A flowchart I put together for The Particle at the End of the Universe. Feel free to spread around, with appropriate attribution.
Sorry for the tiny writing, there are a lot of particles! Click to embiggen and get a legible version.
45 thoughts on “What Particle Are You?”
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@BCG: Same here…hehehe.
I’m curious what you mean by “taking up space?”?
You seem to be refering to the statistics of particles. Maybe something like “do you like particles of your own kind?” would be better.
Hmmm, will it fit on a T-shirt?
Great chart. I must say, though, for your hadron branch, you should ask about how many net quarks you are talking about. At any given instant, the average proton has at least about 103 quarks and 100 anti-quarks (see http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/documents/PUS/dis/hera.htm, http://www.nano.org.uk/news/221/, and http://www.rikenresearch.riken.jp/eng/research/6845, among others). Of course, the whole standard model is much more complicated than you have here, but over all, very cool chart.
As an inquisitive Positronium, I would like to know exactly what you mean by weirdo? Is that a personal or scientific remark?
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This is cute and fun and what i love most about it is the incredible positivity (in a psychological sense) throughout — e.g. “You’re a proton – Go you!”
;->
Nice work, Sean!
-M
Actually instead of take up space, I suggest “Do you like to be with others exactly like you” Better describes fermions and bosons
You might want to split up the “what is your charge?” bubble for quarks and leptons. It seems like you can follow the flow chart from the lepton box to the various types of quarks. I trust you don’t want to indicate that neutrinos are quarks and down quarks are leptons.
You show the Higgs field as the only field in empty space, but gravity and EM fields have infinite range, so they permeate all space. Indeed gravity creates space in a sense: no gravity = no space-time.
Just saw this at the Compton series lectures at U of C (attributed to you as per request). Great idea!
Yupeeeehh!! I just discovered my husband is a Fermion. He just takes up space!!
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Yes, echo 34. Ray Says comment: the ‘what is your charge’ should be on separate tracks for quarks vs. leptons so it does not appear possible to follow a lepton through to a quark, for example. The value of the charge requires the particles to correctly select, but the visual form of the chart gives the appearance that all 4 charge options are possible states when really they are not.
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I am a neutrino – moving at c squared most of the time, but no direction, erratic – but then the speedometer says I am moving less than c squared – how much I don’t know, and then – I have this strange feeling I am something different – something more than I was before -I can even say that I AM something now – I mean something that is ‘solid’ – I feel friction – rubbing I am moving much slower – getting more solid – heavy, is that the word – I can say now that I have a body – yes, I have a body that is slowing down – getting slower and more solid. . . .where I was not before, now I am something. . .something that comes after being nothing. .
.I think that is the right expression. . . ..something from nothing. . . . .
you asked me which particle I am. . . . .I am a particle that is the something from the nothing. . .now I have a whole bunch of choices. . .electron, proton, neutron, meson, . . . . . . .
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I am really psyched to have some groovy particles since I am 99.99% empty space…
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Except for one thing………………….doesn’t seem to be as hard to notice to me as unnoticed as it seems to be. But, the problem with understanding the universe is the following: Consider a nut in a in a large tracked dirt moving vehicle, aka cat, etc. What is a nut going to tell you about an 30 ton cat that it is a part of? You see the problem? Btw, you are no where near as significant to our earth, let alone the solar system, milky way galaxy and the entire universe. as the smallest nut is to our biggest earth mover! lol I mean no where near that much significance just compared to the earth alone. You are also made of the same particles as the rest of the universe, including your brain, so anything above what your eyes seem to indicate means you are ASSUMING THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE AND THAT YOU CONTROL THE ELECTRONS IN YOUR BRAIN! Until anyone can even arrive at a single shred of evidence that you actually can control an electron, then most of the above or below is electrons playing games with electrons! Ie SPECULATION!
The double slit experiment shows electrons start existing ie the wave function is collapsed the instant it suspects you are aware of its possible existence? The polarized pair experiment shows every particle in the universe has instantaneous contact with every other particle in the universe, that means the light waves hitting your retinas are old news to the electrons inside your brain!
Newtons law that “for every action their is an equal and opposite reaction” excludes any variability in our universe, meaning this whole subatomic thread was set in stone ie predetermined about the same time the universe was “reset” ie started over, “the big bang” so please, if anybody can show me that you can make a decision, that actually changes your future, i would be glad to see that. Yea the bible, right? lol