Can Electrons Go Back In Time?

by | Last updated on January 24, 2024

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Can electrons go back in time? An electron is travelling along from the lower right, interacts with some light energy and

starts travelling backwards in time

. An electron travelling backwards in time is what we call a positron.

Can particles travel backwards in time?


Hypothetical superluminal particles called tachyons have a spacelike trajectory, and thus can appear to move backward in time

, according to an observer in a conventional reference frame.

Can the future cause the past?

This idea that

the future can influence the present

, and that the present can influence the past, is known as retrocausality. It has been around for a while without ever catching on – and for good reason, because we never see effects happen before their causes in everyday life.

Do electrons last forever?


Both the proton and the electron, if left alone, will live forever

because there is nothing lighter in mass for either of them to spontaneously decay into without violating any conservation laws.

Do electrons know the future?

If exact location of an electron is known, can we predict future? No. Read up on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Knowing the exact location actually means we have precisely zero knowledge of its future location

, because position and momentum are complementary variables.

Why can’t we reverse time?

Going back in time is unmixing; it can’t be done. The universe can’t be ‘unmixed’. What this means, ultimately, is that

time only exists because the Big Bang created a universe that started out ordered

. If the universe was disordered from the beginning, there would be nothing left to mix and time would not exist.

Can electrons exist in two places at once?

About 80 years ago, scientists discovered that

it is possible to be in two locations at the same time

— at least for an atom or a subatomic particle, such as an electron. For such tiny objects, the world is governed by a madhouse set of physical laws known as quantum mechanics.

Does the past still exist?

In short, space-time would contain the entire history of reality, with each past, present or future event occupying a clearly determined place in it, from the very beginning and for ever.

The past would therefore still exist, just as the future already exists, but somewhere other than where we are now present.

Will time travel ever be possible?

And, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in his book “Black Holes and Baby Universes” (opens in new tab) (Bantam, 1994), “The best evidence we have that

time travel is not possible, and never will be

, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.”

How many universes are there?

In a new study, Stanford physicists Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin have calculated the number of all possible universes, coming up with an answer of

10^10^16

.

Do atoms have memories?


One bit of digital information can now be successfully stored in an individual atom

, according to a study just published in Nature. Current commercially-available magnetic memory devices require approximately one million atoms to do the same.

Will my atoms exist forever?

Ultimately, even these stable atoms have a limit imposed by the lifetime of proton (>10

25

years). Remember, though, that the best estimate of the present age of the universe is the much smaller number of 10

10

years, so for all practical purposes,

atoms are forever

.

What is the lifespan of electron?

The best measurement yet of the lifetime of the electron suggests that a particle present today will probably still be around in 66,000 yottayears (6.6 × 10

28

yr), which is about five-quintillion times the current age of the universe.

Is there only 1 electron?

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

.

Is the universe an electron?

Is there only one photon?

Now,

there is ONE photon for which this is not true

: that’s the photon with frequency zero. But since the visible universe is not infinite, that photon can’t live in this part of the universe, to begin with. Photons simply make a full rotation from the time-like to the space-like coordinate axis.

Is time an illusion?

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli,

time is an illusion

: our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock.

Can time be stopped?

The simple answer is, “

Yes, it is possible to stop time

. All you need to do is travel at light speed.” The practice is, admittedly, a bit more difficult. Addressing this issue requires a more thorough exposition on Special Relativity, the first of Einstein’s two Relativity Theories.

Can you reverse time in real life?


Yes, you really can turn back time—with a catch

. A new paper suggests that time can actually flow forward and backward. Microscopic systems can naturally evolve toward lower entropy, meaning they could return to a prior state.

Can humans be in superposition?

Everyday experience tells us that big objects—eggs and humans—

do not appear to exist in a superposition of states

like that possible for more quantum objects, such as electrons.

Are humans waves or particles?

In fact, if we can define it, we can quantify just how “wave-like” a particle or set of particles is.

Even an entire human being, under the right conditions, can act like a quantum wave

.

Is teleportation real?

While human teleportation currently exists only in science fiction,

teleportation is possible now in the subatomic world of quantum mechanics

— albeit not in the way typically depicted on TV. In the quantum world, teleportation involves the transportation of information, rather than the transportation of matter.

Is the past an illusion?

Albert Einstein once wrote: People like us who believe in physics know that

the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion

. Time, in other words, he said, is an illusion. Many physicists since have shared this view, that true reality is timeless.

How many dimensions are there?

The world as we know it has three dimensions of space—length, width and depth—and one dimension of time. But there’s the mind-bending possibility that many more dimensions exist out there. According to string theory, one of the leading physics model of the last half century, the universe operates with

10 dimensions

.

How can I time travel?

What is beyond our universe?

The trite answer is that both space and time were created at the big bang about 14 billion years ago, so

there is nothing beyond the universe

. However, much of the universe exists beyond the observable universe, which is maybe about 90 billion light years across.

Is it possible to go to another universe?

If you are an advocate of a multiple big bang multiverse, then that would mean that

leaving our universe to travel to another would be just as impossible as travelling back to the time before the big bang that resulted in our universe even happened.

How can I time travel with my mind?

What is the 11th dimension?

What is next to the universe?

To answer the question of what’s outside the universe, we first need to define exactly what we mean by “universe.” If you take it to mean literally all the things that could possibly exist in all of space and time, then

there can’t be anything outside the universe

.

Do we live in a multiverse?


We currently have no evidence that multiverses exists

, and everything we can see suggests there is just one universe — our own.

Do photons travel backwards in time?

Can Tachyons go back in time?

One of the fundamental postulates of special relativity is that the laws of physics should be the same in all non-accelerating reference frames. That means

if tachyons can violate causality and move backward in time in one reference frame, it can do it in them all

.

Does light travel forever?

Light is an electromagnetic wave that doesn’t need a medium to propagate. The strength of the wave, however, can get weaker with the distance, but

as long as nothing absorbs it, the light keeps on travelling forever

.

Can sound travel backwards?

Summary: Acoustic waves in gases, liquids, and solids usually travel at an almost constant speed of sound. Rotons are an exception: their speed of sound changes significantly with the wavelength,

it is also possible that the waves travel backwards

.

Maria LaPaige
Author
Maria LaPaige
Maria is a parenting expert and mother of three. She has written several books on parenting and child development, and has been featured in various parenting magazines. Maria's practical approach to family life has helped many parents navigate the ups and downs of raising children.