Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyrotex
I am aware of experiments done as far back as the early 1970's which attempted to determine the size of the electron. They were only able to show that its size had to be below a very small value---and was the smallest "distance" ever measured at that time.
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Yeah I believe that to be about (10E-15 M).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyrotex
The same book (on Particle Physics, published around 1972) gave the smallest time interval ever measured at that time as the half-life of the mu meson.
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The most recent minimal time estimate I heard was derived from a laser pulse (about 2003) to on the order of (10E-18 sec or Ahto-Second).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyrotex
Now here is the fun part. In the margin of the book, I divided the "smallest distance" by the "smallest interval" and obtained...
the speed of light in a vacuum, to within a fraction of 1%.
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I remember doing something like that in my freshman Intro Physics class also. Yes, this is very curious... Hmmm....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyrotex
As far as I know, the electron is still the "smallest".
Hmmmmm.... curiouser and curiouser....
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Well as for size I am guessing something on the order of (10E-22 M). This is definitely larger that Planck Scale and yet many orders of magnitude smaller than we see at the moment (10E-15 M).
I understand Jay-Qu's comment about how stable an Electron (or any Lepton). However maybe Muon's and Taon's are decay products. Or maybe like quarks, the Electron components are in a bound state. So Muon's & Taon's are excited versions or configurations.
Whatever would be the case, the energy would have to be large as SLAC never found any evidence for electron subcomponents as Jay-Qu mentioned. This would then be the floor on the energy needed -- say more than 14 TeV.
maddog
Re: What if the electron is not an elementary particle ?
