Are Particles Theoretically Tangible?

[polymath257]

Touch happens because out touch detectors send a signal to our brains. They are pressure activated, which ultimately means they are triggered by the repulsion of electrons between whatever you touch and the skin.

So, touch depends on the electromagnetic properties of whatever you touch.

So, a charged particle could be considered to be 'tangible' in the sense you ask for, but it would not be a 'solid' sphere. It would be more like a ball with vague edges that gradually thickens is you go in. This would be what an electron would 'feel like' if you could shrink that far (and you can't).

But a neutrino, which is electrically neutral (no charge) would feel like literally nothing. In fact, about 70 billion neutrinos go through every square centimeter of your skin every second with no effects.

Or you could talk about photons, which are literally particles of light. You might have a 'warm' feeling if the photon is not very energetic, to a fast burn if it is.

Also, there are other forces than electromagnetism. So, quarks also interact via the strong nuclear force. if you had 'touch' for the strong force (you don't), a quark would feel much 'harder' than the electrons above, but still with indefinite edges.

This said, the whole sense of touch is a macroscopic thing. It really doesn't make sense to even discuss it. The term 'tangible' is misleading at this level.

Tangibility is really more of a theoretical question, since we can’t actually shrink ourselves at all to find out, let alone to quantum levels.

I think essentially what I’m trying to grasp is… at the quantum level are particles that are responsible for matter, in and of themselves material in nature? Is, say, a proton an actual physical object? Or is it better understood as three quarks all more energy-like and fuzzy spinning around so fast that once you zoom out, we get the illusion of a material nature? (Again… not trying to delve into any pseudoscience here. Just trying to wrap my head around this.)

But what does 'tangilibity' even mean? It means it 'can be touched'. By what mechanism will you be touching the particle? For that matter, we can't 'touch' very small 'particles' in our atmosphere that are actually quite large on an atomic scale.

Similarly, what does the term 'material' mean? What does it mean to be a 'physical object'?

Think of it like this. What, precisely, makes air a 'material'? Why is it 'physical'? Because air most certainly *is* physical. I wouldn't call air an 'object', though. What is it that makes a dust speck 'tangible' when we cannot actually touch it?

My viewpoint is that electrons and quarks are 'physical' because physics studies them. So are photons and neutrinos, etc. And, for that matter, 'energy-like and fuzzy spinning around' would be physical and material.

Ultimately, I don't find designations like 'tangible' or 'material' to be useful at this level. They confuse and are beside the point.

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Last I read is that an isolated quark has never been observed.

That is correct. They always occur in combinations: 3 for baryons and 2 for mesons. For example, a proton consists of two up quarks and one down quark. A neutron consists of two down and one up. A pion can be *either* an up and an anti-up OR a down and an anti-down. This is another quantum mechanical twist: the very composition is in a superposition.