Bubble trouble
THE electron has a special place in the pantheon of particles. It is supposed to be elementary—an indivisible axiom of the material world. And over the century since it was discovered, no experiment has ever suggested the contrary. Until now. For Humphrey Maris, a physicist at Brown University in Rhode Island, is arguing that the electron is not indivisible at all. Under certain conditions, he suggests, it can split into smaller fragments. Which would explain years of mysterious results obtained from experiments on liquid helium.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Bubble trouble”
Science & technology September 16th 2000
From the September 16th 2000 edition
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