ll report back when I find something.
 
I don't find much interesting about the Rho-meson, TBH. :eek:

Rho meson - Wikipedia

But Politzer, who shared the Nobel Prize with Gross and Wilczek for uncovering the strange asymptotic behaviour of Quarks had a group called: "Politzer and the Rho Mesons".

Politzer’s Harmonic Oscillator Rap | MichiganPhysics

"(Harmonic) Oscillator Rap". One for the geeks, one feels. Thankfully short. :D


I have been investigating the Electroweak Interaction or Force:

Electroweak interaction - Wikipedia

How can a massless photon and W and Z bosons at 80 GeV mass be the same thing essentially? And even stranger, share a critical point with the Higgs boson at 246 GeV?

Vacuum expectation value - Wikipedia

No idea what it means, but I can always spot an interesting number that I have seen somewhere before.
 
Seriously though, and to explain it in simple terms, the rho meson can be thought of as one of the particles which mediates the attractive force between nucleons (protons and neutrons) in the nucleus of the atom.

If you think about it, the nucleus of the atom should fly apart due to the electrostatic repulsion between the positively charged protons contained therein.

The fact that the nucleus does not fly apart means that there must be a strong, short range force which, acting within the dimensions of the nucleus, actually overcomes the repulsive electrostatic force and holds the protons together.

The rho- meson and the pi-meson (pion) are two of the 'force exchange' particles thought to be responsible for this 'nuclear force'.

Nuclear force - Wikipedia
 
Quarks and Gluons are very odd things. I can never get my head round fractional 1/3 and 2/3 charges.

I spent some time reading Quark Man Politzer's Nobel speech. You normally have to pay £25 for this one, but Michigan can publish it for nothing:

Politzer and the Harmonic Oscillator Rap | MichiganPhysics

Absolutely amazing insight into the cut-throat world of Nuclear Physics and name-dropping to the max.

Wayne Hazen was a top Cosmic Ray man back in the day when a cloud chamber was the best detector they had. But the boffins had it jumping through hoops. Another interesting interview:

Wayne Hazen interview | MichiganPhysics

He mentioned something interesting. Apparently there is an upper limit to how much energy extragalactic Cosmic Rays can have. About the same as a fast baseball for a single proton. This is because at its speed even the Cosmic Microwave Background looks like hard gamma rays when it bumps into the photons.

Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin limit - Wikipedia
 

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Well, in that case we're all entitled to our own opinion, no? For anyone interested(we don't need no stinkin poll), I would hazard a guess we would be in total darkness if we were traveling faster than light, obviously.



OTOH, two objects traveling away from each other, each at say 2/3 the speed of light would be moving away from each other at faster than light speed.


Ooops..., hypothetically :)
 
Let one of them have velocity v1=v, and the other velocity v2=-v.

The "usual" way to calculate their relative velocity is simply v relative = v1 - v2 = 2v

However, according to the theory of relativity:

v relative = [v1 - v2]/[1 - (v1*v2/c2)] = 2v/[1 + v2/c2] where c2 is the speed of light squared.

Now, apply that formula to your two objects and see what you get! ;)
 
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