One-electron universe

There&#x27;s a related idea called the &quot;transactional interpretation&quot; of quantum mechanics: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Transactional_interpretation</a><p>The idea is that every event (eg. a particle collision) sends waves forwards and backwards in time, eg. if * is an event and &lt;&#x2F;&gt; are waves moving backwards&#x2F;forwards in time:<p><pre><code> &lt;- past future -&gt; &lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;*&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; </code></pre> The waves from multiple events can overlap and interfere, eg.<p><pre><code> &lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;&lt;*&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; &lt;&lt;&lt;*&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; </code></pre> The interference depends on the phase of the waves, but let&#x27;s simplify and say that similar arrows are destructive (represented as a space) and opposite arrows are constructive (represented as a dash). In which case, the interference pattern of the example above would be:<p><pre><code> *--------* </code></pre> It <i>looks like</i> there is something which is created at the first event, travels through time to the second event, and is then destroyed. That &quot;thing&quot; is what we&#x27;d call a particle. This idea is called &quot;transactional&quot; because it treats the existence of a particle as not just depending on the event which <i>creates</i> it, but also on the event which eventually <i>destroys</i> it, and the interference of these &quot;waves through time&quot; is like a &#x27;negotiation&#x27; between the two events.

I&#x27;m with Feynman. One electron sounds like nonsense. (Where exactly does the &quot;looping around&quot; happen, where it changes directions? Outside of time?) However, the idea of positrons as electrons moving backward in time is cool, and does seem like a convenient sort of an explanation for their creation and annihilation.

I love the direct quote: &quot;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!&quot;<p>I can absolutely hear it in Feynman&#x27;s rapid, wry, dramatic voice.

One-electron seems very problematic in light of the observed antimatter asymmetry. Why&#x2F;how could the electron travel forwards in time more often than backwards?

Let&#x27;s hope nothing bad happens to that electron, then.

&gt; Any given moment in time is represented by a slice across spacetime<p>Is this actually true when we take into account special relativity? I&#x27;ve always struggled with this.<p>I was taught that this sort of thing is not nearly so simple. For instance, if you fix a point in spacetime and have a timelike vector, representing the motion of an observer, then the set of events which that observer will perceive as simultaneous to the fixed point all lie in the plane orthogonal to that timelike vector. Even more bizarrely, because this is a non-Euclidean notion of orthogonal, this orthogonal complement rotates <i>towards</i> the vector as it deviates from the centerline of the future line cone at that point.<p>Given all this, I don&#x27;t see how one can just say that a slice across spacetime somehow represents a particular moment in time. I thought the whole point of relativity is that there are no absolute time slices in spacetime.

Not being a physicist (not even close), I find it amazing how within just ~100 years, &quot;our&quot; model of the universe has changed so drastically.<p>I once read that sometime in the late 1800s, people assumed that they had basically understood how the universe works, and that all that was left was to fill in some of the blanks.<p>And now look what an increasingly strange (and wonderful!) place we find ourselves in.

I remember I already heard that, but is there a way to proof it? Annihilating electrons with positions obviously isn&#x27;t enough.

&gt;&quot;the eventual creation and annihilation of pairs that may occur now and then is no creation or annihilation, but only a change of direction of moving particles, from past to future, or from future to past.&quot;<p>Forgive my ignorance, but how does the fact that annihilation &quot;produces&quot; energy out of the two particles fit into this?

It&#x27;s really neat that electrons and positrons traveling in time just bounce of photons, that are timeless (because of the speed they have).<p>I wonder what cool observation might make by similarly rotating they intuition 90 degrees so that time becomes axis something can move on.

I also arrived at the same conclusion during meditation

Different sources are saying the same:<p><a href="http://www.youaretrulyloved.com/bashar-explains-how-everything-is-the-one-same-thing/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youaretrulyloved.com&#x2F;bashar-explains-how-everythi...</a>

Every time some limit is reached in a physics equation, dilation, contraction or even moving in time is taken as a measure to rescue. It all sounds like a convenient method for explaining something we can not explain. It all comes from the fact that time is defined through speed and speed depends on space, thus time cannot describe dimensions not dependant of space.

I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, &quot;Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass&quot; &quot;Why?&quot; &quot;Because, they are all the same electron!&quot;