The strongest force

CERN; Ne'eman, Yuval

Published 1969 | Version v1

Periodical article Open

The strongest force

This article by one of the co-discoverers of 'the eightfold way' of classifying strongly interacting particles, first appeared in 'Science Year 1968' and is reproduced here by kind permission of the publishers.

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vol9-issue3-p069-e.pdf

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vol9-issue3-p069-e.pdf md5:9f50f07dfea1fa33c32304b9e4c6e686	6.2 MB	Preview Download
l/l/e can detect a proton only through its forces. It is the sum of four effects. The gravitation force, surrounding all matter in all directions to infinity, controls the stars and galaxies. The much stronger electromagnetic force cancels out at long range, since there are equal numbers of positive and negative charges in the universe. It controls the world of atoms and molecules. The weak nuclear force is known to exist, but its carrier has not yet been detected. The strongest force — the strong nuclear force — controls most effects in the compacted nuclear and subnuclear world md5:15730d6897f3a10cf1bbe917312cfd4b	528.7 kB	Preview Download
Strange K-mesons can bond strange baryons in ordinary nuclei to make hypernuclear atoms. In tritium, scientists have replaced a neutron with a lambda particle. md5:779f1edf2bdd1a68cbb2320755eae01c	398.7 kB	Preview Download
When a high-speed pion strikes a proton, many new particles emerge. Since the K+ meson, for instance, physically exists longer than its expected life of 10~23 second, it must possess a new property, called strangeness, that prevents its strong-force decay into two nonstrange pions. The weak interaction permits the decay, but takes 100 trillion times as long. md5:d672c63b770c4800859bf8bc527b9575	399.4 kB	Preview Download
The single unit of spin of the rho-meson, left, is conserved, forcing the two spin 0 pions into which it decays, right, to spin around each other. The detection of orbiting pions first indicated the existence of the rho. md5:8069b9874688fce5b43e37b2e5687aa1	376.6 kB	Preview Download
Forces carried by pions and rho-mesons alternately attract and repel nucléons in an atomic nucleus. Spin 0 pions keep the nucleus from flying apart ; spin 1 rhos keep it from collapsing. The discovery of the spin 2 f° meson hints that if nucléons could be squeezed beyond the resistance of the rho forces, they would attract each other with enormous force. This would not only release staggering amounts of usable energy, but should also produce a new kind of matter. The rho's repulsion, however, does not weaken fast enough to allow this attraction except when two nucléons glance off each other at high speed. md5:a8ea15231287358e931c9b5e3b983ccb	385.7 kB	Preview Download
Three kinds of objects, shown as coloured triangles, can be arranged into ten possible groups of three. In The Eightfold Way, each combination of three fictitious objects, called quarks, makes a different baryon md5:6bbd3508dca446ea7ced858989f9d1ed	758.7 kB	Preview Download

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CDS: 1729002

Issued: 1969-03

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This article by one of the co-discoverers of 'the eightfold way' of classifying strongly interacting particles, first appeared in 'Science Year 1968' and is reproduced here by kind permission of the publishers.

vol9-issue3-p069-e.pdf

Files (9.0 MB)

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The strongest force

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This article by one of the co-discoverers of 'the eightfold way' of classifying strongly interacting particles, first appeared in 'Science Year 1968' and is reproduced here by kind permission of the publishers.

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vol9-issue3-p069-e.pdf

Files (9.0 MB)

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