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Layman here, so this is another infuriatingly wrong pop-science ispired question. :)

The way I understand it an electron (and many/all other elementary particles?) is not a little ball orbiting an atomic nucleus, but rather is rather smeared out in a cloud of probability. At any time it's somewhere inside this cloud, with some areas being more probable than others (say, the particular orbital that it's inhabiting at the moment). However, this cloud extends infinitely in all directions, so there's also a (very very small) chance that the electron might suddenly appear somewhere further away. And since the cloud is infinite, then... this includes the rest of the universe??? That doesn't seem right. At the very least there should be a limit of speed of light.

Which part have I gotten wrong?

Vilx-
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  • This is the first part you've gotten wrong: " At any time it's somewhere inside this cloud". – WillO Feb 04 '23 at 13:42
  • In my opinion, this question is the same as "does a damped harmonic oscillator stop moving at some point?". Technically speaking, no, it always has a non-zero velocity even though it is exponentially suppressed with time. However in practice at some point the motion is so slow that you can't detect it any more. A similar reasoning applies to the atomic orbital: technically speaking, there is a non-zero probability to find the electron on Mars, but in practice there is no hope you can find it there. – Matteo Feb 04 '23 at 13:44
  • See also: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/713177/50583 – ACuriousMind Feb 04 '23 at 13:55

1 Answers1

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Considering a specific electron. After that electron being created, for example in some reactions, if it is free (i.e. not bound into some potentials), then it wave packet (superposition of wave functions with specific momentum) will collapse with a certain rate that is smaller than the speed of light. So in reality, the probability cloud is not infinite but it keep spreading with some speed.

Toan Phuc
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