Inside the Electron Q 91
provide the forces-gluons, photons, pions.The indefinite spin state of
each spin-1/2 subquark pointing in opposite directions at different in-
stants in time but coordinated in such a way as to create a quark-bound
state with overall spin of 1/2, indicates, says Phillips, that Ron was ob-
serving the quantum nature of spin.
Taking a closer look at one walnut, Ron saw that two threads came
out of it, one of which appeared fainter than the other.The clearer one
looked like a tangled, twisted piece of string, which could be pulled
out into a straight line with little effort and which, on being relaxed,
resumed its tangled state.
Thinking he would see a spiral within one of these strings, Ron
magnified it. Instead he saw a stream of bubbles flowing back and forth
so quickly he could not observe the moment they reversed direction.
As the bubbles came out of the walnut in single file to move along
what looked like a tube, some form of energy appeared to expand
them to their maximum over a distance of up to ten bubble diameters.
Then the current reversed.
That Ron should be able to see and describe such a bubble was amaz-
ing enough, the diameter of the walnut-subquark being somewhere in
the neighborhoodof.ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo~ cm.
Fastening his attention onto a single bubble, Ron saw that as it
moved through the tube the tube rotated one instant in one direction,
next in the opposite, clockwise as the bubbles moved away, counter-
clockwise as they moved toward him, though again he could not
distinguish the actual instant of transition. Estimating the distance be-
tween successive bubbles as about six times the width of a bubble, Ron
noted that as each bubble passed, the tube seemed to collapse very
slightly, its edges no sharper than the boundary between two liquids.
Managing to move along with a bubble-obviously not moving his
physical body but his viewpoint-Ron saw that it was shaped like a fat
doughnut, with an indented sort of cap that led the bubble's motion
and trailed a tail.Wanting to see what was happening close up to one
of the walnuts, Ron approached a thread that appeared to link two
walnuts. Inside the thread, close to the walnut's outer surface, he found
himself moving in a graceful spiral. Down he went, like Alice in