Talk:2817: Electron Holes - Revision history

Firestar233 at 00:29, 29 April 2024

2024-04-29T00:29:13Z

172.70.111.49: /* Anode ray */

2023-08-27T23:38:23Z

‎Anode ray

Vaedez at 11:51, 26 August 2023

2023-08-26T11:51:03Z

162.158.159.49: /* Who is firing the beam? */

2023-08-24T16:57:32Z

‎Who is firing the beam?

162.158.158.91: /* Who is firing the beam? */ still disagree. you're wrong about the mass

2023-08-24T16:56:13Z

‎Who is firing the beam?: still disagree. you're wrong about the mass

BunsenH: /* Who is firing the beam? */

2023-08-22T20:43:01Z

‎Who is firing the beam?

162.158.175.68: /* Who is firing the beam? */

2023-08-22T20:18:01Z

‎Who is firing the beam?

162.158.174.196: /* Who is firing the beam? */

2023-08-22T18:16:09Z

‎Who is firing the beam?

162.158.175.133: /* Anode ray */

2023-08-22T18:11:37Z

‎Anode ray

172.70.114.216 at 05:56, 22 August 2023

2023-08-22T05:56:31Z

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 I must admit... I'm not entirely convinced that one _couldn't_ build an electron hole beam. It would probably be called a quasibeam, but I think it could be done. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.61|162.158.175.61]] 05:11, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
 : You could clearly do this if you fired a beam of physical material to carry the holes. You could also find a way to stimulate the production of holes at a distance, maybe by inducing static charge with electromagnetic emission. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.192|162.158.62.192]] 00:49, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 Would an electron "vacuum" be an electron hole gun? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 05:30, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

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 : For sure you can make a beam of positively charged ions - and that's the first thing I thought of with the "electron hole gun".
 : But . . . the context pretty much says that the gun is sending the holes only, without any surrounding matrix. That is what is "impossible".  [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.133|162.158.175.133]] 18:11, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 == Who is firing the beam? ==

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	I firmly believe the printer deserved it. It knows what it did. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.19.95\|162.158.19.95]]		I firmly believe the printer deserved it. It knows what it did. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.19.95\|162.158.19.95]]
		+	:I'm honestly surprised to see no mention of toner printers, or even conjecture on why it's a printer that the electron hole gun is being fired on. Maybe an another reason the physicist is upset is that he's messing up her currently-printing document? - [[User:Vaedez\|Vaedez]] ([[User talk:Vaedez\|talk]]) 11:51, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

	Electrical current was defined as the flow of positive charge carriers before it was understood that the negative charge carriers (electrons) were what was moving. When talking about semiconductor physics, this became a problem because we’re very concerned about what particles are actually moving around, so the mathematical fiction of “hole flow” was invented so we wouldn’t have to use negative signs everywhere in the math. An electron hole is a property of p-type semiconductors, a place where electrons can move into, which can also be described as the nonsensical but more mathematically convenient flow of holes in the opposite direction. By analogy, if you had a children’s shape-sorting box, you could build a catapult that threw around the blocks, but you couldn’t build something that threw around the holes in the lid that the blocks fit into.		Electrical current was defined as the flow of positive charge carriers before it was understood that the negative charge carriers (electrons) were what was moving. When talking about semiconductor physics, this became a problem because we’re very concerned about what particles are actually moving around, so the mathematical fiction of “hole flow” was invented so we wouldn’t have to use negative signs everywhere in the math. An electron hole is a property of p-type semiconductors, a place where electrons can move into, which can also be described as the nonsensical but more mathematically convenient flow of holes in the opposite direction. By analogy, if you had a children’s shape-sorting box, you could build a catapult that threw around the blocks, but you couldn’t build something that threw around the holes in the lid that the blocks fit into.

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:57, 24 August 2023
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	:If you shot out a beam of electron holes (however you are planning to manage that) and then followed it up by shooting a beam of positrons, I very well guarantee that you are going to be able to tell that the two are vastly different things. You might not even need any special equipment to do so . . . [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.196\|162.158.174.196]] 18:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)		:If you shot out a beam of electron holes (however you are planning to manage that) and then followed it up by shooting a beam of positrons, I very well guarantee that you are going to be able to tell that the two are vastly different things. You might not even need any special equipment to do so . . . [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.196\|162.158.174.196]] 18:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
	::My impression from the references given in this discussion is that the phrase "electron hole" can have two different meanings, in different areas of physics: semiconductors and Dirac field theory. I'm familiar with only the former, but the latter appears to be attested and to be equivalent to positrons. A bit like how "exothermic" means nearly opposite things between biology and physics/chemistry. [[User:BunsenH\|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH\|talk]]) 20:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)		::My impression from the references given in this discussion is that the phrase "electron hole" can have two different meanings, in different areas of physics: semiconductors and Dirac field theory. I'm familiar with only the former, but the latter appears to be attested and to be equivalent to positrons. A bit like how "exothermic" means nearly opposite things between biology and physics/chemistry. [[User:BunsenH\|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH\|talk]]) 20:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
		+
		+	:::They're not really different meanings. It's just that the properties of a hole depend on the background. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.49\|162.158.159.49]] 16:57, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

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 :It might depend on the kind of physicist; one who deals with semiconductors wouldn't use "electron hole" to refer to positrons.  It's pretty clear that the beam in the cartoon is ''not'' a stream of positrons, which would be reacting with the electrons in the air and releasing high-energy photons. It's the difference between "fantastic behaviour of a thing that doesn't really exist" and "behaviour that violates the known properties of a thing that does exist".  Perhaps the ST:TNG Enterprise needs to be swept periodically to remove all of the lowadekions it's picked up, fine, but it's a ''bad'' thing to take away all of the baryons. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 01:06, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 : *"an electron hole is indistinguishable from a positron"* - oh, an electron hole is very, very distinguishable from a positron.  They hold the same charge, so they are the same in that respect, but otherwise they have quite a lot of different characteristics. For one thing a positron has mass whereas an electron hole, not so much.
 :If you shot out a beam of electron holes (however you are planning to manage that) and then followed it up by shooting a beam of positrons, I very well guarantee that you are going to be able to tell that the two are vastly different things.  You might not even need any special equipment to do so . . . [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.196|162.158.174.196]] 18:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 ::My impression from the references given in this discussion is that the phrase "electron hole" can have two different meanings, in different areas of physics: semiconductors and Dirac field theory.  I'm familiar with only the former, but the latter appears to be attested and to be equivalent to positrons.  A bit like how "exothermic" means nearly opposite things between biology and physics/chemistry. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 20:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:43, 22 August 2023
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	:If you shot out a beam of electron holes (however you are planning to manage that) and then followed it up by shooting a beam of positrons, I very well guarantee that you are going to be able to tell that the two are vastly different things. You might not even need any special equipment to do so . . . [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.196\|162.158.174.196]] 18:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)		:If you shot out a beam of electron holes (however you are planning to manage that) and then followed it up by shooting a beam of positrons, I very well guarantee that you are going to be able to tell that the two are vastly different things. You might not even need any special equipment to do so . . . [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.196\|162.158.174.196]] 18:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
		+	::My impression from the references given in this discussion is that the phrase "electron hole" can have two different meanings, in different areas of physics: semiconductors and Dirac field theory. I'm familiar with only the former, but the latter appears to be attested and to be equivalent to positrons. A bit like how "exothermic" means nearly opposite things between biology and physics/chemistry. [[User:BunsenH\|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH\|talk]]) 20:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

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 I disagree with the punchline here. a layman might be angry about this hypothetical device, but a physicist would understand that an electron hole is indistinguishable from a positron. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.118|162.158.158.118]] 17:24, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 :It might depend on the kind of physicist; one who deals with semiconductors wouldn't use "electron hole" to refer to positrons.  It's pretty clear that the beam in the cartoon is ''not'' a stream of positrons, which would be reacting with the electrons in the air and releasing high-energy photons. It's the difference between "fantastic behaviour of a thing that doesn't really exist" and "behaviour that violates the known properties of a thing that does exist".  Perhaps the ST:TNG Enterprise needs to be swept periodically to remove all of the lowadekions it's picked up, fine, but it's a ''bad'' thing to take away all of the baryons. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 01:06, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
-: "an electron hole is indistinguishable from a positron" - oh, an electron hole is very, very distinguishable from a positron.  They hold the same charge, so they are the same in that respect, but otherwise they have quite a lot of different characteristics. For one thing a positron has mass whereas a hole, not so much. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.196|162.158.174.196]] 18:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
+: *"an electron hole is indistinguishable from a positron"* - oh, an electron hole is very, very distinguishable from a positron.  They hold the same charge, so they are the same in that respect, but otherwise they have quite a lot of different characteristics. For one thing a positron has mass whereas an electron hole, not so much.

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:16, 22 August 2023
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	I disagree with the punchline here. a layman might be angry about this hypothetical device, but a physicist would understand that an electron hole is indistinguishable from a positron. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.118\|162.158.158.118]] 17:24, 21 August 2023 (UTC)		I disagree with the punchline here. a layman might be angry about this hypothetical device, but a physicist would understand that an electron hole is indistinguishable from a positron. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.118\|162.158.158.118]] 17:24, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
	:It might depend on the kind of physicist; one who deals with semiconductors wouldn't use "electron hole" to refer to positrons. It's pretty clear that the beam in the cartoon is ''not'' a stream of positrons, which would be reacting with the electrons in the air and releasing high-energy photons. It's the difference between "fantastic behaviour of a thing that doesn't really exist" and "behaviour that violates the known properties of a thing that does exist". Perhaps the ST:TNG Enterprise needs to be swept periodically to remove all of the lowadekions it's picked up, fine, but it's a ''bad'' thing to take away all of the baryons. [[User:BunsenH\|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH\|talk]]) 01:06, 22 August 2023 (UTC)		:It might depend on the kind of physicist; one who deals with semiconductors wouldn't use "electron hole" to refer to positrons. It's pretty clear that the beam in the cartoon is ''not'' a stream of positrons, which would be reacting with the electrons in the air and releasing high-energy photons. It's the difference between "fantastic behaviour of a thing that doesn't really exist" and "behaviour that violates the known properties of a thing that does exist". Perhaps the ST:TNG Enterprise needs to be swept periodically to remove all of the lowadekions it's picked up, fine, but it's a ''bad'' thing to take away all of the baryons. [[User:BunsenH\|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH\|talk]]) 01:06, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
		+	: "an electron hole is indistinguishable from a positron" - oh, an electron hole is very, very distinguishable from a positron. They hold the same charge, so they are the same in that respect, but otherwise they have quite a lot of different characteristics. For one thing a positron has mass whereas a hole, not so much. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.196\|162.158.174.196]] 18:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

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 A contributor wrote, "Here, the electron hole gun might refer to the anode ray tubes." An anode ray is a beam of positive ions; these are actual particles and not "quasiparticles", and therefore the comic does not refer to them. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.243|162.158.86.243]] 07:05, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 : Isn't a positive ion an atom missing an electron? Couldn't you make an anode ray tube that emits charged semiconductor dust? The quasiparticles are the missing electrons in the matter. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.21|172.70.114.21]] 05:38, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
 == Who is firing the beam? ==

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 :Projecting a vacuum (which would, incidentally, quash sound except for that which travels round it or is caused by its creation/collapse) sounds like it needs a whole army of Maxwell's demons carrying their own 'portable hatches' to allow air molecules to leave the volume of the beam whilst batting away any that threaten to move into it. (That might be interesting to see, if noisy.)
 ::This might work at absolute zero? For example, you could electrically charge the particles of a motionless gas and then pull them using a focused electric field and make a beam that emits vacuum. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.36|172.70.230.36]] 14:32, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
 :The Meissner Effect is an interesting (practical) version of this. Upon decreasing the possibility of an interior field, an identical increase is detetected immediately outside of it (conserving flux across the whole system, or so it seems to be/makes most sense).
 :Which is not to say that there's no such thing as "a nothing", in the whole weird world of science, or variously vagues analogues to it (if you don't dig too deep, maybe). Some might suggest quantum vacuum decay might be the ultimate substantial 'nothing', but not that we know how to study it... let alone harness it. Yet! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.5|172.71.242.5]] 10:23, 19 August 2023 (UTC)