The One-Electron Universe postulate is true - what simple change can I make to change the whole universe?
The one-electron universe postulate, proposed by John Wheeler in a telephone call to Richard Feynman in the spring of 1940, hypothesises 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!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe
The supposition is that there is only one electron. It stands to reason that if I could change that electron, I could change the properties of the whole Universe.
Assume that the postulate is true.
Question
Given foreseeable science, what properties of a single electron could be changed? In theory, could we change the charge? Could we change the mass?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/142353. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
This universe is fundamentally impossible, since some electrons have their worldlines terminated in a black hole. Without a full working model of quantum gravity, we can't make any firm predictions about what happens to such electrons, other than the singularity is likely to end their existence. The black hole will inherit the charge, mass and angular momentum, but lose all the electron-ness of the particle's information (no hair theorem).
You can also have electrons terminated in beta capture events (which turns a proton into a neutron and the electron stops existing).
So, there won't be anything you can change, because there won't be just one electron. The model is completely incompatible with current understanding of physics.
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