The neutrino

Post author:The Physics Detective
Post published:24th September 2018
Post category:Foundations of physics Neutrino Particle physics
Post comments:6 Comments

The neutrino was proposed by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930 to account for the conservation of energy and spin angular momentum in beta decay. You can find his original letter to Lise Meitner and others on the Fermilab MicroBooNE database, along with the English translation: Pauli later said “I have done a terrible thing. I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected”. He was wrong about that. He was wrong about some other things too. He talked about a particle that travels slower than light, and…

What charge is

Post author:The Physics Detective
Post published:28th August 2018
Post category:Charge Electromagnetism Foundations of physics QED
Post comments:10 Comments

The electron doesn’t have an electric field, it has an electromagnetic field. If you’re a positron and I set you down near a motionless electron, you will move linearly towards it, and it will move linearly towards you. So you might think the electron has a radial electric field, which results in a linear electric force. But it doesn’t. That linear force is there because the electron has an electromagnetic field, and so does the positron. Linear and rotational force Moreover the interaction between these fields…

The electron

Post author:The Physics Detective
Post published:28th July 2018
Post category:Foundations of physics Particle physics QED
Post comments:85 Comments

The electron is usually described as a fundamental or elementary particle. That doesn’t tell you much, but when you look for more information, it’s rather scant. You soon learn that the electron has a mass of 9.109 x 10-31 kg or 511keV/c². You learn that it has a charge of −1.602 x 10−19 Coulombs or -1e, the e being elementary charge. You also learn that it has spin ½. However you don’t learn much else. Instead you get mixed messages. Take a look at the enigmatic electron…