Re: I'm sure this is a silly question
- From: Erik Max Francis <max@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 15:21:41 -0800
David Mitchell wrote:
... but I was thinking, the other day.
Given that it's canon that particles appear and disappear from the
"quantum foam", all the time, (with a nod to Heisenberg so that they Don't
Really Count), and that gravity is always positive.
What happens to the mass of all those particles?
IOW, pick a point, any point, draw a line in any direction to the edge of
the universe. Along that line there are particles appearing and
disappearing all the time.
So why don't we notice the mass of all those particles?
Is it that they cancel out?
Or that they are only around for so short a time that they don't count?
Or am I missing the point?
Well, probably the main thing to keep in mind here is that of the four fundamental interactions, gravity is by far the weakest. The relative coupling strengths are
strong 1
electromagnetic 1/137
weak 10^-6
gravity 10^-39
If it weren't for huge aggregations of matter, the gravitational interaction would be undetectable. It plays essentially no part in particle interactions whatsoever.
--
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-- Fran Lebowitz
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