Electrons
are one of the building blocks of the universe, having negative electric charge
around the universe and allowing us to enjoy all the desires of modern life.
The stability of the electron has never been in doubt, but putting a limit on
its stability allows researchers to better understand the fundamentals that manage
our existence.
So, in a
new research, Italian scientists looked at potential electron decay using the
Borexino neutrino detector for 408 days. They found nothing. No electron decay.
That is good news, because it approves that the conservation of charge is one
of the fundamental laws of the universe.
Researchers
were also able to estimate a minimum lifespan for electrons based on the conclusions
from the experiment. An electron life is 66 Yottayears (6.6x1028 years) or 5
billion billion times the age of the universe. The results are published in
Physical Review Letters.
The
Borexino experiment is a special neutrino indicator buried deep within Gran
Sasso, an Italian mountain 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Rome. Borexino is
filled with an organic liquid rich in electrons (about 1032, or 100,000 billion
billion). A theoretical electron decay will produce a photon and a neutrino,
and the detector has 2,000 photomultipliers that can detect the emitted light.
No detection matched the expected model. Reporting on this might seem insane,
but experiments that discover nothing are still very significant in physics.
Decay is a
habitual process in physics, with heavier particles decaying into a lighter
one. These decays tend to follow specific rules, and heavier particles tend to
decay into smaller ones. Electrons are the smallest particles with charge;
anything smaller (neutrinos, photons, gluons) is neutral, so there’s no way for
it to decay into anything else without violating the conservation of charge.
Speaking
to Physics World, Gianpaolo Bellini proposed that if all the sources of
background radiation were accounted for, the minimum lifetime could be enhanced
to over 1031 years.
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