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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

#51

Post by geon »

Kranar wrote: post #34
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…

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.

Also, the electron moving backwards in time would switch the charge and become its antiparticle: a positron.

When an electron and a positron meet, they annihilate each other. That could be considered the same single particle switching direction in time.

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

#52

Post by dingnuts »

bhaney wrote: post #50
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.

sounds like something you'd hear someone say while passing the blunt.. not that it makes it less true, just, you know, it's so bizarre.. and extra bizarre that the guy with the blunt is kind of right

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

#53

Post by gipp »

kazinator wrote: post #42
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".

No it's more like saying it's all just different regions of a single function. Individual electrons are just regions of that function that have particular recurring kinds of structure to them

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

#54

Post by nilkn »

kazinator wrote: post #42
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".

No, it’s a legitimate answer to why all electrons have the same properties. This is the real answer according to our best modern theories of particle physics. It explains why all elementary particles appear to have fixed sets of properties.

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

#55

Post by kevindamm »

geon wrote: post #51
Kranar wrote: post #34

Earlier 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.

Also, the electron moving backwards in time would switch the charge and become its antiparticle: a positron. When an electron and a positron meet, they annihilate each other. That could be considered the same single particle switching direction in time.

Indeed, that's the classic example given for a Feynman diagram and it shows the presence of a positron and its movement along -t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_diagram

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

#57

Post by thejohnconway »

Kranar wrote: post #36
gnulinux wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fascinating, you went from saying this has nothing to do with postmodern philosophy to describing constructive postmodern philosophy. I love it!

I don’t think there’s anything postmodern about it…

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

#58

Post by thejohnconway »

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.

I think it does, they could turn out to be like phlogiston or the luminiferous ether.

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

#59

Post by fermisea »

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…

The thing you should know is that in QFT, the concept of a particle is a bit different. A particle is a localized excitation of a quantum field. A quantum field is like a bucket of water, and a a particle is a bit like a propagating wave that you can create that travels "on the field" but it's "made of the field".

A mass of a particle tells you how hard you need to hit the field to create this elementary excitation. And this is where the analogy breaks, since a classical field doesn't have this "quantization" of energy, you can create arbitrarily small waves. Whereas in a quantum field, there's a minimum energy that you need to put to excite it and make an electron show up, and that is the mass. It also acts a bit like the (inverse) width of the wave - the higher the mass the smaller the width and thus the more spacially localized it is.

Technically the statement that all electrons are the same is the "correct" one, because technically there's only one "state of the electron field" which is described by a bunch of excitations here and there. So the total mass (or more precisely, the energy state that the field occupies) is actually a huge mess that happens to be easily factorizeable into a bunch of localized states. This is only possible because interactions are extremely weak and thus we can just "sum the electrons". But if all of a sudden the electron charge were to become massive, to the point where electrons would start interacting at much bigger distances, the concept of individual electrons would start to become complicated and we'd need to think about them in some other way (like what happens with quarks and gluons)

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

#60

Post by phkahler »

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".

But this explanation has nothing to do with fields. It is the idea that all the electrons are literally the same particle.
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