We can resolve distances as small as 10 to the minus 18 centimeters or so. But we just don't have the experimental precision to go down any smaller. It could be made, for example, of a vibrating string, which is something that string theory suggests but we really don't know. So I think of it just as a kind of vanishingly small spot in 3D-match. To the best of our experiments, it's like a point.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an atomic particle that's become inseparable from modernity. JJ Thomson discovered the electron 125 years ago, so revealing that atoms, supposedly the smallest things, were made of even smaller things. He pictured them inside an atomic ball like a plum pudding, with others later identifying their place outside the nucleus - and it is their location on the outer limit that has helped scientists learn so much about electrons and with electrons. We can use electrons to reveal the secrets of other particles and, while electricity exists whether we understand electrons or not, the applications of electricity and electrons grow as our knowledge grows. Many questions, though, remain unanswered.
With
Victoria Martin
Professor of Collider Physics at the University of Edinburgh
Harry Cliff
Research Fellow in Particle Physics at the University of Cambridge
And
Frank Close
Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College at the University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson