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I got the "source text" from the New Scientist article (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329802-300-pigeon-paradox-reveals-quantum-cosmic-connections/ h

I got the "source text" from the New Scientist article (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329802-300-pigeon-paradox-reveals-quantum-cosmic-connections/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329802-300-pigeon-p...), I have corrected this statement. I did get the phys.org link through a google search on splitting electrons with interferometers. The experiment that they produced did "split up" the electron, as they stated, into two fractionalized packets carrying half of the original electron charge.

acqq 11y ago
Good, so now it's clear that Daily Mail really just retells the article from July 2014. Regarding experiment from 2015, they never "split" the electron as such, they just claim to observe some "temporal" "partial" excitations in their setup. Which surely can be something interesting, but there's also a lot of work done before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractionalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractionalization "Laughlin proposed a fluid of fractional charges in 1983" etc "Fractional charges continue to be active topic in condensed matter physics." It's not that the single particle is actually being split, even if it appears so. That's why there's talk about "quasiparticles" and "fractional charges." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_quantum_Hall_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_quantum_Hall_effect