The One-Electron Universe | Space Time

Could it be that all the electrons in the universe are simply one, single electron moving back and forth through time?

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In the spring of 1940, the great physicist John Archibald Wheeler had a flash of insight. He picked up the phone and called Richard Feynman. The fateful conversation began, “Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass." "Why?" asked Wheeler’s former graduate student. "Because, they are all the same electron!" Wheeler went on to describe the One-Electron Universe idea: that there exists only one electron, and that electron traverses time in both directions. It bounces in time, eventually traversing the entire past and future history of the universe in both directions, and interacting with itself countless times on each pass. In this way it fills the universe with the appearance of countless electrons. And when the electron is moving backwards in time it is a positron; the antimatter counterpart of the electron.

Written and Hosted by Matt O’Dowd
Produced by Rusty Ward
Graphics by Kurt Ross
Assistant Editing and Sound Design by Mike Petrow

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[AliasUndercover]

I love this theory. I wish I could convince the electric company of it. One electron a month can't be expensive.

[jaykay]

mom said it's my turn with the electron

[glarynth]

It's like how there's only one Olsen Twin, moving back and forth very fast.

[adamzaidi]

It always cracks me up when he says, actually it's a little more complicated than that. You don't say?

[_orko]

Youtube has apparently mistaken me for a smart man.

[joshmyer]

Spoiler: it's actually a single positron, and we're the ones going backwards in time.

[adsdandy]

“Actually it’s slightly more complicated”. That’s okay I’m only slightly lost.

[rabarberellum]

The one electron universe is like Bugs Bunny in the classic baseball cartoon in which he plays all positions

[_a.z]

I'm going to tell my electricity supplier I've only used one electron!

[kermanguy]

The universe is really just you and one guy running around really fast with a flash light.

[elijahkant]

I could have sworn til my head fell off that this was my crazy idea but it turns out these guys came up with it 100 yrs back and it was probably just something I'd heard and regurgitated out of my subconscious. I've gone very quickly from feeling really clever to just very insecure about every creative idea I will ever have.

[asherrfacee]

What if there was simply a single electron field, and what we think of as electrons are simply the points of interaction between matter and the electron field.

[Taalanos]

Opening sound and didn't realise my speakers were turned up so high.

Matt starts to I must have turned it down too much.

Another WHY IS IT SO LOUD!?

Matt talks UP HOLY SHIT!

[fredvand.]

"Every time you do math, you use the same 3 as Archimedes"
- Henry from MinutePhysics

[iamkocka]

"Now that we completely understand the fundamental nature of antimatter..."


Excuse me?

[thedoublek]

That phonecall between Wheeler and Feynman must have been some sort of a *_hits blunt_*-moment.

[rupakrokade]

A close analogy would be CRT screens. An electron gun creating a pixel on the screen can be thought of as the "one" electron. Then sweeping it across the screen at very high speed creates an image. It looks like we have so many pixels but in reality it is just one pixel present at so many points at the same time (given persistence of vision of-course). This one electron universe makes some sense to me.

[kevinbrown]

"It surrounds us, and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together" - Obi-Wan Kenobi

[AwesometownUSA]

I like to imagine the electron getting to the end of time, panting as it tries to catch its breath for a few seconds, then chugs a Gatorade super fast before turning around and bolting off the way it came :)

[Mr.Nichan]

The main problem I've always seen with this is the fact that a positron and electron can be created and then annihilate with each other. That would be a separate electron in a time-loop according to this idea, although it would be interesting if it turned out that the math would be the same if we allowed those particles to have any mass, charge, etc.