The Enigmatic Electron: A Doorway to Particle Masses

This book discusses the author's own classical model of the electron with spin. In his model, the electron is an extended object - with the radius comparable to the Compton radius - which is spinning at speed of light and with the electric charge being at a point on the equator.The author then elaborates this model of relativistically spinning electron further; e.g. imposing the requirement of the vanishing of the quadruple moment of the electron and tying that to its spin angular momentum. In this manner, Dr. Mac Gregor proceeds to account for all the spectroscopic properties of electron with this (non-quantum) model.Dr. Mac Gregor also presents the results of his literature review (up to 1995) of experimental evidence for his model of electron and points certain anomalies in scattering cross-section of electrons from light elements (such as Aluminum) in low kev regions that could potentially be furnishing evidence of the validity of this model.Throughout the book, the discussion is friendly and clear - you are meeting after the department colloquium with your fellow graduate student Malcom and he is sharing with you his thoughts and ideas. Necessarily, then, there is not a whole lot of advanced mathematics, but an assumption that you share the same technical background with your friend - namely High Energy Physics - as well as a desire for discovering the scientific truth.The last chapter of the book is devoted to a discussion of certain pattern that the author has discovered among the masses and lifetimes of elementary particles in units of alpha - 1/137 - the fine structure constant. This is an addendum to the rest of the book and does not thematically belong there but it is interesting nevertheless. The relationships that he has discovered reminded me of the provisional formulas of Planck, Rydberg, Bohr, Lande and others that found their deeper explanations in Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Electrodynamics.Is the book worth reading? Yes, definitely.Lastly, my copy of the book seems to have been published shortly after I had placed the order. The book that I received was cleanly printed, on good quality white paper, ready to be read, and even though a paperback, had very good binding. A Dover-quality book this was not but it would not fall apart with the first reading either - unlike some very expensive books from other famous publishers.

Excellent compilation of features of electron despite the electron’s generally being treated as a point source in other physics literature.

Almost good. I really expected detailed descriptions of the electron experiments e their results before seeing his theory. Although interesting, I do not see its scientific merit, because it does not have any falsifiability criterion.

This is one of those gems: a very narrow field of inquiry with a history that has mostly not made it to public domain until now - by an insider who was intimately connected to that history over half a century and (in the twilight of his own years) is qualified to write the survey paper on the matter. I knew going in that the electron (arguably the simplest chunk of matter as most of us know it) is very poorly understood by the brightest minds who have worked on the problem - and hardly at all by the rest of us. This does not speak well for those who claim that all science is "settled" with the announced (but quietly rebutted) "discovery" of the Higgs Boson. It potentially undermines the position of the Reductionist cadre, whose thesis it is that all bulk-property physics is understandable by what goes on within any single atom. I think the material in this book provides a massive counter-example (among legions...) to the Reductionist thesis. As such, I find it a valuable (if narrow) addition to the current physics frontier between known and unknown.

Review of The Enigmatic Electron by Malcolm Macgregor By Mark RicardModern physics tells us that the realm of subatomic particles is beyond any classical explanation. It requires complex mathematics and the objects it studies do not resemble anything we see in the macroscopic world. Malcolm Macgregor's book goes a long way to refuting this assumption. In this reissue of his 1992 work, Malcolm Macgregor shows the reader that many of the properties of the electron can be understood with his relativistic spinning sphere model of the electron. This model is able to explain many non classical properties using only classical mechanics and electrodynamics. For many decades Macgregor has been pushing this model as an addition to Quantum Field theory. Macgregor starts in part one by showing us the history of the electron's discovery. He shows the contradictions that bedeviled early theorists. We see that the electron could have many sizes depending on what aspect of it that one would look at. By Part two Macgregor goes toward building his argument. He describes the problem of the self energy of the electron and why he believes it cannot be electrostatic in nature. This is the start of his systematic argument that takes up part 3. Here he shows us in an easy to understand manner the many features that his relativistic spinning sphere model can explain. It is an impressive demonstration to see how certain "quantum" properties can be derived from a classical model. Here he shows how the spin, magnetic moment, anomalous magnetic moment, and the vanishing electric quadrupole moment can all be explained using the relativistic spinning sphere. Part four, explains his concept of what he calls "mechanical mass" (i.e., non- electromagnetic). However the majority of the section describes experiments regarding Mott Scattering that provide evidence for his relativistic sphere model. These sections emphasize experimental rather than theoretical results. The jury is still out but the results are promising.The last chapter relates his model of the electron to his work on the fine structure constant and its relation to the observed particle mass spectrum. This briefly covers the basic ideas of his 2007 book, The Power of Alpha. It shows how the electron mass along with alpha, the fine structure constant, can explain many of the fundamental subatomic particle masses, often within one percent of their value. His model shows that the fine structure constant not only gives the mass of the leptons, such as the muon and tau particles; but that it can also calculate the mass of many baryons and mesons, using constituent quark masses rather the current quark masses. Finally he shows the fine structure constant can calculate the fine W and Z and the top quark. Thus showing one can calculate n the entire range of subatomic particle masses. In all, this is an impressive book that is well worth the cover price. Highly recommended.

This is one of the few books devoted to the electron and has the work of a number of physicists included.

Still enigmatic

Very clear and well written! The topics covered on the book are amazing and truly important, it gives us a comprehension of the intrinsic properties of the electron and spin.

I bought this book because I wanted to know what an electron was. Apart from the many equations the overall perspective was good. It appears that even the physicists are still not sure exactly what it "looks" like. If you are interested in sub atomic fundamental particles, even if you are not educated in this field I would still recommend this book.

This is an easy read, I'd almost call it a page-turner (I finished it in two sittings!). I'm not 100% convinced by the physical arguments but there are some interesting ideas, well reasoned and it is well grounded in data.