Einstein's Last Question
Milo Wolff
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
milo.wolff@quantumMatter.com
Additional authors: Geoff Haselhurst
In his later years, Einstein was asked his thoughts about the many short-lived heavy particles, kaons, pions, quarks, mesons, etc. found using high-energy accelerators and enormous amounts of time and money. These physicists thought they were finding important basic matter and wanted to know what Einstein thought of their work. Einstein was a careful thinker and not given to theatrics so he was very serious when he replied, “I would just like to know what an electron is.” Why did he say this? His answer implied that the pedestrian electron, known since Greek times, was more important to science than the prodigious efforts spent on accelerators. Little attention was paid to his remark. This was unfortunate because a Wave Structure of the Electron, originally proposed by Schroedinger (1952) and Clifford (1876) has produced many applications. They are described in this article. Einstein saw [1950] the electron as the leading player in the universe, as could any careful scientist because most of the activity of the Universe is dominated by energy transfers involving the electron. Neither Einstein nor anyone else understood the and mechanisms of energy transfers between molecules and atoms. Although the ‘force’ between ‘electrons’ is simply calculated, the suggested mechanism and rules often do not match the behavior of Nature. The structure of the electron itself was in question. It did not appear to be a discrete material particle. Something was wrong and Einstein knew it.
