4 ms·

I think that this strip about particles should be added to some of the obligatory XKCD-s http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3554 http://www.smbc-comics.co

• gus_massa 12y ago
  If you assume that electrons are made from "smashed electron paste", then the magnetic moment of the electron is related to the angular moment of the electron. If you divide this by the charge of the electron and some universal constants like c an h the result is the g-factor. For the "smashed particles paste" model you get that g=1. (If you have a spinning rock with constant mass density and charge density, you get g=1.) If you use a theoretical model for fermions particles, the calculation is more complicated but finally you get that g=2. If you do the experiment with actual electrons, the result is g=2.00231930436153 (yes, with a lot of decimal places). The difference is dew to the appearance of virtual particles near the electron, and can be calculated theoretically and experimentally, and the results agree up to the current precision!!! You can do the same with other particles, for example for muons g=2.0023318414, because the corrections are slightly different. But for protons g= 5.585694713 because they are not elementary particles, they are composed by quarks. (They are not elemental particles, but are neither smashed paste particles.) More details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-factor_(physics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-factor_(physics) I think that it's a little optimistic to say that we have the definite elementary particles, but we have hit a very strange wall.