Quote:
UnknownUser wrote
Choobus i was wondering if i was correct in the idea that anti-particles are simply their identical counter particle, however could be thought of as a electron which is reversed in time. I think it was John Wheeler who first proposed the idea that positrons are simply electrons that have a reversed flow in time so they follow a wave like pattern of switching between the future and the past, causing, as they interact with electrons, a completely destructive wave to form, and at the points where the waves intersect you have the destruction/creation of the pair/anti-pair.
I believe that it was Richard Feynman who used this for his model of quantum electrodynamics...
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well, this idea has been floating around, as you say, since Wheeler and Feynman, but it's not really all that useful. When you solve the Dirac equation you get a wavefunction that looks something like
F=Aexp(-Et)
which is a plane wave. The solution for a positron gives you a negative energy so it looks like
F = Aexp(-(-E)t)
so it make time negative you go back to
F = Aexp(-Et)
in other words, a positron moving backwards in time looks just like an electron moving forwards in time.
However, there are all sortfs of problems with causality and as far as I know this interpretation has no predictive or practical uses.