As I understand it the diameter of the nucleus is between one 10,000th and one 100, 000th of the atom. lets use the lower figure for the sake of argument.
So, the volume of solid matter in anything is one 1,000,000,000,000th (one trillionth?) of its overall volume. So the volume of matter in, say, me is invisible to the human eye. (That waistline’s invisible! says the wife!)
Surely science has considered the possibility that there is no such thing as matter, or mass and its all just energy in various forms. The only reason that we consider mass to exist being that we are made of, and have senses that react to, just one particular form of this energy.
The inability to track down the electron has surely led to its demise as a form of particle, so the precedent has been set. Will not the proton, neutron and all the other particles not soon follow?
Yes. The concept of the “particle” is a simplification, i.e., a falsification. It follows from the idea of the “subject”, the “soul”, of an eternal and unchanging persona. In fact, there are only relatively durable, relative unities. To gain a better understanding of what is beyond particles, we must first gain a better understanding of ourselves. We are not in-dividuals (the word a-tom means “in-divisible”), but rather, I think, as Heidegger puts it, a Dasein. Someone recently described this to me as follows:
“the ‘Being’ in Heidegger [Dasein] is not the Parmenidean Being; it is that ‘isness’, or ‘being-there’ which is actually a Heraclitean wading in the river.”
Hi Avocet,
Just thought that I might take an opposing point of view.
Data indicates that when a positron and electron meet, their total mass is exchanged into energy. This energy generally takes the form of high energy light escaping in opposite directions.
If there were no such thing as mass, why would anything hang around?
P.S. Nice to see you’re still posting.
Ed
cathode ray tube?
Hi Ed.
Now, as I see it, When a positron ( Which is a massless particle, whatever one of those is, invented because a wave needs something to wave through ) meets an electron ( which I am suggesting isn’t a particle ) energy is produced which immediately departs the scene at the speed of light. Energy + energy = a different form of energy.
As for the cathode ray tube, energy is fired at energy producing a different form of energy which is very pretty when viewed by us, a different form of energy again.
But, of course, as with all things, I may be wrong.
I think this post is varying between a debate about mass and a debate about shape.
I’m fascinated by the suggestion by quantum physicists to say that the universe could be fundamentally shapeless. Shapes automatically seem to us as the most literal things possible. But shapes could be just as abstract as “music.” Analogous, perhaps, to the colour “blue” which we have adapted to identify simply because the blue cone receptors in our retina respond to a certain frequency of light. Blue is in fact a rather arbitrary range of light frequency merging with yellow. In the same way, shapes are identified in our brains to solve problems, but maybe not to understand the universe itself.
As for mass, I think this is a more tangible concept- because mass allows us to hypothesize the behaviour of particles a little better than diameter (shape measurements) might. Still- mass might end up on the slab of dissection too.