[HN Gopher] Proton's mass radius is apparently shorter than its ... ___________________________________________________________________ Proton's mass radius is apparently shorter than its charge radius Author : raattgift Score : 164 points Date : 2023-04-03 23:33 UTC (23 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | drdeca wrote: | The article refers to a gravitational something tensor, and, I'm | wondering whether that is because this is actually dealing with | gravitational effects, or whether it is just called that because | it is the same tensor (or basically the same, or analogous in | some way) to the stress energy tensor? | | It also isn't obvious to me what "mass radius" ought to mean... | | I guess like, the average distance from the center of the mass, | but like... | | Idk, I guess that makes sense..? | | But I guess I'm not sure what the "meaning" of that quantity | would be? Like, what makes that a relevant quantity for | describing the system? Is it in case you are hoping to describe | some gravitational effects? Or...? | | Hmm... well, I guess one could ask the same question about the | "charge radius"... but that one to me sounds like it would have | clearer uses? Like, if you are describing the EM forces on/from a | charge, then the charge being distributed over a region would | have different results than if it were at a single point I'd | think. | | Though, "the center of the proton" also doesn't have one single | position either.. but I imagine one could kind of separate those | two things, comparing "what if we had a point particle with the | charge and mass of a proton (which of course would be in a | superposition over a range of positions)" to "what if we had a | proton, with charge distributed about the center (and the center | distributed over a range of positions in the same way as the | hypothetical point particle)" | joe__f wrote: | Quoting from the article (which quotes from the paper): | | "Note that I am not even attempting to find an analogy for the | gluonic gravitational form factors that would help you | understand them. They're described in the paper as "the matrix | elements of the energy-momentum tensor of the proton" | | The energy momentum tensor is the same as the stress energy | tensor. | evanb wrote: | A good cartoon is that a form factor is the function that | describes how an object deforms when exposed to an outside | influence with a particular momentum. The form factor is a | function of momentum. | | There are many different kinds of outside influence. They can | be scalar (think: just increasing the pressure uniformly), | vector (put in an electric field), tensor (zap with a | gravitational wave), pseudovector (magnetic field), | pseudoscalar (zap with a pion). | | Of course, you can apply a scalar outside influence and a | vector at once. But the scalar, vector, tensor, pseudovector, | and pseudoscalar labels denote different representations of the | Lorentz group [lorentz]. | | What's more: the Wigner-Eckhart theorem [wigner] basically says | [cheat] that the response can be factored into three pieces: | the strength of the external influence, a factor that depends | only on the representation of the external influence, and a | factor that depends only on the property of the thing you're | talking about (a proton, in this instance). | | So people _call_ it the gravitational form factor because if | you exposed the proton to a gravitational wave, it 's the thing | you need to know about the proton to know how it deforms. | | Note that because of the factorization you don't actually have | to zap the proton with a gravitational wave! You can measure it | by zapping the proton with other stuff, as long as you can get | that stuff to have the right rotational properties or measure | the response to many different perturbations and sum the | responses the right way to mock up a tensor operator. The | experiment at JLab doesn't use gravitational waves, it uses | these latter approaches. | | Roughly speaking at zero momentum the form factor is the | _charge_ of the object you measure if it 's just sitting there. | So the electric form factor evaluated at zero momentum is the | electric charge, the gravitational form factor evaluated at | zero momentum is the mass. | | What are radii? Express the form factor as a function of | momentum^2 [possible]. In units that physicists like to work in | (where c=1, hbar=1), the units of momentum are 1/length. Expand | the form factor as a Taylor series in momentum^2 and you will | get form factor(p) = charge + # radius^2 p^2 | + ... | | where # is a known dimensionless number. | | The above story is a cartoon but can be made more-or-less | precise depending on how much quantum field theory you learn. | | lorentz: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_theory_of_the_L... | | wigner: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%E2%80%93Eckart_theorem | | cheat: this is a little bit of a cheat, it's only true to | leading order in a taylor series in the strength of the | external influence. | | possible: it's always possible to arrange this, or at least to | separate the momentum dependence into a factor dictated by the | rotational symmetry properties and another factor dictated by | the object, just like in the Wigner-Eckhart theorem. | hibbelig wrote: | It would have been nice to get some idea about the relative | sizes. | iamerroragent wrote: | It's really really tiny and rather incredibly small. | | https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.00110 | | " Collaboration data to extract the r.m.s. mass radius of the | proton Rm=0.55+-0.03 fm. The extracted mass radius is | significantly smaller than the charge radius of the proton | RC=0.8409+-0.0004 fm. " | hibbelig wrote: | So the charge radius is about 150% of the mass radius. Thank | you. | gus_massa wrote: | So 0.55/0.84 = 0.65, i.e. 35% smaller. | plank wrote: | If charge is surface* effect, and mass a 'volume' effect, | you might expect a ratio of 1.0/(0.5^[1/3]). | | This is 1.26 (or 0.79). Does not seem to fit experiment, | even when fiddling with error bars. OK, so no volume vs | surface effect then. *Suppose that both gluon and quarks | are really in the exact same region, but that the | 'effective' behaviour is "on the surface" for one of them, | while "in the whole volume" for the other. In three | dimensions, the "effective" radio would differ, in one it | would be a factor (0.5)^(1/3) smaller. | dr_dshiv wrote: | Charge radius is 53% bigger, got it. | pacaro wrote: | It's almost as if the charge radius is in miles and the | mass radius is in kilometers. It's imperial vs metric all | the way down | jcims wrote: | For scale, the mass radius of the proton is roughly to one | millimeter as one millimeter is to the diameter of the sun. | mywittyname wrote: | This is very helpful to understanding the sheer magnitude | of the scale. I previously had no concept of the size of a | ten thousandth of a femtometer. | jcims wrote: | (Not a big deal but the .03 is the tolerance not the | power.) | narag wrote: | _The proton is a collection of quarks and gluons moving at | relativistic speeds around a central point._ | | What? Moving at relativistic speeds? I had never heard that. | arethuza wrote: | _" Each of these particles, or "nucleons," is composed of a | dense, frothing mess of other particles: quarks, which have | mass, and gluons, which do not. Yet the quark masses only add | up to a mere 1% of a proton or neutron's mass, with the bulk of | the proton mass coming purely from the motion and confinement | of quarks and gluons."_ | | https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/118 | narag wrote: | So the interior of baryons is analogous to the interior of | atoms, with gluons instead of electrons dancing | frantically... weird. | | Also the part about mass being generated by motion and how it | seems to be an established fact. | nimish wrote: | Not really. The "roiling sea of particles" is a metaphor | for perturbation series, which very specifically does not | work for the strong force at low energies. | | Take anything involving virtual particles as just that, | virtual. They're an aid for computation and cannot be | observed directly. They aren't necessary either; lattice | gauge theory is always applicable if not practical. | | The mass(-energy) being from the strong interactions is | still true. And the residual bit of the strong force | between protons and neutrons works with the virtual | particle/perturbation theory approach pretty well, using | pions. | tines wrote: | I'm glad you brought this up, because I've been reading | some stuff lately that makes it seem like virtual | particles actually have visible effects, like this one: | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/12/y | es-... | | So is it that these articles are wrong, or that I'm | reading them wrong, or that the idea that virtual | particles are just for calculations is outdated? | antognini wrote: | My impression is that the notion of "virtual particles" | is a bit of an outdated concept. There isn't really as | much of a physical distinction between "real" and | "virtual" particles as there is sometimes made out to be. | All particles are excitations of some underlying field. | Generally speaking, these excitations can have some | resonance that allows them to persist for long durations. | This resonance occurs when the particle is "on the mass | shell" in the jargon --- that is, it has a rest mass that | is equal (or at least extremely close) to the observed | mass of the particle. Excitations that are "off the mass | shell" decay exponentially. But these other excitations | do have real observable effects. The Casimir effect is | the most famous, but they're also responsible for the | Lamb shift and Hawking radiation which have also been | observed. | nimish wrote: | No, it's a pretty well-defined concept when you stick to | its technical definition as an aid in interpreting terms | of a perturbation series as Feynman diagrams. | | > these other excitations do have real observable effects | | Yeah, that's the major thing: virtual particles explain | observable effects in a sort-of intuitive way. | | But you could (to my knowledge) get the exact same | results without involving any virtual particles, via | lattice gauge theory. Since you get the same observable | results without them, virtual particles, IMO, shouldn't | be considered fundamental to any effect, even if they | make the explanation a lot easier. | | Anything involving complicated interactions with | relativity like Hawking-Unruh stuff has an even bigger | issue since the notion of a particle/vacuum is observer | dependent. | l33tman wrote: | All post-classical effects in quantum field theory arise | from various "corrections" that come from what you could | define as virtual particles, whether it's from the | perturbative treatment or a numerical lattice gauge | calculation. In the latter, you need to (formally) sum | over all possible field configurations, the majority of | which will contain half-witted weird off-shell | "particles" and the entire spectrum between stuff you'd | never see as a particle and the classical resonances. | | It is more clearly visualized in a perturbative | expansion, for sure, but it's a bit disingenous I think | to argue that there are no virtual particles in a lattice | calculation. | Chabsff wrote: | Hawking radiation has been observed? When did that | happen? | antognini wrote: | It's been observed in sonic black holes, which are | mathematical analogs of gravitational black holes in | fluids (though to be fair the experiment has been | disputed, so the evidence is not absolutely unambiguous): | | https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3863.epdf | Chabsff wrote: | Thanks for the clarification. | | I don't have the background to be confident about this, | but aren't the predicates on which Hawking Radiation is | based on part of the equivalency framework between sonic | and "real" black holes? | | If so, then while the observation of Hawking radiation in | the model is certainly interesting, calling it an | observation of Hawking radiation with regards to real | black holes sounds like a stretch. | so-and-so wrote: | Yeah, the 'Standard model of particle physics' actually | states that particles don't exist and there are only | fields around. | marcosdumay wrote: | What a bad piece of journalism, intent on confusing | instead of explaining. | | Virtual particles were invented because they have | measurable effects. Physicists don't go around inventing | invisible things for no reason. What they are not is | "particles". The particle facade is only there because it | fits the math. | | (The article seems to be describing an experiment that | measured energy-time uncertainty.) | tadfisher wrote: | We discovered the mesons by photographing their tracks on | plates exposed to the sky. They're real, just extremely | short-lived. | cwillu wrote: | Incomplete analogy that's probably a better starting | point: if the tone of a bell is a particle, then the | other movements of the bell that don't resonate are | virtual particles. Now, imagine we called the thermal | motions of that bell "virtual tones", and you have an | idea why physicists always sigh and emphasize that | virtual. particles. are. not. particles. | nine_k wrote: | If virtual particles "fit the math" the same as real | particles, what makes them not real? What do they _not_ | fit? | nimish wrote: | You don't _need_ them, and IIRC _can't_ (in general) use | them if you deal with non-perturbative effects, unless | you do stuff like re-summing infinite series of diagrams | and that really makes interpreting the ultimately | observable effect in terms of virtual particles | interacting difficult. | burnished wrote: | An example that comes up in semiconductor is the 'hole' | virtual particle. It is the absence of an electron. It is | not a real and independent phenomenon. But you can treat | it like a particle just fine | gizmo686 wrote: | Electron holes are quasi particles, not virtual | particles. | evanb wrote: | What makes particles travel long distances as lumps is | that they are on-shell. Virtual particles are not on | shell. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_shell_and_off_shell | marcosdumay wrote: | You meant gluons instead of photons? Because the things | analogous to electrons and the nucleus are the quarks. | | Anyway, the similarity is only on the level of "it's a | bunch of moving things locked together by a force". Those | things are about as similar to themselves as they are to | planetary motion. | squeaky-clean wrote: | > Also the part about mass being generated by motion and | how it seems to be an established fact. | | That's what they mean by relativistic speed. When effects | from special relativity become large enough that you need | to account for them in your math and measurements. There is | a difference between invariant mass (aka rest mass) and | relativistic mass, which depends on the object's velocity | relative to the observer. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_speed | Melatonic wrote: | I have no good background in this but could it not be that | from an outside observer view the motion appears as mass | but when thought of modeled within it is instead | energy/motion ? | ProAm wrote: | The Strong Force and Strong Nuclear Force are so utterly | fascinating to read about. Gluon Flux Tubes! Seems like pure | science fiction and imagination. | SideburnsOfDoom wrote: | This article was around recently: "Inside the Proton, the 'Most | Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine'" | | https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-the-proton-the-most-co... | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33262637 | daveguy wrote: | I think that just means "moving fast enough that relativity is | significant and has to be accounted for". It doesn't mean they | are right at the speed of light (although they could be, I | don't know). You could call a rocket "moving a relativistic | speeds" because relativity has to be included in the | calculations for accurate missions within the solar system. | frutiger wrote: | Gluons are massless so they must move at the speed of light. | However they are strongly interacting with quarks and | themselves so their worldlines will be a crazy mess of | intersections. | bgirard wrote: | I wonder what the cut off speed is for relativistic speeds. | If you think about it, it's not only a matter of speed but | also how much precision you want in your calculations. Even | if something was moving very slowly, you need to account for | relatively if you want very accurate calculations. | shagie wrote: | You also get some relativity with some elements. Gold is | the one that I recall most readily. | | Relativistic Effects and the Chemistry of Gold - https://li | nk.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/BF03215471.pdf | | > In atoms of high nuclear charge (Z), as a consequence of | a relativistic effect, the s electrons of an atom become | more bound and their orbitals smaller than if this effect | were absent. Simultaneously, the d (and f) electrons are | less bound because of this effect, which scales roughly as | Z2. Gold exhibits a large relativistic effect. This | accounts for gold being more resistant to oxidation than | silver. It also accounts for higher oxidation states being | more accessible in gold than in silver. These effects are | illustrated by some fluorine chemistry of gold and silver. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_quantum_chemistr | y | | > Relativistic quantum chemistry combines relativistic | mechanics with quantum chemistry to calculate elemental | properties and structure, especially for the heavier | elements of the periodic table. A prominent example is an | explanation for the color of gold: due to relativistic | effects, it is not silvery like most other metals. | quchen wrote: | A rule of thumb in classical mechanics is that 0.1c is when | you should start taking (special) relativity into account, | I think it's 0.5% contribution then. | | For general relativity I don't know such a cutoff rule of | thumb. Astronomy-wise, Mercury is the only planet that is | obviously general-relativistic (its orbit is not an ellipse | because it's so close to the sun). On Earth, we don't have | strong/inhomogeneous enough gravity, so unless you're | synchronizing satellites or atomic clocks, GR is not | something to worry about. | thfuran wrote: | Some of the most precise clocks can actually measure | precisely enough that a few feet of elevation change | makes a measurable difference, which I expect also means | that what you've placed under the table it's on also | could. | vkou wrote: | Mercury's orbit is absolutely an ellipse. It is | _incredibly_ elliptical, with an apogee of 69.8 million | km, and a perigee of 46 million km. | | The relativistic effects on Mercury concern its | _precession_ - the way that elliptical orbit rotates [1] | around the sun. And it 's not caused by Mercury's speed | (Which is only ~59 km/s at its maximum, compared to the | Earth's 30 km/s). It's caused by spacetime being curved | by the immense gravitational field of the sun. | | If Mercury had a circular orbit, it would have no | precession. | | [1] Precession is akin to spinning a hula hoop around | your body - with the hula hoop representing an orbit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsidal_precession | joe__f wrote: | I think a good rule of thumb is 'check what accuracy you | need your answer to, and then include all effects | relevant to that precision'. If you needed an answer | accurate to four significant figures, then you'd include | relativistic effects for v < 0.1 c | bawolff wrote: | I don't think that fits the definition of rule of thumb. | asah wrote: | As a rule of thumb, I like to define my definitions | first. /s | thfuran wrote: | Even if something isn't moving at all (relative to your | reference frame of choice), you might still need to care | about local gravity's effect on time. | archgoon wrote: | For a back of the envelope calculation we consider the | uncertainty principle | | Dx*Dp >= /2 | | Dp = D(m _v) >= /(2_Dx) | | m = 9.1 * 10 ^ -31 kg (mass of electron) | | x ~= 1 * 10^-15 m (radius of proton) | | = 6.6 * 10 ^ -34 kg m^2 / s (plancks) | | Dv >= 31 524 512 m /s | | Which is about 1/10 the speed of light. There isn't a true | cutoff for "relativistic speeds" but in general, 1/10th counts. | pharrington wrote: | The specific composition of baryons is fairly niche physics. | Assuming you're not educated in quantum physics, there's as | much reason to expect to know about that as there is to expect | a non-programmer to know about the minutia of different manual | memory management strategies. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | TL;DR: Most of the mass comes from the energy of the strong force | interactions of the gluons, not from the quarks. The gluons are | not charged; the quarks are. The quarks sometimes go beyond the | region of most of the gluons, which gives the proton a larger | charge radius than mass radius. | pavel_lishin wrote: | > _The quarks sometimes go beyond the region of most of the | gluons, which gives the proton a larger charge radius than mass | radius._ | | This is one hypothesis, but not a stated fact in the article. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Fair. On the other hand, the charge can't be coming from the | gluons, nor from the strong force itself, so it kind of _has_ | to be coming from the quarks. (Um, unless it 's inducing | virtual pair production out there, and the destruction | mechanism involves the pair getting destroyed by interaction | with the quarks, and it takes one of the pair longer than the | other... something like that could lead to charge out there | farther than the quarks actually go.) | blueplanet200 wrote: | nit: gluons aren't electrically charged. They carry strong | charge. | phkahler wrote: | Why are gluons needed to hold quarks together. If the 3 are in | a line, equally spaced, with the oddball charge in the middle, | they will attract quite strongly. | | +2. -1. +2 | | If these charges are equally spaced, the attraction of the | middle one in stronger than the repulsion of the outer two. | dguest wrote: | Good point! But it's also an unstable system: the -1 will get | attracted to one of the +2 charges and (from a distance) look | like a +1, and the other charge will fly off to infinity. | | I guess we could design a bunch of picometer-scale scaffolds | that hold everything in place and this might work, but that | doesn't seem to be the way nature put things. | phkahler wrote: | Sure, but what if they're orbiting the center charge at | relativistic speeds? Now they also create a magnetic field. | My guess is that somehow it ends up being dynamically | stable. Also that the strong force holding the nucleus | together is actually mostly magnetism. | | I would also posit that just maybe there is such thing as | an electrostatic black hole. When matter is accelerated | gravitationally to speed c, you reach an event horizon. | Same should happen if the acceleration is due to charges, | but will happen at a scale similar to the size of baryons. | I'd say there is a lot of room for some theoretical | developments in this area. | thriftwy wrote: | Stuff will only keep an orbit if it has nothing else to | do, i.e. if it is dynamically stable. | blueplanet200 wrote: | It's not necessarily a questions of "need". Physicists are | just measuring what protons ARE. Whether or not gluons and | the strong force are necessary to form an object that looks | like a proton is a separate point from what protons actually | look like in our universe. | | To your point on if such an arrangement would be possible or | not ignoring the strong force, it would not. The "net-charge" | viewed from the +2 quark would be repulsive, resulting in an | unstable arrangement of matter, even if you could construct | it in an equilibrium state it would be the unstable kind. | 988747 wrote: | [dead] | ArchieMaclean wrote: | The strong force is much stronger than the Coulomb (charge) | force. | sharikone wrote: | In fact gluons have a QCD charge, they just don't have a QED | (electric) charge. That QCD charge is basically one color and | one anticolor, minus the trace. So there are 8 different basis | vectors that define the space for what the charge of a gluon | is. | sebzim4500 wrote: | This is not surprising given my own (presumably horribly wrong) | mental image of what a proton is. Is it surprising given current | theoretical models? | mannykannot wrote: | In your your mental image, was the mass radius necessarily | smaller than the charge radius? If so, then your model has | survived an empirical challenge. If not, then you have learned | something new that was not fully determined or explained by | your model. | etrautmann wrote: | I feel that it's important to point out that a scientific | result doesn't need to be surprising in order to be important | and grounding for future work. I agree this aligns with my | intuitions (to the extent that I have any for subatomic | particles), but it seems important to document and measure | these properties. | JPLeRouzic wrote: | It looks like the questions about electron's mass at the end of | the XIX century. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_mass | bbarnett wrote: | Some help for you, citizen. | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fjFaKD9BuOc | DoctorOetker wrote: | I don't see the relevance of your comment, would you mind | explaining? | peterfirefly wrote: | It's "19th century" in English. Many (all?) Romance | languages + a few of the other ones in Europe use Roman | numerals for centuries. | nine_k wrote: | I think it's styled "XIX" and not "19" to make it look | archaic. | int_19h wrote: | In those languages it is used in all contexts and for all | centuries. It's just a formatting convention that is | occasionally helpful in e.g. history textbooks. | JPLeRouzic wrote: | Thanks, English is not my native language, today I | learned something! | teovall wrote: | I really wish articles about physics or mathematics, especially | ones aimed at non-experts like this one, would include the | English name or pronunciation of symbols and terms. Not all of us | know Greek or advanced mathematics and I need something to say in | my head as I read along. How do you say J/ps meson? | archgoon wrote: | Jay-sigh | garyrob wrote: | [flagged] | Groxx wrote: | Message boards are currently being inundated by low-effort, | low-value, "yeah Google surfaces that Wikipedia page too, | much faster, and has for years" drive-by advertisements for a | paid service. | | It's not really surprising that people aren't excited about | that. | garyrob wrote: | OK. My guess was that the person I was responding to didn't | know that for $20/mo they could get all the answers they | want to questions like the one they were asking (even if | not always perfect), and do so immediately and | effortlessly, and so pointing it out could be useful to | them. | | I say that because I know that if I was unaware of the | cost/benefits and somebody told me that, that might have | motivated me to try it, and it might make a big difference | to me. Someone could have added to my productivity and | helped my stress level by pointing it out. | | In any case, I don't think I'll post about the cost/benefit | of ChatGPT on HN again! Thanks for the explanation. I | appreciate your taking the time to give it rather than just | voting me down. It was kind of you. | mort96 wrote: | They weren't asking a question. They were critiquing the | article. And the criticism is perfectly valid. Shilling | for an OpenAI subscription is wholly unnecessary here. | Groxx wrote: | To be clear, I (and I suspect many others) _do_ | appreciate the "this is from chatgpt [and therefore may | not be correct]" notes. Because posting it without that | _and without verification_ is what some are doing, and | that 's just plain malicious karma farming. Yours isn't | that. | | But personally I'd like it better if it weren't used | period, outside "ai is useful / produces trash" | discussions where its output is directly relevant. If I | want a machine's answer, I know how to get it, but I'm | here for discussion with humans. | bgirard wrote: | It would become redundant very quickly I think. Reading stories | about quantum computing feels this way. The first 3 paragraph | include the same 'qubits can exists as a 0, 1 or a | superposition' over simplification followed by a single | paragraph of explanation of the new discovery. | | IMO it's much easier for you to answer your specific question | with an easy search than it is for article authors to | anticipate every question and keep answering it in every | article. | stronglikedan wrote: | You'd just have to define the pronunciation once per article, | like we do with acronyms. | squeaky-clean wrote: | Don't know why you're downvoted, this is exactly what | they're asking for. You don't have to explain the details | of the J/ps meson, just the first time you write it in the | article put "J/ps meson (J/Psi meson) | | For the qubit example, they're not asking for the article | to always describe what a qubit is, just if you're going to | only write it as "a|0> + b|1> " it would be helpful to put | (qubit quantum state) the first time you do so in the | article. | BobbyJo wrote: | Someone use GPT to automatically annotate articles with | domain specific knowledge so that I can highlight | words/sentences/symbols/formulae/etc. and have it explain it | to me. | gtop3 wrote: | This feels like the type of thing I want human expertise | on. GPT can be too inaccurate for something like this. I'd | also be concerned it was trained on writings from people | that misunderstand the science. | | There's already tons of expert written and reviewed content | designed to teach science. Go buy any textbook on the | subject. You can usually get them very cheaply if you don't | mind older editions. Libraries will also have these types | of books you can checkout for free. Once you've exhausted | information found in textbooks you can start actually | reading the scholarly journals these pop-sci articles are | written about. Once you've read enough scholarly journals, | you might have your own questions that aren't answered yet. | Then, you can conduct your own science...... | | Books are great for looking up quick tidbits of information | too. Chapter titles and indexes are great for jumping to | relevant information. | BobbyJo wrote: | I'm not a physicist, so keeping around a good deal of | reading material (not to mention seeking out a good | explanation) to understand the odd reference or two seems | horribly cumbersome. | | Google is way lower friction, but even that requires some | manual sorting through. | | Seems like exactly the thing a good language model would | be great at. If they can't do that, where the stakes are | low and the task is exactly the domain of LLMs, then I | don't see how they'd be useful for anything. | gtop3 wrote: | I'm optimizing for accuracy and depth of understanding. | Your optimizing for lower friction. | | I think I'm optimizing for the correct variables. | bgirard wrote: | There was a news site that did something like that, I don't | recall which. It was incredibly distracting and I think | they started annotating ads in their popovers as well. | BobbyJo wrote: | This is why it's have to be a separate lyer from the page | itself. Otherwise it would become yet more add real | estate. | Teever wrote: | In the /r/SpaceX subreddit there is an acronym bot that will | scan articles or posts for acronyms and make a post that | explains the acronyms that it found. | | Such content doesn't need to be right in the beginning of an | article, it could be linked to or at the bottom of the page. | bgirard wrote: | That's a good example. I found it handy when I was new to | the subreddit and it's easily ignored at the bottom of the | thread. | oneshtein wrote: | Play the audiofile here: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet#Letter_names | meindnoch wrote: | On macOS: select letter "ps" - right-click - "Look Up" - it is | pronounced "psi" | squeaky-clean wrote: | The real scourge is articles that use embedded images for the | greek symbols or other equations. | otikik wrote: | You can always retaliate by using the wrong name on purpose: | the Jason meson, the Fork meson. | | It will drive them crazy. | giardini wrote: | The J is pronounced as an English "J" ("jay"). | | ps - psi - pronounced "psaai" (as in "top side") or "saai" (as | in "side"). | | from "Pronunciation of the Greek alphabet in English": | | https://jakubmarian.com/pronunciation-of-the-greek-alphabet-... | mLuby wrote: | Interesting link, though I question some of those: taw & | p'saai--it's not p'sai'onics right? | | And I wonder how useful symbols like ae @ ^ are to people | asking how to pronounce Greek. | eindiran wrote: | There is an international, widely-recognized standard | alphabet for precisely specifying the pronunciation of | things in arbitrary languages, and you are unsure of why it | would be useful for people trying to figure out how to | pronounce something? Visit the wiki page for each IPA | symbol and there will be recordings and examples and you | can learn how to read it instead of complaining that people | are using the correct tool for the job. The real problem | with the linked page is that it is only using IPA half the | time... | int_19h wrote: | It's even worse - in English, "psionics" would be normally | pronounced something like /saI'on.Iks/. | | Generally speaking, the Great Vowel Shift did quite a | number on anything originally Latin or Greek. | raattgift wrote: | See also <https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and- | posts/largehadron...> (2011) | | Preprint of Nature paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.05212 | | HTML5 version: https://ar5iv.org/abs/2207.05212 ("x"->"5" opens | up ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org). | yonixw wrote: | Wow! What a rabbit hole finding a proton is not just 3 quarks!. | | Suggesting these 2 articles: | | 1] Experimental results of proton collision as of 2013 (3 | quarks is an observation, but for low energies) : | | https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/81190/whats-insi... | | 2] Another article from the same author (Matt Strassler). | Suggesting to read his answers for the comments of: Harry | Bostock, Bob Anderson, and the 2 top comments of "aa. sh." (for | more history and Neutron decay) | | https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/largehadron... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-04 23:01 UTC)