Electron explosion Since like charges repel each other, why doesn’t electron explode (i.e., different parts of the electron cloud repel) as neutral parts -- in spite of the "conservation of charge" which is a man-made law?
- Mehran (age 53)
Lisle, Illinois

Mehran- once again, you’re asking extremely deep tough questions.

I believe the answer here is that when you write out the expression for the electrostatic interaction among electrons in quantum operator form, there is no term which is non-zero for a particle field representing a single particle. The interaction term involves operators which change the number of particles represented by the particle field. Essentially, you can’t annihilate the same particle twice.

I know that isn’t a transparent answer.

Mike W.

(published on 10/22/2007)