May 10, 2010
I do not mean to suggest in this essay that really deep mysteries about nature are not being discovered, they are. It’s just that the general public doesn’t get to hear about them and it might be by design. It is not that there aren’t many great mysteries left to be discovered, there are. I once read somewhere that Einstein, in the early 1950’s, was asked what he thought about all the strange new, but very short lived, particles being created. His reply was something like – I would be happy just to know what an electron is! I asked what an electron was when I was studying electronics in the late 1960’s, when I was studying x-ray physics in the 1980’s and I and many others are still asking that question in 2010! Will we ever get a straight answer?
It has been well over a century since the electron was discovered by J.J. Thomson, and yet we are still being told that it is a "point" free field, meaning a radius equal to zero (1). Of course there are many theorists who disagree with this view, i.e. that the electron does not have extension or some form of internal substance or substructure. But do you hear about them? How many know about the discoveries – in the 1980’s – concerning the Integral Quantum and Fractional Quantum Hall Effects (2)? Or the recently discovered quasi particles that exhibit a remarkable phenomenon known as spin/charge separation, where electrons in some materials ‘split’ into two independent particles called spinons and chargons (3)! (What kind of workings of nature is that? Recall that the electron is the intrinsic magnetic dipole moment unit.) Imagine, if you will, the Bohr Magneton = e h / 4 pi m c. (Expressed in Gaussian CGS units.) It might be simply expressed as:
BM = S times U, where S(quantum spin) = h(Planks Constant)/4 pi and U = e(electron charge)/m(mass electron) times c(the speed of light).
Clearly it is remarkable that this one dimensional experiment would split S (the spinon?) away from U (the chargon?), i.e. the rest of the magneton fundamental constants of nature – if that is in fact what is happening. (See ref. 3 and make of it what you will.)
These discoveries are found under test conditions near absolute zero temperature and high magnetic fields and are likely to be trying to tell us something very deep about nature. I think a lot more people would take interest in this stuff if the media did a better job of reporting it. (That’s assuming they want to, which I doubt.)
Do some elite groups in mainstream science/military establishments possess very deep understandings of nature that must be kept under wraps? I tend to think so. The remarkable physics behind the Hutchison Effect would seem to indicate so (4). But perhaps for most of us, a deeper understanding of these things are apparently not meant to be. (But I guest I would like to change that.)
Another interesting thought might be: How deeply have visiting ETs probed these great mysteries? Probably all the way! (Perhaps they consider some very deep understandings of nature forbidden knowledge for war mongering planets?)
Here is an example on how slow a pace some areas of research take place. It is well known that in 1916 physicist Hermann Walter Nernst proposed that the Universe is filled with zero point energy (ZPE). In other words, the vacuum can manifest electromagnetic radiation (5). In 1948 H. Casimir proposes that this energy could be measured between two closely placed metal plates in a vacuum at low temperatures (6). This is followed by the pioneering work of M. J. Sparnaay in 1958 and S.K Lamoreaux in 1997 (6). Of course the point is that it has been about one hundred years since Plank, Einstein, Nernst and others revealed the likelihood of this energy being everywhere in the Universe and yet most of humanity remains unaware of this vast potential.
I think it is likely that new discoveries about the electron and matter will continue at temperatures near absolute zero in condense matter physics. Will we be made aware of these fascinating experimental results? Not likely I think, but we should because this is likely where the future technology and energy hopes for the future will come from (7). In the mean time, there are many physical effects we already know about and shouldn’t be ignored.
As for me I would sure love to know if an electron has any internal substructure before I get too old. I guess that applies to the proton also, but that might be a different "bag" of quark or etheron worms!
References
