Frank Wilczek - Atoms Quotes

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When two identical 3He atoms collide... the interference is destructive. Particles that behave like 3He atoms are called fermions, short for "particles obeying Fermi–Dirac statistics."... while bosons imitate one another... the "identity force" between fermions acts like a repulsion, and the probability of finding a fermion at some point in space is reduced if some of its identical siblings are nearby.... It is the repulsive identity forces between electrons that support white dwarf stars... against their own gravity.

Frank Wilczek
Sam Treiman... has quoted something he called Treiman's theorem... Impossible things usually don't happen.... With the discovery of radioactivity... it suddenly became apparent that the "impossible" was happening all the time. Uranium, thorium, radium... fit all the requirements of chemical elements. They could not be broken down by any of the standard methods... But occasionally... atoms of these elements spontaneously changed into other kinds of atoms.... So what is left of the doctrine of the elements? Is alchemy reinstated? Not at all. The point is that the doctrine fails only under rare or special conditions.... We can isolate the conditions in which they do, and retain a more restricted but still useful concept of the "impossible."

Frank Wilczek
There is a simple rule for composite objects, such as nuclei or atoms. The rule is that if such an object contains an odd number of fermions, the composite object is a fermion. Otherwise, it is a boson.... this simple rule doesn't care at all about the number of bosons in the composite object.

Frank Wilczek