This post is about the shape of the electron. Here I wish to show some remarkable physics as told by John Duffield to me and some friends in an email correspondence.
From James
See Electron Shape
From John
Interesting, thanks James.
But it's a strange article this. It talks about the electric field and the
magnetic field as if they're two different things, rather than two aspects
of the electromagnetic field, depending on relative motion.
If you're at rest in an electron's electromagnetic field, you'd say you were
an electric field. If however this electron was at rest close up to a
proton, the electromagnetic fields of the electron and the proton would mask
one another, and you'd say you were in no field at all. If however the
electron was going round the proton, you'd say you were in a magnetic field.
If you've got a whole array of electrons and protons, and the electrons are
all going round in the same orientation, what you've got is a magnet.
Going back to a single electron, the electron has spin angular momentum, and
its magnetic dipole moment tells you that even though you've only got a
single electron, you've got something going round, because a loop of current
has magnetic moment. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_moment#Magnetic_moment_of_an_electron
But the electric dipole moment "is a measure of the separation of positive
and negative electrical charges in a system of charges". Looking for this in
an electron doesn't make sense to me. It's like looking for a bit of the
electron where the chirality goes the other way.
Another guy pointed out this other report on the same thing:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028145.100
I didn't know this:
"The result is a challenge to supersymmetry: while the standard model
suggests the electron is egg-shaped by only one part in 10^28, supersymmetry
sets the range at between one part in 10^14 and one part in 10^19.
'We cannot rule out supersymmetry but we're certainly putting pressure on
the theory,' says Hudson.
An improvement of one order of magnitude could either confirm supersymmetry
or rule it out, something the Imperial team now aims to achieve".
From James
Fascinating! Isn't your model of the electron non Circular? A photon in an orbit? Or is the orbit spherical?
From John
It isn't my model. The orbiting photon is toroidal, which means it's
circular, but not entirely spherical. Think of a spherical onion and peel
off layers. As you get down towards the middle it starts looking apple
shaped. But you've got to get down to the scale of the Compton wavelength
before you see this.
From James
Fascinating about the electron but wouldn't the torroidal geometry be detected? Thanks for insights but surely the torroid is not experimentally discovered if spherical to one part in 100000000000000. Not a hint of internal onion?
From John
The lack of electric dipole moment doesn't actually say the electron is
spherical. Looking for it is like asking which part of the electron is
positively charged. None of it is, just as no part of a screw thread goes
the wrong way. Magnetic dipole moment is different. Read about it at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_magnetic_dipole_moment and note the
bit that says the electron "indeed behaves like a tiny bar magnet". A bar
magnet is where the electrons have a common orbital spin orientation. They
aren't totally randomised, pointing in all directions that might cover a
sphere. So the electron "intrinsic" spin isn't either.
-----
And that concluded this discussion of the electron shape, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this physics :-)
John's book, the superb Relativity+ is available on Amazon.
See the Physics Discussion Forum that John hosts.
No comments:
Post a Comment