Humphrey Maris proposes that it is possible to split the electron. A paper describing the theory appears in the Aug. 1 Journal of Low Temperature Physics. Maris presented his research at the International Conference on Quantum Fluids and Solids, held in June at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He has also discovered there is a significant amount of experimental evidence supporting his theory.
Physicists consider that matter in the world is composed of a large number of elementary particles.
Some of these particles, such as the electron and the proton, carry an electric charge, while others, including the neutron and neutrino, are electrically neutral. Although some elementary particles can decay into other particles, it has been regarded as a general principle of physics that an elementary particle cannot be broken into two pieces. Thus, for example, although a neutron can decay into a proton plus an electron and a neutrino, it can never be broken into two half neutrons. According to quantum theory, the state of a particle is described as its wave function. The probability that the particle will be found in any position is proportional to the square of the wave function at that point in space.