What Are Bosons?

[Alex K]

No Rhonda, protons are a composition of quarks. Protons are composed of 3 quarks as are neutrons and all others hadrons. Mesons have two.  IIRC. I think Alex is more up to date and has more knowledge in this than me. While hadrons, mesons and leptons obey Pauli's exclusion principle, bosons do not. In a nuts and bolts explanation they are the force carriers between those particles. Correct me if Im wrong, my physics are a little rusty.

That's almost right, except that all Mesons are Bosons, and are also hadrons.

Hadrons = Mesons + Baryons, where Baryons are fermions because the contain an odd # of quarks, and mesons are bosons because they contain an even number of quarks.

[Rhondazvous]

Yes it does. But I can't give you a definite answer. Not because the question is bad, but because I am not sure which of the things I think I know about particles are artifacts of the formalism used to analyze the theory, artifacts of the theory we use to describe nature, and which things are really truths independent of how one writes down and treats the theory. Furthermore, my understanding of theory has its limitations. Last but not least, "a particle" in common usage is an idealized thing which does not reflect the intricasies of the theory.

With those caveats: In the Standard Model, the way it is usually written down, elementary particles are excitations of fields. They carry theoretical labels  which distinuish them (which field it is, and in what state precisely). Energy is a secondary property which can be assigned to field configurations, among others such as momentum, charge, etc., and isolated particles correspond to field configurations with certain discrete energy quantities corresponding to their mass via mc^2. In this picture, elem. particles are not containers of energy, but neither would one say they are Energy itself.
One might hoewever be able to simply adopt the speech convention that everything is Energy, and that this Energy can be stored in different fields, or, equivalenty, be assigned different labels.

But I don't feel comfortable giving Energy such a fundamental role.

There seem to be different schools of thought, with some wanting to make a cut-and-dried difference between matter and energy and some wanting to say that matter is energy. I was in this later school until I looked into QM and learned that fermions=matter while bosons=energy (thus my original question). Despite your caveats, wouldn't you shrink from saying that what we see through a microscope or nanoscope is just as subject to cherry picking as the Bible? We cannot approach the phenomenal world without a paradigm or describe what we find there in a way that is independent from language. At least, we have yet to find a way to do these things.

Well, at least the gods of QM aren't going to send anyone to hell (unless there are people on Earth when the sun goes nova).

[Alex K]

The fermions=matter, bosons=energy narrative seems to appear in many popularizations, but it is one which I don't understand - fermions are associated with a quantity of energy exactly like bosons...

[Alex K]

I wouldn't call it cherry picking, but yes, we interpret nature through the lens of our theories, and while the phenomena are often described very accurately (in the case of electrodynamics, to 10 digits precision), the *explanations* extracted from theory are not on the same secure footing. Furthermore, taking the maths and the mathematical objects of the theory and trying to express them in ordinary English is something else again.

[Rhondazvous]

The fermions=matter, bosons=energy narrative seems to appear in many popularizations, but it is one which I don't understand - fermions are associated with a quantity of energy exactly like bosons...

In that case, I must discard my original question and instead explore the connection between matter and energy. We might focus this exploration with the question is matter a form of energy. If so, what happens to energy to make it turn into matter? If not, then what are your views on the matter/energy connection?

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[Cyberman]

Hey, I just discovered something. I've been studying Min's delightful picture - scientifically, of course:

If you look carefully, there's actually a dog in it. Bet the photographer never spotted it either.

[Rhondazvous]

I wouldn't call it cherry picking, but yes, we interpret nature through the lens of our theories, and while the phenomena are often described very accurately (in the case of electrodynamics, to 10 digits precision), the *explanations* extracted from theory are not on the same secure footing. Furthermore, taking the maths and the mathematical objects of the theory and trying to express them in ordinary English is something else again.

If theory interpretation and language are all we have to work with then that's what we have to work with The communicator and the communicatee have to meet each other halfway. I remember when I first started the English master's program, I'd listen to the professors and think "Damn, why didn't they tell me about the Greek language prerequisite?" They were using words that weren't even in Webster's. They had to have their own special dictionary. But I learned that stuff. And I'm not afraid to learn from you.