Kind: captions
Language: en
[Applause]
21 G that is the mass of all of the
electrons in your body if like me you
weigh about 70 kg now all of that mass
comes from the higs mechanism which
means that as your electrons are
traveling through SpaceTime they
interact with the higs field and it's
that that gives them their Mass it slows
them down and stops them from traveling
at the speed of light but most of your
mass doesn't come from the higs
mechanism and neither does all of the
stuff that you see around you the mass
is coming from somewhere quite different
and that's because most of your mass and
most of this mass comes from neutrons
and protons and they're not fundamental
particles they're made of constituent
particles called quarks now the theory
that describes quarks and their
interactions with each other through
gluons is called Quantum chromodynamics
and Chromo is the Greek word for color
so in some way these objects are meant
to carry the color charge but they are
much much smaller than the wavelength of
visible light so there is no way that
they are actually colored but it's a
useful analogy that helps us think about
how they interact and the particles that
they can make up now the rules are
pretty simple in order for a particle to
exist it must be colorless or white like
this house now you can accomplish that
in two different ways you could make
three quirks where each one is a
different color red green and blue so
overall they combine to produce white or
you could use a quark and an anti- Quark
where one is a color like green and and
the other is its anti color say magenta
now what I'd like to do on this little
patch of beach behind me is simulate how
quirks actually bind together and form
different particles now for this you
need to remember that in the last video
we talked about how empty space is not
truly empty so the beach here has these
undulations in it which represent the
fluctuations in the glue on field but
you have to imagine this beach sort of
Rippling in these bumps coming and going
now that's really important because to
get rid of those fluctuations actually
takes energy and this is an important
part of binding the quarks together the
existence of quirks actually supresses
the gluon fluctuations and creates
what's called a flux tube an area where
there is really nothing in the vacuum
and that's IM between this quark and the
antiquark and that pairs them up and
creates what's called a Mison the Quark
antiquark pair what's interesting about
the flux tube is that as these quirks
become more separated the flux tube
Remains the Same diameter and the same
of depth of suppression of the field
which means that the force doesn't
actually increase it's not like a spring
it's not like an elastic band the force
is the same that is pulling these quirks
back together but you are putting more
work in as you move these quirks and any
quirks further apart and so for a time
people thought well these quirks are
always going to be confined however far
you move them you're just going to get a
really long flux tube but what actually
happens is that you put in enough energy
that you can actually create a quirk
antiquark pair nevertheless the quirks
you still confined you can never see an
individual cork because if you try to
pull it out you'll put so much energy
into the situation that another cork any
cork pair will be created now to form a
proton we're going to need an up Cork
another up Cork and a down Quirk now the
standard model of a proton that you've
probably seen involves these quirks
bounded together by little glue on
Springs that go between them we know
that that picture is totally wrong now
even in the best sense you might have
hope that you would see Flex tubes
around the edge of the triangle but uh
we know that in fact they don't do that
that you get these y-shaped Flex tubes
the crazy thing about a proton is that
there may be more than three quarks
there you see you can have additional
Quark anti- Quark pairs pop in and out
of existence so at any given time there
could be five or seven or nine any odd
number of quarks could make up the
proton so this is what a proton actually
looks like you can see that the quirks
like to sit on those lumps in the gluon
field and you can see the two up quirks
and a down Quirk but there's also a
strange Quirk and an anti-st strange
Quirk which is strange because you don't
normally think of these quirks being
inside a proton but they can be at any
particular point in time you can also
see that these quirks have cleared out
the vacuum and you can see there's kind
of these flux tubes which are the areas
where the gluon field has been
suppressed and that's really what's
binding these quirk together that's the
strong force that binds quarts into the
heart of the proton it is intrinsically
related to the fact that clearing out
those fluctuations has more energy than
where they are that's right it costs
energy to clear the
vacuum so where is the mass the Proton
really coming from well of course the
constituent quirks do interact with the
higs field and that gives them a small
amount of mass but if you add up the
mass of all the quirks in the the proton
it would only account for about 1% of
its total mass so where's the rest of
the mass coming from the answer is
energy you know Einstein's famous
equation eal mc^ 2 well that says we got
a lot of energy for just a little bit of
mass but if you rearrange the equation
you can see that we can get an amount of
mass if there is lots of energy there
and that is really where most of the
mass of the proton is coming from it's
from the fact that there are these
energy fluctu in the gluon field and the
quirks are interacting with those gluons
that is where your mass is coming from
it's coming from the energy that's in
there you know Einstein talked about
well if I had a hot cup of tea it would
actually have a slightly greater mass
than the same cup of tea when cold and
he was right I mean you can't measure it
with a cup of tea but most of your mass
you owe to eal mc^ 2 you owe to the fact
that your mass is packed with energy
because of the interactions between the
quirks and these glue GL on fluctuations
in that glue on field I think it's
extraordinary because what we think of
as ordinarily empty space you know that
turns out to be the thing that gives us
all most of our
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