Abstract
THE paper by Prof. A. S. Eddington on the charge of an electron which appears in the January issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society (vol. A, 122, p. 358), and was read and discussed at the meet ing of the Society on Jan. 17, is based upon the fundamental principles of the theory of relativity and of the new mechanics. The so-called exclusion principle of the statistics of Fermi and Dirac pre scribes an interaction of two electrons; this inter action is identified with their electric repulsion, and the details of the latter phenomenon can thus be pre dicted on essentially statistical grounds. The prob lem is taken to be one of a ‘space’ of sixteen dimen sions, and it follows that the ratio hc/2e2 (where h, c, and e have their usual significance of Planck's constant, the velocity of light and the electronic charge respectively) should be simply the number of symmetrical terms in an array of sixteen rows and sixteen columns, which is 136. The experimental value of the ratio is 137.1, but Prof. Eddington believes that the discrepancy, although some three times the reputed probable error of experiment, does not originate with the theory. Prof. Eddington's con ception of the meaning of the factor 2e2/hc can be best given in his own words. It “expresses a kind of property attributed to every pair of points in space; it turns space from a mathematical concep tion into a possible site of physical phenomena by associating with a pair of points some degree of probability that they may be the scene of this inter action. There is no room for elaborate integrations or for differential equations in the theory of such a fundamental factor.” Again: “Modern theory has virtually abolished all structure of an electron,” and with this, the expectation “that the value of e would depend on the singular solution of some differential equation expressing the transition from charge to field.”
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[News and Views]. Nature 123, 138–142 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/123138b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/123138b0