According to the current Standard Model of particle physics, electrons don't decay. A new study tests that theory and confirms: they probably don't, but if they do decay, it would take at least 66,000 yottayears.
If you're wondering what a yottayear is, it's a lotta years: 10-million-million-million-million, to be exact. That's the minimum age that scientists were able to establish for electrons, which are negatively charged subatomic particles. From there, we can extrapolate that electrons probably don't decay, and that the current model is at least accurate insofar as it considers electrons basically immortal.
But why test this in the first place? The current standard model of physics is actually a work in progress. The presence of dark matter tells us that the model doesn't quite perfectly account for everything in the universe — something is off-kilter about the theory. So, physicists are always looking for other hints that the model might be wrong, and new avenues to find and fix its weaknesses. One of those potential weaknesses would be in electrons: if they did indeed decay, it would tell us that the current model is a lot worse-off than we thought.
But the physicists found what they expected to find: electrons live for about as long as we can currently measure, and maybe beyond (very Buzz Lightyear).
The new information came out of work done by Italian physicists at the Borexino experiment of the National Laboratory of Gran Sasso. The research was published this month in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Source: Motherboard
Image: Pietro Zuco | Flickr
