Feynman's One-Electron Universe: Every Electron Is the Same Particle
In 1940, Richard Feynman called John Wheeler with a wild idea: all electrons might be a single particle, moving forward and backward in time. A positron is just that electron traveling backward. Feynman admitted he didn't take it too seriously, but the concept inspired his Nobel-winning work in quantum electrodynamics.
I did not take the idea that all the electrons were the same one from him as seriously as I took the observation that positrons could simply be represented as electrons going from the future to the past in a back section of their world lines.
- stared
In the line, I recommend „The Egg” by Andy Weir https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
- lioeters
A twist on this theory: One-Observer Universe.
It is the hypothesis that all observers are actually manifestations of a single observer experiencing all of time, space, and every point of view. All world lines across spacetime are parts of one single line "like a huge tangled knot" traced out by the one observer.
- chasil
CP-violation would appear to rule this out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation
The main referenced wiki suggests that the missing positrons are inside protons, but recent a recent LHC experiment asserts CP-violation over baryons.
- edgyquant
I always loved this as it seems to be a more modern way of interpreting the monad. Could it not be the case that all particles are actually just one thing that is not subject to time and that our reality is a snapshot of a matrix of its different potentials?
- throwaway27448
How meaningful is this actually? Is this a measurable distinction, or a conceptual one with the same semantics?