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The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe

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Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe

#41

Post by coldtea »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #27

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. 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 ha…

>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?

Wouldn't this be explained by the mass attraction of the electron alone in point A, vs the aggregate attraction of the electron creating a larger "cloud" by being at multiple points (to e.g. form a whole sun)?

As long as this "jumping from point to point" is immediate (or much faster than the speed of transmition of gravity attraction due to mass), that would appear as a much higher mass, no?

Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe

#42

Post by kazinator »

nilkn wrote: post #11

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".

That's about as useful as "there is only one complex plane no matter how many regions and functions we work with".

Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe

#43

Post by coldtea »

Byamarro wrote: post #38
webwielder2 wrote: post #7

Are there really electrons? Or does observable phenomena simply fit with the theory of electrons?

Electron is something humans created to describe reality in a way that's comprehensible to us and at the same time we can observe via experiments that it is an accurate descriptions in a way that we can measure. Asking whether electrons are something else that conceptualization doesn't make much sense.

Well, it does makes sense, and there has been research and experiments to see if it is something else (and, compared to early descriptions of an electron, it has been shown to be something else: QM, further subatomic particles and all that).

You can argue that this is because we measured better, but even for some of the things we can't measure, we still opt for specific explanations of how they "really are" over others, even if they describe the same phenomena and have the same measurement accuracy.

If anything what you say is just a particular philosophy of looking into what those models mean, not some definitive truth.

Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe

#45

Post by kazinator »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #27

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. 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 ha…

If you can go forward and backward in time, you can make your mass appear in multiple places. Your 75 kg (or whatever you are) can appear in NY Times Square, simultaneously with an appearance in Champs-Élysées.

Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe

#48

Post by blamestross »

farhanhubble wrote: post #46

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?

Sure, but like most "interpretations" in physics, would that be a useful thing to do?

Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe

#49

Post by xdavidliu »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #47
farhanhubble wrote: post #46

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?

There Is Only One Wavefunction! (of unbounded complexity)

though that wave function is very closely approximately separable into individual particle wavefunctiond

Re: The Theory That There Is Only One Electron in the Universe

#50

Post by bhaney »

farhanhubble wrote: post #46

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?

The wave functions of all everythings can be (and often are) seen as one giant wave function.
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