• Question: What is an electron shape experiment about?

    Asked by skyeoa99 to Jony on 18 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Jony Hudson

      Jony Hudson answered on 18 Nov 2011:

      Hi skyeoa99,

      sorry it’s taken so long to answer your question – so many to answer!

      An electron shape measurement tries to measure something very basic: is the electron, one of the building blocks of atoms, round or not.

      At the moment, our theories say it is round, but we’re trying to check because some people have come up with theories that predict it will be egg-shaped. If we can measure the shape, we can check whether these theories are right.

      These theories are important, because we know that there’s something wrong with our current theory, but we don’t really know what it is yet.

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