Positive and negative charge

[sunspot]

I would like to share some interesting ideas that came to me last night about positive and negative charge. Positive and negative charge are two sides of the same coin, in the sense that both create electrostatic force but of the opposite sense. What is interesting is that both are integrated within the magnetic force. In other words, if a postive charge was moving left or a negative charge right, at the same velocity, it would be hard to distinguish them from the magnetic fields that would be created. So they are integrated by the magnetic force into something common to both.

 

What is also interesting is that if one takes a positron and an electron they will attract, anihillate each other, and cancel the charges. But if the positive charge is part of a proton the electron and proton can not readily cancel each other out under normal (low energy) conditions. The question is, why does the extra mass make all the difference in the world as to how opposite charge interacts?

 

One possible way to answer this question is connected to the larger mass of the proton. The larger mass of the proton does not allow the positive charge to move as fast such that it can not generate the same level of magnetic field as the electron (under the same conditions). Charge only appears to disappear when the generated magnetic fields are very close in magnitude. Either the positive has to get faster or the negative slower?

[swansont]

I would like to share some interesting ideas that came to me last night about positive and negative charge. Positive and negative charge are two sides of the same coin, in the sense that both create electrostatic force but of the opposite sense. What is interesting is that both are integrated within the magnetic force. In other words, if a postive charge was moving left or a negative charge right, at the same velocity, it would be hard to distinguish them from the magnetic fields that would be created. So they are integrated by the magnetic force into something common to both.

 

Yes, this is all described by Maxwell's equations.

 

What is also interesting is that if one takes a positron and an electron they will attract' date=' anihillate each other, and cancel the charges. But if the positive charge is part of a proton the electron and proton can not readily cancel each other out under normal (low energy) conditions. The question is, why does the extra mass make all the difference in the world as to how opposite charge interacts?

 

One possible way to answer this question is connected to the larger mass of the proton. The larger mass of the proton does not allow the positive charge to move as fast such that it can not generate the same level of magnetic field as the electron (under the same conditions). Charge only appears to disappear when the generated magnetic fields are very close in magnitude. Either the positive has to get faster or the negative slower?[/quote']

 

 

Protons are comprised of up and down quarks; these are different kinds of particles than electrons and interact differently. You can get an interaction with a proton and an electron that produces a neutron and neutrino, but the weak interaction is involved an has a short range, so the cross-section is small.

 

A proton moving at some speed would generate exactly the same magnetic field as an electron at that speed, other than the sign. Also, in the case of a proton and electron moving with respect to each other, relativity tells us that the magnetic field seen from the electron's viewpoint is exactly the field seen by the proton, again, accounting for the sign difference.

[sunspot]

I agree with what you say. The point I was making is that nature, during the creation of the universe, steady state tagged 99.99999+% of the positive charge onto the protons and 99.99999+% of the negative charge onto the electrons. This high mass ratio arrangement prevents the two charges from canceling. They just dance for forever. The positron and electron, of equal mass, dance for an instant. I saw the heavy slow nature of the proton lowering its ambient magnetic field, preventing the canceling of charge. The latter does occur, but requires extreme instead of ambient conditions. The positron/electron will cancel under most conditions.

[swansont]

I agree with what you say. The point I was making is that nature, during the creation of the universe, steady state tagged 99.99999+% of the positive charge onto the protons and 99.99999+% of the negative charge onto the electrons. This high mass ratio arrangement prevents the two charges from canceling. They just dance for forever. The positron and electron, of equal mass, dance for an instant. I saw the heavy slow nature of the proton lowering its ambient magnetic field, preventing the canceling of charge. The latter does occur, but requires extreme instead of ambient conditions. The positron/electron will cancel under most conditions.

 

 

And I'm saying that the interactions you describe are already explained in terms of other physics, and that your explanation fails when you shift into a different reference frame.

[sunspot]

Thanks

[Severian]

A better question to ask is why are all the heavy charged objects (i.e. the protons) positively charged and why are the light ones (the electrons) negative?

 

After all, you could (in principle) construct a world out of negatively charged antiprotons and positively charged positrons. So where are they? (This is the baryon asymmetry problem.)

 

For that matter, it seems like a massive coincidence that the up quark has charge exactly 2/3 while the down quark has charge exactly -1/3. Since the proton is 2 up quarks and a down quark it has charge 2/3+2/3-1/3=+1 which exactly cancels the charge of the electron making a neutral hydrogen atom. Our physics theory contains no mechanism whatsoever to link the charges of quarks and the electron. If the charge of the up quark had been +1/2 (or 0.6667) say then protons wouldn't form and we wouldn't be here to wonder. (This is the charge quantization problem.)