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A Critique
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there is an electron and a photon, and then there is an electron again. The interaction lasts only for about one thousand trillionth (10-15) of a second. The reason that this can happen is the famous Heisenberg's Uncertainly Principle, in which there is also a reciprocal uncertainty of time and energy.
Similarly, protons also interact with themselves. First there is a proton, then there is a proton and a pion, then there is a proton again.
This is the simplest example of self-interaction. Eleven particles make their transient appearance between the time the original proton transforms into a neutron and a pion and the time it becomes a single proton again in the flicker of time permitted by the ‘Uncertainty Principle'. All interactions and self-interactions of subatomic particles are instances of artha-prayāya and six-fold decrease and increase (sat-guna-hāni-vrddhi) resulting from the agurulaghu guna of pudgala.
PARIŅĀMA
Physical properties like extension (volume), mass, density, etc., can be changed by change in temperature and/or pressure. For instance water is solid (in the form of ice) at temperature 0°C or below. When heated, it becomes liquid and its volume slightly increases. At 100°C, it boils and changes into steam which has very much larger volume. Similary air (or oxygen) which is gaseous at normal temperature and pressure can be liquified under very high pressures. The thermal motion in a solid body is quivering or vibration of molecules. If the body is heated, the quivering becomes stronger and at the melting point the molecules leave their places and begin to move. At still higher temperatures, they fly apart in all directions and the result is gaseous state of matter. But the
1. Temperature of liquid air is 63o absolute or 210° C below zero. 2. If the temperature is raised still farther, thermal dissociation takes place and
the molecules are boken up into separate atoms. For instance, molecules of water will be broken up at a temperature over a thousand degress. But when the temperature rises to several thousand degrees, the matter will be a gaseous mixture of pure elements. At still higher temperatures, thermal ionization takes place when outer electrons are chipped off from the atoms. At a few million degrees (temperature common in the interiors of stars) all electronic shells are completely stripped off and matter becomes a mixture of bare nuclei and free electrons. If the temperature goes up to several billion degrees the nuclei themselves break up into protons and neutronss. Thus the effect of thermal agitation is to destroy step by step the elaborate ar
chitecture of matter into particles rushing around without any apparent law. 2. Parispandana-laksana kriya --Pravacanasara Pradipika Vrtti, 2-37.
