Rosa Khatskelevich: I want to introduce you to Igor Ivanov - that's what Ilya and I talked about for so long. And... a few rules. Igor immediately told us, when we started organizing the lecture, that I don't want just people sitting in the hall, like soldiers, looking at me, listening and... leaving. I want the people who come into the room to interrupt me and ask me questions in places where they think it's appropriate.

We really liked this idea, but now, when we see that so many people have come to the hall, we think: “How can we do this?” And so we decided to let things go. That is, Igor will speak, we still expect questions from you that will interrupt his speech, but if it turns out that there are so many questions, and Igor will not be able to continue his speech, then we reserve the right to somehow streamline this spontaneous process. That is, we will say: “Guys, that's it. All questions. Let Igor tell us everything he wants, and after the lecture, then, please, answer - I don’t know how long we can be here? - until the night will answer your questions.

Do you agree? We really want you to be active, we really want you to be interesting today, and we are almost sure - or even quite sure - that this will be the case. Please, let's start.

Igor Ivanov: Thanks a lot. I am really very pleased to see you all in this room, almost full. (Can you hear me well? Good. Here. Can you see the picture? Don't turn off the light? Can you turn it off? That's better, right?)

In fact, here is what I will show on the slides - there will be very little, there will be such, the main statements. But basically this lecture is like this, hand-waving: watch your hands, I will show you everything on my fingers. Here.

First, I will tell you, well, as it were, the ideas that exist in modern physics, which studies what happens inside atomic nuclei and even deeper - inside the particles, and then, at the very end, I will show a few slides about the experiment, which physicists have been waiting for years. This experiment has already begun to be pieced together, piece by piece already 10 years ago, and next year it will be launched. Now the elements of the largest experimental facility in the world are being prepared - this is the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. And this experiment, which will be launched next year, will answer many questions and, in fact, will push physics to develop further. Therefore, I will show several slides, technical, experimental, and, here, about this experiment. Well then, let's go.

How does a proton live?

You have gathered here, and since you have gathered, it means that you are interested in physics. Probably, you have read some popular science books or articles, and therefore you know a little about the structure of the world. If the first two or three minutes seem familiar to you, it's okay, because I'll start with simple things. But be careful, because quickly enough I will move on to things that are not talked about in school. But they are quite simple, so I also want to talk about them. (Questions, if any, ask.)

So, let's start with the simplest things that probably everyone knows, well, or almost everyone knows. That's all that is around us - a chandelier, for example, the floor, air - all this consists of molecules. Molecules are made up of atoms. You know all this very well, this is probably even passed in the middle or primary grades of the school. There are a lot of molecules in the world. I do not know how many chemists have synthesized substances - I think that millions. And each substance is special because it has its own special molecule. These millions of different molecules are actually constructed from atoms, which are not so many. You, too, probably know the periodic system: a little more than a hundred atoms have been discovered there now, hundreds of elements. In nature, even less is actually found.

So, from this small number of atoms, you can combine to create a lot of different molecules. Atoms - well, you know this well too - are not elementary: they consist of a compact nucleus, which is there, in the center, it is very heavy, and electron shells that sit. (I'm telling you these simple things now just to introduce words. Then these words will be important.) And, in the end, that nucleus that sits inside each atom, which is very small compared to the atom, but very heavy, - it is also not elementary: it consists of protons and neutrons. You also know this very well.

This is all done at school, and it would seem that these are all very simple things, but in fact, this situation can be looked at from a slightly different angle, which is usually not paid attention to. I will put it this way: in all these situations that we have here - molecules, atoms and nuclei - everywhere the principle that I called the "principle of combination" works.

What it is? Let me explain. In fact, the idea is very simple, even too simple at first glance. She says that more complex and heavier objects can be obtained from simpler ones simply by attaching some additional pieces. The heavier the object, the more pieces it has. And so the complication of the object is inevitably associated with an increase in the number of pieces. This also works in ordinary molecules (you can imagine what molecules are - they are very small, but if you put them together, you get large ones, and there are completely gigantic molecules consisting of a large number of atoms). The same thing works in atoms and in atomic nuclei (there are very small nuclei; for example, an alpha particle is a very small nucleus, but if you add additional protons and neutrons to it, you get heavy nuclei as a result).

It would seem, why talk about it so much? It's all elementary. It would seem, how could it be otherwise? It's so obvious. So, when we plunge into the depths of the proton, it will be completely different there. It won't work there.

But that will be in five minutes, but for now let's see what physics has got to the bottom of now.

Perhaps you also know this picture, at least in the 11th grade in physics they pass it. Modern physics "climbed" into the very depths of matter. It's not as simple as it might seem, because small particles - you can't feel them with your fingers, and with the help of small tongs you can't take them either, and you can't see them with the help of light. As a result, physicists have been trying for a long time to figure out how to “look” inside some particles, and found out that the easiest way is to simply push them against each other.

Now these experiments are being carried out in different centers of the world - these are accelerators that accelerate particles and collide them with each other. If there are questions, I will tell you the details later, and at the end I will also tell you a little about these experiments. For now, it is important for us to know that these experiments exist, that particles collide with each other, and when you consider the results of collisions, you simply understand what they consist of.

After analyzing all this - and these experiments began about 40 years ago - physicists quickly came to the conclusion that the proton is also not elementary. It also has a structure, and this structure is quite simple: there are three small compact objects called quarks...

I.I.: Wait, wait...

I.I.: It's clear. Can I answer right away?

I.I.: I readily believe that you can explain it. The fact is that, naturally, there will be a huge number of simplifications on all these slides, that is, in fact, from a scientific point of view, there are many inaccuracies. But since this lecture is unscientific, I simply omit these inaccuracies, I do not discuss them.

I.I.: So you think it's all wrong?

I.I.: So. Well, let's continue, and then we can discuss ...

Actually, I just want to say this: that this topic is quite dangerous, because there are many people who are not well versed in this topic. Actually, seriously. Simply, indeed, in science there are several subtle points around which there are disputes. Nevertheless, there are experimental data - there are a lot of them - which are now commonly formulated in this form: there are three compact objects (just in case - in a resting proton), which are approximately surrounded by such ... something that surrounds them, which can be conditionally call it a "gluon cloud". Gluons are the particles that actually lead to the attraction of these quarks. And here, in fact, a very interesting thing is happening - moreover, I will even boldly say: a thing that humanity has never met before at all. These gluon forces are very unusual.

What happens is something like this. Again, with great simplifications, very briefly, but it looks something like this. The forces that attract quarks suddenly cease to be just forces - they materialize. That is, relatively speaking, they fall out in the form of sediment, envelop these quarks and are next to them. Can you imagine? That is, there are not just some particles connected by forces, but these fields that connect them suddenly begin to take on a life of their own. They have a material essence.

For example, they weigh - they have mass. And they cease to be just "servants" of these quarks, they do not just attract them - they begin to attract themselves, for example. That is, different parts of the gluon cloud, which is schematically drawn here, also feel each other and do not allow this cloud to expand, they hold it back. It is thanks to this that it turns out that our proton (after all, it is all a proton, in fact) is quite compact.

Due to this, it turns out that the quark cannot fly very far. So you imagine that this is not just a cloud, and there quarks are a cloud that is generated by quarks. That is, at first the quarks begin to attract, and then this force, which holds them back, precipitates, as it were, condenses. And imagine that if you now take these quarks and try to push them apart - in fact, such experiments are being carried out - I can literally say directly: they take it and knock on some quark with a click. These are just real experiments - of course, they don’t use a finger as a click, but some kind of electron: they accelerate an electron with great energy - boom! - right on the quark. The quark tries to fly away as much as it has strength, but it cannot fly away from the gluon cloud: it generates this cloud itself. As a result, it turns out that the gluon cloud tries to stretch, it swells, swells, becomes heavier, and as a result, it all falls apart into particles. A quark just can't get out of this - this is one of the manifestations of the unusualness of gluon forces.

In fact, it will be even more interesting further. Thanks to this, it turns out that - remember the principle of combination, which worked perfectly in atomic nuclei? it worked in atoms and molecules - well, it doesn't work in the proton at all. What does it look like? Let's imagine, for example, by analogy with the atomic nucleus. Let there be a proton, which consists of quarks. Let's add a few more quarks to it - 9, 12, whatever. We want to get some one big and thick mega-proton. You can try to do this experimentally - in fact, there are no difficulties. Experiments were carried out, and what happens? It turns out that these additional quarks do not want to go inside. We try to shove them in, but they don't want to climb in - they want to isolate themselves. This is a complex transition that physicists do not fully understand now. In details, this, of course, is somehow calculated, theoretically or numerically, but, unfortunately, there is no such general understandable picture yet. But the result is such that it is not possible to combine many quarks together.

It would seem, okay - no, so no, let's try to study what is. We begin to study particles and suddenly we see that in fact there are heavy analogues of the proton. There is a proton, and there are other particles - I have listed several of them here, which are experimentally discovered, experimentally studied - they are all very similar to the proton. There are about ten of them; maybe almost two dozen are now open. And, what is most interesting, they have a large mass. That is, there are several particles with different masses - it keeps increasing, increasing...

Scientists are interested - how so? What then are these particles made of? They conducted experiments and found out that they all consist of the same three quarks. And there are three quarks, and there are three quarks. These quarks are all the same. Actually, I did not say - quarks have their own names, several different varieties, but all this is zoology - this is a classification of quarks, which does not say much about them. That's what's really interesting - this is their life: how they are connected with each other, interact - that's what I'm telling. You can read the classification somewhere, it's not important.

So, what does it turn out to be? It turns out that there are also three quarks in these particles, but the difference is that they sitting differently. They are located in some tricky form relative to each other, and move a little differently. If you think about it, this is also a very unusual thing, because, well, look, in ordinary everyday life, if you take and rearrange parts of, for example, a Rubik's cube, then you will not get anything new from it - some heavier object. And here it turns out exactly like this: if you somehow rearrange the quarks, then as a result the gluon cloud swells, and since it also weighs, the mass is more. That is, the combination principle is completely violated, but nevertheless there are heavier analogues of protons.

I don’t even know which example to give from ordinary life so that you feel how much it is ... ( From the audience: "Teapot with water".) Hmm... Well, well, let me tell you how a gluon cloud differs, for example, from water, and indeed from anything else. You see, there is no fixed number of particles in this gluon cloud, there is no law of conservation of the “cloud matter”. If you take and insolently pull out a piece of this cloud - this can also be done experimentally - then it will not disappear there at all. If you take and pull out half of the cloud, it will grow there again, because quarks cannot do without it - quarks spread these forces in different directions, and these forces then materialize. This is very important to feel that this is not just some kind of cloud of matter, but a self-healing structure that weighs, that acts on itself.

Question:And due to what it is restored?

It can be described like this. Let me tell you this in two minutes. There are forces that you know - electromagnetic forces. These are the forces of attraction between electric charges. And in a sense, they can be thought of as an exchange of particles - these particles are called "photons". Most importantly, photons do not interact with each other. If, say, there are a number of photons somewhere, and more photons are added there, then this will not affect those previous photons at all. This is called the "principle of superposition", in electrostatics, for example. The electric and magnetic fields just add up, and that's it. But with gluon fields, this does not work. If you increase the concentration of gluons, they tend to create even more gluons. Each gluon can give rise to more gluons, they can recombine, collide. As a result, if there are too few gluons in the cloud (for example, take a cloud and remove half of the cloud), then the remaining gluons will emit new ones, and they will settle around the proton so that everything is stable, stationary. This is a property that people did not know at all before.

So. Neither the principle of combination works here, nor even a normal point of view on where the mass comes from. Usually the mass is made up of a mass of some bricks. If we have three bricks, then the total mass of a pile of three bricks will be equal to three times the mass of one brick. In nuclear physics, when protons and neutrons are combined together, the mass of the nucleus is also approximately proportional to the number of nucleons, only there is a small binding energy. And everything inside the protons absolutely other.

In fact, physicists have calculated - compared theoretical calculations with experimental data - and calculated the mass of those quarks that sit there, these small compact objects. And it turned out that their mass is approximately 2% - only! - from the mass of the entire proton, can you imagine? Just imagine: there is a man, his mass is 60 kg, and only 1 kg in him is actually matter: all sorts of electrons, quarks - that is, what we actually call matter. And the remaining 59 are gluon clouds that neatly sit in each proton and neutron and weigh, weigh, and attract to the earth, and give inertia to the body. It's just interesting to imagine.

I also wanted to say the following about these particles. Here it turns out that the different arrangement of quarks relative to each other seems to generate an additional mass, regenerates the particle in a new way. From what comes to my mind, I can suggest you think of them as transformer robots - you know, there are such in cartoons. So they rearranged, twisted somehow, and something completely new turned out, and it seems to have turned out even more. Here something similar happens, only this is not some fictional transformer robot, but this is what really exists in our world, in each of us. In every molecule, atom, all this is realized. It turns out - and this is an important statement - that practically the entire mass - at least more than 90 percent - in each proton, and indeed in the body, consists of a gluon cloud. Gluon cloud gives inertia.

The physicists themselves were a little surprised by all this, puzzled when they discovered it. I must say that it was not so abruptly open - it gradually cleared up, there were various experiments, numerical calculations, there were some simple models. At first they did not agree with each other a little, then they gradually began to build bridges between them, and all this gradually came to an understanding. And physicists thought: since such a picture, maybe it should be experimentally verified? This is a gluon cloud, because quarks - well, that's understandable, some kind of particles. But the gluon cloud is something new. And so they thought: how can these properties of the gluon cloud be studied?

In general, as I said, they are studied in this way: they take and collide particles, while they fly apart, something new can be born, there are detectors that capture everything, restore it. So, this method works great if you want to know, for example, what kind of energy is sitting in these quarks. It is in quarks, because they carry the bulk of the energy. But, unfortunately, this does not help to learn about the structure of the cloud. After all, this is not just some kind of gluon density - this is a new structure, which seems to have condensed itself and arose. I repeat once again - this is a very interesting object. This cloud must be explored in some other way.

And so physicists came up with a way: you also need to collide particles, also at high speed, with great energy, but you need to pay attention not to head-on collisions, when a bunch of everything is born, but to collisions, when they slightly touch each other - so here they pass, fly by and strike each other lightly. Then these quarks that fly here do not feel this collision - just think, they flew by and flew by. But here are the clouds that slightly touch each other - something tricky happens to them at that moment. They can be imagined as a lump of foam. Here two pieces of foam are flying, and at the moment when they touch each other, a piece of foam slips between them.

There's this object that's jumping around here - it's called a "pomeron." This is a very tricky object, and in fact, physicists are studying it right now. That is, literally, if you go to the conference now, probably half of the reports will be about the experimental or theoretical study of the pomeron. I want to emphasize again that this object is not just some kind of particle taken and exchanged, such as a photon. This is a very tricky object: it dynamically emerges, and it doesn't look like just a particle.

About ten years ago - now they have calmed down - people at conferences literally cursed with each other, because they all had different models of pomerons. There are simple models, there are complex models, and for some reason they did not converge with each other. Well, actually, some models were still quite clumsy. But nonetheless. It was such a period when people did not know what a pomeron was - at all. And they tried different ways to figure it out. It didn’t come to physical assault, but at least people were arguing with each other. Now they also swear, but for other reasons - they no longer swear about Pomeron, probably because they realized that it was already useless. There are experiments, especially in the last 10 years. Here in Hamburg there was an experiment that studied the properties of the pomeron very well, and now at least a little about it is clear.

So, the pomeron is the object that appears when we try to pull a piece of the gluon cloud out of the proton. This object has to go somewhere. For example, he can jump from one particle to another. In the process of jumping, it exists on its own. You see: it is not linked to any quarks there, but seems to be localized in space, as if it lives on its own. And there are even suggestions that he can live separately. If you hit a proton, then under certain conditions, a pomeron can escape, fly off and live there on its own for some time, without any quarks. It's actually quite interesting to imagine.

That is, what used to be just a force, now it materialized and even broke away from its parent quarks and sits in space. People have been looking for such objects for a long time, but, unfortunately, they have not found them. They are called "glueballs" - from the words "glue" and "ball", that is, "a piece of glue." "Gluons" is from the word "glue", which seems to glue these quarks together. That is, in principle, the existence of this piece of the gluon field separately is possible, but, unfortunately, it has not yet been found experimentally. Maybe this is not there, or maybe there is - it is not clear, it needs to be studied.

Well, physicists, of course, have come up with all this - especially theorists - and they say: that's cool, now you can explore the pomeron in this way. But for experimenters, in fact, it is very difficult. Because when two protons fly by, slightly striking at each other, then there is no strong collision between them. The proton is deflected quite a bit - less than a degree.

Question:When two protons pass, quarks - they also have mass, right? Will they also interact with each other?

Yes, let me repeat it again. When you slam protons into each other, you actually can't even control how they collide - how they collide, so they collide. That is, you can do anything with it. There can be a hard head-on collision where one quark collides with another; they scatter, and it turns out something unimaginable. There are collisions when two quarks from one proton and two quarks from another proton collide independently - this can also happen. And this is usually what happens - it's called "hard collisions", when a bunch of everything is born with a lot of energy. But in these collisions, you can't study the pomeron - this piece of cloud, it's hard to study. Therefore, physicists do this: they push everything together. Here at this collider, protons will collide 40 million times per second for several years. They will collect all these collisions, and then they will look for those that, for example, are of this type or another type.

That is, in fact, quarks interact - everything interacts. It turns out all sorts of variety in this case, but then, when physicists try to figure it out, they pull out exactly what they need.

Question:How did they manage to see all these quarks, gluon clouds, and so on? Has this been experimentally proven?

Yes. Here is such an experiment by Rutherford, in 1905. Then the atoms were discovered, but they did not yet know their structure - they simply knew that there were electrons in some form. So, he did this experiment.

He took some particles - alpha particles - and let them through the atom. He had such a thin gold foil, he shot particles right at this foil and looked at what angle they deflected. So, we believe in classical physics, but then there was classical physics; this classical physics predicts the law by which particles will be deflected by electrical attraction or repulsion as they fly past each other. This law clearly predicts what the scattering pattern will be (this is called scattering - when particles deviate in different directions) depending on the specific model of the atom, depending on the specific device. For example, if the atom is "loose", then they will fly mostly forward and deviate by a small angle. If the atom, as it turned out, has a very small and compact nucleus in the center, then the picture will be completely different. That is, what experimenters see - they see at what angle the particles scattered, and after that, using the laws of classical electrodynamics, they restore the structure of this atom.

From the point of view of the experiment, the proton is almost the same. The only thing is that there, of course, the formulas are more complicated. But specifically, quarks are best seen in this way: if you push two protons together, then, depending on the energy, you get different pictures. If the energy of the protons is small, then the protons simply scatter, and that's it. If the energy is just a little more - say, if the speed is close to the speed of light, but not very close - then the result is that you can create a couple of particles. All this has been studied, but it is difficult to determine the structure of the proton in this way. You can define its properties and how they interact with each other. In order to see a small structure, it is necessary to disperse the particles more and more, simply because, as in a microscope, ever smaller distances become visible.

When you collide particles with each other - well, protons - with an energy that is 50-100 times higher than their rest energy, it turns out that these quarks can collide and scatter sharply. When they scatter, the result is a jet. This jet is a stream of particles that goes roughly in the direction of the original quarks. That is, quarks fly, knock, scatter, and as a result, in the experiment, we see the flow of particles in this direction, the flow of particles in this direction. By no means other than assuming that there is a compact little object there that came very close and pushed very hard, we can't describe it. That is, maybe some people can completely rewrite all of physics, but, unfortunately, there is no such other theory yet.

But there are various other ways to determine the presence of quarks in a proton. For example, if a proton is motionless, then it has static properties, that is, the properties of a motionless proton - well, mass, this is understandable; it can have spin, spin is a quantum thing; it has a magnetic moment. It has several characteristics that can be experimentally measured with high accuracy, not only in the proton, but also in other particles of this type. It turns out that if we apply this simple quark model to a stationary proton, then it seems to be very similar to what we actually observe in reality.

Well, there are also the third and fourth types of experiments, and so on...

In fact, these quarks - here, of course, everything is subtle, because the quarks that are in a stationary proton are one quarks, and the quarks that are in a fast moving proton are already completely different objects. This is all very difficult, but you do not pay attention to it. Just believe that in fact, from different experiments, such a picture is formed that there are compact particles that are connected by different forces. And it's all immersed in a gluon cloud. Some other picture that just as well describes the experimental data, which, unfortunately, is not very much. Unfortunately - because it would be interesting if a completely different picture would turn out, which would describe this case just as well.

Question:A proton is visible from afar as a magnetic moment and an electric charge. If you get very close, then maybe these quarks that make it up also have their own magnetic moments? From afar, this structure looks like an eggplant, and if you look closer, they appear to be covered with needles, like a cactus.

In fact, this is a reformulation of what I said. There is a proton, which we used to see as a proton, some kind of particle in the nucleus, and then, when the experiments were carried out and looked inside, we saw some kind of fine structure. The next question is, does a quark have a fine structure? Experiments at the highest energies so far say that this structure is not visible. Maybe it is there, but it is not yet visible. Well, theorists, of course, are much more inventive, they have already come up with a bunch of models.

Recently I saw one article - there will be such a particle, the Higgs boson, an interesting particle, everyone is talking about it - and so, a normal scientific article, but it is not quite ordinary: there is nothing of its own. This is an article that simply lists 200 references to various research groups that have predicted such a mass, such a mass, such ... The result is that no matter which one is discovered, something will already be. That is, theorists will come up with hundreds of models with varying degrees of correctness. The final answer, of course, lies with experiment.

Self-Emerging Phenomena

“Self-arising phenomena are phenomena that were not originally laid down, but arose by themselves. Found everywhere in physics. Terribly interesting phenomenon!

I have finished this part, but now I want to make a small pause, such a small digression. It seems to me that it is useful now to talk about that phenomenon of the emergence of mass as if from nothing in a broad context. Because it's a pretty simple thing, but very important in physics. In my opinion, this is one of the main discoveries in theoretical physics. The discovery is that there are phenomena that can occur on their own, they do not need to be initially laid in some details, bricks and formulas. They will arise on their own exactly in the form in which we see them in nature. This is the most amazing thing. What I was talking about before is actually the mass (well, of a proton, for example), which arose at 90% spontaneously, by her own. This type of self-arising phenomenon is found everywhere in physics.

Let's take an example from a completely different area. There is such a thing as superconductivity. Maybe you even know. Superconductivity is when a body completely loses electrical resistance, current can flow through it without any resistance at all. If the superconductor is closed in a circle and a current is passed through it, without any voltage, then it will spin for hours, days, years - such experiments have been done. It does not fade, it spins, spins... This is called superconductivity. This phenomenon, of course, is remarkable, and physicists have tried to figure out how it arises.

If it is completely naive to approach the understanding of nature, then we can say: since this phenomenon exists in such a substance, let's divide it into atoms and delve into each atom or each molecule, try to find the origin - something that gives it superconductivity. Of course, you can do it: cut it into atoms, pulverize it, study individual atoms - theoretically, experimentally, whatever. And you won't see anything there! There will not be the slightest hint of superconductivity, because superconductivity knows nothing - almost nothing - about atoms, and atoms know nothing - almost nothing - about superconductivity.

If you take one atom, then there will be no superconductivity in it, there will simply be an atom, and that's it. If two, three atoms - the same. Well, it will turn out to be some kind of small molecule. If you take a lot of atoms, then suddenly it arises. Well, of course, not suddenly, not abruptly - it comes through smoothly, it is like a flower rising from a bud when you take many, many atoms. But such phenomena arise on their own, simply due to the fact that the particles interact. They didn't have to be built in the first place.

I'll tell you a story. When I was a child - I didn’t have computer games then - I loved to fantasize. I invented all sorts of virtual worlds for myself, and since there were no computers, I drew them. He came up with a planet and decided: let there be animals on it, drew the zoology of this planet. Then I thought further: let it have its own chemistry. This, of course, is nonsense, because we understand that the chemistry is the same throughout the Universe, and the chemical elements are the same everywhere. But I wanted to dream up, and I drew a periodic system of elements named after Ivanov and simply populated it with new elements. I looked at the world around me and thought: what would I come up with? I decided that, for example, the elements of such and such a series would be magnetic. That is, I decided that inside the atom there would be such a small magnet, special, which leads to magnetism if a substance is created from this element.

This is also a very naive view of things, because it focuses on the fact that if there is magnetism (more precisely, in physics it is called "ferromagnetism" - that a magnet attracts metal things), then it must remain, even if we cut it into pieces. individual atoms. That is, if, literally, we take individual atoms, then iron, which, as we know, is ferromagnetic, must be somehow so different from all, since it has such strong magnetism.

In fact, magnetism - ferromagnetism - has long been studied, and it turns out that ferromagnetism in iron arises precisely because of the interaction. There is nothing so special, specific in the atoms of iron - precisely in atoms - there is nothing. All this arises after you put a lot of these atoms and take into account how they interact with each other - that's where the trick turns out - and take a large volume, and then the difference between iron and other elements will gradually appear. Of course, there are other substances that magnetize, but iron is the most famous.

I also want to say that this thing arises not only in physics, its various areas. In mathematics there are self-arising phenomena, in economics there are self-arising phenomena, even in biology they are. If desired, much can be interpreted as a self-arising phenomenon - a phenomenon that arises due to interaction.

Actually, it's terribly interesting, because how does a theoretical physicist actually work with this? When he wants to investigate some object, he knows something about it - for example, when he investigates matter, he knows that matter is composed of atoms. He writes equations: there are atoms and the forces of interaction between them - this is, as it were, the initial data. It's very simple and you can't see anything in them. But then he tries to solve these equations. As in school, only these equations are very difficult to solve, because they are very confused with each other. However, we are still trying to figure it out. And when we start solving them, some formulas appear, and that's where it all suddenly comes through. And this is a very bewitching sight, because you did not initially lay down anything, but some phenomenon that you see in our world is suddenly born of formulas by itself. It's very impressive when you see it for real.

Higgs field

“Another source of mass: The entire universe is filled with an invisible Higgs field. Particles "cling" to it and become massive. At the LHC collider, they will study exactly how this field arises.”

The source of mass that I spoke about - the mass of the proton - is actually only one of the possible ones. In reality, at least two operate in nature - maybe more, we do not know. The second source of mass gives mass to light particles such as electrons, quarks, etc. And this is a completely different mechanism, and the theory that describes it is also completely different. This theory has not yet been fully tested, but many of its predictions have already come true, and it will be very actively investigated at this big, huge collider, this big experiment.

Briefly, this is the theory. In fact, there are many details, strictly mathematical theorems, but the main statement is this. Initially, all particles - quarks, electrons, and so on - were absolutely massless. This means that, for example, a swarm of electrons is flying, a small force acted on it, and it flew off somewhere sideways. That is, these are particles that have practically no inertia, they easily fly away somewhere sideways under the influence of small forces. Then, due to some mechanism, some peculiarities - all this is also being studied - some invisible Higgs field fills the entire Universe. "Higgs" - from the name of the English scientist Peter Higgs, who invented this thing, an English scientist, it's all called after him.

This field evenly fills the entire Universe, it is not visible, because all particles move through it. But when they move through it, they are a little bit behind it. cling. It's hard to imagine, but believe me, in a sense they cling to him. This means that the field prevents the particles from accelerating too fast. Particles flew by, some force acted on them, they tried to fly away, but the field interferes with them. As a result, of course, they fly away, but somehow reluctantly, as if they have additional inertia, as if they simply do not want to move. As a result, in the formulas it looks like they have a mass. This is a completely different type of mass appearance. Here there is no initial energy, which, as it were, condenses. There is simply movement through some medium that we do not see, but this medium has an effect, namely, it gives mass to these particles.

There are many details in this mechanism, I will not tell them, but I want you to feel this mechanism. To do this, I will tell you an analogy that you can even make at home, just a real experiment. Take a piece of Styrofoam and crush it. When it crumbles into small pieces, small foam balls are obtained. He is very light. You can crumble them on the table and blow on them - they will scatter. This is an analogy for massless particles - that is, particles that have very little inertia.

Now carefully pour water on the table and crumble the foam on top. Wait for it to get a little wet and blow on it again. You will see that the balls float away, but somehow reluctantly. If we did not see this water, it would seem to us that they had some kind of strange inertness that did not exist before. This inertia arises from the fact that when moving they have to wade through the medium. In this case - through the water, but in reality - through the Higgs field.

Question:Where does the Higgs field even come from?

This is a tricky thing, really, where it comes from. When you construct models of the microcosm, you introduce things that are still unclear - whether they come from somewhere or not. Then it may become clear. Let us say, it may turn out that it is indeed taken inevitably from some deeper theory. There have been examples in the history of physics at one time when something was postulated and then deduced from a deeper theory. What will happen to the Higgs field is not yet clear. I emphasize that this has not yet been proven. That is, this theory, which is already considered generally accepted, seems to work by indirect manifestations, but in order to finally prove it, it is necessary to conduct an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider and find this particle - the Higgs boson, the particle for which people want to receive the Nobel Prize. award (and, most likely, will receive).

Question:It turns out that when passing through the Higgs field, the particles do not lose energy?

It is important to understand the difference between the Higgs field and my water analogy: the Higgs field interferes accelerate and water makes it difficult to move. You can safely fly through the Higgs field at a constant speed, and it will not interfere; it stops you from accelerating. Indeed, there are such examples from ordinary life when some kind of force arises that prevents acceleration.

Different particles cling to this Higgs field in different ways: some stronger, some weaker. Some particles don't stick at all. For example, electromagnetic waves and light do not cling, so they are obtained without mass. Those particles that cling very strongly become very massive.

Question:I would like to clarify: is the Higgs field the only thing that endows particles with massiveness and inertia, or are there other reasons for this?

I have already said that this is the second mechanism, and there was also the first one, according to which protons became massive. The fact that protons became massive has nothing to do with the Higgs field. One can imagine a world in which there would be no Higgs field at all. Then electrons would be massless, quarks would be massless, and protons would be as massive as they weigh in our world, because this is a completely different mechanism.

The first mechanism is described by the condensation of a gluon cloud. Pretty complicated mathematically, but the gist is something like this. It is described here as a kind of field through which one has to wade. There are also other mechanisms - most likely, there are, but I won't talk about them.

Question:It turns out that there are two mechanisms for the emergence of mass. Does the Higgs field affect the gluon cloud?

The Higgs field does not act directly on gluons. But this must be said carefully, because it does not act on gluons like particles, but it acts on the condensate. It is not simple. There are many subtleties, but, to put it simply, it does not act directly on the gluon field. And yet, due to virtual amendments, it is connected with it.

Question:I think you can explain the speed of light in terms of the Higgs field. Since the Higgs field provides mass to the body, then it turns out that its energy divided by the speed of light is mass? There must be some effect of the Higgs field on the light, otherwise it would not have energy.

These things are not related. There is such a term from the history of physics - ether. "Light-bearing ether". This is a kind of postulated medium whose vibrations are electromagnetic waves. It was thought so more than a hundred years ago. In fact, it is now believed that this ether is completely optional, the modern theory of electromagnetic phenomena does without it.

The Higgs field may seem a bit like aether, because it also permeates the entire universe. In fact, it does not have the properties needed for ether. It, for example, does not affect photons at all. Photons just go on and on, they don't care. And this can be easily understood, well, not to understand - it's just an experimental fact. The fact that we see very distant quasars, the light from which has been coming to us for 10 billion years, means that nothing has happened to photons during this time. Otherwise, they would somehow be distributed, smeared, and we see a clear image of these quasars. And during all this time, the light actually travels through the Higgs field. Well, if, of course, this theory is correct - and it is 99% correct.

That is, in fact, these are two different phenomena - electromagnetic waves and the Higgs field - which are not related to each other.

LHC collider device

Now some pictures.

A collider is a colliding particle accelerator. There, particles accelerate along two rings and collide with each other. This is the largest experimental facility in the world, because the length of this ring - the tunnel - is 27 km. That is, he still needs to fit into the mountains. It is located on the border of Switzerland and France, the Alps begin there, Mont Blanc is visible from this place, and on the other hand there are other mountains, so you still need to carefully fit into these tectonic layers so that everything is fine. Actually, this picture is not to scale, because the diameter is almost 9 km, and the depth there is 100 m. Nevertheless, it roughly gives the big picture.

There is a ring along which particles fly. They are accelerated, accelerated - there are special accelerating sections. They are dispersed to terrible energies, and then pushed. They push them in certain places, around which there are sensitive sensors. These are very large sensors, they are called “detectors”, I will show them later.

The LHC will accelerate these protons to eerie energies. Just imagine: particles fly through a vacuum tube, it is literally a few centimeters in diameter and stretches for 27 km in different directions, along the perimeter. The particles that fly there - they are corrected by magnetic and electric fields - are separate clots, like needles. They are very thin, less than a human hair thick and have a length of several centimeters or several tens of centimeters. They fly at such a terrible speed that the energy is great. If we take all the energy of these particles, it will be approximately like the energy of a jet aircraft in motion. It would seem that some kind of trifle: if all these particles and protons are collected and put, then you will not see anything, because there are very few of them, there will be one nanogram. But when they are accelerated to such energies, if they hit somewhere, they will not only destroy everything - they will travel for many kilometers.

This is what the tunnel looks like inside. There is some person inside here - a worker or a physicist, I don't know. The tunnel is not very spacious, of course. There is a vacuum tube here, which is furnished with a bunch of equipment, because, firstly, the beam must be monitored, it must be controlled. Then, all this happens at very low temperatures: there are only 2 degrees Kelvin, because you need the helium to be in a superfluid state. The result is such a thick bandura into which everything is stuffed. And it all stretches for 27 km. This is not just some kind of piece of iron - it is a fairly accurate technique. Say, when these sections are compared with each other, they are aligned in height with micron accuracy. It's not easy to take and attach a piece of pipe to another piece. This installation is very long, so as you can see, people are not moving on foot. Imagine, in order to get to the other end of your experimental facility, you need to do a rather big bike ride. Sometimes they drive small cars, especially when they bring some parts.

Here is an example of what a section looks like. It's just one of the sections with its own specific function. Here you can’t even tell right away where the pipe from where the beam flies. In fact, there are such yellowish beams here (of course, everything is unrealistic), they fly through these pipes. But then these pipes are already furnished with magnets, insulation sections, and so on. So everything is complicated and it is very expensive.

Here is a typical view of the detector. This is the ATLAS detector that will work at the LHC. Do you think it's big or small? It's big because the people here are drawn to scale. Imagine, it is the size of a 4-5-storey building. All this bandura is lowered into the shaft - not completely, but in pieces - it is mounted there ... In fact, ATLAS has already been practically mounted and it really works. True, he is now investigating not the collision of beams, but cosmic rays. Rays come from outer space, they also leave a trace in the detector, he just checks them - indeed, everything works as it should. The most important thing is that it’s not just pieces of iron that are instructed here - it’s all a very complex technique. It is literally stuffed with electronics, and the substance that is used here is very rare and complex. If you imagine - it is incomprehensible to the mind how much all this costs. In fact, not one group, of course, created this - several thousand people worked on this for several years.

Question:How many ATLAS detectors will be installed in these colliders?

ATLAS is a proper name, this is the name of this particular detector. As for detectors in general, here it is shown: there will be two large detectors that are designed for everything in the world - ATLAS and CMS (these are such huge banduras), plus two smaller detectors - ALICE and LHCb. Well, and a few other very small ones. That is, in reality, there will be seven experiments, but there are two such large ones.

I'll tell you in a minute how it's all done. You come to some research group - to the south of Italy, for example. There people are engaged in physics, there is a small group - two people plus three students who also really work for ATLAS. What does their specific work look like? They have a laboratory, and there they created, assembled, tested, connected some small piece, for example, for this corner. They carefully study it - a year, maybe two. You need to fully understand how this device works, so that later, when everything is connected, everything will be tip-top. Students on this defend a term paper or a diploma, and so on.

Then, when all these things have been researched and completed in literally dozens, maybe even hundreds of laboratories around the world, all this is collected in one place, and then large parts are collected. Here, for example, here in the center is a very important central detector, it is assembled in one place. Elsewhere they pick up pieces for these, and so forth. After all this has been collected, they are all brought to CERN, where this installation is located, lowered into the mines and assembled on the spot. So it's very hard work.

See this central detector, which, as I said, is very important? It looks very small, but in reality it is the size of a human. Here is a picture. Here a man sits and assembles the last parts for this large (in this scale) central detector. It's a cylinder crammed full of sophisticated electronics. Here's a slight zoom in, just to show how many wires go there. And for each wire there will be a signal that such and such a particle flew here, left so much charge, and so on. When all this is analyzed together - from tens, hundreds of thousands of wires - it's all together and gives a picture of what happened.

And here is an example of a substance that was created specifically for elementary particle physics experiments (not in this LHC experiment, but earlier). This is an airgel that is sometimes referred to as "solid smoke". This is a substance that is very light and quite fragile, moreover, it is lighter than foam. It is only several times heavier than air, weightless, translucent. Its peculiarity is that its refractive index is one that does not exist in any substance in nature - 1.05. For some reason, this does not exist in nature. Or like water - 1.3, or like gases - 1.00002. But there was no such substance, and it had to be created. Because with the help of this piece it is very convenient to measure the speed of the particle.

And here is how it will look like - of course, modeling - the decay of the particle that we are catching (the Higgs boson). I said that collisions happen very often, billions, trillions of data come in. If you sort through them with a computer, sometimes such events occur. Each such picture is called an event. Well, what do you see here? This is a simulated end view of the CMS detector. Here you can see that there are particles that scattered like that, there are particles that flew up to here and released a lot of energy, and there are those that fly small. This is how the birth and decay of the Higgs boson will look like; people will hunt for such events.

Events will not always be so simple, sometimes they will be complex. Another collision is shown here: not a proton against a proton, but a collision of two nuclei in the ALICE detector (this is also a simulation). Imagine: two lead nuclei collided, they already have 400 particles together, and even a bunch was born, and these thousands of particles scatter in different directions from one point. The detector should not just look and say: “Oh, how many particles!” He must measure all these trajectories, count the number of particles, their energies, sum it all up and understand how these particles flew apart. That is, at the very first moment, when they just collided, how it all began to move. All this is required, and therefore they create such a complex technique.

You and I know that there are two mechanisms for the emergence of mass, about which we know for sure that they exist. However, this is not the end of the story, because it is possible that there are other ways to generate mass. What we see as a massive body can actually get its mass from very different mechanisms.

This large collider will provide not only answers to questions that have been tormenting physicists for many years, because theorists no longer know what to invent, because too many options have accumulated, it is necessary that nature answers them. It will also open a new road to further theories. Physicists will understand where to go next and what to develop.

Questions after the lecture

Question: That was said about the Higgs boson. The Higgs field... Are the... Higgs boson interrelated - is it... what exactly is of interest to...?

I forgot to really say. So, look. The Higgs boson is a fluctuation of this Higgs field, it's a whole new type of particle. But it can also be illustrated - this is the analogy with water. Remember, I said: Styrofoam on the table and some water. When you blow on this water, you not only see that the particles themselves floated somewhere, but sometimes, especially if you blow hard on the water, you will see waves on the surface of the water that scatter. So, waves are vibrations of the medium that holds back the particles. Do you understand? And their presence is an important proof that there really is some kind of environment. So, the Higgs boson is also an oscillation of the Higgs field. In order to give birth to it, it is necessary to collide with high speed, with high energy of the particle. And that's why it needs to be opened. If it is not opened, then, in fact, it means that this theory is wrong.

Question:What is the mass estimate for the Higgs boson?

But this is the most difficult thing. Because, I say, different models predict completely different things. Some do not predict anything at all. Some predict. There are experimental restrictions - well, some, not very important. The problem is that it is not yet clear what mass it has.

Question:You talked about the Higgs mechanism for the emergence of mass. It is clear why the particles become inert, but it is not clear why they should be attracted to each other if they have mass in this way? Well, I mean, gravitationally. Where does gravity come from then?

It's clear. So, look. Let's do it. The Higgs mechanism is not directly related to gravity. Gravity, to be quite precise, does not occur between masses - in the Newtonian case it occurs between masses, but in the theory of relativity, in the general theory of relativity, it occurs between objects that have energy. Do you understand? So, if you have a massless particle, but it flies somewhere, then it also has energy. And, in principle, it also attracts. It's just that when a particle has mass, it can be stopped, and then only mass will remain of its energy. But this is a special case. In fact, gravity exists between massless particles as well. The Higgs mechanism just shows it differently, but gravity is there.

Question:You said that the neutron and the proton, especially the proton, are made up of three quarks that generate the gluon field. And how did they calculate the number of quarks in a neutron and a proton, and in general - how can one check their existence experimentally, how can one prove it?

I will repeat now, I have already said in principle that if there weren’t any, if everything was filled with solid particles, then when particles collide, everything would fly apart somehow more or less isotropically. In different directions, but about the same. Experiments show that when you start colliding particles at high energies, the result is jets, jets that are very narrowly directed. Calculations show that they can only occur when you have small compact objects that fly apart and create jets. Their number is also related to experimental data - these are technical things, that is, they can also be restored.

Question:You said that protons differ only in the different arrangement of quarks...

Not protons, but there are many fellow protons - particles that look like protons. And all of them in this series differ from each other not in quantity, but only in the arrangement of quarks.

...and at the same time you also said that there are different quarks. That is, it also depends on the difference between quarks?

Yes, that is, there are simply quarks, say, heavy ones, which are heavy in themselves. They are unstable, but they live for a while. And from them, too, you can make an analogue of the proton. These particles are known, they are open, here, these are simply heavier particles - other quarks sit in them.

Question:I would like to ask, rather, not about the lecture itself, but the question as a whole. What other mechanisms are possible for the emergence of mass?

It's clear. Well, let me say a couple more. First, there is the superunification theory, which combines the three known forces - the weak, the strong, and the electromagnetic. All this happens at even smaller distances, where modern experiments do not reach at all so far. In modern theories that try to describe this, there is also an analogue of the Higgs field, only it is heavier. So, probably, there are particles that acquire their mass not due to this Higgs field, which is, as it were, “ours”, which will be studied at the LHC, but due to a heavier one. Well, it's probably the same mechanism, but there are such particles.

A completely different way is through superstring theory. There is such a fashionable theory of superstrings. There, string vibrations are not a Higgs field, not a concentration of energy - it's just a new mechanism for generating mass.

In general, I do not know how you imagine the mass. Maybe you think it's something special. In fact, if you write an equation, then this is just some kind of additional term that arises here. This term looks like a mass. We call it mass. That is, there is nothing particularly surprising in the fact that the mass appears in some way, no.

Question:You said that when the nuclei collide, they scatter into several hundred particles. They will scatter into quarks - and what else?

They scatter in different ways, depending on the energy. They can do a lot. But they will not scatter into quarks. The situation is like this. I have already said that you cannot just pull a quark out of a proton. If you try to do this, your gluon field will start to "swell", and at some point it will break - it's just energetically beneficial to break it like that. When it breaks, then a quark-antiquark pair is born at the break point (if you are a little familiar with the terminology). It turns out that they tried to tear off a quark from a proton - and it was not a quark that was pulled off, but a pi-meson (this is a particle consisting of a quark and an antiquark). When these particles are actually born in the process, it looks something like this: first, the first quarks collide, they try to fly apart. When they fly away for some distance, this cloud breaks, a “quark + antiquark” appears here and a “quark + antiquark” here, then breaks in different places. And after all this has been torn apart and the energy has already calmed down (because at first there was too much energy), then particles fly apart: pi-mesons, K-mesons, various hadrons, and so on.

Question:As a result, if we take the theory of the Higgs field, different particles have different masses?

And this is also incomprehensible. This question is not answered within this theory. Unfortunately, there are questions that this theory does not answer. Without this theory, we know that there are different particles with different masses. This theory says the same thing, only in other words: these particles cling to the field in different ways. But why they cling so much is completely unknown. Physicists hope that this will begin to clear up after they finally discover this Higgs boson, because there are many options out there, and they will begin to figure out, in fact, what kind of Higgs field is, what specific mechanism generates it in the entire Universe. But this is still an open question.

Question:Is the phenomenon of dualism related to the gluon cloud?

No, not related. Dualism - in the sense of wave-particle duality - simply arises in quantum mechanics, without any additional particles, without any gluons.

Question:String theory tries to explain not only how, but also why. But does the theory of the Higgs field explain why there is such a variety of particles?

No, no, of course it doesn't. This version of the Higgs theory (its official name is "electroweak theory with spontaneous breaking of electroweak forces") does not explain this. In fact, this is not an alternative to this string theory at all. These are theories that work "on different floors", let's say so. Superstring theory also says nothing so far about this Higgs mechanism.

Question:Can these theories overlap?

They do not intersect, they can follow one from the other. Superstring theory is formulated at very high energies. After everything is compactified, low energies are obtained. What will happen at low energies, the theory of superstrings cannot yet answer. Now, if she can bring out the Higgs field, then it will be a great success, but so far she cannot do this.

Question:You said that something from the Higgs theory has already been confirmed. What exactly?

It confirmed the following. There are particles that carry weak interactions: W- and Z-bosons. They have mass, and this mass is also generated by the Higgs mechanism. But unlike ordinary matter - electrons and quarks - there is no uncertainty there, everything is clearly defined in theory. That is, the theory can simply clearly calculate, for example, the ratio of the masses of these particles to each other. This value was calculated and predicted in the 70s. After that, they began to hunt experimentally for these W- and Z-bosons. They were discovered and their masses coincide with an accuracy of 1-2% with the prediction of this theory. Other models that give such good agreement are hard to imagine. But, in my opinion, they are, that is, in principle, there are still alternatives. This time. Second, particles that have not yet been discovered can be felt even if you cannot see them. In quantum mechanics, there are such virtual corrections - fluctuations of heavy particles, when heavy particles are not born, but appear in vacuum for a while, and then disappear again (but these are just words, in fact, you don’t need to imagine this picture visually). This mechanism affects the properties of particles and their scattering reactions - well, ordinary particles, for example, protons. These corrections, the corrective factors, were calculated within the framework of the Higgs theory, and they seem to agree with the experiment. That is, the Higgs boson has not yet been discovered, but it is, as it were, already indirectly felt.

Question:I've heard of a theory - maybe it's the superstring theory - that says that our universe is a pulsating wave and that, when magnified a lot, atoms are also made of these waves. Is it possible to nest the Universe in your version?

I can't say it's impossible, but I don't know of a really working theory.

Question:Are there accidents in the collider? Probably, there are huge radiations?

There are, yes. Rarely, but there are. They usually try to avoid them. One worker died during the construction of the LHC, he died due to a safety violation. In some mine, a load was lifted, which was not fixed. The worker was downstairs and just nailed it. They also say (I don’t know how much one can believe this) that a beam hit a person in the head. He got a hole through, but he still lived after that.

There are, of course, huge energies, and they really don't leave anything in the place where they go. That is, they can break through this channel easily. But this does not mean that they will blow everything to shreds, as they show in the films. In principle, this is possible, but how realistic it is - I do not know.

But there were just minor injuries, for example, when people forgot to turn off the magnetic field. When you pass by, and in your pocket, for example, a wrench, with such pressure, it simply flies out of your pocket and can hurt you.

Question:What prevents the particle "quark + antiquark" from simply annihilating?

Nothing prevents, they really annihilate. In fact, it depends on which particle to take. Here is the pi-null meson - it consists of a quark and the same antiquark. They can annihilate, and as a result, you get decay into photons. The pi meson actually decays into photons.

How do they know he existed?

There are particles that live long enough - for example, microseconds. For microseconds at the speed of light, they can fly quite a lot. They leave traces in the detecting equipment: you can just see that the particle was moving, and then split into two parts. It all looks real. And the pi-zero-meson lives very shortly, and therefore it does not have time to fly anywhere. Particles of this kind are restored according to the invariant mass, that is, the total energy of the decay products. If you have a particle - for example, a pi-null meson - that can decay into two photons, then you watch its reactions in some kind of collision. Not in one, but in many: just thousands of similar collisions. And plot the distribution over the total energy of these two photons. Usually the picture turns out like this: at different energies you get few photons, and at a certain energy you get a lot. It turns out such a peak. If we believe in quantum electrodynamics, quantum theory, then this happens only because a particle was formed, which decayed. This is how they recover.

Question:The idea was raised that quiet quarks and moving quarks are different things. Please explain how different they are. Are they really different things? Are these trivial differences - like an object at rest and a contracting moving object - or not?

No, these are more complex differences.

Does the invariance of the relativistic theory remain in this case? After all, everything must be consistent with the theory of relativity.

Everything is in agreement there. Now I will not venture to explain it at this level. This is a more complex connection. If you want, you can talk about this separately.

Question: I have a few clarifying questions.
1. Is LHC a pp or anti-pp collider?

Yes, this is pp, that is, the proton-proton collider. This is because it is very difficult to obtain antiprotons in such quantities. They do not exist in nature, they must be obtained. There are a lot of particles with a high concentration in the collider, they must be obtained very quickly.

2. You spoke about superconductivity and that this effect exists at large volumes. Is it true that there will be no superconductivity in nanoparticles in vacuum under the same conditions?

This is incomprehensible. In fact, I said that there is no limit below which it does not exist at all, and above it it is completely there. There is simply a phenomenon that gradually turns on as the particles increase.

3. We are trying to tear off a piece of the gluon cloud in the proton. You said that when a piece is torn off, the cloud grows. How does the proton know how much it needs to be increased?

There is no need to imagine gluons as if they are just sitting in their place and that's it. In fact, each gluon is not something so small, but sits immediately in the entire proton. They just interfere with each other, somehow in a tricky way. If you tear off a piece of the gluon cloud, all the particles will "feel" that something has happened, and will begin to multiply so as to fill everything.

Until when will they do this?

Until it fills everything. Here I can give a simpler analogy, with the Maxwell velocity distribution. If we take a gas in a calm state at room temperature and measure the velocities, then this will be the Maxwell distribution. And now let's remove high-energy particles (in principle, this can be done - not to remove them, but to slow them down dramatically). The result is such a distorted profile. What will the rest of the particles do? Will they move the same way? No: if you wait a while, then it will all even out, and again it will become the Maxwell distribution, well, maybe a little shifted. When interacting, incorrect, unstable states gradually turn into stable ones. Here is the same with the gluon cloud.

4. If gluons decide to multiply and fill the volume, does their total energy increase?

No, when one gluon emits another, the energy is shared between them.

That is, the number increases while conserving energy?

Quantum particles - they are: their number is not fixed, but the energy is yes .

Question:When we tear off a piece of the gluon cloud, we also take away some mass. After that, the cloud is restored. I can tear it off many times. Will it ever stop?

If you really tear off a piece, then you affect this proton. You can't just pick up and unhook a piece. By itself, the proton does not decay into an underproton and another piece of the gluon field, because they are attracted. If you want to take a piece of the goyuon cloud out of it, then you must somehow pull it. And at that moment you put additional energy into this proton. This energy is entirely spent on building up a new goyuon cloud. That is, you just need to carefully imagine how it really happens.

Question: Experimentally detected reverse processes - from gluon fields to quarks?

Yes, gluon fields can collide, and "quark + antiquark" pairs can be born.

Question:Can the Higgs field help explain the nature of dark energy?

Energy? Well, matter, of course, can help, but what about energy? This is a difficult thing. Again, I can't say it can't. But dark energy is still more obscure than dark matter. Dark energy must take into account the Higgs field. If someone undertakes to describe dark energy in some model, he must also take into account the energy density of the Higgs field. So far, I can't say anything more specific.

Question:How did different particles differ in theory, which had no mass before the Higgs field?

They didn't differ at all. The fact is that then - "then" this means just before the violation of this symmetry - there was complete symmetry between these particles. They looked the same. Three leptons are now known: the electron, the muon, and the tau lepton. They differ in mass. And then they were all massless and looked exactly the same. And then the symmetry was broken, masses appeared, and so on.

Question:If we can tear off pieces of the gluon cloud, can we have the same energy but no quarks inside?

Yes, it is theoretically possible. But experimentally, this has not yet been discovered, although they have been looking for 40 years. It's called a glueball.

Question:Could you write a list of good physics books for beginners?

Well, I won’t take on all physics, but on elementary particle physics and what is connected with the LHC, I may write a selection.

5. Light microscope, its main characteristics. Phase contrast, interference and ultraviolet microscopy.

6. Resolution of the microscope. Possibilities of light microscopy. The study of fixed cells.

7. Methods of autoradiography, cell cultures, differential centrifugation.

8. The method of electron microscopy, the variety of its possibilities. Plasma membrane, structural features and functions.

9. Surface apparatus of the cell.

11. Plant cell wall. Structure and functions - cell membranes of plants, animals and prokaryotes, comparison.

13. Organelles of the cytoplasm. Membrane organelles, their general characteristics and classification.

14. Eps granular and smooth. The structure and features of functioning in cells of the same type.

15. Golgi complex. Structure and functions.

16. Lysosomes, functional diversity, education.

17. Vacular apparatus of plant cells, components and features of organization.

18. Mitochondria. The structure and functions of the mitochondria of the cell.

19. Functions of cell mitochondria. ATP and its role in the cell.

20. Chloroplasts, ultrastructure, functions in connection with the process of photosynthesis.

21. Variety of plastids, possible ways of their interconversion.

23. Cytoskeleton. Structure, functions, features of organization in connection with the cell cycle.

24. The role of the method of immunocytochemistry in the study of the cytoskeleton. Features of the organization of the cytoskeleton in muscle cells.

25. Nucleus in plant and animal cells, structure, functions, relationship between the nucleus and cytoplasm.

26. Spatial organization of intraphase chromosomes inside the nucleus, euchromatin, heterochromatin.

27. Chemical composition of chromosomes: DNA and proteins.

28. Unique and repetitive DNA sequences.

29. Proteins of chromosomes histones, non-histone proteins; their role in chromatin and chromosomes.

30. Types of RNA, their functions and formation in connection with the activity of chromatin. The central dogma of cell biology: dna-rna-protein. The role of components in its implementation.

32. Mitotic chromosomes. Morphological organization and functions. Karyotype (on the example of a person).

33. Reproduction of chromosomes of pro- and eukaryotes, relationship with the cell cycle.

34. Polytene and lampbrush chromosomes. Structure, functions, difference from metaphase chromosomes.

36. Nucleolus

37. Nuclear membrane structure, functions, role of the nucleus in interaction with the cytoplasm.

38. Cell cycle, periods and phases

39. Mitosis as the main type of division. Open and closed mitosis.

39. Stages of mitosis.

40. Mitosis, common features and differences. Features of mitosis in plants and animals:

41. Meiosis meaning, characteristics of phases, difference from mitosis.

26. Spatial organization of intraphase chromosomes inside the nucleus, euchromatin, heterochromatin.

And the interphase nucleus as a whole is the spatial organization of chromosomes

As a result of the development of methods for obtaining preparations of metaphase chromosomes, it became possible to analyze the number of chromosomes and describe their morphology and size. True, the physical dimensions and morphology of the chromosome on cytological preparations are very strongly

depended on the stage of mitosis and the conditions for preparing the corresponding cytological preparation. Many years passed before it was shown that the size and morphology of chromosomes in the G2 stage of the cell cycle differ little from real mitotic chromosomes.

The development of cellular and molecular biology has made it possible to visualize individual chromosomes in the interphase nucleus, their

three-dimensional microscopy and even identification of individual areas. Studies in this direction have been carried out both on fixed and living cells. It turned out that long prophase and prometaphase chromosomes, well known to biologists from cytological preparations, are simply the result of chromosome stretching in the process of spreading them on glass. In the later stages of mitosis, the chromosomes resist stretch more effectively and retain their natural size. In experiments on living cells, various methods of fluorescent labeling and 4D microscopy are used. Thus, for lifetime observations of individual chromosomes, a fluorescent label was first introduced into the DNA of all chromosomes cultivated in cells, and then the nutrient medium was replaced with

free of fluorochromes, the cells were allowed to undergo several cell cycles. As a result, cells appeared in culture.

This term refers to the complex of nuclear DNA with proteins (histones, non-histone proteins).

There are hetero- and euchromatin.

Heterochromatin - transcriptionally inactive, condensed chromatin of the intraphase nucleus. It is located mainly on the periphery of the nucleus and around the nucleoli. A typical example of heterochromatin is the Barr body.

Although less well understood than euchromatin in historical hindsight, new findings suggest that heterochromatin plays a critical role in the organization and proper functioning of genomes from yeast to humans. Its potential importance is highlighted by the fact that 96% of the mammalian genome consists of non-coding and repetitive sequences. New discoveries regarding the mechanisms of heterochromatin formation have revealed unexpected things

Euchromatin – transcriptionally active and less condensed part of chromatin, localized in lighter areas of the nucleus between heterochromatin, rich in genes. Region of the chromosome that stains poorly or does not stain at all. Diffuse winter phase. Actively transcribed. Euchromatin is characterized by less DNA compaction compared to heterochromatin, and, as already mentioned, it mainly localizes actively expressed genes.

Euchromatin, or "active" chromatin, consists mainly of coding sequences that make up only a small fraction (less than 4%) of the mammalian genome.

Thus, the collective term "euchromatin" most likely denotes a complex state(s) of chromatin, encompassing a dynamic and complex mixture of mechanisms that interact closely with each other and with the chromatin fibril and are designed to carry out the transcription of functional RNA.

19632 0

Using a subtle combination of particle accelerators, X-rays, high-intensity lasers, diamonds and iron atoms, scientists have been able to calculate the temperature of our planet's inner core.

According to new calculations, it is 6000 degrees Celsius, which is a thousand degrees higher than previously thought.

Thus, the core of the planet Earth has a higher temperature than the surface of the Sun.

New data may entail a rethinking of the facts considered indisputable in such fields of knowledge as geophysics, seismology, geodynamics and other disciplines focused on the study of the planet.

Seen from the surface in depth, the Earth consists of a crust, a solid upper mantle, then a mostly solid mantle, an outer core of molten iron and nickel, and an inner core of solid iron and nickel. The outer core is in a liquid state due to high temperatures, but the higher pressure in the inner core prevents the rock from melting.

The distance from the surface to the center of the Earth is 6371 km. The thickness of the crust is 35 km, the mantle is 2855 km; against the background of such distances, the Kola superdeep well with a depth of 12 km looks like a mere trifle. In essence, we do not know anything for sure about what happens under the crust. All of our data is based on the seismic waves of earthquakes bouncing off different layers of the Earth, and pitiful crumbs falling to the surface from deep within, like volcanic magma.

Naturally, scientists with great pleasure would drill a well to the very core, but with the current level of technology development, this task is not possible. Already at twelve kilometers, the drilling of the Kola well had to be stopped, since the temperature at such a depth is 180 degrees.

At fifteen kilometers, the temperature is predicted at 300 degrees, and with it modern drilling rigs will not be able to work. And even more so now there are no technologies that would make it possible to drill in the mantle, in the temperature range of 500-4000 degrees. We should not forget about the practical side of the matter: there is no oil outside the crust, so there may not be anyone willing to invest in an attempt to create such technologies.

To calculate the temperature in the inner core, French researchers have gone to great lengths to recreate the ultra-high core temperatures and pressures in the laboratory. Simulating pressure is the most difficult task: at this depth, it reaches a value of 330 gigapascals, which is three million times higher than atmospheric pressure.

To solve it, a cell with diamond anvils was used. It consists of two cone-shaped diamonds that act on the material from two sides over an area with a diameter of less than a millimeter; thus, a pressure of 200 gigapascals was applied to the iron sample. The iron was then heated with a laser, subjected to X-ray diffraction analysis to observe the transition from a solid to a liquid state under these conditions. Finally, the scientists adjusted their results for a pressure of 330 gigapascals, resulting in a coating temperature of the inner core of 5957 plus or minus 500 degrees. Inside the core itself, it seems to be even higher.

Why is rethinking the temperature of the planet's core important?

The Earth's magnetic field is generated precisely by the core and influences many events occurring on the surface of the planet - for example, it keeps the atmosphere in place. Knowing that the core temperature is a thousand degrees warmer than previously thought does not yet provide any practical applications, but may come in handy in the future. The new temperature value will be used in new seismological and geophysical models, which in the future may well lead to serious scientific discoveries. By and large, a more complete and accurate picture of the surrounding world is valuable for scientists in itself.

Konstantin Mokanov

Its mass is 9,675,1022 kg. The average density of the inner core is 12.85 g/cm³. The density in the center of the core is 13.01 g/cm³. The inner core was discovered in 1936 by the Danish geophysicist I. Lehmann.

The time of the beginning of the crystallization of the inner core is estimated at 2 billion years ago.

Seismic studies indicate that the anisotropy of seismic wave velocities is recorded in the inner core: the propagation velocity of longitudinal waves is 3-4% higher along the polar axis than in the equatorial plan.

There is also a point of view who?] that the inner core is not in a crystalline, but in a specific state similar to amorphous, and its elastic properties are due to pressure.

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See what the "Inner Core" is in other dictionaries:

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It was discovered in 1831 by the English botanist Robert Brown. He discovered it in orchid skin cells. To get acquainted with Ya, young parts of the root or stem are taken. On the 1st fig. cells of various ages are shown from the bark of the Fritillaira root ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

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