Corruption of Modern Physics 16: Electron Spin

Scientific American presented yesterday an article about the mystery of electron spin serving a fundamental role in the standard theory of quantum mechanics stdQM:

• Quantum Particles Aren’t Spinning. So Where Does Their Spin Come From?

  with the following contradictory messages typical of modern physics:

• Electrons are proficient little magicians. Electrons always seem to spin. 
• But despite appearances, electrons don’t spin. They can’t spin.
• Proving that it’s impossible for electrons to be spinning is a standard homework problem in any introductory quantum physics course. 
• Yet spin is deeply important.
•  If electrons didn’t seem to spin, your chair would collapse down to a minuscule fraction of its size. 
• In fact, there wouldn’t be any molecules at all. 

Ok, so we learn that electrons spin, although they cannot, and that spinning electrons are necessary for the World to exist: Contradiction. But Contradictory Physics is Corrupted Physics. 

The concept of electron spin, which can take two values say up and down, was introduced when stdQM was formed in the 1920s to satisfy Pauli's Exclusion Principle PEP stating that 

• At most two electrons can occupy the same spot in space-time. 
• If two electrons do so, then they must have different spin.  

This was described by Pauli as a mysterious two-valuedness of stdQM arising already in the case of the Helium Atom with two electrons with key question: 

• How do the two electrons share the space around the kernel? 
• Can they overlap or not? 

The answer by stdQM was that they have to overlap in the ground state of the Helium Atom to make computation of energy fit with observation. But electrons having the same negative charge repel each other and so cannot overlap. Pauli's resolution of this apparent contradiction was to say that they indeed can overlap if only the have different spin, one up and the other down. 

That gave some apparent rationale to the mysterious two-valuedness appearing already for Helium taking the form of PEP. The trouble was and still is that nobody knows what is the physics of electron spin? Is it physics at all, or not just a trick to make stdQM correctly predict the ground state energy of Helium?

RealQM seeks to give a different answer with direct connection to physics. In RealQM the two electrons of Helium divide the space around the kernel into two half-lobes of electron density which do not overlap. This is a classical continuum model in three space dimension which accurately predicts the ground state energy of Helium, as well as other atoms with electrons organised into non-overlapping shells. 

In particular, the mysterious two-valuedness can get an explanation in the form of the two half-lobes model of Helium in RealQM. Take a look and see if you get inspired to uncover the mystery of PEP!