A thought that just popped into my head.
Why is the core so small?
Ten thousand times smaller than the linear size of an atom.
We will use to explain the generally accepted theory of nuclear (strong) interactions, proposed in the thirties of the last century by the Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa, a student of another famous Japanese physicist Hantaro Nagaoka. This theory, which I personally consider dubious, explains the strong mutual attraction of nucleons (nuclear particles – protons and neutrons), 137 times stronger than the Coulomb repulsion of protons at very short distances.
The particles in the nucleus “exchange” other particles, pi mesons, whose duration of existence is extremely short from 2.5 microseconds to one nanosecond of a microsecond, that is, ten to the minus fifteenth power of a second, one quadrillionth! Since the residence time of such pi mesons outside the protons of the nucleus is extremely short, the particles exchange them at negligible distances of one trillionth of a centimeter. If the distance increases, the time of flight of the pi meson will increase and it will simply decay into mu mesons and everything else, and this will cause the self-decay of a pair of nucleons.
So far, I hope everything is clear?
The core must therefore be very small, as just mentioned, with a diameter of one trillionth of a centimeter.
Now imagine that we have “injected” a cloud of nuclei into a synchrophasotron, where they accelerate to subluminal (relativistic) speeds. According to the conclusions of the Special Relativity Theory (SRT), time slows down significantly for such particles.
One of the experimental proofs of this is the prolongation of the life of muons (mu mesons). Which are born in collisions with the nuclei of terrestrial gases from impacts of highly energetic particles (nuclei and protons) of cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. The average life span of a mu-meson is two microseconds, and even if it were moving at light speed instead of subluminal speed, it would fly only six hundred meters and would not reach the surface of the Earth. And it flies for many kilometers without disintegrating, which means that ITS LIFETIME has greatly lengthened due to its tremendous speed!
We return to relativistically accelerated nuclei. Since their lifetime is lengthening, this means that it is lengthening many times for pi mesons as well! But we were just talking about the “short-range” forces of intracellular attraction due to the short life span of pions (pi mesons). The interaction distances between protons are no more than one trillion centimeters! And since the lifetime of peonies is extended hundreds of times, then their exchange will be successful at distances hundreds of times greater.
This means that the nuclei accelerated to relativistic speeds must “SWELL UP” STRONGLY! But DON’T BREAK UP!
There is an interesting conflict here. There are two competing factors at work: The swelling of the nuclei due to time dilation and their flattening along the flight vector! According to SRT, any body moving at a sub-zero speed, SHOULD flatten in the direction of its movement, that is, the ball, say, should turn into a disk flying along the main axis of rotation, and on the other hand, due to the lengthening of its lifetime, it, the core, should just increase its diameter. Moreover, both processes will follow the same Lorentz Transformation formulas!!! This means that the core will remain the same in “thickness” as at rest, one trillionth of a centimeter, but its transverse dimensions will grow hundreds of times! It will turn out to be a very LARGE disk that will react with the target nuclei much more strongly (the “capture cross-section” has increased).
Wonderful are your deeds, RELATIVISM!
12 XI 2026
