
Electron lifetime is at least 66,000 yottayears - jonbaer
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/dec/09/electron-lifetime-is-at-least-66000-yottayears
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ars
Note that this lifetime is ONLY for this one specific decay route!

If the electron decayed some other way then this research is silent on that.

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echelon
This comment needs higher visibility. This paper doesn't set a lower bounds
for all possible interactions.

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noobermin
The electron seems to very much be point-like[0], and its lack of decay, now
with an extraordinary bound on its lifetime--these observations seem to
suggest the electron really is the fundamental particle the standard model
says it is.

It's interesting, as time goes on and more data comes in, the standard model
is verified again and again, much to the chagrin of theoretical particle
physicists who hope for more beyond the standard model.

I once saw a talk by Fabiola Gianotti, the leader of the ATLAS detector when
the Higgs was discovered, and she said that the lack of evidence for
supersymmetry might lead to a "crisis" in particle physics. It was surprising,
because up till that point, she spoke matter-of-factly, but it's possible what
she's saying is true.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_electric_dipole_momen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_electric_dipole_moment)

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PhantomGremlin
_the electron really is the fundamental particle_

The curious thing is it has an electric charge of -1. But quarks, constituents
of protons and neutrons, have +2/3 and -1/3 charge. So how is it that
internally a proton has fractional charges but there's nothing analogous for
the electron?

How is it that there's such weird asymmetry there? Why have we only observed
-1, +2/3, and -1/3 for electric charge?

Somehow that just doesn't seem "fundamental" to me as a lay person.

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IvyMike
That's good, because we've only got the one. ;)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
electron_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe)

~~~
ericjang
This is such a beautiful idea. Are there people developing this theory? How
could this be experimentally verified? What are the philosophical/time-travel
implications of the one-electron universe theory being true, distinct from
classical QM?

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avian
I can't find a good reference, but as far as I know, this theory is no longer
seriously considered. One problem right from the start was the observed
difference between the quantity of electrons and anti-electrons in the
universe.

Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9007308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9007308)

~~~
gus_massa
I'll repeat a quote of skywhopper in that thread, from Wikipedia:

Wikipedia> _Feynman was struck by Wheeler 's insight that antiparticles could
be represented by reversed world lines, and credits this to Wheeler, saying in
his Nobel speech:_

Feynman>> _I did not take the idea that all the electrons were the same one
from [Wheeler] as seriously as I took the observation that positrons could
simply be represented as electrons going from the future to the past in a back
section of their world lines. That, I stole!_

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moultano
I should know better than to play armchair physicist, but isn't this the
perfect mechanism for symmetry breaking? If antimatter is just matter
travelling back in time, then naturally all the antimatter created in the big
bang isn't here because it went the opposite way! This is probably dumb, but
I'd love to hear more about it.

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abdullahkhalids
Good question. The answer is that the dimension of time is something that
exists within our universe. Within the standard model of cosmology there is no
notion of anything before the big bang - that would imply the there is a meta-
time that exists outside our universe.

This might be slightly difficult to digest, so let me give an analogy. A few
of centures/millinia ago it was valid to ask, "What is beyond the end of
earth?". Now that we know that the earth is a sphere and spheres don't have
ends, it is nonsensical to ask "What is beyond the end of earth?". Similarly,
at the big bang time just stops, there is brick wall beyond which you can't
go. And it is nonsensical to consider what happens before the big bang.

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solipsism
That might be the best analogy, but it's unsatisfying to me. The earth doesn't
have an edge because it is round. When you go far enough in one direction you
end up where you were.

If that was how they thought time worked, I could deal with that. But it's
not. If they thought it was infinite in extent in both directions. I could
deal with that. But the idea of a dimension just ending... That's a mind
boggler.

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pavel_lishin
> _The electron is the least-massive carrier of negative electrical charge
> known to physicists._

I thought it was the only carrier of negative electric charge.

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alexbock
Muons also carry a negative charge, although they're unstable. (and of course
there are antiprotons, if you count those)

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arethuza
207 time more massive than an electron - so if you could replace electrons
with muons the resulting atom would me much smaller, so nuclei would be closer
and therefore fusion easier. Possibly...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-
catalyzed_fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion)

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joshrotenberg
66,000?! That's a yotta years!

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peterburkimsher
If it were designed in base 2, the lifetime would be 65536 years.

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devy
6.6 * 10 __28 seems immortal to me.

