The Power

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the fundamental bosons are all their own antiparticles. photons and gravitons are massless, and lack self-interaction, and it's exactly these properties that lead to the infinite reach of gravity and electromagnetism. the weak nuclear force works with two charged W bosons and a neutral Z boson, all three of them massive. the Heisenberg uncertainty relation smearing out the bookkeeping of virtual particles is inversely proportional to the energy involved, and thus the weak interaction is effective only over short ranges, and it's slow even there. we might have to tolerate massive charged bosons popping into existence, but there's no need to let them live their unseemly off-shell lives on the couch. now you might be asking "but niiiiiiiiick, we know the top quark only decays via flavor-changing weak interactions, but its average lifetime is so shooooooooooooort niiiiiiick". well, the top quark approaches 175GeV. it doesn't <i>need</i> to borrow virtual bosons at the First Bank of Heisenberg. if a 172GeV top wants an 80GeV W boson, it whips and drives the little bastard. gluons are mysterious, sublime. i don't pretend to understand their mysterious ways.

[[File:forcemap.png|left|thumb|no one likes neutrinos]]

so, the fermions: leptons, quarks, and composites. here's the good stuff. well, not just yet, because first we have to deal with bullshit neutrinos and the even more thoroughly bullshit antineutrinos. actually, neutrinos might be their own antiparticles, who knows, they're worthless either way. if you've heard of the search for "neutrinoless double beta decay", a bunch of very unhappy japanese and italians are trying to figure this out, morlocks in salt mines and giant tanks of ultrapure water, counting scintillations and subtracting expected tritium decays and just generally living their worst lives. there are three distinct neutrinos, all so weak-willed and devoid of identity that they oscillate freely between one another. trillions transpierce you each second, but they might as well not. neutrinos have mass, but they might as well not. i loathe neutrinos.

The Power: Difference between revisions

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 the fundamental bosons are all their own antiparticles. photons and gravitons are massless, and lack self-interaction, and it's exactly these properties that lead to the infinite reach of gravity and electromagnetism. the weak nuclear force works with two charged W bosons and a neutral Z boson, all three of them massive. the Heisenberg uncertainty relation smearing out the bookkeeping of virtual particles is inversely proportional to the energy involved, and thus the weak interaction is effective only over short ranges, and it's slow even there. we might have to tolerate massive charged bosons popping into existence, but there's no need to let them live their unseemly off-shell lives on the couch. now you might be asking "but niiiiiiiiick, we know the top quark only decays via flavor-changing weak interactions, but its average lifetime is so shooooooooooooort niiiiiiick". well, the top quark approaches 175GeV. it doesn't <i>need</i> to borrow virtual bosons at the First Bank of Heisenberg. if a 172GeV top wants an 80GeV W boson, it whips and drives the little bastard. gluons are mysterious, sublime. i don't pretend to understand their mysterious ways.
+[[File:forcemap.png|left|thumb|no one likes neutrinos]]
 so, the fermions: leptons, quarks, and composites. here's the good stuff. well, not just yet, because first we have to deal with bullshit neutrinos and the even more thoroughly bullshit antineutrinos. actually, neutrinos might be their own antiparticles, who knows, they're worthless either way. if you've heard of the search for "neutrinoless double beta decay", a bunch of very unhappy japanese and italians are trying to figure this out, morlocks in salt mines and giant tanks of ultrapure water, counting scintillations and subtracting expected tritium decays and just generally living their worst lives. there are three distinct neutrinos, all so weak-willed and devoid of identity that they oscillate freely between one another. trillions transpierce you each second, but they might as well not. neutrinos have mass, but they might as well not. i loathe neutrinos.