Sure, these series of ultra-advanced experiments hold the promise of allowing us to see the subatomic world in more precise terms than ever before. Think of it like Plato's Cave. From shadows to reality.
Relativity describes the very large macroverse to the tiniest detail. But we have long been groping in the dark in the realm of quantum physics. Which is why no one has really expanded on Einstein to form a GUT or a TOE.
Guess what? We never will have a truly working Theory of Everything. Whatever we discover will only lead to questions. Questions that will never be fully answered in a way that makes what we refer to as rational sense. When you start to deal in measuring the properties of particles even approaching the speed of light things get real crazy real fast. That's why we use the most basic of particles. And why we use the heaviest nuclei available. Should we not try? No, of course we should try. As we learn more and more, science will be advanced. But just as actual hard physics hasn't advanced all that much in the last almost century since Einstein's first breakthough (despite the vast amount of resources and brainpower devoted to the quest since), don't expect any ridiculously huge leaps. At any rate, my
gut feeling is that the microverse will ultimately remain elusive and mysterious no matter how much we learn about it.
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Originally Posted by science
An electron is a tiny and very, very light particle that forms part of an atom (everything around us is made out of atoms but they are far too small to see without a scanning electron microscope).
Ok, say we want to accelerate an electron to the speed of light. Since it's so small and light, we can make it travel at the speed of light, can't we?
This has been tried, but so far physicists have only actually managed to send electrons flying round at 99.999999995% of the speed of light, which is very close to, but not quite the speed of light.
So, why is it so difficult to make an electron go at the speed of light?
In order for an electron to accelerate it needs energy. The energy given to an electron is converted into kinetic energy which is associated with the forward motion of the electron. At low speeds the more energy given to the electron, the faster the electron goes; but as the speed gets closer to the speed of light, the electron does not go much faster as energy is put in but seems to just store kinetic energy (this was first noticed by a scientist called W. Bertozzi in 1964)...
If you calculate the instantaneous speed of electron
using the theoretical models, it comes out to be the velocity
of light. However, we cannot measure instantaneous speeds, but only
speed averaged over some time scale by measuring position at two
instants of time. When we do this, the speed is always less than
the velocity of light. Theoretical models also predict average
velocity less than speed of light. The above discussion only applies to speed of light
in vacuum. Electrons can , and do, travel at speeds faster than
speed of light in some media.
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