A succinct explanation of this theory and some of its consequences can be found here: <a href="https://ia600903.us.archive.org/24/items/dr_watchstop_adventures_in_time_and_space/dr_watchstop_adventures_in_time_and_space.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://ia600903.us.archive.org/24/items/dr_watchstop_advent...</a><p>Switch the PDF display to single-page and find page 33.
Obviously, Wheeler was much more knowledgeable about physics than the likes of me, so my obvious objection must have occurred to him, but here it is.<p>Electrons have mass, so the total mass of a multiple electrons must be more than the mass of a single electron. Or is there some other mind-bender that would explain why "the" single electron appears to have a trillion times it real mass when that electron's timeline happens to be considered at a particular slice of space and time?<p>Also, why wouldn't this logic also apply to every other primitive particle: there is only one muon, one tau, one up quark, one down quark, etc?
The conventional answer is that all electrons are the same because they are all local excited states of a single quantized field (the electron field). So we just have to shift perspective from "there's only one electron" to "there's only one electron field".
PBS Space Time has the same info but more fun than Wikipedia ;-)<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dqtW9MslFk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dqtW9MslFk</a>
Wikipedia has the same info but better<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe</a>
Its more a reinterpretation than a different theory because all computations are still the same. There are no alternative predictions for any measurable quantities.
If there were really only one electron, somebody in the universe would have broken it by now. Or maybe there is a great filter prohibiting any intelligence capable of poking too hard.
Since the wave function of an electron is unbounded in space, can't the wave functions of all electrons in the universe be seen as one giant wave function?
We don't need a cockamamie time travel theory like this to explain why electrons all share certain properties like mass.<p>The entities of which there is only one instance are the fundamental constants. There is only one speed of light in vacuum, one Planck's constant and so on.<p>The properties of the electron arise due to some behavior of the underlying electric field, governed by equations, which contain fundamental constants.<p>The equations and constants explain why identical phenomena occur in locations separated by time and space.<p>The existence and pervasiveness of the constants is a mystery, to be sure. But constants are not particles; we don't need to postulate that they travel forwards and backwards through time. They exist across time and space, to be sure.
Another fun electron hypothesis, also unlikely:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_electron" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_electron</a>
Whenever I read
"It's estimated that there are around X ys in the observable universe."<p>How in the hell could you figure that out, when there are a lot of things
in physics and astronomy that we do not yet know how works, nor how they
are composed.<p>It is the ultimate "estimate how long it will take to implement this computer system based on this napkin drawing I made in 3 minutes ago".
The only problem with the argument against it based on baryonic asymmetry is that if you cut a knot in half and look at one half of it, there's an entire other half you aren't seeing.<p>With this in mind, this idea is particularly fun if paired with something like Neil Turok's CPT symmetric universe (i.e. the other side of the knot).
Maybe our known universe truly is a single electron behaving similar to scan lines on a TV at Planck scale in a higher dimension. Planck is the hz rate in this parable.
So, let's get this straight.<p>All the power utilities of the world share one single electron.<p>And they rent it out to billions of subscribers, concurrently, multiply booking that electron and charging everyone.<p>What a racket!
<a href="https://youtu.be/pq-L3VCSnwU?si=tJYaISHHqOJ2O-bz" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/pq-L3VCSnwU?si=tJYaISHHqOJ2O-bz</a><p>This is a fun discussion which touches on how deep the matter rabbit hole goes.