Harvard team helps make most precise measure ever of electron’s charge
Electrons are almost unimaginably small, but their tiny size doesn’t mean they can’t be used to poke holes in theories of how the universe works. Working in a basement lab at Harvard, a group of researchers led by John Doyle, the Henry B. Silsbee Professor of Physics, has been part of a team to make the most precise measurement ever of the shape of the field around an electron, and the results suggest that some theories for what lies beyond the standard model of physics need to return to the drawing board. The study is described in a recently published paper in the journal Nature. The team included groups led by David DeMille from Yale University and Gerald Gabrielse from Northwestern University. “This measurement is an order of magnitude better than the last best measurement, which we had also made,” Doyle said. “What this means is these theories of what is beyond the...