Ernest Sparks

I heard that Christian Science Evangelist Kent Hovind denies that gluons are there and that scientists have ever confirmed them. I couldn't find this on the CSE site, but I found a reply to a letter from a teacher on the subject of naturalism provided by someone who appears to be an evangelical christian faculty member at some college. I don't care about that, just the following text in the reply:

"Some objects in quantum mechanics may or may not exist. We have never seen a gluon. We do not know whether they exist. Models of quarks and gluons do explain high energy experimental results. We do not know whether it is the correct explanation."

So, do scientists know that gluons and glueballs and quark/gluon plasmas really exist?
Are gluons just theoretical requirements for Quantum ChromoDynamic explanations?

I found this page from PDG's ParticleAdventure. How does the interpretation of this experiment expand to provide some degree of confidence in gluons?

<a href="http://pdg.web.cern.ch/pdg/cpep/comp_qg.html" target="_blank">Production of Quarks and Gluons</a>
On the left, three clusters, initiated by a quark, its antiquark, and a gluon, provide evidence for the existence of gluons

---
"Gluons don't hold atomic nuclei together; God holds atomic nuclei together!"
just a pseudo-quote

I guess there is some kind of anisotropic probe with charged particles that tends to confirms that quarks are in atomic nuclei.

{Fixed Link - Pantera}

[ December 27, 2001: Message edited by: Pantera ]</p>

Shadow Wraith

There is only very indirect evidence for quarks and the gluons that hold them together. They have smashed all different kinds of mesons and baryons into each other in accelerators, but no quarks ever came out. So they may or may not exist. Personally, I think our understanding of matter is very poor. We know the basic attributes of elementary particles--their mass, what they do, and how long they last--but we don't know their nature. I'm particulary interested in Ralph Sansbury's particle theory. I'd have to go look up the site where it is discussed, but I'd be glad to look it up if you're interested.

Pantera

Hovind also denies that the stars are millions of light years away, and in private he is alleged to deny that the Earth goes round the sun, so it's not surprising that he'd deny the existance of gluons as well. The claim that atoms are held together by Bible verses rather than gluons is made in Jack Chick's notorious tract <a href="http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp" target="_blank">Big Daddy</a> - written with help from Hovond. Of course, practically every sentence in the tract is factually incorrect.

Toto

too lazy to cut and paste, so I added the UBB tag to fix your url

Toto

BTW - this is a cool site. Sort of a <a href="http://pdg.web.cern.ch/pdg/cpep/adventure_home.html" target="_blank">Cartoon Guide to Particle Physics.</a>

Eudaemon

The evidence for gluons (and for quarks, for that matter) is indirect, but so is the evidence for electrons. We can't see electrons, but we can work out what their effects would be, and compare them to what's actually observed in the world. All of chemistry basically follows from the behavior of electrons, so electrons are very well tested. Quarks and gluons are less well-tested because it is presently much harder to do experiments with them.

In the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), quarks have "color" (which is just a name for an abstract property that has three values). An important property of QCD is that all free particles (not bound by the strong force to another particle) made up of quarks must have all the color in them combine to "neutral". If a combination of quarks has some "unbalanced" color, it must be bound to some other quark(s) that make the total neutral, and the strength of the binding actually increases with increasing distance from the other quark(s). That means that at large distances (we're talking about the size of a proton here!) a lot of the energy of the particle is in gluons that are being exchanged among the quarks.

The preceding is to lead up to the explanation why the pictures of electron-positron collisions in the link are evidence for gluons. When an electron and positron collide at high energy, a pair of quarks (actually a quark and an antiquark) can be made out of the energy of collision. These fly off in opposite directions (as seen perpendicular to the electron beams) in keeping with conservation of momentum. But single quarks have color, so before they can get too far apart there is enormous interaction (gluon) energy between them. The energy becomes so large that the gluons can convert into more quarks and antiquarks. Some of these form colorless free particles, some combinations still have color and the process repeats. Eventually all the color is "balanced" and we have a tight bunch of particles flying off in the direction the original quark was going, and another tight bunch going in the opposite direction where the antiquark was going. So QCD (in a rather complicated way, to be sure) explains why there are two tight groups of particles flying off in opposite directions, using gluons.

The picture where there are three groups of particles is a case where a gluon was produced with the original quark pair, with enough energy to produce quark pairs of its own. Again explained by QCD calculations.

-JP

Ernest Sparks

Electrons have a very visual demonstration, using cathode rays with low pressure gases. You can bend the beams with magnets.

I think the thrust of the CSE argument would be that you can't actually see anything, since they are postulated to be massless, electric chargeless and provide to visualization. All you have is theory about them. This is used to deny that they exist.

{spelling correction}

[ December 31, 2001: Message edited by: Ernest Sparks ]</p>

Shadow Wraith

All right. I found that site I was talking about. Go to <a href="http://users.bestweb.net/%7Esansbury/Index.htm" target="_blank">http://users.bestweb.net/%7Esansbury/Index.htm</a> to read it.

Eudaemon

Of course, even in the cathode-ray demonstration the actual electrons are never seen; what is seen is fluorescence caused by their interaction. The visualization still depends on the details of the theory of the interaction of electrons with specific molecules. It's only a difference in degree between that and the particle experiments.

People like Hovind who are mainly interested in denigrating science because it conflicts with their religious beliefs are quick to point out the indirectness of most evidence, but they don't seem to realize that for their criticism to be effective they have to provide an alternative theory that explains all the observations at least as well. So if gluons don't exist, what is the alternative to QCD that explains the particle jets (and everything else that's been observed about the strong nuclear interaction)?

-JP

Photocrat

Why not just ask him directly--if we cannot rely on indirect ways of knowing something, how can we know that there is a God?

Even the Bible, taken under full inerrancy with verbal plenary inspiration, is indirect *for us.* If those cannot count as evidence, why the Bible? We accept God due to part of our natures? It's also part of our nature to be inquisitive, hence the scientific theories... etc. etc.

In any event, how far do you expect to get if he really thinks the earth is flat? *sigh* ... There's no reason to reject science like this ... Even King Solomon was reputed to be an avid naturalist, as is implied in a few places ... *sigh*