Long Life of Common Matter

[HydrogenBond]

Why do protons, electrons and neutrons exist so long compared to their building block parts? Shouldn't the building blocks last as least as long as the structure they create?

[infamous]

Why do protons, electrons and neutrons exist so long compared to their building block parts? Shouldn't the building blocks last as least as long as the structure they create?

I'm not sure why you have come to this conclusion? Quarks whcih make up the proton and neutron are quite long lived. And the electron which is a lepton has, as yet, no other known constituent parts. Maybe the reason these particles are so long lived is they have found a dimensional equilibrium with the fabric of space/time?

[Qfwfq]

Why do protons, electrons and neutrons exist so long compared to their building block parts?

The neutron isn't all that long lived, it soon ß-decays, and yet a neucleus with more than one proton can only be stable if it has neutrons too. The aggregate is more stable.

 

Shouldn't the building blocks last as least as long as the structure they create?

No.

[Qfwfq]

Quarks whcih make up the proton and neutron are quite long lived.

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to say this.

 

Personally, Ive yet to see a free quark(!) whereas inside a hadron is a continuous, frenetic quark-antiquark frothing. Only the overall net is what the tables say, for a given hadron type.

 

Actually this goes in part for a nucleus, when they tell you an isotope has Z protons and N neutrons, it doesn't exactly mean that the buggers exist individually in there, each with its own quarks. This is actually part of the way the aggregate can be more stable than a free neutron.

[infamous]

I'm not sure how much sense it makes to say this.

Yes I see your point Qfwfq, but even though the quark may be constantly changing it's character, it doesn't decay, or am I mistaken about this?

 

Personally, Ive yet to see a free quark(!)

Quite right, and we have also not seen one decay.

 

This is actually part of the way the aggregate can be more stable than a free neutron.

Does this suggest an equilibrium of forces?

[HydrogenBond]

That is how I see it. The aggregate is nearly eternal but the parts separated from the aggregate don't exist very long. I like the space/time equilibrum theory. Could such equilbrium contain aggregate potential energy that is lost/changed when the aggregate is disrupted. The sub-particle equation is missing something. Maybe, the lost potential energy is an aspect of the observed particle diversity. If one explodes a bomb, all the glowing flying pieces were the bomb, but the sum of these pieces is still less than what the bomb was when it started.

 

If it was force equilibrium causing aggregate stability, breaking the aggregate apart would be endothermic so we could overcome the stabilizing forces. The absorption of energy would imply that at least some of the sub-particle diversity is due to energy input, ie., at least partially synthetic matter. Either way the building block appear to be at least partially due to aggregate potential energy or experimental potential energy.

[Qfwfq]

even though the quark may be constantly changing it's character, it doesn't decay, or am I mistaken about this?

 

Quite right, and we have also not seen one decay.

Good question. In a sense it depends on what you mean by decay. :)

 

I really don't know if the standard model predicts anything about the stability of a free quark. Because it doesn't predict the possibility of a free quark, would it make sense for it to predict the stability of one? ß-decay can occur because quarks can interact weakly. When a neutron "decays" into a proton, do we or don't we say that one of the quarks has decayed?

 

Does this suggest an equilibrium of forces?

If you want to call it that, yeah, I guess. :lol:

[HydrogenBond]

If one assumes the standard model is correct, it is strange that the partilce aggregates called the proton and electron and nuclear neutrons are stable enough to last for billions of years, while nearly everything else is unstable and measured in billionths of a second. It is like the creation of the universe added a stablizing potential to these particular aggregates of building block particles. My theory for th elong life anomoly is localized time dilation induced by the creation of the universe, when the only universe reference was highly time dilated. There is a lot of potential energy stored there.