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Narwhal_Assassin t1_jbzcasy wrote

Reply to comment by LeN3rd in As they still have a neutral charge, can antineutrons replace neutrons in a regular atom? by Oheligud

You’d have an up quark-antiquark annihilation, and a down quark-antiquark annihilation, leaving behind an up quark and a down antiquark. These have charges of +2/3 e and +1/3 e, respectively, so they can combine to form a meson with a +1 charge (I forget what the specific name would be, probably a pi meson?). So, the proton-antineutron annihilation is totally fine in terms of charge conservation and in terms of not leaving solo quarks.

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migueltrout t1_jbztpck wrote

It absolutely boggles my mind that we as human beings have discovered this knowledge.

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Emu1981 t1_jc0imbi wrote

>It absolutely boggles my mind that we as human beings have discovered this knowledge.

What is even more mind boggling is that we could be completely wrong about it all and not even know it - the old story about the blind men describing a elephant by touch comes to mind. We cannot "see" quarks but rather we can only see how they effect the physical world (e.g. via destroying matter in a particle accelerator).
We then infer what they are and build models to describe what we see. All it would take is a discovery that changes our understanding of one little part to completely upend the model.

*edit* bleh, no idea why Reddit insists that there should be a line break in there.

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ontopofyourmom t1_jc0ky76 wrote

We could be, but this is part of the most accurate and best-proven scientific theory in existence.

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ApeMummy t1_jc0hsqq wrote

Question: how do sets of quarks annihilate simultaneously? Why doesn’t the energy released from the first annihilation cause the other quarks to scatter? Do they occupy the same physical space meaning all the annihilations are simultaneous?

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ghedipunk t1_jc11cgc wrote

The models presented so far don't describe individual quarks.

Rather, nuclear particles (the protons, antiprotons, neutrons, and antineutrons) are a soup of quarks and gluons that, on average, add up to a specific number of quarks.

So, yeah... for a basic understanding, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZfmG_h5Oyg

To answer your question: We're firmly outside of the ideas we're familiar with when we think of particles. There is no concept of simultaneity at this scale; you need to rely on probabilities only.

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