Re: a paradox ?

[LUDWIK KOWALSKI <KOWALSKIL@alpha.montclair.edu>]

Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 12:29:25 -0800
From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: Increasing Mass of Particles

> ...  so what is the meaning of density at high speed?
>
> It is also the case that charge is not uniformly distributed in
> particles. No one has any idea what the charge distribution might be
> in electrons. They are pointlike down to the shortest length scales
> accessible to experiment.

Yes, the term particle was not appropriate for 10 cm sphere. But the
problem is puzzling. Take another case. The distribution of electric
field line for a single electron (now we can say a particle) is the
same in each direction. I am thinking in terms of E vectors staring
on a Gaussian surface arround the particle. 

Now the electron moves with respect to me at highly relativistic speed. 
Is it true or not that the distribution of E, as mesured by me, becomes 
nonuniform? Vectors of E pointing away from the direction of v become 
longer and those pointing along v become shorter. Suppose I am an atom 
ready to be ionized. My distance from the trajectory is such that E is 
too small to ionize me when v is too low. Am I going to be ionized 
when v is very large? 

> I think there is some value in pointing out to students that some of
> their questions are, perhaps, syntactically reasonable, but they have
> no real physical content. 

Am I going to be ionized or not? The atoms have the right to know; they
belong to real reality.
                                          Ludwik Kowalski