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Article: Peeking inside an electron's screen. (findings support the existence of virtual particles)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- February 8, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Standard references and textbooks describe an electron as a stable elementary particle. Typically, they specify values for its mass, electric charge, and spin, and they sometimes mention vaguely that an electron's charge appears concentrated in a point. However, there's both more and less to an electron than such a bare-bones description indicates.
According to modern quantum theory, the space surrounding an electron is not empty but filled with a boiling sea of so-called virtual particles, which continually blink into existence in oppositely charged pairs, then almost immediately disappear again. Since the 1930s, theorists have proposed that these virtual particles ...