9 ms·
One-electron universe
- has2k1 13y agoNice little bit of New Age Physics.
- colanderman 13y agoDon't forget, this explains pair production too! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production) Pair production nuclei are just the places the electron decided to make a U-turn :)
- ultramundane828 13y agoThat reads more like a bad, wordy, science joke than an actual hypothesis to me.
- adambard 13y agoIt's more of a scientific koan. Interesting to consider, but of little practical consequence (unless, of course, the missing positrons could be located).
- ISL 13y agoIf you enjoyed that notion, you'll probably like this one too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole#Dirac.27s_quantization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole#Dirac.27s_qua...
- drjesusphd 13y agoI'll see your Mangetic Monopole, and raise you a Boltzmann Brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
- IBCNU 13y agoI had to turn my lurker-cloak shield off and tip my hat to you my friend I have never heard of this! I remember my Quantum teacher introducing the concept of a one electron universe, and at the time it sounded like some 19th century type explaining that glass is a liquid, but this, my dear God... this is amazing.
- drjesusphd 13y agoThank you kind sir. Now combine this idea with the Heat Death of the Universe...
- chegra 13y agoI will see your Boltzmann brain, and raise you Infinite monkey Theorem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
- jeremyswank 13y agothis is hilarious, guys. keep it goin'.
- anigbrowl 13y agoI will see your infinite monkey theorem and raise you Bicameralism (psychology). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)
- ISL 13y agoBy request, I'll see your Bicameralism and raise you the Banach-Tarsky Paradox. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox
- brianpgordon 13y agoBack on topic with physics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time#Overview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time#Overview
- drjesusphd 13y agoYeah, that's really cool. Isn't the argument: if there exists a magnetic monopole anywhere in the universe, and angular momentum is quantized, then charge must also be quantized. Nothing has made me wish for magnetic monopoles more.
- ISL 13y agoThe best part? A serious experiment detected precisely one unexplained monopole event in a monopole detector [1]. The result is unexplained, and probably always will be. Subsequent searches have turned up nothing. You only need one... :). [1] http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v48/i20/p1378_1 http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v48/i20/p1378_1
- 51Cards 13y agoIf that's the case then I have to talk to my electric company about charging me over and over for the same re-used electron.
- jacquesm 13y agoYou can talk to them anyway since they're using AC which means they're pumping the same electrons around over and over again. Whether it's just one or a couple that they re-use who cares, the fraud is obvious.
- diminish 13y agomoreover they've stolen your only electron and sell it back to you.
- oleganza 13y agoSome electrons are leaking into the ground under your apartment. You should pay at least for those.
- dfritsch 13y agoWouldn't that just be the one electron also leaking into the ground?
- dj_axl 13y agoYou have to pay for the one electron. Since it's the only electron, the cost is infinite. This results in a buffer overflow. Your utility bill is an overflowed unsigned short, divided by 100. This is why the maximum utility bill you will ever see is $655.35.
- mikeash 13y agoIt's not even "around". They're literally charging you money to wiggle your own electrons!
- csomar 13y ago
- GuiA 13y agoThis seems like it would be a major discovery if proven true. Unlike many similar theories though, the people behind this have enough scientific credentials to make it maybe plausible? So why is the article so short? Has there been any additional research?
- greyfade 13y agoI don't think it's viewed as a plausible idea by very many. It seems Feynman only mentioned it in passing, so I doubt he held it in much regard. It's an interesting hypothesis, but without a testable and falsifiable theory, it's not really something we can study.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- JonnieCache 13y ago>So why is the article so short? Has there been any additional research? This is just one of the many things that fell out of feynman's brain when he wasn't concentrating. AFAICT he produced ideas like this the same way the rest of us produce farts.
- acadien 13y agoIt was his adviser's idea. Read the article.
- unimpressive 13y agoWas the RTFA really necessary?
- acadien 13y agoGood point, I shouldn't have been so rude.
- a3voices 13y agoIf this electron can travel faster than the speed of light, maybe other things can too.
- fennecfoxen 13y agoThis isn't the case: the electron postulated can travel no faster than the speed of light. It just happens to have a world-line which bounces back and forth, a lot, from the beginning of time to the end of time. There's a variety of interesting theory-things which treat a particle's absorption as an emission back in time, as well; the difference is that here is the "same particle" tracing all those lines, instead of just one of those lines.
- mr12 13y agoThis idea is very, very old. I first read about it in the book Stalking the Wild Pendulum. http://www.amazon.com/Stalking-Wild-Pendulum-Mechanics-Consciousness/dp/0892812028/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380136812&sr=8-1&keywords=stalking+the+wild+pendulum http://www.amazon.com/Stalking-Wild-Pendulum-Mechanics-Consc...
- shardling 13y agoWhy are you referring to a book that was published well after the quote in the article? >"Feynman's thesis advisor, John Wheeler, proposed the hypothesis in a telephone call to Feynman in the spring of 1940"
- mr12 13y agoBecause I'm lazy and didn't read the entire article. You got me.
- drjesusphd 13y agoIf this were true, there would be much more antimatter in the universe than is currently observed. The idea is that since positrons can be viewed as electrons moving backwards in time, it may be the same electron weaving its way to the future and past countless times. But that would imply that the number of electrons in the universe = the number of positrons.
- mratzloff 13y ago> But that would imply that the number of electrons in the universe = the number of positrons. Hence Feynman's objection.
- unclebucknasty 13y agoWell, this could explain the EPR Paradox[1]: It is one thing to say that physical measurement of the first particle's momentum affects uncertainty in its own position, but to say that measuring the first particle's momentum affects the uncertainty in the position of the other is another thing altogether. Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen asked how can the second particle "know" to have precisely defined momentum but uncertain position? Since this implies that one particle is communicating with the other instantaneously across space, i.e. faster than light, this is the "paradox".[2] The answer: It's the same electron being measured! No more paradox. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox#Einstein.27s_oppositionition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox#Einstein.27s_opposi...
- wetmore 13y agoThat solution doesn't work in the general case. Say I have an anti-correlated EPR pair of electrons, such that measuring spin-up for one particle means I will subsequently measure spin-down for the other. Then your solution doesn't work. Also the EPR paradox applies to quantum states that are not necessarily electrons. FWIW the EPR paradox is no longer a paradox anyway since you cannot use entanglement to transmit information faster than the speed of light, therefore preserving locality. The reason Einstein et al. termed it a paradox was because they thought it represented some sort of instantaneous information transfer.
- _dark_matter_ 13y agoYou are mostly correct, except for the last part. EPR denied that it was faster than light transfer, but instead thought that the information was already present in the second particle, thus implying that the theory was incomplete. This was also more exciting since it left open an avenue for further development in physics.
- unclebucknasty 13y agoRight. Either relativity or our understanding of quantum mechanics had to be "violated" in order to explain their observations. Einstein & Co. chose the latter with their idea of hidden parameters (i.e. information already present in the second particle). But, later experiments based on Bell's theorem seriously challenged the hidden parameter explanation, preserving quantum mechanics in the process. So, that takes us back to instantaneous information transfer or a third option: one electron (or any particle for that matter)!
- Raphmedia 13y agoThat's SCARY. Imagine if someone or something were to destroy this electron? Imagine, if we had split the electron instead and then BAM, no more space and time.
- mratzloff 13y agoAssuming its position distribution in time and space is the same in our future as it is in our past, its destruction would have no impact on space and time, because its past positions would continue to exist into our future.
- ck2 13y agoThat makes no sense to me, I mean what about particle colliders that bash together electrons to get subatomic particles. That would mean you are colliding the sole electron with itself? What about electrons on the opposite sides of a planet or even universe, they are violating the speed of light without any gain in mass if it's a single entity. How about when an electron falls into a blackhole, why aren't all the other "copies" affected by the dramatic space-time shift of such an event?
- sherjilozair 13y agoIf you use a time machine now, and travel to the past, you can collide with the past yourself, right? :)
- ck2 13y agoIf you damage an earlier copy of yourself, your later version should also reflect the damage? Unless we are dealing with an infinite-outcomes model where there are no paradoxes.
- stan_rogers 13y ago"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history - the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end." -- Douglas Adams
- powertower 13y ago"Interpretations", (such as the Many-worlds interpretation) are just silly ways of thinking about things that make difficult to grasp concepts of reality marketable to the general public. Other times they are often nothing more than artificial (relative to fundamental reality) products of mathematical complexities, edges, holes, paradoxes, and artifacts... Artifacts that shouldn't seriously be used-on or applied-to anything outside of whatever mathematical framework created them - but often are.
- Steuard 13y agoPhysics professor here. As others have said, this is a really cute idea in physics that touches on some neat properties of the universe (like fundamentally identical particles, conservation of lepton number, and the effects of time reversal on particle properties), but: 1. It's more akin to philosophy than to science: this suggestion either has no testable consequences (or if it does, its predictions look obviously false: see below). 2. In all of our observations of the universe there seem to be many more electrons than anti-electrons, but this concept would seem to imply that the number should be exactly equal. You can try to get around that, but anything you do is a stretch.[1] 3. The formalism of quantum field theory naturally includes plenty of situations where electrons and anti-electrons form "closed loops" in time. (The classic example is a something like a photon giving rise to a virtual e-/e+ pair that immediately annihilates back into a photon, but they can get a lot more complicated.) Those closed loops would not be connected to the hypothesized "one electron" bouncing back and forth through all of time, so this idea would fail to explain why they also look identical to the rest. So in my book, the beauty of this idea lies entirely in the fact that it could be suggested at all. It doesn't actually match reality, but it does give some striking intuition about how particle physics works. [1] You could suggest that there is some other (unobservably distant?) region of the universe where antimatter dominates, but there's absolutely no evidence to support that suggestion. As another idea, the quote in the link suggests that "maybe the extra anti-electrons are hiding in the protons or something". But anything of the sort would seem to eliminate the whole point of saying "it's all one electron" (which always has the same properties, etc.).
- seiji 13y agosituations where electrons and anti-electrons form "closed loops" in time. A Quantum Loooooop! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rjbtsX7twc&t=1m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rjbtsX7twc&t=1m23s
- Apocryphon 13y ago"You could suggest that there is some other (unobservably distant?) region of the universe where antimatter dominates, but there's absolutely no evidence to support that suggestion." That would validate the modern day myths crafted by science fiction and comic book writers. Future generations will look back and ask, "How did they know?"
- teilo 13y ago"Maybe they are hidden in the protons or something." Priceless.
- avty 13y agoThe Electric Universe Theory is also extremely intriguing.
- gesman 13y agoHere's the best explanation of it from Bashar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNxnE8nXFo4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNxnE8nXFo4 Search google for "bashar prime radiant"
- znowi 13y agoI suspect if this idea was not coming from Wheeler/Feynman, it would be readily dismissed as a crackpot theory :)
- protez 13y agoIf it would ever make any sense, multiple electrons should weigh no more than one single electron. But that would be obviously false under Standard Model, to treat something singular to be that apparently multiple. Or, our present physics needs to totally reconstructed to incorporate that, by building everything again from defining the "tremendous knot" and the implications from its hypothetical world lines. Instead, what if, everything from electrons, protons, even strings, is sort of that "knot?" That would make more sense, in terms of coherence.