{"id":30176,"date":"2017-05-08T01:03:52","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T19:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yaabot.com\/?p=30176"},"modified":"2017-05-08T01:03:52","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T19:33:52","slug":"universe-made-single-electron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/universe-made-single-electron\/","title":{"rendered":"Could the Universe be made of a single electron?"},"content":{"rendered":"
What exactly is an electron? A textbook definition will tell you that it is a negatively charged subatomic particle which revolves around the nucleus of an atom in fixed orbits. But if we can\u2019t directly observe one, how can we say with for sure that it even exists? In fact, thanks to Heisenberg, we can\u2019t even pinpoint its exact location. We need to rely on probability to do just that. Can an electron be at two places at once? Imagine this – what if all the electrons in the Universe are, in fact, just one particle that is perpetually travelling forward and backwards in time? Sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. This gives rise to the one electron universe theory. Well, without getting into the nitty-gritty of Quantum Mechanics, let\u2019s dive into the plausibility of the theory.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/strong> Why Would We Have Just One Universe?<\/a><\/p>\n Electrons are essentially indistinguishable from one another. This means you cannot tell the difference between one electron and the next! Every electron has the same mass, same charge, and same spin. So if every electron in the Universe is identical, then what if it\u2019s the same one that is present everywhere? Hence, the one-electron Universe theory. It\u2019s more like an attempt to justify why every electron is, essentially, the same.<\/p>\n Also Read: Is there an order to chaos in the Universe?<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n Hydrogen atom orbitals at different energy levels. The brighter areas are where one is most likely to find an electron at any given time.<\/span><\/p>\n Many of us would dismiss the idea of a single-electron Universe as utterly nonsensical. The famous American physicists, John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman, didn\u2019t think so. In fact, here\u2019s a snippet of the conversation between them which Feynman mentioned in his 1995 Nobel lecture<\/a>–<\/p>\n I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, “Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass.” <\/strong><\/p>\n “Why?” <\/strong><\/p>\n “Because they are all the same electron!” <\/strong><\/p>\n And, then he explained on the telephone, “suppose that the world lines which we were ordinarily considering before in time and space – instead of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when we cut through the knot, by the plane corresponding to a fixed time, we would see many, many world lines and that would represent many electrons, except for one thing. If in one section this is an ordinary electron world line, in the section in which it reversed itself and is coming back from the future we have the wrong sign to the proper time – to the proper four velocities – and that’s equivalent to changing the sign of the charge, and, therefore, that part of a path would act like a positron.”<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Electron Identity Factor<\/h2>\n
So who believes it?<\/h2>\n