The higher dimensional abstractum of the electron emanates through the multiverse. Electron is.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
796 points (98.7% liked)
Science Memes
10818 readers
2604 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It is an interesting theory, for sure. Instead of countless 3-dimensional particles, you have a single (or very few) 4-dimensional objects. You can imagine it like a sheet of fabric that is our present, with everything above the sheet being the future, everything below the past. When you want to sew a thread (our electron) through the sheet, you need to pierce the fabric, but to do it again, you first need to piece it the other way, giving you a positron. You can create or destroy arbitrary many of these, but you need create or destroy one of each every time. More interestingly, it is exactly determined which two will annihilate each other, as the allegorical loop of thread gets pulled tighter and tighter until it gets pulled though the sheet. The universe would be deterministic.
I'm sure there's a myriad of contradictions to modern QM and particle physics, but it's fun to think about nonetheless
second, slightly different electron shows up
universe implodes or something
Na, we got those too. Muons, tauons and neutrinos. But the universe unfortunately hasn't imploded, meaning I have to go to work and pay taxes and shit.
When is it my turn with the electron?
You can have it as long as you don't observe it.
don't worry guys I'm keeping track of it it's moving very fast but oh fuck sorry guys my bad
For fuck sake Pauli, stop trying to smush it in the palm of your hand!
load more comments
(1 replies)
I see, charge is a class method and not an instance method. Well played universe creator.
load more comments
(1 replies)
We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.
Life is just a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather!
Sorry mate, Tom couldn't make it, so here we have Bill.
Weather update: it's raining rocks from outer space
One reason why that is probably not true is because there are less positrons but if it were true they should number the same as electrons, right?
But if electrons are moving along the same "time direction" as we are and positrons are moving in the opposite "direction" then wouldn't we expect there to be less protons? As we can't measure the protons that already "passed" us? And we would measure more electrons as a some/many/all of the existing electrons are traveling alongside us?
I think you may have put more thought into this than Feynman. But then he probably had someone waiting for him in bed...
I know! Horrible isn't it? I just can't help it, thinking about stuff is actually fun for me... so embarrassing!
It was more a joke about how Feynman had two great loves: physics and fucking. And probably fucking more than physics.
Ah I see ;) I also have two loves, but my gaming pc is too heavy to drag to bed...
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Create the parent entity electron, give it properties, then clone as needed
That's just efficient world design, guys, why make assets different if you don't gotta, yakno?
load more comments
(3 replies)
So if I can destroy 1 electron I destroy every electron?
You would need a positron to do that and all you might have done is reflect it backwards in time.
If you could "remove" it by placing it into another dimension, it might disprove the theory, but the causal domain might be larger then previous assumed.
This is one of those Math Theories that isn't technically a Science Theory. We can make a mathematical model, but it's untestable.
Only in its future. Probably you’d have to find the electron precisely at the end of its timeline.
load more comments
(8 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
Shouldn't be just electrons though - don't all instances of any given type of subatomic particle have the same mass and charge?
Nobody wants to covalent anymore.
Fine, I’ll do it myself
-Thelectron
load more comments
(3 replies)
Don’t most sub-atomic particles have the same charge and mass? Why just electrons?
The whole thing is an abstraction. The nucleus isn't actually tiny ball shaped things mashed together, but rather cloudy stuff which would probably not be identical if we could actually see them. The quarks that make up protons and neutrons are considered elementary particles and identical, but they don't move around much unless energy is used to split them.
The electron however is an elementary particle that moves outside of the nucleus and can move from one atom to another. So the hypothesis is that if we could follow one electron from the big bang to the end of the universe, and this electron could move both forwards and backwards in time, it would potentially be enough with just one.
It probably doesn't hold up very well, but it's an interesting thought experiment.
It's one of those things which would be pretty much impossible to prove, but it holds well with the effects we currently see. Electrons can annihilate by colliding with positrons. But the collision we see could be a single electron changing from moving forwards in time to moving backwards in time. It holds that it's the same particle in the equations by cancelling out the minus sign of the charge with the minus sign in the time. So while we see a collision, the electron would just see itself changing charge and start moving backwards in time instead.
It's a beautiful hypothesis, and fills me with chills to think about the electron "experiencing" all of history an unimmaginable amount of times.
load more comments
(1 replies)
No, electrons are much smaller than protons, which are slightly smaller than neutrons.
I think they meant “aren’t all protons the same as other protons?, neutrons as other neutrons?, etc.”
load more comments
(2 replies)
A big part of quantum mechanics is the fact that matter can show wave-like behaviour, which sort of breaks a bunch of "rules" that we have from classical physics. This only is relevant if we're looking at stuff at a teensy tiny scale.
Someone else has already mentioned that electrons are a fair bit smaller than protons and neutrons (around 1840 times smaller) and this means they tend to have a smaller momentum than protons or neutrons, which means they have a larger wavelength, which was easier to measure experimentally. That's likely why electrons were a part of this theory, because they're small enough that they're sort of a perfect way to study the idea of things that are both particle and wave, but also neither. In 1940, quantum mechanics and particle physics were super rapidly moving fields, where our knowledge hadn't congealed much yet. What was clear was that electrons get up to some absolute nonsense behaviour that broke our understanding of how the world worked.
I like the results of some of the worked examples here: https://www.chemteam.info/Electrons/deBroglie-Equation.html , especially the one where they work out what the wavelength of a baseball would be (because that too, could theoretically act like a wave, it would just have an impossibly small wavelength)
TL;DR: electrons are smaller than protons/neutrons Smaller = larger wavelength Larger wavelength = easier to make experiments to see wave-like behaviour from the particle Therefore electrons were useful in figuring out how the heck a particle can have a wavelength and act like a wave
I detect you therefore you're no longer a wave.
I like the way one of my university textbooks frames the particle wave duality thing: "A single pure wave has a perfectly defined wavelength, and thus an exact energy, but has no position. [...] [Whereas a classical particle] would have a perfectly defined position but no definable wavelength and thus an undefined energy" ^([1]^[2])
I am currently in my bed. I have a lot to do today, but I'm not sure how much I will get done because I don't know how much energy have. Thus I conclude you are right and that I am clearly a particle.
^([1]: Principles and Problems in Physical Chemistry for Biochemists, Price, Dwek, Radcliffe & Wormald, p282)
^([2]: I'm practicing being more diligent with citations, in hope that good habits will make it easier when referencing is actually important)
Makes sense, why should I keep waving when you can see me now.
You'd have to ask John Wheeler, which would be difficult since he died in 2008.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Let him cook
What a boson.
To his credit, Wheeler did try to make a quantum leap. It just wasn't coherent. If he had kept at it, I'm sure he would have had momentum.
This comment gave me spin
view more: next ›