Rodney A. Brooks Quote

A delicate balance. In summary, nuclei are held together by a delicate balance among (a) the attractive strong force between nucleons, (b) the electrical repulsion between protons, (c) the dilution of this repulsive force by neutrons, and (d) the instability created by the Exclusion Principle if there are too many neutrons. Thus, for a given number of protons there is a narrow range of allowable neutron numbers: not enough and the protons will fly apart because of electrical repulsion: too many and the nucleus will be unstable because of the Exclusion Principle.

Rodney A. Brooks

A delicate balance. In summary, nuclei are held together by a delicate balance among (a) the attractive strong force between nucleons, (b) the electrical repulsion between protons, (c) the dilution of this repulsive force by neutrons, and (d) the instability created by the Exclusion Principle if there are too many neutrons. Thus, for a given number of protons there is a narrow range of allowable neutron numbers: not enough and the protons will fly apart because of electrical repulsion: too many and the nucleus will be unstable because of the Exclusion Principle.

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About Rodney A. Brooks

Rodney Allen Brooks (born 30 December 1954) is an Australian roboticist, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, author, and robotics entrepreneur, most known for popularizing the actionist approach to robotics. He was a Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is a founder and former Chief Technical Officer of iRobot and co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics) and currently is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Robust.AI (founded in 2019).