The One-Electron Universe | Space Time
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters use it as the accessible, layman-friendly explainer for the one-electron universe hypothesis, and the Wikipedia article also links to it.
Recommended by 3 people across 4 different months, 2020 to 2026.
What it is
PBS Space Time host Matt O'Dowd explains John Wheeler's 1940 idea, relayed to Richard Feynman, that all electrons are one electron zigzagging back and forth through time, with positrons being its backward-in-time phases. The episode covers the physics behind the idea and how it fed into Feynman's work on antiparticles.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including One-electron universe.
What people said
Strong rec shagie · 2023-04 · Hacker News · on “The electron is so round that it’s ruling out potential new particles”
(I give absolutely no credence to the root of this comment tree...) There was an idea posed a bit ago known as the "one electron universe" ( [LINK] ) > The one-electron universe postulate, proposed by theoretical physicist John Wheeler in a telephone call to Richard Feynman in the spring of 1940, is the hypothesis that all electrons and positrons are actually manifestations of a single entity moving backwards and forwards in time. According to Feynman: > > I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass" "Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!"
Recommends airstrike · 2020-04 · Hacker News · on “Ask HN: What scientific phenomenon do you wish someone would explain better?”
The one-electron universe is always a personal favorite. Though more a far-fetched theory than a proper "scientific phenomena", I'd be eager to learn more about it in layman's terms [LINK] [this video]
Recommends airstrike · 2023-01 · Hacker News · on “The James Webb Space Telescope is finding too many early galaxies”
Speaking of unpopular pet theories from the 1940s, I'm a fan of the [LINK] EDIT: There's also this super fun PBS Space Time episode on the theory: [this video]
Recommends ck2 · 2026-09 · Hacker News · on “One-Electron Universe”
it's important to realize that very few physicists accept that idea right up there with everything that will happen in the universe has already happened and it's just a matter of zooming out on the entire time dimension (some use that idea to explain "spooky action at a distance" quantum entanglement and the quantum eraser) but I love how wikipedia even links the PBS Space Time about it * [this video]