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Re: Question About Charged Particles.



I believe that my question has produced some helpful responses.
If I understand the points made correctly, Jack Uretsky holds the opinion
that a theory which incorporates electrically charged massless particles is
possible but he suspects that in order for the theory to be consistent
massless particles may have to be confined. John S. Denker finds no intrinsic
reason why QM would not allow massless charged particles. He takes the very
clever approach of taking a charged particle like an electron and continue to
reduce it's rest mass. The question to ask is, at what point in this weight
loss program do we produce inconsistencies with known laws of physics. ( Here
I equate mass and weight for the sake of pun)

John also makes the point, which I agree with, that one road to
answering this question is to get beyond the standard model and come up with
a theory that could calculate particle masses from first principals. Of
course this a tall order.
Nevertheless if I understand Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan
correctly (I am just starting to look into his work) a successful theory
incorporating Supersymmetry may be able to do this. This theory should give
us a better understanding of the Higgs mechanism which is closely related to
my question I believe.

Jack Uretsky has made the comment that in Physics, arguments from
authority are worthless. Of course he is correct. Nevertheless it is also
true that when certain people offer their opinion on a subject that by virtue
of talent and education they are experts on, one should listen very carefully
to what they say. Both John and Jack fall into this category and I am
grateful for their responses. I find it interesting that even though Jack
said the question was without meaning he was still able to offer a very
reasoned response.

I would like to respond to Jack's point on the value of this question.
There are certainly meaningless questions. If I were to ask if it were true
that the Universe was made in seven days by a loving but stern father figure
and that he planted evidence to fool us into thinking the whole thing took 15
billion years that would be a meaningless question. It would be meaningless
because there is no possibility of disproving it so this question has no
value. I do not believe that my question falls into this category at all.

First to be consistent, the standard model requires massless
particles with the observed masses being due to the Higgs mechanism.
Shouldn't we be sure we can say this and be consistent? If not, then how do
we deal with this question in the standard model? Jack points out that in a
later post that we don't even know what electric charge is. This is true, but
to be fair how much do we really know about any of the terms we use to
describe reality. Mass, spin etc. To me this sounds like a philosophic
question, not a question we should be dealing with when we talk physics.

Finally we do have zero rest mass particles which carry color
charge (they are confined by this force) and we did not question a massless
neutrino with weak charge. Now we strongly suspect that neutrinos are not
massless. So perhaps we can redefine the question, must all zero mass charged
particles be confined, as Jack suspects? This may be worth thinking about
too.

Bob Zannelli
New York