Electrons Are Near-Perfect Spheres

'Near-Perfect' == 'Perfect to within our ability to measure'<p>That is, the headline might lead you to believe that they are not perfect spheres, but that is not known to be the case.<p>Also: cool.

Title and timing are everything - I submitted this story yesterday and got no upvates, and no comments: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584908" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584908</a><p>Don't mistake me - this isn't a complaint. It's an observation that although technically savvy people pride themselves on assessing data purely on its merits, we are persuaded by words and images in ways we don't fully understand.<p>This is then really important in web design, marketing, sales, presentations, <i>etc.</i> You can't rely on your technical superiority.<p>Timing and presentation matter almost more than content. More than you'd hope. More than you'd want. More than is reasonable.<p>But it's not about reason.

I've always been curious about this. If electrons are spheres and so are protons and neutrons, what type of matter is filling up the area in between? Are protons and neutrons not spheres? Can electrons get squished into different shapes depending on arrangement? Or, does there even have to be matter in the voids surrounding adjacent spheres?

<i>"if an electron was the size of the solar system, it would be out from being perfectly round by less than the width of a human hair"</i><p>This doesn't seem right:<p><pre><code> Radius of an electron: 2.8e-15 m Off by: 1e-29 m Thus it's off by 0.0000000000004% Average distance of pluto from the sun: 5.9e12 m Thus "size" of the solar system: 1.18e13 m 1.18e13 * 0.0000000000004% = 4.2e-2 = 4.2cm </code></pre> It's not off by that much , but 4.2cm is way more than the width of a human hair (17-180um, a factor of ~1000-2000-fold)

What actually happened was that they placed a new upper limit on the electric dipole moment of electrons. This has implications for physics beyond the standard model. You can't be a "sphere" unless you have a finite and well defined radius, which electrons don't.

The Economist Science columnist, Babbage, had an article about this today as well.<p><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21518365" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/node/21518365</a><p>It has a little more context than the wired article.

... and we still can't figure their areas beacause of Pi!<p><i>facedesk</i>