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From: neal@denelcor.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: really elementary particles
Message-ID: <443@denelcor.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-May-84 13:02:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: denelcor.443
Posted: Tue May 22 13:02:11 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 26-May-84 09:58:43 EDT
References: <281@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: Denelcor, Aurora, CO
Lines: 44

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>						     The major
>difficulty is that the effective "size" of quark is very small and
>the mass of a up or down quark is only a fraction of a proton mass.
>In order to fit smaller particles inside a quark they must have
>tremendous momentum (Heisenberg uncertainty principal del p x del x
>is less than Planck's constant).  Therefore they must have a large
>energy, which in turn corresponds to a mass which is much greater than
>the mass of the quark into which they fit.  It is not clear how to
>make this work.

	This brings up a hypothesis I have heard now and again:  Since
the mass of any particle is equal to the mass of its "constituent
particles" MINUS the mass equivalence of the "binding energy"  (e.g.,
the mass of a helium-4 nucleus is somewhat less than the sum of the
masses of two protons and two neutrons), why wouldn't it be possible
that quarks (for example) are "made up of" particles that are INDIVIDUALLY
more massive than quarks with the excess being accounted for by a (VERY
LARGE) binding energy?

	I can think of three objections to this hypothesis but none of
them seem fatal:

	1.  It's counterintuitive.  This hasn't been a serious objection
	    in physics for almost a century.
	
	2.  It leads (potentially) to an infinite regress.  This is
	    philosophically "uncomfortable" but not enough so to reject
	    the hypothesis.
	
	3.  If it ever were "verified" by an experiment, it would be 
	    difficult if not impossible to resolve the question of whether
	    the new particles were actually "constituents" of the quark
	    (or whatever) or just artifacts of the very high energies
	    that went into the experiment.
	
	How about it?  Is this hypothesis completely ridiculous or might
it be a serious possibility?

			Regards,
				Neal Weidenhofer
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