Re:Black Hole Electron
by movpasd on Wednesday September 06, 2023 @06:30AM
(#37403316)
"Point particle" isn't quite as clean as it sounds. What it means (hand-wavy) is that the underlying electron field has a finite number of degrees of freedom for every point in spacetime (in contrast to, say, a string theory). It doesn't mean that the density of the electron is infinite because quantum effects will "blur it out".
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Can quantum effects blur out small black holes as well? We know too few about these, though.
Re:Black Hole Electron
by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday September 06, 2023 @08:16AM
(#37403972)
If it does, don't they cease being black holes? (If the smearing is larger than the Schwarzchild radius - obviously, that requires really small black holes...)
Which seems to be really useful if you want your point particles not becoming black holes upon creation. If you think about it, every classical electron should be a black hole, it is already thanks to quantum physics that this is not the case.
I'm not an expert in quantum gravity, but as there's no widely accepted theory of quantum gravity I suspect the answer is: we don't know.
Re:Black Hole Electron
by Enginerrrd on Wednesday September 06, 2023 @07:50AM
(#37403758)
Just to elaborate further, I believe the Compton wavelength is relevant here. In particular, the Compton wavelength of an electron is much larger than its swarzchild radius would be.