Re: Whence Degeneracy Pressure?

[Larry Smith <larry.smith@SNOW.EDU>]

At 6:23 AM -0800 1/30/02, John Mallinckrodt wrote:
> Jack U. gave what may well be the appropriate technical
> answer--that there is no force term corresponding to degeneracy
> pressure in the Hamiltonian, that it arises purely from the
> properties of the wave function.  It seems to me, however, that if
> this *is* the only way to understand why it is not considered a
> force, then we will have to content ourselves with not really
> being able to explain that fact in any appreciable way to
> nonphysicists.  I'm only a little dismayed by this possibility.
> Frankly, it has always seemed to me that it is even harder to
> explain why the weak part of the electroweak force *is* considered
> a force.

Somebody (who was it?) said if we (the physics community) can't explain
something in simple terms then we (the physics community) don't really
understand it.

Larry