And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge;
and though I have all faith,
so that I could remove mountains,
and have not LOVE, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:2
"In school, students are taught that atoms are the basic building blocks of matter, comprising
--The number of protons determines the type of atom.
But electrons can only orbit at certain specified distances from the nucleus. These special distances are called orbitals. In physics, when only certain values are allowed (i.e., physically possible), like the orbitals of an atom, the system is said to be quantized. This is where we get the term quantum physics.
The reason orbitals are quantized has to do with the wave nature of electrons. Physicists have discovered that subatomic particles do not always behave as if they were at one specific location in space. Rather, they sometimes act as if they were “spread out” much like the wave that forms when a rock is dropped in a lake. An electron can only orbit at distances where the peaks and troughs of its wave self-align. Otherwise, a peak would “cancel out” a trough; there would be no wave left and hence no electron.
. There are six types (called flavors) of leptons,...Three of the six leptons—the electron, the muon,
--The electron is stable, meaning it will never spontaneously change into any other particle.
--The muon (µ–) is essentially identical to an electron except that it is 207 times more massive. Muons are unstable and will spontaneously decay into other particles. Typically, muons last only 2.2 microseconds before they decay.
--The tau particle (τ–) is the heaviest lepton, with a mass 3,477 times greater than that of an electron. Tau particles are very unstable and typically last only 2.9 × 10-13 seconds before they decay into other particles.
----Already we can see a general trend—heavier particles tend to be more unstable than the lighter particles of a given class.
We can see why the electron must be stable. There is no known lighter charged particle; thus, any decay would violate the laws of either conservation of charge or conservation of energy. From these patterns, we begin to perceive the awesome intelligence of the mind of God and the consistent way He upholds what He has made, from the largest galaxies to the smallest particles.
The fact that protons stick together in the nucleus implies that there must be some attractive force between these particles that is stronger than the electromagnetic force—a nuclear force. We now know that there are in fact two types of nuclear force. The force holding protons together is the stronger of these two, so we call it the strong nuclear force, or simply the strong force.
Perhaps the best way to understand the properties of protons, neutrons, and other baryons is in terms of their constituent particles—quarks.....quarks have a fractional electrical charge—either positive 2/3 (+2/3) or negative 1/3 (-1/3), depending on the quark flavor. Quarks are the only known particles
In order of increasing mass, they are the up quark (represented by the letter u), the down quark (d), the strange quark (s), the charmed quark (c), the bottom quark (b), and the top quark (t).
--The quarks having a charge of +2/3 are the up, the charmed, and the top. The down, the strange, and the bottom have the -1/3 charge.
Protons (represented by the symbol p+) are composed of two up quarks and one down quark, written as uud. This accounts for the charge of a proton being +1.
A neutron (n0) is composed of one up quark and two down quarks (udd), which results in its net charge of zero.
The various combinations of quarks lead to a variety of different baryons. As one example, the lambda (Λ0) is a baryon composed of an up quark, a down quark, and a strange quark. By adding the charges of the quarks, we can see that the lambda is a neutral particle.
---...baryons also have a quantum property called baryon number. All baryons have a baryon number of +1. All quarks have a baryon number of +1/3. Conversely, antibaryons and antiquarks have a baryon number of -1 and -1/3 respectively. This is important because baryon number is a conserved property just like energy, charge, spin, and lepton number. This constrains how baryons can decay and how they can form. The total baryon number before and after any particle interaction must remain unchanged.
This presents an enormous challenge to Big Bang supporters. The energy from extremely energetic particle collisions is sometimes sufficient to produce baryons. However, due to conservation of baryon number, any such collision must produce an equal number of antibaryons. According to the Big Bang model, all the baryons in our universe were produced from the energy of the Big Bang. If that were so, then the number of baryons in the universe should exactly equal the number of antibaryons. But it doesn’t. Antibaryons are extremely rare.
But a type of particle with mass between leptons and baryons also exists; these are mesons. A bit more mysterious than protons and electrons, mesons have a fleeting existence, lasting only a fraction of a microsecond. But they provide us with great insight into how the laws of physics work and thus the organized and mathematical way that God upholds what He has created.
...strong force is similar in some ways to the electric force, but it also has some differences. Without these differences, matter could not exist and biological life would be impossible.
First, as implied by the name, the strong force is much more powerful than the electric force at
Second, the strong force has an extremely limited range. This is a phenomenally important design feature because if the strong force had the same infinite range as the electric force, then the former would overwhelm the latter and all the matter in the universe would collapse into a single nucleus.
The third difference is particularly interesting and involves the type of charge. The electric force has two types of charge that we simply refer to as positive and negative. But with the strong force, there are six charges. Physicists have labeled these six charges red, green, blue, antired, antigreen, and antiblue.
Just as the proton’s electric charge is the sum of the electric charges of its quarks, so its color charge is the combination of the combined color charges of its constituent parts. And protons are always white, or colorless. This is because one quark will be red, one will be green, and one will be blue—these add to make white.
There is another way in which quarks and antiquarks can combine to form a colorless particle. A red quark could combine with an antired antiquark. Red and antired exactly cancel, so the resulting particle will be colorless.
Subatomic particles have a property called spin that is a bit like a rotating planet. But unlike a planet, the spin of a particle only comes in integer or half-integer units (0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, 2, …) and cannot be changed.
But since mesons have an even number of quarks, their spins always combine to form an integer. Thus, mesons are either spin 0 (if the two quarks are anti-aligned) or spin 1 (if the two quarks are aligned). Integer spin particles are called bosons. Since all mesons are bosons, they are not required to obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Basically, this means we can put many mesons into the same location with the same quantum numbers.
Some neutral mesons are, by definition, their own antiparticle. For example, the phi meson is made of a strange quark and strange antiquark. Swapping quarks with antiquarks and vice versa leaves the particle unchanged.
Think of gauge bosons as subatomic messengers. They communicate information about the four
Just as photons are the messengers of the electromagnetic force, so gluons (g) are the messengers of the strong nuclear force....a quark will emit a gluon that is absorbed by another quark, telling it how to move. Gluons possess a color charge and simultaneously an anticolor charge.
The recently discovered Higgs boson is rather unique. It is an elementary boson but not a gauge boson (it does not mediate any of the fundamental forces). Rather, the Higgs boson is associated with the Higgs field, an invisible uniform “cloud” that permeates all of space and that is thought to set the mass of all particles. Most physicists believe that particles that strongly “feel” the Higgs field have more
Nonetheless, most physicists believe that gravity is also mediated by a gauge boson that they call the graviton. This undiscovered particle is predicted to have a mass of zero, a charge of zero, and a spin of 2.
Supersymmetry models predict the existence of an extremely massive elementary boson “partner” for each type of elementary fermion. Thus, quarks would have boson partners called squarks, and electrons would have corresponding selectrons. None of these have been observed.
Why such logical organization?
...evolution cannot account for the hierarchy of particles because particles do not gradually evolve.
