4 ms·

'Near-Perfect' == 'Perfect to within our ability to measure' That is, the headline might lead you to believe that they are not perfect spheres, but that is not

• spottiness 15y ago
  Excellent observation!
• spottiness 15y ago
  Although after reading the article from The Economist, physicists need electron's cloud shape to be a 'near-perfect' sphere (but never perfect) to comply with the Standard Model of elementary particles. It's important to emphasize what you said, though: that the experiments still haven't found any "defect" in the shape of the electron's cloud that makes it a non-perfect sphere. I wonder what HN predicts? I'd say it's a perfect sphere and the Standard Model is wrong. Time will tell... Link to The Economist article (also in a comment posted below): http://www.economist.com/node/21518365 http://www.economist.com/node/21518365
• baddox 15y ago
  Wouldn't it require mathematically perfect instruments to even measure/verify a mathematically perfect sphere? A mathematical sphere is simply an infinite set of points: the set of all points a given distance away from some central point.
  • Afton 15y ago
    The experiment was to detect spherical imperfections. That experiment failed to detect any. You're proposing limitations on how we'll detect spherical perfection, which is the opposite issue.
• ansy 15y ago
  Note that whether electrons are spherical or not is important to theoretical physics. Right now we do NOT want them to be perfect spheres. But, as you say, our ability to measure this is limited by our instruments. Keep in mind that many important scientific theories had to wait a very long time until our instruments could reliably measure what was predicted. For example, theories that the earth rotated around the sun were theorized as far back as the 5th Century BC and maybe far before that. Actually proving the Earth rotated around the sun didn't happen until 1728 by measuring aberration in starlight. But what the ancients actually sought, proof by stellar parallax, was far beyond the capabilities of optical instruments until 1854. To be technical, it was actually empirical to believe the sun orbited the earth during this time. Ancients would say "if the earth orbits, I should see stars shift. I do not see stars shifting, therefore the earth does not orbit." Aristotle actually used this very argument! I was listening to some of the researchers comment on this particular discovery and they are more hopeful about the technique than the findings. There is already talk about improving the resolution a couple of orders of magnitude.
  • endtime 15y ago
    >Right now we do NOT want them to be perfect spheres. Two questions: 1) By "do not want" do you mean that it wouldn't be compatible with current models? Or something else? 2) Relatedly, what would be the implications if they were to turn out to be perfect spheres?
    • ansy 15y ago
      Aspheric electrons help explain the imbalance between matter and antimatter under many current models. I don't know the full implications if electrons were spherical. But two I can think of are that either our models are wrong or there is something wrong with the way we are measuring the amounts of matter and antimatter in the universe.
      • queensnake 15y ago
        Geez, I'm out of touch - last I knew they were point particles (and not just in abstract).