What is electron? Is it a perfect point? What does it mean?

Watch and learn, sweetpea.

Let's see now, who was it who said this: "So in ignorance of the true nature of the electron, current mainstream physics makes the most natural assumption of the size of the electron consistent with observation: the electron is point-like". Why rpenner, that was you! Stand by, because it's all downhill from here.

QED is not the issue here, nor is quantum field theory. The issue is the people who have subverted it into quantum-point-particle theory, and f*cked up a whole field of physics, dragging the rest of physics down with them.

My hard scientific evidence trumps your Nobel lecture.

So would you care to explain how your point-like electron can exhibit angular momentum and a magnetic moment and diffraction? Cue a whole pile of huff and puff and handwaving, because the answer, as you know, is no.

Of course I haven't. Because I said the electron's field is what it is, and in case you hadn't noticed, that field doesn't have an outer edge.

I'm no impeachable authority. But that scientific evidence is.

Oh yes you did. You might want to have a quick google on wave nature of matter evidence before you back-pedal further on QED assumes electrons and photons are point particles.

It's just a little sign, rpenner.

No, it's a function of your state of mind. Moving swiftly on:

You know you've slipped up, don't you? The beginning of post #34 says this:

"Renormalization is a 'fudge' to 'fix' a problem wherein treating particles as point particles leads to infinities. It's a clear demonstration that the mathematics of point particles is incorrect, just as the hard scientific evidence of the wave nature of matter demonstrates that the concept of point particles is incorrect."

And you know that I know that Quantum Electrodynamics is "the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics". Not the the relativistic quantum point-particle theory of electrodynamics.

Ah, so it's a wave theory is it? This theory of light and matter, this theory of photons and electrons, is a wave theory? Why rpenner, we have come full circle. Now you're agreeing with me.

Jarek: I rest my case.

 

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I think the burden of proof is on you to show that they can not be just intrinsic properties, like charge is.

I think, but am too lazy to try to calculate, that even if all of one electron charge is running around the perimeter of a 10^(-22) meter diameter loop at half the speed of light, it would not make the observed magnetic moment. - If that is true, it is quite a powerful arguement that the magnetic moment of the electron is an intrinsic property of all electrons, like their charge is, and not some tiny classical current loop as you seem to think is the only way magnetic moments can exist - Ergo you conclude the electron can not be a point.

Even if that above guess /spculation is false, it does not eliminate the possiblity that the electron is a point. That would only show the above speculation that they are intrinsic is not a valid proof that they are. There is no reason, I know of why both could not be intrinsic - Nature does not need to confrom to your model (current loop) of how they are made.

 

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Jared wanted to know if mainstream physics treats the electron as point-like. I say the mainstream assumes the electron is point-like. You said in post #34 the mainstream users of QED rely on methodology you disagree with because they treat the electron as point-like. Beyond that observation that we agree on the mainstream treatment of the electron, if not the merits of that approach, I don't see a reason for you to have quoted me.

Old man yells at cloud. Just like you don't get to redefine spinor to be something other than the mainstream mathematical model which has nothing to do with torii, QED is not what you want it to be. QED is what physicists know it to be and QED is used how they use it.

You are not mainstream, Farsight. Your ideas about the electron are your own. Your misunderstandings about physical topics are also your own.

Since you were replying to an observation about rigor in mathematics sometimes coming later than physical success with mathematics, evidence isn't part of the equation. Math only needs to be internally consistent.

As to your claims of presenting evidence, you only named a number of physical phenomena, the behaviors of which are precisely described by mainstream use of QED. You never bothered to argue from any particular piece of physical evidence that the status of QED was seriously at question.

Noether's theorem (1918) connects the continuous rotational symmetry of physical theories like relativity, quantum mechanics and electromagnetism with a conserved quantity called angular momentum. Quantum mechanics quantisized the action which means that changes in angular momentum are observed to change only by \(\hbar\). The spin of electrons was discovered in 1925 – while as a conserved quantity it is indistinguishable from angular momentum of a planetary motion, Noether's theorem is silent as to whether this angular momentum arises from some mechanical motion (as in the Uhlenbeck-Goudsmit hypothesis of 1925) or is intrinsic. As outlined in post #18, Wigner's 1939 classification of the Poincaré group allows for massive, spin-1/2, unitary irreducible representations of the Poincaré group. Thus the four-complex-component Dirac bispinor-valued function of space and time can represent the electron-positron probability amplitude(s) in a particular basis choice of spin direction in a completely covariant fashion. The angular momentum associated with spin is intrinsic because of the way the Poincaré group include rotations, Lorentz boosts and translations as was pointed out in 1914 by Silberstein. Because of the QED interaction term, a coupling between the otherwise independent electron field and the photon field, which is proportional to the electric charge of the electron, electrons have electric charge equal and opposite to positrons and because of the intrinsic angular momentum and the way the Poincaré group mixes up combinations of rotations and Lorentz boosts, the naive (tree-level) calculation of the magnetic dipole associated with the electron is \(2 \, \mu_B\) not \(1 \, \mu_B\) as non-relativistic assumptions (such as those prior to 1927) might lead to. A more complete treatment in QED (first available sometime between 1949 and 1953) causes this intrinsic magnetic dipole is to be about 0.116% larger than the simple approximation of \(2 \, \mu_B\) and as I pointed out in post #18, the agreement between theory and observation is good to at least a dozen decimal places.

The Einstein-de Haas experiment (1915) is sensitive to this value but a single electron in a Penning trap can be much more precise.
http://gabrielse.physics.harvard.ed...ronMagneticMoment/ElectronMagneticMoment.html

So you have to know a good number of quantum and relativistic maths to make the same sense of that as a physics major, but since all of that is incorporated into QED, the short answer is that QED assumes (consistent with relativistic and quantum physics) that the electron field allows excitations (particles) with fixed mass and intrinsic spin and this field couples to the photon field and from those assumptions allows calculation of a g-factor of roughly 2.00232 in super precise agreement with observation. That's spelled out in the decomposition of the QED Lagrangian density in post #13. But you have to distinguish between fields (which have zero expectation value) and excitations of the fields (particles) if you want to be clear.

You seem to have lost the thread here. Each electron doesn't have it's own field. The 4-complex-component electron field is common to all electrons, just as any quantum field is. Because there is just one field, all electrons are indistinguishable. But the electron of Jarek's question is the localizable excitation of the electron field which when isolated behaves very similarly to the Schrodinger evolution of a classical point particle. The wavefunction can get spread out in space, but the electron itself is found only in one location at a time.

No one has articulated which scientific evidence you mean or knows what you think it is saying. That just looks like failure to carry your burden of supporting your claims. My position is that all of the phenomena you cited have behaviors which are precisely described by mainstream interpretations of QED, the types found in mainstream scientific papers and textbooks.

Have you really confused the electron with the electron field? That's analogous to confusing a classical point particle with the Schrodinger wave equation describing the probability amplitude to find such a particle. The quantum treatment does not change the point-like nature of the particle which is only found in one place at a time.

As I point out at the beginning of my post #34, you have acknowledged that mainstream use of QED treats electrons as point particles. That you disagree with the mainstream or their interpretation of QED is irrelevant to my point, since I've been waiting since post #4 for you to recognize that you have misread a Wikipedia article on spinors. In the next paragraph of post #36 I addressed your tedious denial of mainstream physics and mathematics as without foundation.

The theory may indeed have waves -- all quantum theories do -- but the particles are still modeled as point-like. Not sure why this is such a hard concept for you, the electron is not the electron field and the electron field is not the electron. The field is everywhere, the electron is located at just one point at a time when we choose to find it.

The alternative to a quantum field theory of point objects is a quantum field theory of extended objects, and that's currently still under development as string theory with not enough work done to distinguish electrons from muons, etc. So while lots are working on it, it doesn't yet do the types of precision tests that QED does and thus isn't yet even in the running for mainstream.

 

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You don't have a case. The only thing you're good at is running your mouth. You'd think you would have figured out your place in the pecking order doesn't exist. Peddling falsehoods is lying. In my opinion that's all you do. Peddle falsehoods.

 

I think the Dirac Delta fundtion, may be a good historical example of this. It was being used by physicists for about a decade while the matheticians struggled to finally justify its use mathematically.

 

That should read "As I point out at the beginning of my post #36 which responds to post #34,"

 

His falsehoods aren't malicious though, they are just due to his ignorance and arrogance. The funny thing is if he would have just shutup for the last several years and taken some classes at a community college he would know what he was talking about - guess that would have been too hard.

 

Actually the falsehoods of many of our alternative brigade are just as malicious, particularly when what they propose, they propose as "fact"
Ignorance, arrogance most certainly, but just as certainly coupled with delusions of grandeur, inflated egos, and "tall poppy syndrome".

Most are banned on other forums.

 

To access some of the scholarship on these subjects is to use text and and the rest of the scholarship available to everybody including Farsight. He only gives a crap how much nonsense he gets to spew in everybody's face . He thinks he's a big fish in a sea of scientifically illiterate cranks. He's had plenty opportunity to figure out why he's an illiterate crank. He's a spreader of falsehoods.

 

Once again very informative for me. Thanks.