So we know that atoms are made of small subatomic particles. electrons protons, neutrons etc. but have you ever thought why all the electrons in the whole world have the same properties? Why are they exactly identical.
In 1940 john wheeler proposed the same idea and while in a phone-call with Richard Feynman. They were both wondering about all the electrons having the same exact properties like charge, mass etc. He proposed a solution over a phone-call one day. Wheeler said to Feynman.
Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass" "Because they are all the same electron!"
Holy crap!!
He suggested that its the same electron traveling back and forth in time. maybe that's why all the electrons in the universe are indistinguishable.
Imagine the word line of an electron traveling through the time and space for a tiny fraction of the time, as shown in the figure below.
the electron travels from point O to A, its the electron traveling in the space like a normal thingy, and after point C the electron does the weirdest thing of all, It reverses its direction of travel and gets reaches point D.
And here's the key part, notice that there was a point in time where the electron was at two places at the same time. (electron exists at point 1 and 2 at the same point in time timeframe1). This way electron can exist in multiple places(point 1,2,3,4,5,6, and 7 in the diagram) at any given times. and by continuing this way we can see that a single electron can make up the whole universe.
Conclusion.
It was a nice idea, but it didn't have much to contribute to the field. because even if it were true we could never be able to prove it.
one more problem associated with this idea was, that if this theory were true, we should have had equal numbers of Positrons as compared to electrons. But we as we know so far, that this isn't the case. there are so many electrons compared to positrons
Even though this theory wasn't followed, This Idea inspired Feynman to build a representation for antimatter in his path integral formulation. maybe I'll do a post on that sometime. :P
| Citations | Further readings |
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| 1. All images used in the post are used under CC0 license and Sources for images are cited below the images unless they are self-created. | I would also recommend watching this video on youtube (Click here), |
gif Created by @foundation
Quote of the day-
"If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day."
-John Archibald Wheeler