One-electron universe

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The one-electron universe hypothesis, commonly associated with Richard Feynman when he mentioned it in his Nobel lecture, postulates that there exists only a single electron in the universe, propagating through space and time in such a way as to appear in many places simultaneously.

[edit] History

Feynman's thesis advisor, John Wheeler, proposed the hypothesis in a telephone call to Feynman in the Spring of 1940. He excitedly claimed to have developed a neat explanation of the quantum mechanical indistinguishability of electrons.

[edit] Status

The hypothesis immediately confronts two apparent hurdles. The first is the annihilation reaction of an electron and a positron; the second the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe. While the first is neatly overcome by the realisation that this event is the precise moment in which the particle reverses its trajectory in time, the second is irreconcilable with our current understanding that matter strongly outweighs antimatter (although this was not well established at the time).

Apparently, the hypothesis as a whole has been disproved by modern mathematical physics.^{[citation needed]} However, the notion of a positron existing as an electron travelling backwards in time remains valid.^{[citation needed]}. This subsequently postulates that a positron may very well be a form of exotic matter, and could therefore possess a negative mass.

[edit] References

• Jagdish Mehra, The Beat of a Different Drum, The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Oxford, 1994, pages 113-115. Unverified, cited in http://www.eftaylor.com/software/FeynmanDiagrams.pdf.
• S. Schweber, QED and the Men who Made it, Princeton University Press, 1994. Unverified, page number unknown, cited in Ord and Gualtieri, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89 (2002) 250403.
• http://www.vectorsite.net/v2005m08.html (archive)