Imagine there is an electron gun that is capable of emitting 1 electron at a time, the gun emits an electron directed at an empty space, no dust, no matter or anything that could interact with the electron. Does that electron still exist? probability wave don't count.
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$\begingroup$ Are you thinking in Quantum terms of a particle not existing in a exact defined location until it is detected or interacts with something? $\endgroup$– KDPCommented Jan 24 at 8:19
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$\begingroup$ The final sentence should start with "a" or "the". Also "doesn't" should be used not "don't". $\endgroup$– alanfCommented Jan 24 at 8:58
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$\begingroup$ @alanf You not going to mention the "I shoots" in the title? :P $\endgroup$– KDPCommented Jan 24 at 11:06
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3 Answers
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Electric charge, momentum and mass/energy are conserved quantities, so the electron still exists.
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To give a concrete example, suppose the "gun" is a muon. After an average delay of $2.2 ~\mu\mathrm{s}$ this will shoot out an electron (plus a neutrino-antineutrino pair that we can ignore). And we can assume that as in your question the muon is sufficiently isolated that it cannot interact with anything else.
As time goes by the muon will evolve into a superposition of the undecayed muon and the decay products including the electron. In the real world this superposition would quickly decohere and we would observe the electron (as indeed we do all the time). In the rather artificial situation without even any cosmic microwave background the system would remain in a superposition indefinitely.
Now to answer your question is the electron still there we need to define what still there means. The state of the system includes a component from the electron, and any observation of the system has a probability for detecting the electron that rises quickly to approximately unity after a few microseconds and remains at approximately unity for all time since the electron has no decay mode. Whether this satisfies your definition of still there only you can decide, but all the physicists I know would agree that the electron is created within a few microseconds and then remains there indefinitely.
answered Jan 24 at 8:26
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Imagine there is an electron gun that is capable of emitting 1 electron at a time, the gun emits an electron directed at an empty space, no dust, no matter or anything that could interact with the electron. Does that electron still exist?
Yes. An electron fired into empty space still exists.
probability wave don't count.
The wavefunction isn't a probability wave. The square amplitude of an outcome in general does not obey the rules of probability, e.g. - in interference experiments:
https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9911150
If you want to claim that there is nothing in reality corresponding to the wavefunction then you have no explanation for the outcomes of many experiments:
