Fundamentals of physics suggest that the electrons are virtually immortal. But recently had a wonderful experiment, who managed to refute this fundamental assumption. However, after learning the results, you will surely laugh: revised minimum “shelf life” of the electrons was 60 000 hottelet (!) is five quintillion times the age of our Universe.
Ittihadi
The electron is the lightest subatomic particle carrying a negative electric charge. It has no known components, so it is considered a basic building block of the Universe, elementary particle.
An international group of scientists working on the Borexino experiment in Italy, looking for signs of the collapse of electrons into lighter particles, but, as expected, found nothing. Actually, this is good, because it confirms what physicists have long suspected. If they found that the electrons decay into photons and neutrinos — particles with a smaller mass — that would violate the law of conservation of electric charge. Such a discovery would point in the direction of absolutely new physics beyond the Standard model.
However, the same team of scientists managed to make the most accurate measurement is the “lifetime” of electrons. Their calculations showed that a particle that exists today, there will be another 66 000 hottelet (6.6 x 10^28 years), and it is about five quintillion times the age of the Universe. Parts of this work appeared in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.
Here is how explains this extreme pirouette:
“Borexino is composed of shell oil-based fluid that is activated when the neutrino is a nearly massless neutral particle knocks out an electron from one of the atoms in the liquid. 2000 the detector photomultipliers amplify the emitted light. Scientists have determined the sensitivity of the detector to the photons produced by a hypothetical collapse of the electron into a photon and a neutrino. Then they searched the photon “events” below that the background energy is about 256 Kev, the corresponding half of the rest mass of the electron”.
After 408 days of combing the data they have found nothing. But they still managed to determine the average life of the electron.
The new lower threshold
Of course, this does not mean that the electrons will live that long. First, the Universe during this time will not be, most likely. And even if it is — say, after a Big Gap is a fundamental property of particles like electrons, will likely be completely different.
Second, and more important, is that a new dimension has still shifted the bottom limit of the “length” of the electron. New value 100 times greater than the previous lower threshold, which was defined as part of a similar experiment in 1998. Now we know that if this reaction should occur less than once every 6.6 x 10^28 years.
No signs of decay
The cause of terribly long duration must somehow relate to the fact that scientists are not entirely sure that the electrons are immune to disintegration. Observations made by scientists Borexino (or rather, lack thereof), I presume that because we have not seen the collapse of electrons, their lifetime should be not less than what would require new calculations.
Sean Carroll, Professor of physics at Caltech, explained in a letter to Gizmodo:
“Decay is a natural process in particle physics; heavy particles typically decay into lighter. Neutron, left to itself, for example, will decay into a proton, electron and anti-neutrino within minutes. It is this version of the decay of radioactive nuclei like uranium performed by elementary particles.
But there are things that never seem to happen, which we describe conservation laws. For example, the total electric charge does not change. In addition, the “baryon number” (total number of protons plus neutrons minus the number of antiprotons antineutrons plus) and “lepton number” (electrons plus neutrinos, minus their antiparticles). Before the collapse we have one neutron, charge = 0, baryon number = 1 and lepton number = 0. After the collapse of the charge also = 0 (proton = +1, electron = -1 and antineutrino = 0), baryon number = 1 (proton = 1, electron and anti-neutrino = 0) and the lepton number = 0 (proton = 0, electron = 1, antineutrino = -1).
Baryon and lepton number has never changed in any of the experiments, such an event would be worth the Nobel prize — but in theory we believe that change is possible and may have occurred in the early Universe. (It might help us to explain why in the modern Universe has more matter than antimatter)”.
But no one expects will change the charge. This value is strongly conserved.
If electric charge is not preserved, it would be very surprising event. Why do people think that electrons do not disintegrate”.
Carroll says that the particles that are lighter than electrons, is electrically neutral, neutrinos, photons, gluons, gravitons. If there were other light charged particles, we would have found them by now. Everything indicates that the electron cannot disintegrate.
“But look for certainly worth it! It’s a lottery ticket — it’s unlikely that you’ll find something, but if you will, you get rich, says Carroll. Unfortunately, no one found, but zero results is an important part of good science”.