I am reading that it is proton magnetism that keeps us from falling through a bed if we land on it- That is to say that the proton magnetism in the bed repulses the protons in us, our clothes etc. If proton magnetism rejects nearby protons due to their magnetism why don't all of our proton rich cells simply fly apart?
Asked
Active
Viewed 94 times
0
-
Where did you read that???? The energy of nuclear spin-spin interaction in matter is a very small fraction of the energy of electrostatic and quantum mechanical interaction between the electrons and nuclei. – CuriousOne Mar 15 '16 at 23:32
-
Could you link to a source for this claim? As CuriousOne says, there are several differences between your explanation for the solidity of matter and the more standard explanation (to be posted in an answer by someone soon). – rob Mar 16 '16 at 00:16
-
1Possible duplicate of Why doesn't matter pass through other matter if atoms are 99.999% empty space? – ACuriousMind Mar 16 '16 at 00:55
1 Answers
1
In everyday matter around us, individual protons are fixed inside the nuclei of the constituent atoms. They cannot do free streaming inside everyday materials. There are two fundamental interactions that keep our nuclei stable: electromagnetic interaction (keeping electrons inside their orbits around nucleus) and strong interaction (keeping nucleons from disintegration). But the first one is many orders of magnitude smaller than the second one. In small scale, We need both of them to survive.
Again, the use of everyday is crucial here as you want to break the matter apart; first you can remove electrons by low-energy ionization and then separate individual protons by high-energy collisions. But, no matter what is the amount of energy, you will never have energy enough to break protons into their constituent particles (gluons and quarks) for a considerable time duration due to confinement. However, we believe that this was easily achieved in early Universe where it is thought infinite amount of energy was somehow reached for a very very very small fraction of time.
Benjamin
- 1,310
-
1You can't break a free isolated proton into quarks because if you supply the energy to separate the quarks then you end up providing enough energy to make new quarks and if they are isolated they can form multiple nucleons instead of free quarks. The early universe had a quark gluon plasma because if you have enough energy then you can have all the quarks and gluons interacting with each other instead of clumping into nucleons. – Timaeus Mar 16 '16 at 00:17
-