I‘ve never been completely convinced about the concept of ‘electric charge’ in Physics, despite the key role that it plays in both electrostatics and nuclear physics. So I’ve put together this article, which aims to list the shortcomings of the concept as I understand it. Each point made, may be challenged or discarded, but as a whole I feel they make a compelling case.
So I’d appreciate learning from anyone, how it is possible to justify the concept of an ‘electrostatic charge’ and to make the case convincing enough so that I can believe in it.
**Introduction.**
One of the essential features of electrostatics is the concept of ‘charge’. But what exactly is known about ‘charge’? The birth of electric charge is generally believed to start with Benjamin Franklin’s Leyden Jar experiments, which led to the terms ‘positive charge’ and ‘negative charge’ being incorporated into physics. If he had described the Leyden jars as being ‘charged’ and ‘uncharged’, then physics may possibly never have adopted the concept of ‘charges residing upon particles’. To this day, physicists are a little exasperated by having to explain that the positive terminal of a battery stores negatively charged electrons.
But the flow of electrical fluid, as Franklin coined it in the 1750‘s, from the Leyden jars was thought then to carry away the positive charge that was held within the Leyden jar, simply by being negatively charged itself. So the concept (or myth) of the negatively charged electron was born. Whether Franklin would agree with this account is immaterial to the point of this analysis. All that is cogent is whether you will continue to believe in the concept of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ charge.
**Points challenging the Concept **
To put ‘electrical charge’ into its context, there is no dispute about our technical abilities to harvest and store electrons in vast quantities, before they spark off or short circuit. The processes of accumulating electrons by chemical reactions in batteries, rubbing fur on amber, or turning Wilmslow machines and then storing them in Leyden Jars or in a multiple of other more sophisticated capacitors and batteries, are known and understood. Electrostatics, as defined by the study of static electrons is real physics. All that is at dispute is the concept that particles, such as the electron and the proton, carry a ‘charge’. So what are the arguments against the existence of charge?
Firstly, a ‘charge’ is restricted to only having two independent forms, called a ‘positive charge’ and a ‘negative charge’. It’s conceivable that a ‘neutral charge’, as distinct from ‘no charge’ exists, with the ability to transform into positive and negative charges, such as occurs in the transformation of a neutron into a positively charged proton, a negatively charged electron and an anti-neutrino. But the concept of a ‘neutral charge’ is not defined as such in electrostatics or particle physics and this adds to the view that electrostatic charge on the proton and the electron does not play any part in this fundamental transformation process of the neutron into a proton!
No-one knows what the physical structure of a charge actually is, but conventionally, it is considered to be a point charge, which axiomatically implies that it has no discernible dimensions or wavelength and therefore effectively doesn‘t exist!
Each and every charge, whether positive or negative, has exactly the same magnitude, although no one knows why it doesn’t vary, which would be a more realistic expectation of a ‘force wielding’ entity, such as that exhibited by magnets and magnetic fields!
Every charge of either sign, is believed to be able to create a three dimensional force field around itself, whether created by an infinite number of ‘electrostatic lines of force’ or through an ‘electrostatic continuum’. This field concept is thought to stretch right across the universe in its influence! Since Einstein introduced his ‘general theory of relativity’ to explain the nature of a gravitational field, then electrostatic charge is the only field theory, which still claims to have this ‘infinite reach’ property!
The electrostatic field created by electrostatic charges is viewed as continuous and smooth, having no discrete ‘quantum mechanical’ nature! It is also not clearly understood how an electrostatic field created within and around a mass of charged particles, such as a ‘gas plasma’, interacts with Einstein’s ‘spacetime’ concept of a gravitational field or indeed the prevailing magnetic fields.
Like charges repel each other and unlike charges attract each other. This concept enables them to create a physical force upon one another. Whether this occurs through lines of electrostatic force or within a continuum of electrostatic energy, is unknown but is largely immaterial to the argument regarding the existence or otherwise of electrostatic charge.
No energy is required to maintain this universal electrostatic field! Energy is only used when a charge changes its location under an external force such as a magnetic field or new charges are created from an atomic process, such as the ‘pair production’ of the electron and anti-electron (positron).
The charge upon an isolated particle cannot change its magnitude, but is viewed as being an infinite point resource without the need for any regeneration of its charge, even when it has interacted with another charged particle!
How the field energy is exchanged between like and unlike charges is a unknown! It could well be that the electrostatic ‘lines of force’ from a positively charged particle is different from the electrostatic ‘lines of force’ of a negatively charged particle and in this way, the different charges know to respond by being attracted or repelled. Alternatively, in a continuum field, all charges universally must somehow be able to sense each other’s presence and charge type, to which they can respond accordingly. But how this ‘charge map’ of the universe is created and maintained for the continuum field, no-one knows!
Nor is it known how moving charged particles react to one another within an electrostatic field, bearing in mind that moving charged particles, such as the electron are known to create a magnetic field around themselves. So an electrostatic field could in reality be a subset of an electromagnetic field, which then offers it the extra functionality of being able to exchange forces through electromagnetic photons, but this seems to be unknown!
It is thought that the universe probably contains equal numbers of positive and negative charges, which makes the universe itself neutrally charged. Either that or electric charges don‘t exist!
If a region of space could be defined where the charges were not equally balanced, then the charges will attract and repel each other until equilibrium is achieved. Either that or they would all end up either clumped together in the middle, strung out in a line of ±±± or, if they all had the same sign, repelled away from each other onto the boundaries of the region!
The force generated by the individual electrical charges at a particular point within this region can theoretically be calculated by summing up the individual attracting and repelling vector forces acting at that point from every charge in the region. But as all electrostatic charges have an infinite three dimensional reach, (whether it is believed to be a continuum of electrostatic force or an infinite number of electrostatic lines of force), no region can be isolated from the charges outside its boundary and hence the net force will always be zero at every point in the field, through the cancellation of infinite attracting and infinitely repelling forces!
Charges cannot exist by themselves but are assumed to reside within, around or upon particles, such as the electron and the proton. It is unknown exactly what form the charge takes in conjunction with the electron or proton particles. Is it spread over the surface, is it a constituent part of the particle like snowflakes in a snowball, or does it circulate around the particle like a magnetic field? Or doesn’t it exist! No-one knows.
The magnitude of the force that they can exert upon one another obeys a law devised by Coulomb, namely: Kq1q2/d2, where K is Coulombs constant, q is the magnitude of the charge and d is the straight line distance between them. This formula has some apparently inexplicable ramifications in other branches of physics that equally employ the concept of electrostatic charge, such as the nuclear physics of the atom!
Each point so far may be subject to correction or rebuttal, but as a whole it leads to the view that the concept of electrostatic charge is weak and unconvincing and if so, so are the theoretical constructs based upon them.
Next and finally, there are some aspects of the concept of ‘charge’, that don’t stack up with ‘real world’ phenomenon of physics and as such mitigate against the existence of the ‘electrostatic charge’. Three of them are as follows, but perhaps you can point to others.
**Shortcomings of the Charge concept in Particle Physics**
-
When a charged ‘particle’ collides with its oppositely charged ‘anti-particle‘, their attracting forces according to Coulomb’s Law are infinite, as the distance between them is zero, so they must theoretically bind together with infinite force, but in reality, they annihilate one another!
-
Two electrons with differing spin orientations are known to reside in pairs around the nucleus of an atom, but as the distance between their respective negative charges is zero, the repelling force according to Coulomb’s law must be infinite. But if it was, then electron pairs would not exist, but they do!
-
Electrons, as we know, can be bottled up within magnetic fields and so the question arises, that “if an electron is held within a Penning Trap, is its charge contained within the trap or is still able to communicate through the magnetic trap to the outside world“? If the charge is held within the trap then it loses its ‘infinite reach’ ability and the ‘neutrality of the universal electrostatic charge’ is violated, as no counteracting positive charge has been created. If the electric charge on the electron in the Penning trap is able to communicate outside of the magnetic trap, then the trapped electron could be influenced by electric charges outside of the trap, to the point of extracting the electron from the trap!
That’s it! As far as I know, text books on the subject don’t deal with any of these issues. But maybe some key articles do and you can point me to them.
(mech. eng. here…)