One-Electron Universe

by Mira Azkia 20 September 2026 3 min read 68x views

From Wikipedia, the liberated encyclopedia

The one-electron universe is the hypothesis that all electrons and positrons are really manifestations of a sole being moving backwards and forwards in time. It was projected by theoretical physicist John Wheeler in a phone call to Richard Feynman in the fountain of 1940. A akin "zigzag earth row clarification of brace annihilation" was independently devised by E. C. G. Stueckelberg at the identical time.^[1]

Overview

The idea is according to the world lines traced out throughout spacetime by all electron. Rather than have myriad specified lines, Wheeler suggested that they could all be parts of one sole row akin a huge tangled knot, traced out by the one electron. Any stated instant in period is represented by a piece throughout spacetime, and would encounter the knotted row a awesome many times. Each specified gathering item represents a genuine speck at that moment.

At those points, fractional the lines volition be directed onward in period and fractional volition have looped circular and be directed backwards. Wheeler suggested that these backwards sections appeared as the antiparticle to the electron, the positron.

Many additional electrons have been observed than positrons, and electrons are idea to comfortably outnumber them. According to Feynman he raised this matter alongside Wheeler, who speculated that the missing positrons power be hidden inside protons.^[2]

Feynman was struck by Wheeler's understanding that antiparticles could be represented by reversed earth lines, and credits this to Wheeler, saying in his Nobel speech:

I received a phone call one day at the alumnus university at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I cognize why all electrons have the identical accusation and the identical mass" "Why?" "Because, they are all the identical electron!" (...) I did not obtain the idea that all the electrons were the identical one from [Wheeler] as earnestly as I took the study that positrons could merely be represented as electrons going from the forthcoming to the former in a rear division of their earth lines. That, I stole!^[2]

Feynman afterward projected this explanation of the positron as an speck moving backward in period in his 1949 document "The Theory of Positrons".^[3] Yoichiro Nambu afterward applied it to all manufacturing and annihilation of particle–antiparticle pairs, stating that "the eventual innovation and annihilation of pairs that may happen now and then, is no innovation nor annihilation, but lone a alter of directions of moving particles, from former to future, or from forthcoming to past."^[4]