What if Electrons are not Fundamental? Exploring the Possibilities

[ghostanime2001]

Could electrons be non-fundamental particles. What if electrons are made of other matter particles. Could these particles interact with each other and exist but had not been given much thought about its existence because the electron alone explains much phenomena except wave-particle Duality. Call me crazy or irrational but such paradox's exist everytime a bold step is brought to the desk and then frowned upon and dismissed as not already previously involving some form of mathematics or partially understood background to prove it.

Bohr also had a physical hunch about spectra and electrons. What if there are more quantum numbers for electrons and even new particles within it? I am no rocket scientist but I do know more or less that there's something electrons are not revealing.

I do understand heisenburg's measurement limits and if we at this point not involve ever-powerful instrumentation to measure or slow down electrons and just use purely mathematical equations and an imaginary picture of some particle(s) within the electron and at the same time take all what we observe from the uncertainty principle and interference effects and particle distribution could we then once again fill a gap and discover yet another scientific breakthrough?

I'm sort of relating to the ultraviolet catastrope where one end was known but the rest had to be explained by making an assumption. What if we make an assumption about having an electron's internal structure and working ourselves backwards from intereference effects, point-charge distribution and fill the gap ?

I had an idea a couple weeks like that and it keeps coming back to me...just consider this as a plausibility.. What if?

 

[DrChinese]

Could electrons be non-fundamental particles. What if electrons are made of other matter particles. Could these particles interact with each other and exist but had not been given much thought about its existence because the electron alone explains much phenomena except wave-particle Duality. Call me crazy or irrational but such paradox's exist everytime a bold step is brought to the desk and then frowned upon and dismissed as not already previously involving some form of mathematics or partially understood background to prove it. ...

...What if?

What if I'm Batman? There needs to be some evidence if your idea is to make sense. The idea that electrons might not be fundamental particles has been explored in depth, both experimentally and theoretically. There is no support from either side.

 

[Edi]

This started a chain reaction witch led me to a question: matter emits EM radiation when its heated, more heat the higher emitted frequency. Heat is basicly kinetic energy of atoms/molecules and because there are electrons in atoms they emit EM via Bremsstrahlung, right? Protons, neutrons would not emit EM radiation because of its changing movement?

 

[DrFaustus]

ghostanime2001 -> I'd be really surprised if you were the first to ever have thought about this "What if?". But has to be also asked here is "Do we need it?". That is, "Do we need the assumptions that electrons have an internal structure to explain, predict and understand the various phenomena?". And the short answer is "Not at this point." All the known experiments performed in colliders and the data measured from "outer space" are explained with the assumption that electrons are fundamental particles. Yes, we could "make an assumption about having an electron's internal structure and working ourselves backwards from intereference effects, point-charge distribution", but are we really going to "fill the gap"? No, because there's no gap to be filled! You might say "Not now, but what in the future?". If any future experiments will hint at this, be sure people will include this in our fundamental understanding.

Keep in mind that physicists don't just make random assumptions that require difficult mathematics to be worked out to look cool and intimidate others. Trust me, physicist would be more than happy to throw QFT out of the window if classical field theory would be enough to describe everything. What I'm trying to say is that if electrons are assumed to be fundamental is simply because there is no need (read no experimental evidence or theoretical simplifications) for us to assume otherwise.

 

[jtbell]

Theorists have speculated about leptons (electrons, muons, etc.) and quarks being composites of more fundamental particles called "preons" or "rishons." Try a Google search for them. But these speculations haven't gotten very far because (as DrFaustus noted) there's no "need" for them yet as far as experimental data is concerned.

The quark model originally came about as a way of "explaining" the regular patterns of properties in the dozens of "elementary" particles that physicists discovered in the 1950s and 1960s. What made people first take it seriously was that it predicted that "new" particles should exist with certain properties, and those particles were in fact later found. This hasn't happened with preon / rishon theories.

 

[ghostanime2001]

You know what this reminds me of? That chinese doll thing.. Theres a big doll and in that a smaller and the next smaller and the next smaller one

What if we need it? just supposing i asked this question and knowing about all that experiment stuff Dr. Chinese talked about earlier.

You ppl have way more experience than I do but let's just say we need it... what would we do with it ?

 

[ZapperZ]

In case people have forgotten them, I will point again to the https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5374" that you have agreed to, especially our policy on speculative theory.

You need to keep in mind that if you make an assumption, at the very least, what you are assuming must at least have some empirical evidence to back your claim. We are not yet at the point where we require that you make addition prediction that could separate your theory from the existing one, i.e. what makes THIS better than THAT. However, simply guessing something while ignoring whether it fits into existing, verified observation is a no-no on here. It requires nothing, and no knowledge of any kind, to make such a thing.

The quality of discussion here requires that, at the very least, you consider if there's ANY physical evidence to even consider the validity of your idea, and not simply make a proposition simply because you can. To be able to do that, you therefore need to know what are the physical evidence that we know of for sure today. And that requires you to do some homework. There are no shortcuts.

Without such consideration, this type of speculative wild goose chase is not allowed in this forum.

Zz.