CompuServe Messages

The packed neutron idea arises because try as we might, we keep visualizing atomic particles as 'solids.' I think either Rutherford or Bohr admitted, late in life, 'you know, I think about atoms as little red billiard balls.' Neutrons are themselves mostly empty space, at least if you try to bang on them with a neutrino. They aren't 'spheres' of continuous material. The 'edge' of a neutron is not really like the shell of an egg; it's a quantum thing of dubious location. Once one is down at a small enough level to talk about particles which have no component parts, and thus should move the way one imagines one's '100% rigid rod' moving, one is no longer talking about something with definite location or momentum, and if I cannot know where or how fast my particle is moving, I cannot transmit information with it by giving it a jiggle.