One-electron universe

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!"[1]

A similar "zigzag world line description of pair annihilation" was independently devised by E. C. G. Stueckelberg at the same time.[2]

  1. ^ Richard Feynman (11 December 1965). "Nobel Lecture". Nobel Foundation.
  2. ^ Silvan S. Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It, p. 388, Princeton University Press, 1994, ISBN 0691033277.