Global Climate Change Science News

[macdoc]

Tell that to Cern.

[Brian Peacock]

Erm.

[JimC]

you can create electrons through beta decay or high-energy collisions

Sure, and also the decay of a gamma photon into a positron and an electron. But the vast majority of the current electrons in the universe were created in the big bang...

[macdoc]

I picked your nit .

[Brian Peacock]

Nah, just a non sequitur really - because, as Jim pointed out, it should be "make electrons move" rather than "make electrons" to generate electricity. The LHC doesn't generate electricity when briefly creating particles either.

Consider your picked nit nit picked.

[macdoc]

CERN creates electrons. It doesn't just move them.

Electrons can be created through beta decay of radioactive isotopes and in high-energy collisions, for instance, when cosmic rays enter the atmosphere. The antiparticle of the electron is called the positron; it is identical to the electron, except that it carries electrical charge of the opposite sign.

How much energy is needed to create an electron?
The rest mass energy of an electron is 511 keV. So this is how much energy is required to create an electron, at rest, and which is not in an electromagnetic field.24 Jan 2015

https://physics.stackexchange.com/quest ... ic%20field.
are we done yet?

[pErvinalia]

Creating electrons doesn't generate electricity. That's the point they are making.

[macdoc]

Moving electrons does.....and ?
I only disputed that electrons could not be created outside big bang conditions. Nit remains picked.