Is The Electron Too Perfect?
The latest attempt to measure an electric dipole moment for the electron improves the resolution by a factor of 10 over the last best measurement. The problem is that the result, as in all past measurements, is negative. That means that the electron charge has very nearly perfect spherical symmetry.
The latest value for the electron’s putative EDM is less than 10^-29 electric charge centimeters. To give you a hint of how amazingly spherical this is, an object the size of the Earth would be perfectly spherical to an uncertainty of a couple of nanometers!
This causes serious problems for theoretical physicists because most ‘beyond the standard model’ hypotheses that attempt to patch up shortcomings of the standard model predict a measurable EDM for the electron. The latest negative result means that the LHC has no chance of testing their pipe dreams, which already had a miserable track record.
One option they might consider would be to stop trying to prove that nature obeys their modeling preferences, and take a fresh look at observed properties of nature with an attitude more like that of a student than of a teacher. May I suggest the following as a possible start on that journey of discovery?