1998 Bonestell Lecture presented by Dr. Kai Woehler 1998 Bonestell Lecture presented by Dr. Kai Woehler
HOW DOES NATURE CHOOSE
BETWEEN ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSES?
The Origin of the Universe by a Process of Natural Selection
THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF MATTER AND FORCES
| EINSTEIN'S
UNIVERSE About the Big Bang and Black Holes THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF MATTER AND FORCES About Elementary Particles and Forces SYMMETRIES - PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN About the Search for the Holy Grail--The Theory of Everything STRINGS AND STRINGY SPACE About Hidden Dimensions OUR UNIVERSE--A VERY SPECIAL PLACE About Worlds Hospitable to Life THE MULTIVERSE About the Origin by Natural Selection CONCLUSION |
| THE STRUCTURE OF MATTER Since about 1900 it has been accepted that matter is costituted of smallest building blocks, ATOMS. Each chemical element has its own kind of atoms with specific structures, characteristic for that chemical element. These atoms have typical sizes of one hundred millionth of a centimeter. |
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| In 1911 Rutherford made experiments that
revealed the inner structure of atoms, showing that most of the mass of each atom is
concentrated in a very small nucleus, a hundred thousand times smaller than the atom.
During the 1930's it became clear that these atomic nuclei themselves had structure. They
are composed of smaller entities jet, which were then thought to belong truly to the class
of most elementary building blocks of matter, so called ELEMENTARY PARTICLES. Among them
were PROTONS and NEUTRONS. After World War II, partially made possible by the war time development of microwave technologies for Radar, Particle accelerator technology grew rapidly and led to the discovery of a whole zoo of particles that seemed to belong to the class of elementary building blocks of matter. By the 1960's there were known 48 stable kinds of particles and around 100 other particles that are short lived and disintegrate after more or less short time into the stable ones. There were three families: LEPTONS, the lightest group of elementary particles. Then there were MESONS, medium heavy particles and then BARYONS, the heavy particles with PROTONS and NEUTRONS among them that make up the atomic nuclei. In the 1970's the energies of accelerators had been pushed to such high values that it became possible to probe the interior of Protons and Neutrons. It was then discovered that these so called elementary particles are not elementary. They have a structure of their own. They are made up of smaller entities jet. These entities were eventually called QUARKS. Since about 1980 this is the picture we have of the structure of matter. |
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| There are 6 kinds of quarks and 6 kinds
of Leptons, forming 3 families of two each. These quarks and Leptons have certain
identifiable properties. There are also 13 other things, Energy Lumps, called INTERACTION
BOSONS. These are the mediators of forces. THE FORCES IN NATURE |
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| The strongest of the forces is the
"STRONG FORCE" which acts between the Quarks and is responsible for holding the
quarks together in the heavy Baryons, like protons and neutrons. The force mediating
energy lumps are called GLUONS. Associated with these gluons is a kind of charge that has
been called COLOR CHARGE. The strength of this force is 15 when compared with the other
forces. The next force is the ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE. It acts between any electrically charged particles, quarks as well as some leptons. The force is mediated by a kind of photons, also the mediators of light propagation. The strength of this force is 1/137. This force is the best understood and most extensively studied force. That is why the strength is so accurately known. It governs all atomic, molecular, chemical, biological processes, and as such is of most direct significant in our lives. The next force is the WEAK FORCE. It plays a role in radioactive processes, that is processes when Baryons or Mesons that are unstable decay into the more stable particles. The force is ten billion times weaker than the Electromagnetic force. It is mediated by very massive WEAK INTERACTION BOSONS that carry with them another type of charge, the WEAK CHARGE. Finally there is the GRAVITATIONAL FORCE. It is on comparative scale the most weakest force, . It acts between any particles with mass. The mediator, in the quantum picture is the GRAVITON. The associated "Charge" is just the mass. The pattern that emerged from this listing is: each type of force is mediated by a specific type of interaction particle. Each is characterized by a strength number. Each has associated with it a "charge' like quantity also characteristic for that force. * This summary of the particles and forces in nature and the pattern of these that we tried to show, raises many more questions about the nature of our world:
It is these questions that have driven the "SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL", the search for a "THEORY OF EVERYTHING". By this it is not meant that one envisions a theory that exactly describes every detail of everything that has happened in the universe and would predict exactly everything that will happen. The individual processes in this universe are so complex that such exact description is not possible. Even the behavior of the tiniest of living cells is so complex that a complete description of every detail is impossible. What is hoped for is a theory that contains all the underlying most general principles that govern all of the material universe. |
SYMMETRIES - PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN
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