[Smallfrog]

http://news.bbc.co.u...and/8227861.stm

Can't find much on this, but some people claim to have split electrons.


This annoys me because it means the physics I learnt 5 months ago is now out of date.

[Emperor Stranger]

Smallfrog, on Aug 29 2009, 04:12 PM, said:

http://news.bbc.co.u...and/8227861.stm

Can't find much on this, but some people claim to have split electrons.


This annoys me because it means the physics I learnt 5 months ago is now out of date.

And the computer I bought a month ago is now obsolete. Get used to it.

[xoindotnler]

The movie is not loading.....

Edit:
The guy who made that site must be shot in the face repeatedly...

OW MY GAWD!

This post has been edited by xoindotnler: 29 August 2009 - 02:14 PM

[Foggers]

This is why I chose to do Theology at university.
Thousands of years, and it hasn't changed too much.

[Kenadian_2006]

Foggers, on Aug 29 2009, 04:26 PM, said:

This is why I chose to do Theology at university.
Thousands of years, and it hasn't changed too much.

That's pretty disingenuous.

[Delta1212]

Here's a text article for those of us who can't load the video

[Gran the Adequate]

Am I the only one who read the thread title as 'splitting the election'? >_<

[ty345]

Gran the Terrible, on Aug 29 2009, 05:09 PM, said:

Am I the only one who read the thread title as 'splitting the election'? >_<

No, I read that too

[Emperor Stranger]

Gran the Terrible, on Aug 29 2009, 05:09 PM, said:

Am I the only one who read the thread title as 'splitting the election'? >_<

Lol, nope.

[Eagare the Alenthin]

Foggers, on Aug 29 2009, 08:26 PM, said:

This is why I chose to do Theology at university.
Thousands of years, and it hasn't changed too much.

Theologieee <3333333333

[Foggers]

Gran the Terrible, on Aug 29 2009, 10:09 PM, said:

Am I the only one who read the thread title as 'splitting the election'? >_<

I read your post as 'splitting the electron' and as very confused.

Kenadian_2006, on Aug 29 2009, 09:51 PM, said:

That's pretty disingenuous.

Well, the real reasons were very different. I would have thought by now that people would know not to take all of my posts seriously (or most of them really).

[Jace Couture]

Son of a....

Seriously? If this is real, then the standard model has a whole lot of explaining to do.

[xoindotnler]

And how does this effect us the peasants?

[Penguin]

Just another example of the main-stream media simplifying the science to sell papers. "Splitting the electron" has a catchier title than "Probing Spin-Charge Separation in a Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquid" which is what the paper was actually called. Always try to get your science news from the primary source (here's the link to the actual article for those with site licenses).

From Jompol et al, Science 31 July 2009: Vol. 325. no. 5940, pp. 597 - 601:

In a one-dimensional (1D) system of interacting electrons, excitations of spin and charge travel at different speeds, according to the theory of a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) at low energies. However, the clear observation of this spin-charge separation is an ongoing challenge experimentally. We have fabricated an electrostatically gated 1D system in which we observe spin-charge separation and also the predicted power-law suppression of tunneling into the 1D system. The spin-charge separation persists even beyond the low-energy regime where the TLL approximation should hold. TLL effects should therefore also be important in similar, but shorter, electrostatically gated wires, where interaction effects are being studied extensively worldwide.

From my limited knowledge of the field, it looks like this paper aims to experimental test the Tomonaga-Luttiger liquid theory which you can read about on Wikipedia or in his 1950 paper. In TLL theory, charge and spin are carried by separate waves whereas in a traditional Fermi liquid model, they are carried by the same wave. This is probably where the authors of the newspaper article got the idea for "splitting the electron". To demonstrate that the TLL theory was correct in 1D, they've measured the interactions of electrons in a one dimensional quantum wire (a very narrow wire where the electrons cannot pass one another). They were able to see separate excitation of both the "spinon" and "holon", the wave nature of the spin and charge excitations respectively. They intend to use the system to probe electron interactions at and beyond the high energy limits where TLL theory breaks down.

So, all in all, the paper is pretty neat. They demonstrated that under very specific conditions (one-dimensional) the TLL theory correctly predicts the spin and charge separation of electrons into separate spinon and holon waves. Unless I've completely missed something in the text (I didn't spend that much time reading it), they didn't challenge any existing laws of physics that predicted this to be impossible, rather they were able to make a very difficult experimental model able to measure electrons interacting in 1D. I would love some insight from a condensed matter physicist if there are any of them playing CN.

This post has been edited by Penguin: 29 August 2009 - 03:59 PM

[Charles VI]

Wikipedia said:

Electrons inside conducting solids, which are quasi-particles themselves, when tightly confined at temperatures close to absolute zero, behave as though they had split into two other quasiparticles: spinons and holons.[117][118] The former carries spin and magnetic moment, while the latter electrical charge.

I'm not quite sure what exactly is a quasiparticle and what distinguishes it from an actual particle, but it doesn't seem that the electron was actually ''split.''

[Sal Paradise]

Foggers, on Aug 29 2009, 01:26 PM, said:

This is why I chose to do Theology at university.
Thousands of years, and it hasn't changed too much.

That's why I chose history?

Penguin, on Aug 29 2009, 02:54 PM, said:

Just another example of the main-stream media simplifying the science to sell papers.

Is that really why they simplified it? I would think it's because it's complicated.

[penguino]

Gran the Terrible, on Aug 29 2009, 04:09 PM, said:

Am I the only one who read the thread title as 'splitting the election'? >_<

EXACTLY what i thought

[Penguin]

Sal Paradise, on Aug 29 2009, 03:23 PM, said:

Is that really why they simplified it? I would think it's because it's complicated.

It was a sensationalist title so I assumed it was to grab the reader, which I guess isn't really a bad thing. I bet most people who read the title thought: "Wow! Discovery of the century right here. Everything I learned about electrons was wrong." That isn't really the case.

Charles VI, on Aug 29 2009, 03:15 PM, said:

I'm not quite sure what exactly is a quasiparticle and what distinguishes it from an actual particle, but it doesn't seem that the electron was actually ''split.''

The electron certainly wasn't "split" in the traditional sense that most of the above posters seemed to gather (and reasonably so) from the title of the news article. Two of its properties (spin and charge) behaved as separate "quasi-particles" in a one-dimensional system and no introductory level physical theories appear to be overturned, though I bet this made some waves ( ) in the field of condensed matter physics. In short, we can all rest at ease in that nothing we learned needs to be unlearned unless perhaps we happen to work in the field.

This post has been edited by Penguin: 29 August 2009 - 04:31 PM

[Arcturus Jefferson]

xoindotnler, on Aug 29 2009, 05:38 PM, said:

And how does this effect us the peasants?

Electricity costs will be cut in half because we will now have twice as many electrons.

[Delta1212]

Penguin, on Aug 29 2009, 06:36 PM, said:

It was a sensationalist title so I assumed it was to grab the reader, which I guess isn't really a bad thing. I bet most people who read the title thought: "Wow! Discovery of the century right here. Everything I learned about electrons was wrong." That isn't really the case.

The electron certainly wasn't "split" in the traditional sense that most of the above posters seemed to gather (and reasonably so) from the title of the news article. Two of its properties (spin and charge) behaved as separate "quasi-particles" in a one-dimensional system and no introductory level physical theories appear to be overturned, though I bet this made some waves ( ) in the field of condensed matter physics. In short, we can all rest at ease in that nothing we learned needs to be unlearned unless perhaps we happen to work in the field.

I bet you're feeling particularly clever right now, aren't you?