I do know that beta particles, used in the famous gold foil experiments, are .75 c in vacuum, but often faster than c in other materials.
On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Roger B <rogerbi...@hotmail.com> wrote: > I confess to being an ignoramus. I confess to having only a B.A. in > psychology, a B.A. in philosophy, and an A.S. in electronics technology. > I am, however, a philosophical savant. > > I have a question that I have asked several times but have never gotten an > answer. By what means do conventional physicist probe and understand the > innards of the atom? What is the minimum speed of the particles that > they shoot into the atom to see what is there? Do they ever use some > version of light to understand the innards of the atom? > > If, as I suppose, and I could be wrong, all of the particles "shot" into > the atom are traveling close to the speed of light, then could not there be > some unknown characteristic at this speed, perhaps as yet unknown to us, > that causes things inside the atom to behave differently than from how > they would behave if the probing particle were going much slower. For > example, what if the almost light speed particle had a bow wave in front > of it as it flew through the aether? If every single particle that was > used to probe the inside of the atom were traveling at .99 the speed of > light, then this "distortion" would be the same in every experiment, and > one aspect of this limited view inside the atom we might call the > "Coulomb Barrier". > > Is this all possible? Or am I off base? > > > Roger Bird > Colorado >
