Monday, March 08, 2021
how fast can i count?
Everyone assumes some form of conservation of number. That is if i have n particles in a box at time t1, and count them at t2 then if i have not done anything i will again count n particles. Except it's not true; maybe on average you will have something close to n, but it is a statistical rule because particles can suddenly appear and then disappear. Borrowing bits of energy out of the vacuum, and forming positive and negative pairs for a short time.
How about thinking about a single particle. Could it disappear, with nothing else around it? clearly One can have pairs that come and go, but would one have one particle long term? Could it just disappear? Could it disappear into a parallel world, or whatever. Or alternatively could an empty space suddenly have a single particle appear and then stay around.
My question is how on earth would you do an experiment to investigate it.
My idea is to send a stream of particles past two sensors, which count the number of particles.. Any differences would represent a list of gained particle. It would certainly surprise people if there was a difference.
I don't know how to build the experiment.
Martin
