10-Year Study Reveals Electron Shape

lee1 writes "In a 10 year long experiment, scientists at Imperial College have made the most precise measurement so far of the shape of the electron. It's round. So round, in fact, that if the electron were enlarged to the size of the solar system, its shape would diverge from a perfect sphere less than the width of a human hair. The experiment continues in the search for even greater precision. There are implications for understanding processes in the early universe, namely the mysterious fate of the antimatter."

Re:Units

[Twinbee]

The 0.000...001 version maybe visually represents the amount better.

puuurfect

[fragfoo]

Maybe its shape is indeed a perfect sphere and the "width of a human hair" is just a measurement error. How more precise they want to get, until its shape diverges a human hair from a perfect sphere when enlarged to the size of the galaxy? Is there an end to measurement errors? Am i making any sense? I think not, its late at night :x

Re:all that wave particle jazz

[Daniel_Staal]

Your head exploding is a perfectly normal reaction to trying to comprehend modern physics. Carry on.

Re:Units

[mattack2]

What's wrong with calling it mysterious? The theories say there should be equal parts matter & antimatter.. There doesn't seem to be.. So it's a mystery.. Thus, as an adjective, it is mysterious.

Re:Curious question

[gcnaddict]

My good sir, I merely asked a few questions. I made no statement indicating an expectation of multiple theories, merely a query for any in the event that any happened to exist.

As an aside, it would do you wonders to investigate new methodologies of conveying written information. Your response, most notably the capitalization, the usage of asterisks for emphasis, and the snide remark about political journalism, appeared to have a not-terribly-subtle hint of condescension. As someone who wants to learn more, this is something I most certainly do not deserve after asking a benign question.

Re:Units

[davester666]

Heisenberg phoned and left a message saying all these numbers just MIGHT be slightly too precise...

Re:Under what conditions?

[AliasMarlowe]

The Heisenberg principle is just a consequence of a property of Fourier transforms that says that any signal localized in frequency space will not be localized in the original space.

It's a consequence of linear operators in general [wikipedia.org]. Conceptualizing it in terms of the Fourier transform which localizes an invariant process very well in frequency and not at all in position may limit one's viewpoint. It's more informatively interpreted using time-frequency decompositions such as the Wigner distribution [wikipedia.org] (or position-scale representations such as wavelet transforms), in which there is a direct trade-off between localization in frequency (or scale) and localization in time (or position).

Where the magic comes in is the relationship between momentum and position, and energy and time, operators in QM.

An even bigger magic comes from the applicability of mathematics to physics, which is an interesting philosophical issue in its own right. "How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality." - Albert Einstein.