Dragaera

Amorphia and the 'Accident' (Was Re: Where's the technology?)

Mark A. Mandel thnidu at yahoo.com
Thu May 5 17:35:57 PDT 2005

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Erik Holmes wrote:

>>>>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter
Guys. We could write pages trying to explain Antimatter and Antimatter theory. I was just
giving a really brief description of Antimatter as I once saw it explained somewhere
else. I know it's extremely complicated but to quote the very page that Dave gave a link
to:

> "For each kind of particle, there is an associated antiparticle with the same mass
> but opposite electromagnetic, weak, and strong charges, as well as ***_spin._*** "
<<<<<


Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> answered:
>>>>>
You're referring to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparticle I see. But you can't
believe everything you read on the web, even from wikipedia. Electrons have spin 1/2;
positrons have spin 1/2.  As noted in fact in the table at the end of the antiparticle
link.
<<<<< 

The physicists call it "spin". They also speak of "charm" and "color". Those are names
for characteristics that don't exist in the world of our senses. These particles aren't
charming, they're smaller than visible light wavelengths so they have no color (rather as
a guinea pig is too stupid to have any honor), and they don't spin one way or another. 

-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian,
   Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody
   a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel



		
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