🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4NOV199204224018@reg.triumf.ca>, vincent@reg.triumf.ca (pete) writes...
> 
>If mass was diffused about a particle over several nanometres,
>how could we tell? What if mass occupies space about a
>particle the way electrons form orbitals about a nucleus?

It is important to remember that a particle is really a wave-packet, i.e.,
some superposition of excitations of a quantum field.  The mass, at least 
in the Standard Model, is a manefestation of the interaction of this field
with the Higgs scalar field.  So it does not make sense, in this context,
to talk about the mass being "somewhere" distinct from where the the
particle is, which is in turn only determined by the degree of localization
of the wave packet.  

Loosely speaking, the particle has some drag as it moves through the 
Higgs field, which gives it an appearance which we interpret as "the particle 
has inertia corresponding to a mass M."  But the mass is not an intrinsic
property of the particle - if you could turn off the Higgs (remove all Higgs's
from the Universe) then all particles would be massless.  So it makes no
sense to try to say where the mass of a particle is.

Of course, the Standard Model could be wrong on this point, in which case
you can disregard everything I just said.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		 although I have no right to say so, having
				 been a single cell so long ago myself that I 
				 have no memory at all of that stage of my 
				 life." - Lewis Thomas