Since Millikan it is obvious that the charge of the electron can be measured as a result of the force exerted by an external electric field. What we get in detail is the charge from the excess of electrons in a water or oil droplet.
I wonder why we are so convinced that a free electron does not lose part of its charge on its way to the nucleus, on its way to a bound electron.
I am fully aware that the direct measurement of charge reduction is impossible, isn't it? Take it, if you want, as a subquestion.
The implication that electrons partially lose their charge has some consequences that fall into the realm of observable physics.
- applied to the electron, the proton must exhibit the same behaviour A free proton has the charge +1. The proton that is bound in the nucleus does not. This makes the strong force obsolete or worth considering.
- an electron without kinetic energy, captured by an ion, loses energy on the way to a bound electron. Where does the energy come from? From the electric field of the electron, which weakens.
My question: What are the inconsistencies of a hypothesis of the charge loss of a bound electron?
And please just this once, for some of you, stay away from the impulsive reaction that this is not mainstream physics. Physics is a living science, not a collection of truth theories.
Edit after Johns answer
The energy levels of the hydrogen atom are calculated for a constant negative charge on the electron and constant positive charge on the proton. If the charges were to decrease (keeping the total charge zero) the energy levels would differ from those calculated (and observed).
To do so, the approach is that the charge has a potential energy value from infinity to the point it is away from the nucleus? With the one hand we apply energy and with the other we take energy away by the emission of photons.
Full aware what I was doing, I wrote in the question that even an electron in rest, near the nucleus, will “fall” to it with the release of EM radiation. This couldn’t be the claimed potential energy from infinity nor kinetic energy. It is taken from the electron itself, its mass or/and its field.
Maybe that is semantic. But the consequence lays in the need or not-need of the strong force. It lays in the understanding, why the electron-proton interaction is stable at the end and quantized for stimulated states. And why the particle-antiparticle annihilation happens.
Edit after sinteticos comment
the photon has no charge, so emitting or absorbing a photon do not change the charge
@sintetico, yes, the photon does not has charge. But the e and the p have, and they have opposite charges. Furthermore, they have (measured, really real) magnetic fields.
The photon, in turn, has a swelling electric and magnetic field component. How this does not mach the robbery of some field strength from e and p to the energy quant?
One more addition to Johns profound answer
In quantum field theory the object that we call the electron is strictly defined only in the limiting case where is isolated from all other particles. In this case it is represented by a Fock state of the field and this state has the charge −. However a bound electron is not a Fock state. In fact we don't have a simple description of this state but we can approximate it as a sum of Fock states and it is these extra states in the sum that represent the virtual particles.
What the reduced electric charge idea claims is the not-need of virtual photons. It changes the claimed sum of Fock states for the not simple descriptionable states by a simpler model. Let the model be not right, but it is worth to calculate it first, and then throw it away. For the beginning, what are the inconsistencies and - again and again - not the implications to the existing theories?
