🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 25 Mar 1997 03:27:28 GMT, ykhan@achilles.net (Yousuf Khan)
wrote:

>
>Ah, but there's more to it than that, which I didn't mention previously.
>It's now also thought that the very concept of mass itself has a very
>smallest particle associated with it. For example, an electron and a proton
>have the exact same amount of electric charge (but in opposite directions),
>however, an electron is about 2000 times less massive than a proton. Same
>magnitude of electric charge, but a very different amount of mass. Now,
>there's no explanation for this yet. How can such a tiny particle be the
>equal of a much larger particle when it comes to electric charge? We just
>know it to be true, but we have no idea why. 
>

Hm.. that would create an interesting theoretical possibility. Suppose
you could exclude the Higgs field from and area of space. Would this
not result in everything in that area becoming massless and therefore
instantly achieving light speed? Seems like this could be a basis for
something like Larry Niven's "displacement booths".

Myself I've long suspected that "rest mass" is actually caused by
particles travelling at lightspeed in one of the collapsed dimensions.
This allows them to have relativistic mass without actually going
anywhere.

---------------------------------+----------------------------------
I was born weird:  This terrible | Like Pavlov's dogs we are trained
compulsion to behave normally is | to salivate at the sound of the
the result of childhood trauma.  | liberty bell.
---------------------------------+----------------------------------
Malcolm