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by hinkley 399 days ago
Neutron decay is one of those things that I forgot between college physics classes and today and it was sort of surprising to rediscover it.

We also know that electrons eventually decay but it's something like 10^26 years, which is long enough to say that probably not many electrons in the solar system have decayed since the universe was born but the universe is really stupidly big, so it absolute numbers that could still be a lot of dead electrons. Maybe a solar system's worth.

Surprisingly there is no wikipedia page for this. Just rando articles.
1 comments
mr_mitm 399 days ago
Electrons do not decay, because there is nothing they could decay into. You need a lighter particle of the same charge due to charge conservation, and there is none.

You might be thinking of protons.

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hinkley 397 days ago
About ten years ago a research team concluded that electrons last for at least 10^28 years. Which is just a lower bound, and did not establish an upper. Rereading it now, it does seem that proving they decay is an attempt at a new branch of physics. So they might decay or they might not.
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mr_mitm 397 days ago
Can you link that paper? Or name at least one of the authors? Not to mention that checking for a lower bound means nothing for a potential upper bound.

It's ridiculous to cite an unnamed paper while being unable to procure a single source on the internet and then proclaim it's equally likely that they might or might not decay. With everything we know about physics there is absolutely no way imaginable that they might decay.

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