Earlier quoted context omitted.
All particles are like that.
Then why article is about electron only?
What's true about all particles is also true about electron. There's also the myth that not all particles are equal.
The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
81–90 of 93 posts
Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time travel is required for this thought experiment. The single electron moves forwards and backwards in time so that at any slice of time it can appear at multiple locations simultaneously. Just like a time traveller can go back in time and there would be two of them, this electron travels back and forth in time so that there are numerous instances of it.
This all begs the question, what happens to the electrons going into a black hole?
They are absorbed by neutronium.
Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then why article is about electron only?
What's true about all particles is also true about electron. There's also the myth that not all particles are equal.
Maybe I don't follow the consequence of your statement, but isn't the photon quite different from an electron? It has no mass & has no anti particle that we can identify. It's also an elementary particle that doesn't get combined like quarks to make the proton
Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#84We don't need a cockamamie time travel theory like this to explain why electrons all share certain properties like mass.
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.
The properties of the electron arise due to some behavior of the underlying electric field, governed by equations, which contain fundamental constants.
The equations and constants explain why identical phenomena occur in locations separated by time and space.
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.
Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#85A succinct explanation of this theory and some of its consequences can be found here: https://ia600903.us.archive.org/24/items/dr_watchstop_advent... Switch the PDF display to single-page and find page 33.
(which is page 35 of the PDF)
they are all the same pages, just at different points in time
Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#86So, let's get this straight.
All the power utilities of the world share one single electron.
And they rent it out to billions of subscribers, concurrently, multiply booking that electron and charging everyone.
What a racket!
Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#87Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you understood the question. It was about the status of theories, not the status of reality.
It was about the status of theories, not the status of reality. What is the difference?
Theories are attempted descriptions of reality for various purposes (usually prediction.) Don't confuse the map for the territory. Theories, like maps, are created by humans, reality, like territory, is apparently not.
Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#89Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can explain the difference, maybe you can help me make sense of postmodern philosophy.
This has nothing to do with postmodern philosophy. There is a difference between the reality, and a human's conceptualization of that reality. In fact, we can abstract further and say that there is a difference between X and the concept of X. Now, the GP comment is saying that the model of X (which is how a human being conceptualizes X) is different than X. So, when you look at nature as it is, there are no electrons…
I can't help but point out the humor of one being hundreds of years old while the other thousands.
(But yeah, Mediterranean/Europe wasn't at its best in-between...)
Also, postmodern science concepts of relativity and various quantum weirdness not having had an impact on postmodern philosophy (with the incompleteness theorem straddling both) is quite a bold claim.