Where does the charge go? Perhaps 'charge' is an effect which only occurs or manifests when spin and angular momentum are combined...
-m _____________________________________________ From: Jones Beene [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2012 6:19 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Vo]:Spinon + Orbiton = Electron -----Original Message----- From: Alan J Fletcher Terry Blanton wrote: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/19/splitting_the_electron/ But where does the CHARGE go ... either? both? If it were to go ONE way then the other would be charge-less and could maybe enter a proton. Once in, it could call its charged buddy to come and join it. (Usual ignorant speculation disclaimer comes here). It is a good question, and the "buddy system" is not far off metaphorically (as in a "condensate"). In 1997 we saw the first modern direct evidence that electric current can be carried by "quasiparticles" with fractional charge (Weitzman Inst). But older experiments including those of Robert Millikan himself, probably saw found this. Here is a good article with relevant background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle Millikan is regarded by some as one of the founders of American science - but he was also guilty of pathological science, ignoring evidence and fudging experiments. He held-back progress for a half-century on fractional charge, partly because of an underserved reputation, not to mention the flawed experiment (he only used about a third of his actual results - the ones where data fit into the desired outcome). An updated, automated (and equally flawed) Millikan-type experiment was undertaken at SLAC but it was seriously doomed by the assumption that nothing less than about 15% of the electron charge would be found. And nothing was found by them. That constraint changed the way the experiment can be meaningfully run, since - given the ubiquity of the fine structure constant, they should have designed a wide range experiment that would at least look for charge as low as e/137. The results of the many experiments agree with a theory which was formulated by Robert Laughlin to explain the fractional quantum Hall effect FQHE. According to Laughlin, electrons in strong magnetic fields form an exotic collective state, similar to the BEC state. This does not rule out Shoulder's claims. But any BEC-like agglomeration of electrons, although it may fit in with the experimental work of Ken Shoulders, will need to "hide" charge somewhere. Where? You ask. The sea, of course. Dirac's sea. Probably located "just around the corner" in reciprocal space <g> Jones
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