It is difficult to overstate the importance (not to speak of the beauty) of what we have learned: The exchange of a spin 0 particle produces an attra… - Anthony Zee

" "

It is difficult to overstate the importance (not to speak of the beauty) of what we have learned: The exchange of a spin 0 particle produces an attractive force, of a spin 1 particle a repulsive force, and of a spin 2 particle an attractive force, realized in the hadronic strong interaction, the electromagnetic interaction, and the gravitational interaction, respectively. The universal attraction of gravity produces an instability that drives the formation of structure in the early universe. ... Denser regions become denser yet. The attractive nuclear force mediated by the spin 0 particle eventually ignites the stars. Furthermore, the attractive force between protons and neutrons mediated by the spin 0 particle is able to overcome the repulsive electric force between protons mediated by the spin 1 particle to form a variety of nuclei without which the world would certainly be rather boring. The repulsion between likes and hence attraction between opposites generated by the spin 1 particle allow electrically neutral atoms to form.
The world results from a subtle interplay among spin 0, 1, and 2.
In this lightning tour of the universe, we did not mention the weak interaction. In fact, the weak interaction plays a crucial role in keeping stars such as our sun burning at a steady rate.

English
Collect this quote

About Anthony Zee

Anthony Zee (, b. 1945) (Zee comes from the Shanghainese pronunciation of 徐) is a Chinese-American physicist and author.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Xu Yihong
Try QuoteGPT

Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Anthony Zee

... The quantum Hall system consists of a bunch of electrons moving in a plane in the presence of an external magnetic field <math>B</math> perpendicular to the plane. The magnetic field is assumed to be sufficiently strong so that the electrons all have spin up, say, so they may be treated as spinless fermions. As is well known, this seemingly innocuous and simple physical situation contains a wealth of physics, the elucidation of which has led to two Nobel prizes.

Ah, group theory! The entire subject is amazing and amusing. Who would have expected that three Platonic solids—the cube, tetrahedron, and icosahedron—would pop up in constructing the Dynkin diagrams of the exceptional Lie algebras? Or that finite group theory could determine the remainder when 10<sup>10</sup> is divided by 11?

Go Premium

Support Quotewise while enjoying an ad-free experience and premium features.

View Plans
The goal of condensed matter physics is to understand the various states of matter. States of matter are characterized by the presence (or absence) of order: a ferromagnet becomes ordered below the transition temperature. In the Landau-Ginzburg theory ... , order is associated with spontaneous symmetry breaking, described naturally with group theory. Girvin and MacDonald first noted that the order in Hall fluids does not really fit into the Landau-Ginzburg scheme: We have not broken any obvious symmetry. The topological property of the Hall fluids provides a clue to what is going on. As explained in the preceding chapter, the ground state degeneracy of a Hall fluid depends on the topology of the manifold it lives on, a dependence group theory is incapable of accounting for. Wen has forcefully emphasized that the study of topological order, or more generally quantum order, may open up a vast new vista on the possible states of matter.

Loading...