What would be needed for meaningful interaction with non-fermion matter?

[Frustration]

So I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I thought I'd ask for some assistance.

Let's say that there is another set of particles out there, independent of protons, electrons and the like that could make their own matter, which for simplicity we will call blue matter.

What properties would these particles have to have for them to be able to be interacted with by say humans, while also being different from the elements we currently have?

[offer]

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

So I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I thought I'd ask for some assistance.

Let's say that there is another set of particles out there, independent of protons, electrons and the like that could make their own matter, which for simplicity we will call blue matter.

What properties would these particles have to have for them to be able to be interacted with by say humans, while also being different from the elements we currently have?

The interactions of particles are mediated by force particles (e.g. photons which transfer the electromagnetic force) so they would need to have interaction with (at least one) of the force particles.

For example, one hypothesis for what is the dark matter (I am not sure what the current opinion on this in the physics community) is that it is particles that don`t interact with photons or with the nuclear forces but do have mass (=Interact with the force of gravity via the gravity particles, gravitons). This is what causes it to be undetect by telescopes but still have gravitational effect on the galaxies.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, offer said:

The interactions of particles are mediated by force particles (e.g. photons which transfer the electromagnetic force) so they would need to have interaction with (at least one) of the force particles.

For example, one hypothesis for what is the dark matter (I am not sure what the current opinion on this in the physics community) is that it is particles that don`t interact with photons or with the nuclear forces but do have mass (=Interact with the force of gravity via the gravity particles, gravitons). This is what causes it to be undetect by telescopes but still have gravitational effect on the galaxies.

Yes but in what ways.

It would need to have some regions of negative electric charge as that's how we hold and touch other matter, but are there other requirements?

[offer]

5 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Yes but in what ways.

It would need to have some regions of negative electric charge as that's how we hold and touch other matter, but are there other requirements?

I don`t understand what you mean. In the black matter example it won`t have electric charge since it doesn`t interact with photons.

[Frustration]

8 minutes ago, offer said:

I don`t understand what you mean. In the black matter example it won`t have electric charge since it doesn`t interact with photons.

I was referring to the hypothetical blue matter mentioned in the original post.

[offer]

5 minutes ago, Frustration said:

I was referring to the hypothetical blue matter mentioned in the original post.

I understand that. Why do you say it will have negative electric charge?

[Frustration]

17 minutes ago, offer said:

I understand that. Why do you say it will have negative electric charge?

Our ability to hold matter is dependent on the repulsion between electrons, so it needs a negative electric charge in order to be held. Though I suppose a positive charge repelling against the nucleus of regular matter would also work.

[Just a Lifetime he/him]

9 hours ago, Frustration said:

What properties would these particles have to have for them to be able to be interacted with by say humans, while also being different from the elements we currently have?

The short answer here is: If we can easily interact with them, then we've already accounted for them among the elements we currently have.

Things become more interesting if we can interact with them, but not easily.  This is the case for the dark matter that @offer brought up...

1 hour ago, offer said:

The interactions of particles are mediated by force particles (e.g. photons which transfer the electromagnetic force) so they would need to have interaction with (at least one) of the force particles.

For example, one hypothesis for what is the dark matter (I am not sure what the current opinion on this in the physics community) is that it is particles that don`t interact with photons or with the nuclear forces but do have mass (=Interact with the force of gravity via the gravity particles, gravitons). This is what causes it to be undetect by telescopes but still have gravitational effect on the galaxies.

I research dark matter (among other things) for a living, and can confirm that this is correct.

In particular, what you describe is sometimes called "the nightmare scenario" for dark matter --- particles that interact only gravitationally with the known particles.  Since gravitational interactions are so weak, this makes it practically impossible to gain any detailed knowledge about dark matter.  For example, we can gravitationally estimate the total mass of the dark matter in a galaxy, but couldn't figure out how many particles there are, or how much mass each of them contributes to this total.

It's actually possible for dark matter to interact with known particles via electromagnetism, the weak & strong nuclear forces, or the Higgs field, so long as these interactions are rare enough not to have been observed in many huge experiments that have been looking for them since the 1980s.  (Such interactions also have to be [mostly] dissipationless, but that may be getting a bit too technical for this forum.)  In particular, massive particles that interact via the weak nuclear force (called weakly interacting massive particles) are among the most studied possibilities.  My own research (for example arXiv:2006.16429) focuses on dark matter that is actually formed from electrically charged particles --- to avoid easy detection, we hypothesize that these are confined into electrically neutral dark matter, the same way electrically charged quarks are confined to form electrically neutral neutrons.  While photons can interact with the confined 'dark quarks', such interactions are far more rare than they would be if the electrically charged particles were not confined, making this possibility consistent with experimental observations.

Finally, I'll add that the generic statements above hold for both fermions and bosons.  Both bosonic and fermionic dark (or blue) particles can interact with known particles, though the particular forms of the possible interactions are different.

Finally finally, here's a shameless plug for me talking about dark matter on teh YouTubes.

[offer]

48 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Our ability to hold matter is dependent on the repulsion between electrons, so it needs a negative electric charge in order to be held. Though I suppose a positive charge repelling against the nucleus of regular matter would also work.

Ahhh.... I didn`t understand you want matter that we can hold in your hand.

In this case it seems that @Just a Lifetime gave a better answer than I can

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Just a Lifetime said:

The short answer here is: If we can easily interact with them, then we've already accounted for them among the elements we currently have.

Thanks for responding.

That's what I was afraid of.

If for the purposes of a story I need such matter to exist, how much would I have to fudge?

[Just a Lifetime he/him]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

If for the purposes of a story I need such matter to exist, how much would I have to fudge?

Quite a bit, I think.  The best examples of this sort of thing that immediately come to my mind don't introduce new particles but instead organize existing particles (electrons, protons, neutrons) in new ways.  I'm thinking of ice-nine in Cat's Cradle and newmatter in Anathem --- though the latter didn't work for me, since it involved different objects in the same room being subject to different laws of physics 

I'm sure this sort of thing has come up on Writing Excuses, probably many times.  A quick Google search gave me season 3 episode 2 with the recommendation, "don't try to explain the black boxes".

Edited December 29, 2022 by Just a Lifetime
Forgot to link Writing Excuses transcript

[Frustration]

5 minutes ago, Just a Lifetime said:

Quite a bit, I think.  The best examples of this sort of thing that immediately come to my mind don't introduce new particles but instead organize existing particles (electrons, protons, neutrons) in new ways.  I'm thinking of ice-nine in Cat's Cradle and newmatter in Anathem --- though the latter didn't work for me, since it involved different objects in the same room being subject to different laws of physics 

I'm sure this sort of thing has come up on Writing Excuses, probably many times.  A quick Google search gave me season 3 episode 2 with the recommendation, "don't try to explain the black boxes".

Alright, thank you.

[curon he/him]

I am a bit late to the party but I want to remark that I very much agree with Just in a Lifetime on this. Part of the reason Brandons cosmere and "in-world scientifically rooted" magic systems work as well as they do for me is that the sciencey black boxes are left alone. Something about attempting to explain the science details becomes rather disturbing rather quickly. Stories that try to elaborate on their underlying science (be it fantasy or sci-fi or ... ) tend to feel like shady papers to me: a dizzying melange of buzz words raising more questions than they answer  

 

Now, something that I believe could work is if you sort of take a real world model like the standard model and only borrow from it its overall idea and structure for your world. If this is well done, I imagine it could make your in-world physics both consistent (because you are free to make it so) and plausible because of its structural reminiscence of something describing our world. In case you are interested in this kind of thing I would recommend to read up on the standard model -- I could dig out a youtube video of a fantastic popular sciencey talk on it should you be interested  

[Frustration]

5 hours ago, curon said:

I am a bit late to the party but I want to remark that I very much agree with Just in a Lifetime on this. Part of the reason Brandons cosmere and "in-world scientifically rooted" magic systems work as well as they do for me is that the sciencey black boxes are left alone. Something about attempting to explain the science details becomes rather disturbing rather quickly. Stories that try to elaborate on their underlying science (be it fantasy or sci-fi or ... ) tend to feel like shady papers to me: a dizzying melange of buzz words raising more questions than they answer  

 

Now, something that I believe could work is if you sort of take a real world model like the standard model and only borrow from it its overall idea and structure for your world. If this is well done, I imagine it could make your in-world physics both consistent (because you are free to make it so) and plausible because of its structural reminiscence of something describing our world. In case you are interested in this kind of thing I would recommend to read up on the standard model -- I could dig out a youtube video of a fantastic popular sciencey talk on it should you be interested  

The standard model was part of my inspiration

I think I've gotten it figured out enough that it shouldn't cause too many problems.

[curon he/him]

23 hours ago, Frustration said:

The standard model was part of my inspiration

I think I've gotten it figured out enough that it shouldn't cause too many problems.

Sounds pretty cool! I like the general idea a lot!