Startling new physics theories
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
I am a university undergrad, fortunate enough to have a lecturer at the very cutting edge of physics research. He must be - he's always showing us slides of the concrete tunnel where he does all his research. And he teaches us things that no other lecturer dared hint at.
First of all, the composition of the common proton. Until now, we had believed it was made of two up quarks and a down quark (quarks are the tiny little things that make up matter on the very smallest scale, known only to particle physicists and other strange people). Now we discover it is in fact made of two ups and an _anti_down.
You may remember having seen in some science fiction show what happens when matter and antimatter meet. That's right, they blow themselves up. Or as particle physicists like to put it, they annihilate each other. But according to my gifted lecturer, every single proton (and your body contains around a million million million million protons) should have annihilated by now. No matter is stable. Nothing. No people, no lecture theatres, no physics departments...
Next, the composition of the common student. Apparently, we're composed entirely of hydrogen. Not water, with its ten protons and eight neutrons per molecule, but hydrogen atoms with one proton each. It means less of those nasty unstable protons, I suppose, and we should be able to float quite nicely on air, but woe betide the first student to light a cigarette after a hard morning of classes. It doesn't take a particle physicist to deduce what happens to a student-sized mass of hydrogen around a naked flame...
Of course, before embarking on further study of these bizarre theories, I checked with a responsible solid-state physicist, who spends his time measuring voltages and has developed a healthy attitude to bizarre particle physics. He proposed a more logical theory. All that time in concrete tunnels had worn our poor lecturer out, causing him to make slips in his calculations and proofs.
Oh well, what do you expect from someone whose idea of a fun picture is a concrete tunnel with _water_ in?
First of all, the composition of the common proton. Until now, we had believed it was made of two up quarks and a down quark (quarks are the tiny little things that make up matter on the very smallest scale, known only to particle physicists and other strange people). Now we discover it is in fact made of two ups and an _anti_down.
You may remember having seen in some science fiction show what happens when matter and antimatter meet. That's right, they blow themselves up. Or as particle physicists like to put it, they annihilate each other. But according to my gifted lecturer, every single proton (and your body contains around a million million million million protons) should have annihilated by now. No matter is stable. Nothing. No people, no lecture theatres, no physics departments...
Next, the composition of the common student. Apparently, we're composed entirely of hydrogen. Not water, with its ten protons and eight neutrons per molecule, but hydrogen atoms with one proton each. It means less of those nasty unstable protons, I suppose, and we should be able to float quite nicely on air, but woe betide the first student to light a cigarette after a hard morning of classes. It doesn't take a particle physicist to deduce what happens to a student-sized mass of hydrogen around a naked flame...
Of course, before embarking on further study of these bizarre theories, I checked with a responsible solid-state physicist, who spends his time measuring voltages and has developed a healthy attitude to bizarre particle physics. He proposed a more logical theory. All that time in concrete tunnels had worn our poor lecturer out, causing him to make slips in his calculations and proofs.
Oh well, what do you expect from someone whose idea of a fun picture is a concrete tunnel with _water_ in?
