![]() ![]() Electrons are important components of atoms, orbiting the nucleus of an atom composed of protons and neutrons. An electron has a rest mass energy of 0.511 MeV (opens in new tab) (Mega electron-Volt) (which equates to 9.1 x 10^–31 kilograms). The electron was the first lepton to be discovered, in 1897 by the British physicist Joseph John Thomson (opens in new tab). It turned out that they weren't vanishing, but oscillating into muon and tau neutrinos on their way here. Neutrino oscillations are the solution to the mystery of the solar neutrino problem (opens in new tab), where it seemed that only a third of the expected number of electron neutrinos from the sun were reaching Earth. This is referred to as neutrino oscillation and is described by physicists in Stanford University's Neutrino Group (opens in new tab). However, once an anti-electron neutrino is produced from the decay of a neutron, the neutrino itself can change flavor into a muon or tau neutrino. So, a neutron could never decay and produce an electron and an anti-muon neutrino, because they belong to different families of leptons. The Lepton Number of an electron is 1, and the Lepton Number of an anti-neutrino is –1, hence they cancel and conserve the overall Lepton Number of the reaction.Ĭomplicating things are the three families of leptons (electron and electron neutrinos, muons and muon neutrinos, and tau particles and tau neutrinos) and the rules of Lepton Numbers say they can't be mixed and matched. Therefore its decay products must also add up to a Lepton Number of 0. A neutron is a baryon, not a lepton, so its Lepton Number is 0. First of all, it conserves a property known as the Lepton Number, which is defined by physicists at Georgia State University (opens in new tab) as the number of leptons minus the number of anti-leptons. This decay reaction demonstrates a couple of the fundamental properties of leptons. Tachyons: Facts about these faster-than-light particles Higgs boson: The 'God Particle' explained ![]()
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