UK boffins split electron

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Devill

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Physicists from the Universities of Cambridge and Birmingham have shown that electrons, which are indivisible in isolation, can divide into two new particles called spinons and a holons when crowded into in a narrow wire.

Reporting on their work in Science, the researchers explained that while single electrons seem to be impossible to break apart, this does not seem to be the case when electrons are brought together. Instead, the like-charged electrons repel each other and need to modify the way they move to avoid getting too close to each other. In ordinary metals this does not usually make much difference to their behavior. However, if the electrons are put in a very narrow wire the effects are exacerbated as the electrons find it much harder to move past each other.

Nearly three decades ago, physicist Duncan Haldane conjectured that under these circumstances and at the lowest temperatures the electrons would always modify the way they behaved so that their magnetism and their charge would separate into two new types of particle called spinons and holons.

The challenge today's researcher team faced was to confine electrons tightly in a "quantum wire" and bring this wire close enough to an ordinary metal so that the electrons in that metal could "jump" by quantum tunneling into the wire. By observing how the rate of jumping varies with an applied magnetic field the experiment reveals how the electron, on entering the quantum wire, has to fall apart into spinons and holons. The conditions to make this work comprised a comb of wires above a flat metal cloud of electrons. The Cambridge physicists, Yodchay Jompol and Chris Ford, clearly saw the distinct signatures of the two new particles as the Birmingham theorists, Tim Silk and Andy Schofield, had predicted.
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More here: http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20090630234524data_trunc_sys.shtml
 
Interesting.

Seems there is always new things in science.

Wonder what benefits will be there for splitting electrons.
 
The_Librarian said:
Interesting.

Seems there is always new things in science.

Wonder what benefits will be there for splitting electrons.
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Well for starters I hope we can learn more about magnetism as that is a field we, imo, have really not done enough to explore :)

*Also if it can lead some how to super hot woman taking over the world and wanting to populate another planet themselves, I'll be happy :D
 
Geriatrix said:
Hehehe, you know what? I've got this feeling they just keep on moving the decimals to the right and getting smaller intercepts on the Polynomials graph.
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Lol, yeah soon we will need to go into another dimension though :D
 
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