{"id":131108,"date":"2021-11-23T09:23:02","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T17:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/the-mathematical-structure-of-particle-collisions-comes-into-view"},"modified":"2021-11-23T09:23:02","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T17:23:02","slug":"the-mathematical-structure-of-particle-collisions-comes-into-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/the-mathematical-structure-of-particle-collisions-comes-into-view","title":{"rendered":"The Mathematical Structure of Particle Collisions Comes Into View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-mathematical-structure-of-particle-collisions-comes-into-view2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s where physicists are getting stuck.<\/p>\n<p>Zooming in to that hidden center involves virtual particles \u2014 quantum fluctuations that subtly influence each interaction\u2019s outcome. The fleeting existence of the quark pair above, like many virtual events, is represented by a Feynman diagram with a closed \u201cloop.\u201d Loops confound physicists \u2014 they\u2019re black boxes that introduce additional layers of infinite scenarios. To tally the possibilities implied by a loop, theorists must turn to a summing operation known as an integral. These integrals take on monstrous proportions in multi-loop Feynman diagrams, which come into play as researchers march down the line and fold in more complicated virtual interactions.<\/p>\n<p>Physicists have algorithms to compute the probabilities of no-loop and one-loop scenarios, but many two-loop collisions bring computers to their knees. This imposes a ceiling on predictive precision \u2014 and on how well physicists can understand what quantum theory says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And that\u2019s where physicists are getting stuck. Zooming in to that hidden center involves virtual particles \u2014 quantum fluctuations that subtly influence each interaction\u2019s outcome. The fleeting existence of the quark pair above, like many virtual events, is represented by a Feynman diagram with a closed \u201cloop.\u201d Loops confound physicists \u2014 they\u2019re black boxes that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,41,2229,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-information-science","category-mathematics","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}