4 replies to this topic

[aloKNsh]

I have heard that there is mesons and all that kinda stuff but i dream is there anything smaller that electrons neutrons and protons.
Then it would be great to work in nanotechnology.
I f i am not wrong.
Thank you very much

[Baniboy]

Well you are comparing them like they would be all the same size,
Neutron and proton have about the same mass(neutron has slightly more mass), but electron has like 0,001 of the mass proton has. What you said about mesons, well, mesons are formed from one quark and one antiquark, so they aren't exactly the smallest particles. Usually in chemistry, you don't need to go lower than protons, neutrons and electrons, because they are the particles that affect the energy level of atoms(like in which shell the last electrons are, how many there are there, is it an ion etc...)

There are different types of quarks, we call them "flavors". The most common flavors are Up (u) and down (d) quarks, they are the lightest, then we have heavy and rare types (which also have weird names) like charm ( c ), strange (s), bottom (B ) and top (t). C,s,b and t are the most massive ones, they aren't stable either, and they often decay into lighter ones. Massive quarks can only be produced for example in particle accelerators, anywhere there is high energy collision.

Protons form from 3 quarks, two u quarks and one d quark. Neutrons form from quarks too, I don't remember how many and which types... Anyway quarks can only form comosite particles of hadrons.

We haven't found any substructure for electrons yet. So I think it might just be electron? I'm not sure.

That's all I know, hope I helped.

Edited by Baniboy, 07 May 2009 - 03:39 PM.

[rvalkass]

We have quarks, gluons, neutrinos and all sorts of other things much smaller than protons and electrons. The problem with using them in nanotechnology varies between the particles, but they are numerous. Quarks can never be found alone (to our current knowledge) so offer no advantage over electrons. Gluons only exist to hold quarks together, so we can't do anything with them. Neutrinos are too unreactive - they pass through absolutely everything, we can't stop them and they are almost impossible to detect, so using them is practically impossible. If we could find one of these particles that we could control and use then that would be a breakthrough.

[freenrg]

rvalkass, on May 7 2009, 04:42 PM, said:

We have quarks, gluons, neutrinos and all sorts of other things much smaller than protons and electrons. The problem with using them in nanotechnology varies between the particles, but they are numerous. Quarks can never be found alone (to our current knowledge) so offer no advantage over electrons. Gluons only exist to hold quarks together, so we can't do anything with them. Neutrinos are too unreactive - they pass through absolutely everything, we can't stop them and they are almost impossible to detect, so using them is practically impossible. If we could find one of these particles that we could control and use then that would be a breakthrough.

Hi

Would it make more sense to use whole atoms for nanotechnology? It seems to me that since they are bigger and more stable, we can build small molecular machines with them.

Using protons seems impossible. They are way too small for our technology to handle. Forget about quarks, gluons and their friend. it is a lot of work just to detect them!

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About the question of smaller than neutrons and electrons, just one comment. String Theory is be based on the proposed existence of tiny strings of energy that would be orders of magnitude smaller than quarks, electrons, gluons. Only problem is, a number of physicists complain that String Theory is not a theory at all because it is not refutable, or at least that is what I have understood.

Anybody knows the real deal about String Theory?

[rvalkass]

freenrg, on May 11 2009, 10:34 AM, said:

Would it make more sense to use whole atoms for nanotechnology? It seems to me that since they are bigger and more stable, we can build small molecular machines with them.

At the moment I believe atoms and small molecules are being used for various different uses in nanotechnology. The prefix 'nano-' actually means 10^^-9 m. Atoms themselves are around 10 times smaller than this, so could technically be considered too small for nanotechnology

freenrg, on May 11 2009, 10:34 AM, said:

About the question of smaller than neutrons and electrons, just one comment. String Theory is be based on the proposed existence of tiny strings of energy that would be orders of magnitude smaller than quarks, electrons, gluons. Only problem is, a number of physicists complain that String Theory is not a theory at all because it is not refutable, or at least that is what I have understood.

Anybody knows the real deal about String Theory?

Generally physics is considered an empirical science - proof is needed for a theory to be accepted. As part of this many people state that for something to be considered a theory it must also include a method for testing the theory experimentally. For example, you can test the laws of thermodynamics. This allowed them to be considered theories and then to move from theories to laws. Currently, string theory has no way to be proved or disproved. Therefore many people don't consider it a theory in the tradition sense.