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Physicists Detect Elusive Orbiton By "Splitting" Electron
ananyo writes "Condensed-matter physicists have managed to detect the third constituent of an electron — its 'orbiton'. Isolated electrons cannot be split into smaller components, earning them the designation of a fundamental particle. But in the 1980s, physicists predicted that electrons in a one-dimensional chain of atoms could be split into three quasiparticles: a 'holon' carrying the electron's charge, a 'spinon' carrying its spin and an 'orbiton' carrying its orbital location. In 1996, physicists split an electron into a holon and spinon. Now, van den Brink and his colleagues have broken an electron into an orbiton and a spinon (abstract). Orbitons could also aid the quest to build a quantum computer — one stumbling block has been that quantum effects are typically destroyed before calculations can be performed. But as orbital transitions are extremely fast, encoding information in orbitons could be one way to overcome that hurdle."
Maybe a flying car can be made feasible with a new kind of drive, like ejecting orbitons from the bottom.This research is in order to understand stuff. Forget about flying cars, maybe FTL drive is possible.
Think about the laser. When is was first conceived of by Einstein he had no way of doing it and no application for it. When Lamb and Retherford made it work there still was no use for it. But think about the world now: Internet, CD/DVD/Blu ray players and even the next gen IC fabs are based on the laser. Many metal parts are cut with lasers, welding is sometimes done with lasers (high presision work) and many measurements are done with lasers. If there had been no theoretical physics last century we wouldn't have lasers. Who knows what we could do with another century of theoretical research?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Glad some one else brought this up. Naming the states and calling them particles is a little like saying three dimensions are three particles. Shouldn't there be a particle for height, width, depth? At a certain stage it's pointless naming to rationalize publishing a paper. Is dividing an electron proving multiple particles or is it in fact like splitting a glass of water and claiming that it's two new atoms? And yes I know there are two atoms making up a glass of water so in this case it would mean four atoms since you can divide a glass of water in half. Unless unique properties can be established for the resulting two electrons then you haven't found two new particles you have simply split a single particle in to two pieces.
Philosophically, what makes these particles any more quasi- than electrons? Surely all we have to work with is the sum of their effects in either case.
It's the medium. When you look at a quasiparticle, it only exists in the context of its medium, whereas fundamental particles exist in the vacuum. It's a bit like the difference between sound waves and light waves. A sound wave needs something to wave in; a light wave doesn't. Or at least, if it does, the thing it waves is omnipresent throughout the universe and obeys the peculiar laws of relativity; that makes it seem pretty special, doesn't it?