View source for Astronomy:One-electron universe

{{Short description|Physics postulate describing all electrons/positrons as one time-independent entity}}
The '''one-electron universe''' postulate, proposed by theoretical physicist [[Biography:John Archibald Wheeler|John Wheeler]] in a telephone call to [[Biography:Richard Feynman|Richard Feynman]] in the spring of 1940, is the hypothesis that all [[Physics:Electron|electron]]s and [[Physics:Positron|positron]]s are actually manifestations of a single entity moving backwards and forwards in time. According to Feynman:

{{cquote|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" "Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!"<ref name=Feynman1965>{{cite web|url=
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html | title= Nobel Lecture |date= 11 December 1965 | publisher=Nobel Foundation|author=Richard Feynman}}</ref>}}

A similar "zigzag world line description of pair annihilation" has been independently devised by E. C. G. Stueckelberg at the same time.<ref>Silvan S. Schweber, ''QED and the Men Who Made It'', p. 388, Princeton University Press, 1994 {{isbn|0691033277}}.</ref>

==Overview==
The idea is based on the [[World line|world line]]s traced out across [[Physics:Spacetime|spacetime]] by every electron. Rather than have myriad such lines, Wheeler suggested that they could all be parts of one single line like a huge tangled knot, traced out by the one electron. Any given moment in time is represented by a slice across spacetime, and would meet the knotted line a great many times. Each such meeting point represents a real electron at that moment.

At those points, half the lines will be directed forward in time and half will have looped round and be directed backwards. Wheeler suggested that these backwards sections appeared as the [[Physics:Antiparticle|antiparticle]] to the electron, the positron.

Many more electrons have been observed than positrons, and electrons are thought to comfortably outnumber them. According to Feynman he raised this issue with Wheeler, who speculated that the missing positrons might be hidden within [[Physics:Proton|proton]]s.<ref name=Feynman1965/>

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

{{cquote|I did not take the idea that all the electrons were the same one from [Wheeler] 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. That, I stole!<ref name=Feynman1965/>}}

Feynman later proposed this interpretation of the [[Physics:Positron|positron]] as an electron moving backward in time in his 1949 paper "The Theory of Positrons".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Feynman |first=Richard |title=The Theory of Positrons |journal=Physical Review |issue=6 |date=1949 |doi=10.1103/PhysRev.76.749 |volume=76 |pages=749–759|bibcode = 1949PhRv...76..749F |s2cid=120117564 |url=https://authors.library.caltech.edu/3520/1/FEYpr49b.pdf }}</ref>  [[Biography:Yoichiro Nambu|Yoichiro Nambu]] later applied it to all production and [[Physics:Annihilation|annihilation]] of particle-antiparticle pairs, stating that "the eventual creation and annihilation of pairs that may occur now and then, is no creation nor annihilation, but only a change of directions of moving particles, from past to future, or from future to past."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Nambu |first=Yoichiro |title=The Use of the Proper Time in Quantum Electrodynamics I |journal=Progress of Theoretical Physics |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=82–94 |date=1950|bibcode=1950PThPh...5...82N |doi=10.1143/PTP/5.1.82|doi-access= }}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Astronomy:Eddington number|Eddington number]]
* [[Identical particles]]
* [[Physics:Retrocausality|Retrocausality]]
* [[Physics:T-symmetry|T-symmetry]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==

{{Richard Feynman|state=collapsed}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:One-Electron Universe}}
[[Category:Thought experiments in quantum mechanics]]
[[Category:Quantum electrodynamics]]
[[Category:Physical cosmology]]
[[Category:Richard Feynman]]
[[Category:Electron]]

{{Sourceattribution|One-electron universe}}