I have heard that positron electron pairs can appear out of nothing, I am a high school student who has had no physics yet but I am curious. I am not finding th eanswer to this question easily on the net. Can someone please help?
2006-11-17 16:37:27 · 3 answers · asked by John Frusciante 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
What you're asking about are called "virtual particles" which are constantly and spontaneously generated in the near-vacuum of space. It's a quantum mechanical effect that occurs at spatial sizes smaller than about 1.6^ minus 35 meters (..some 10^ 20 times smaller than a proton) It's there that space becomes a kind of seething foam filled with energy. Virtual particles are formed in pairs, each the anti-particle of the other so that they almost instantaneously self-annihilate.
This website provides more on this subject ==>http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=0004D0F8-772A-1526-B72A83414B7F0000
2006-11-17 16:52:56 · answer #1 · answered by Chug-a-Lug 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Yes, but there is a catch. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle permits the creation of particle - antiparticle pairs as a vacuum fluctuation provided that the particles annihilate within a very short time. ie delta E * delta t < h-bar.
2006-11-18 00:50:08 · answer #2 · answered by d/dx+d/dy+d/dz 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The search below lists a few scholarly articles. I'm not sure if this was addressed in "What the bleep do we know?" It may have been.
Good luck.
2006-11-18 00:51:21 · answer #3 · answered by Deirdre H 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋