News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Why an Electron Doesn't Fall into a Proton but a Positron... by gus_massa on Wednesday December 31, 2025 @02:21PM (#46447360)
I don't buy this, we know a lot about the internal structure of the proton and it's very different from this explanation.

Anyway, how do you explain beta capture?

Re:Why an Electron Doesn't Fall into a Proton but a Positron... by pajuhaan on Thursday January 01, 2026 @04:16AM (#46452550)
Electron capture doesn’t contradict “electrons don’t fall into protons.” In an atom, the electron isn’t a tiny ball spiraling inward; it’s a stable quantum state.

But for inner orbitals there’s still some chance of finding the electron right at the nucleus. if the nucleus can lower its energy by turning a proton into a neutron, the weak interaction can use that overlap and the capture happens. so it’s not an electromagnetic “collapse”; it’s a weak nuclear transition that only becomes possible in certain nuclei.

My point is that a deeper microdynamics can still reproduce the familiar quantum phenomenology (including Dirac as the macroscopic limit); what would separate it from "repackaging or pseudo-theory" is if it actually predicts the physical constants and transition behavior that the standard model largely treats as input or has no idea about them, rather than explaining them.