Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: fas on 20/07/2009 14:56:49

Title: quark - antiquark pairs in mesons
Post by: fas on 20/07/2009 14:56:49

Hola good guys...

im a little confused, since i cant wrap my head about this meson thingie. As far as i  understood it:
1) A meson is composed of an quark-antiquark pair
2) A meson decays by weak interaction

why wouldn't the quark-antiquark pair annihilate itself? they have opposing electrical charges and in my view should attract each other until they finally annihliate each other into a bunch of photons or whatever :)
Is the decay happening too fast for the electromagnetic interaction to take place?
Or can't i as so often use my intuiton on that kind of problem since the quantum world doesnt obey common sense?

thanks for your help

frank

Title: quark - antiquark pairs in mesons
Post by: Soul Surfer on 20/07/2009 21:51:14

They do eventually decay and most mesons last a short time. This is nothing special  Remember it is possible for an electron and a positron meeting each other with an angular momentum componentto form several metastable states "orbiting" each other and emitting quanta of radiation before they finally anhilate each other and relase a pair of gamma rays.