I think high energy physicists talk about "colour charge", rather than "colour pole", but this is by analogy to electricity with its +ve & -ve charges, rather than analogy to magnetism with its north and south poles. However at the level of analogy, which is what your story is, this distinction is unimportant.
In the real world, objects tend to be electrically neutral (even when charged, objects have only a slight imbalance between positive and negative charges). This is a not quite analogy to the need for magnets to always have two poles. Incidently, physicists also talk about monopoles, but aside from one isolated experiment, monopoles have never been seen. With the strong force, the colours can never be imbalanced on everyday objects. Only quarks have colour. Bigger objects from protons up are said to be "white" or "colourless". The reason for this is "confinement", but I'll let you look that up on Wikipedia if you're interested. Cheers On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 04:04:59PM -0400, John Mikes wrote: > Russell, > > I apologize for my flippant quip of yesterday, it was after several hours > of reading and replying internet discussion lists. Besides: it was true.<G> > > I never considered the features named as distinguishing 'colors' in QCD as > "poles". Also it is new to me that the strong force has 3 poles. In my usage > a 'pole' represents ONE charge of the TWO we know of - the positive and the > negative. > Well, it seems those non-physicists are simpleminded brutes. It felt so good > to 'invent' something (for fun) beyond our grasp. > What nature would that 3rd pole present in the strong force? (I ask this > question, because I did not read about the 3-pole distinction of it). > > Cheers > > John M > > On 3/12/07, Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > On Mon, Mar 12, 2007 at 11:58:58AM -0400, John Mikes wrote: > > > In the sci-fi I wrote in 1988-89 I depicted the 'story' of human > > evolving as > > > done > > > by an experiment of aliens from another universe, to which I assigned > > > "energy" > > > with 3 (three) poles. One +, one -, and a THIRD one. (Maybe your math > > could > > > formulate this, but I could not. I accepted it as something beyond our > > human > > > mind. > > > > The strong force has 3 "poles". To think about them in a human > > fashion, we name them "red", "green" and "blue", and the theory > > describing the strong force is called "quantum chromodynamics". It > > doesn't seem beyond the human mind at all. > > > > I dare say if we had a reason to have a theory with four poles, > > someone will come up with a way of thinking about these too. > > > > Prof Russell Standish > > > > > -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
