Or in other words which forces keep electrons in orbitals and prevent it from flying away or crashing into the nucleus according to modern understanding?
Or in other words which forces keep electrons in orbitals and prevent it from flying away or crashing into the nucleus according to modern understanding?
As I understand it, it’s the quantum part of quantum mechanics.
Electrons can only have fixed energy states, they can only radiate or accept fixed sized packets of energy - a “quantum” of energy. So an electron that is hit with the correct sized quantum of energy can be excited up to the next orbital, and it will emit the same sized packet of energy when it returns to its ground state. So they can’t gradually emit radiation and fall into the nucleus.
Eventually electrons should spontaneously decay but that’s predicted to be in 10 to the power of 40 years or something like that.
Really? What is it hypothesized that they decay into?
They are not expected to decay. The half-life they’re thinking of is a lower-bound based on current measurements, not an actual expected half-life.
I looked it up, after 6.6 x 10e28 years or so they are theorised to decay into neutrinos and photons.
Six hundred and sixty octillion years. That research is going to be hard to fund.
Huh, interesting. So would charge not be conserved in that process? Neither neutrinos nor photons are charged.
Presumably there is a transformation of charge to energy which is then carried away by the photon, but all of this is beyond my understanding of the theories involved.
Charge conservation would unambiguously be violated, which is why this decay is not expected. The half-life you quote is an experimental lower-bound.
Charge conservation would indeed be violated, which is why this decay is not expected. Dave is mistaken: the half-life they’re referring to is an experimental lower-bound, not a actual expected value.
Thanks, that makes more sense.