What Does An Electron ACTUALLY Look Like?

[@petersage5157]

I remember an introductory quantum physics lecture from Stanford (I'm pretty sure the series is still up on KZbin): "Electrons don't behave like waves or particles. They behave like electrons." It's a bit of a deepity, but it helps illustrate how unintuitive the quantum world gets.

[@hoebare]

Student: is an electron a wave or a particle? Teacher: no

[@ignotumperignotius630]

Deepity?

[@cloudpoint0]

@@ignotumperignotius630 A deepity is a statement that can be interpreted in two ways: as true but trivial, or as more intriguing but false. Clear?

[@petersage5157]

@@ignotumperignotius630 A deepity is a statement that is seemingly profound, yet trivial and meaningless. Of course electrons behave like electrons; they're not going to behave like moons or politicians or numbers. To further illustrate, they _are_ a bit like children in that sometimes they misbehave.

[@AntiCitizenX]

Except they are absolutely governed by a wave equation, so I’m not sure what your professor was smoking.

[@at0mly]

All electrons look the same to me.

[@QDWhite]

Because there only is 1 electron 😉

[@realzachfluke1]

Elementary particlist. Be ashamed.

[@dexterrity]

​@@QDWhite hmm in that case it must be moving forward and backward through time

[@Atok595]

So racist

[@Beegrene]

@@dexterrity That's the one electron universe: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

[@yeeturmcbeetur8197]

As an electrician, it’s always blown me away at how we as a species have mastered controlling electricity but haven’t scratched the surface of what makes it tick (kind of); the electron.

[@kid_missive]

as a chemist, the electron tells me all its secrets 😝

[@Nagria2112]

we dont have a photo for the wall, but we chemists do most of our work by knowing how the electron "ticks".

[@MakeMeThinkAgain]

It's interesting that chemists have responded to you as it wasn't until around the time of the Great War that chemists had any notion of what was going on in chemistry at the level of electrons. For every chemist before that chemistry was a black box: you could predict how things would work but HOW and WHY was a complete mystery. And this was just over a century ago.

[@logicplague]

In Warhammer 40K, the Imperium knows how to build FTL engines, but have no idea what actually makes them work. Sounds stupid, until you read something like this. Knowing HOW a thing works, is very different from knowing WHY it works.

[@shammyh]

We built ships and learned how to sail, before we knew what caused the wind. Pretty neat human trick.

[@XuryFromCanada]

I saw one yesterday, it was visibly upset we didn't properly assign it positive charge by convention.

[@idris4587]

Conventional current no more!

[@jac.34]

what a negative guy

[@baab4229]

If he didn't hang out with photons that much he wouldn't be VISIBLY upset.

[@DrDeuteron]

it would be better if we called the positron "matter" and the electron "anti-matter", but we didn't know about antimatter when we decided the electron was matter. (no fr fr, this is why grand unified theories conserve B-L and not B+L)

[@magma90]

@@DrDeuteron the weak force interacts with left handed matter and right handed anti-matter, by treating electrons as anti-matter for the purposes of turning B-L into B+L, we would end up with the weak force interacting with left handed quarks, right handed anti-quarks, right handed leptons, and left handed anti-leptons, meaning that you would need to explain why the weak force interacts differently with quarks and leptons. This could be the basis of a theory of everything where the different interactions with the weak force causes quarks to gain colour charge, however it would make a theory not dependent on this, more complicated.

[@theosalmon]

There's a certain trigger that goes off in my head, the moment I perceive, a change in the tonality, of the soothing tone's of Matt's voice, when he inexorably heads toward, that final point, describing to us viewer, something amazing, about spacetime.

[@michaelpapadopoulos6054]

ayyyyy!!! He said the thing!!!

[@palanthis]

I am going to take your comma key away.

[@MrShanester117]

You’re being creepy

[@0ctopities]

lol, is "the O salmon" code for pvssy,.nice!

[@c9brown]

It feels like crossing the event horizon

[@Aphasial]

Always enjoy the ability to explore those 20 orders of magnitude or so sitting between our smallest “particle” concepts and the actual Plank length where it all goes awry. The notion that there’s almost the size of a person as compared to a galaxy between what we think of as the smallest chunks and the actual pixel limit implies there’s just that much more we still need to understand about the Universe.

[@davidtatro7457]

We don't even know if the Planck Length is an actual limit for pixelization. We only know that it's a hard limit for any possible observation, because if we put enough energy into a small enough space to exceed that, it would just create a singularity. So yes, l agree with you!

[@bigdaddynero]

This is what lead me to believe that the universe is fundamentally infinite in all aspects.

[@efdangotu]

I think the singularity is a relic of bad math parameters and use of imaginary numbers. So I don't believe the big bang is a realistic projection of physics, it's just a black hole in the math.

[@kevinlawrence1582]

I can't believe I've been watching this channel for like 8 years. This was like the first channel I subscribed to when I started watching KZbin 2016-17. It's come quite a long way

[@mudhen24]

Have you been watching long enough to know he isn’t the original host of this show?

[@cortster12]

​@@mudhen24 Not sure about him, but I have. He's really grown on me.

[@psychoedge]

​@@mudhen24 I do, barely. I think I found the channel right around the time Matt started hosting it :D

[@Audio_noodle]

I never considered the idea of self annihilation and different scales permitting THAT much different behavior. I'm left wondering how much of this is just theoretical and how much of this is something we have actually measured happening.

[@garethdean6382]

We've been able to measure the change of the electromagnetic force at higher energies (That is shorter distances.) This is part of what led us to electroweak theory, where the force unites with the weak force. So it has a decent grounding.

[@Turnoutburndown]

Fermilab had a good video on virtual particles a few months ago. Might give some more info kzbin.info/www/bejne/l6q0mYGCpseHfM0

[@bigdaddynero]

As far as I am aware, self-annihilation, as well as antiparticles, remain theoretical. Supposedly, particle accelerators have synthesized some antiparticles, but I'm not personally convinced. A lot of this kind of stuff is purely speculative based on mathematical theory and we don't really know if our form of mathematics can accurately portray the nature the universe.

[@cortster12]

​@@bigdaddynero antimatter is 100% confirmed without a shred of doubt. Look into it more.

[@TysonJensen]

We've forgotten the original philosophical conjecture of science -- reductivist materialism. We have no proof that reductivist materialism is true. If it is NOT true, what you would expect is exactly what we see, the harder you try to pin down what the "material" is, the weirder it gets. That's what you'd expect if the material was never really there at all, but only an approximation.

[@DrDeuteron]

Don't forget, the atomic orbitals we draw are defined in a "fake" coordinate system (reduced mass coordinates), irl the nucleus is also in a "fuzzy" orbital.

[@b.clarenc9517]

Aren't the nucleus orbitals way more spatially condensed, given its higher mass?

[@ozzie_goat]

A police officer pulls over Heisenberg and asks him how fast he was going. Heisenberg responds, "I know exactly where I am though." The officer says, "You were going well over 100 miles per hour back there." Heisenberg throws his hands in the air and yells, "GREAT, NOW I'M LOST!"

[@rossracing6433]

The officer asks to search the vehicle and Heisenberg (foolishly) complies. "Did you know you have a dead cat in your trunk?" Asks the officer. "Well now I do!" Replies Schrodinger from the passenger seat

[@ozzie_goat]

@rossracing6433 Correct response. I was waiting for someone to do it

[@kousseilashakur672]

I didnt get it...both of the jokes, yours and the 1st comment (can u explain please

[@andyk2181]

​@ozzie_goat "Actually", interjects Galileo from the backseat, "we were only doing 40mph relative to the other traffic", "besides" adds Einstein, "we were well under the speed limit of 671 million mph"

[@microwave221]

​@@rossracing6433 the cop has seen enough and decides to place them all under arrest. Ohm resists.

[@jvcscasio]

I wish PBS would put some links for further reading

[@ticketforlife2103]

They do show every paper they discuss.

[@DrDeuteron]

wikipedia slash: Vacuum_polarization Ward-Takahashi_identity Fine-structure_constant#Variation_with_energy_scale Classical_electron_radius Self-energy Quantum_electrodynamics Renormalization

[@jonwesick2844]

Sean Carroll's "Quanta and Fields: Biggest Ideas in the Universe" is good. For the professional, try Robert Klauber's "Student Friendly Quantum Field Theory."

[@0ctopities]

@@jonwesick2844 Sean Carroll is a mini god

[@0ctopities]

the Royal Inst is good too, but u probably know tht but other might not,. ( quantum computing wants a link 2 u )

[@blazethefaith]

Can electrons really "look" like anything? It seems like asking how wet a molecule of water is: if you try to answer it, you're actually answering a different question.

[@ugoeze7360]

Electron: _“paint me like one of your French girls”_

[@amihartz]

water molecules are exactly 1 wet

[@finwefingolfin7113]

The only thing we can see is photons. End of story.

[@jordancobb7553]

I wish I had around 47 billion molecules of water I’m thirsty but not too thirsty

[@petevenuti7355]

​@@amihartz damp I would say 2 wet , because two hydrogens for hydrogen bonds. But maybe that only makes sense if it's interacting with something that's two dry. So maybe I'll just call the molecule damp.

[@Dark_Jaguar]

This slightly more wholistic look is very much appreciated! I had no idea that the uncertainty principle had to do with the local environment AROUND the particle in question and was a result of increased density of virtual particles.

[@LinkenCV]

More mindblowing - de Broglie Wavelength ~1/m. Which means more massive particle have less fuzziness. In vacuum rate of creation/annihilation of virtual particles with low mass bigger then more massive particles. And this "ping-pong" for massive particles not so frequent, which leads to smaller distancing from the initial point for same amount of time. And this is de Broglie Wavelength ~1/m

[@beecat4183]

The problem is that we always avoid what the question is ACTUALLY asking. We get so sidetracked with "the act of measuring x..." or "the way we see..." it's avoiding the question. The question is this: What would an atom look like to a magical deity, who does not affect atoms by observing or rely on light to see? What does an atom look like, if time were frozen, ignoring all side questions of how we see and the effects of measuring? What does an atom look like, removed from any other considerations? "

[@jorymil]

Ultimately that's something that we can't really answer. And it's fascinating! So we use the best tools we can to try and translate it into what our brains can perceive. Hence Feynman diagrams, graphs of wavefunctions, electron microscopes, etc. Maybe start by asking: "a bee can perceive ultraviolet light. What does the world look like to a bee?" Or "what does the world look like to a dog?" Another interesting question is: "does green look the same to me as to my mother?" If so, how would I know? As for the magical deity... all we can do as humans is to try and improve our understanding to the best of our ability, keep our sense of wonder, hope we get a little closer to what things might look like, and try not to assume our own ideas are those of the deity. After all, if we can't really imagine what the world looks like to a bee....

[@Raine247]

@@jorymilblah blah bro. We just wanna know what a fckn electron looks like and this video didn't answer the question.

[@Cycyryable]

Your ability to communicate these topics never ceases to amaze me.

[@jajssblue]

Its nice to have a concise video that explains this nuanced idea to share with others.

[@LuisSierra42]

Certainly, this video had a point and was very well defined and not uncertain

[@annaclarafenyo8185]

This is okay, but if you point out the classical electron radius, that the mass of a charge blows up as 1/R classically where R is the radius of fuzzing out, you should also say that quantum mechanically, the electron bouncing around leads the self-energy to blow up only as log(R), much, much weaker. This fundamental result is due to Victor Weisskopf, and was part of the reason renormalization was taken seriously.

[@PhilipMurphy8]

This will go on my quality content playlist

[@tru7hhimself]

i'm really looking forward to those future episodes you've hinted at.

[@Hardy_Oxide]

Yeah... Still hoping for proton decay episode

[@Turnoutburndown]

Yesss thank you for a chunky episode on quantum mechanics!! I know you try to balance the episodes on the very large and the very small, but I love the tiny stuff and hope this is the first episode in a big series!!

[@russelfausnight7748]

I predicted when I read the clickbait-y title that they would not answer that question, and that there was no answer to it at all. I gave them a chance, though.

[@Brotherdot]

Do we know what a photon hits, when it exites an electron to jump to a higher energy-level? Because if the photon and electron are both mindbogglingly small, how would they ever collide? Anyway, thank you for a great episode!😊

[@abody499]

YEAH MAGNETS

[@dennisestenson7820]

The photon doesn't "hit" anything. It interacts with the electron's electromagnetic field.

[@drdca8263]

There is uncertainty in both of their positions. There is a range of places each could be, and like, if you integrate over possible positions the products of the amplitude with which the electron is there with the amplitude with which the photon is there, I think this integral, or something like it, is related to the amplitude of the electron absorbing the photon (though there are also other things to consider, such as the spins of each being compatible, etc.)

[@LinkenCV]

Nobody knows because no one has explained the fine structure constant.

[@garethdean6382]

Something to keep in mind is that the electron CAN be very small, if you try to put it in a box, as it were. In an atomic orbital it covers a larger volume of space. While you can imagine it as flickering about, it's more accurate to say it DOES occupy the full volume and it is this that the photon interacts with. This is not so strange, electrons will bounce off of one another electromagnetically without 'touching'. This is part of what makes the forces of nature necessary.

[@nishgriff1]

I've been watching this channel since the beginning, and with each video I nod at the references to concepts covered before as if I truly understand them, and furrow my brow at new concepts. What's really amazing to me is that people devote their careers to understanding small pockets of physics and they truly can make sense of things like the electron.

[@WhitefirePL]

I really like the animations explaining H. uncertainty and that positron screening issue. They are very simple graphically, but spot-on and super helpful for understanding.

[@maskon1724]

“As we localize it in space time” might be my favorite ending yet after a video as complex and fascinating as this. Thank you PBS Spacetime for all that you give us.

[@stevenm8503]

9:40 just gave me a new understanding of Feinman diagrams.

[@gregr5077]

I love episodes like this, especially since it's a preview of a whole series that sounds really interesting. One thing that I am curious about - how would such a system be described without using virtual particles in this way? I don't know for sure, but my impression is that virtual particles are being invoked here in somewhat the same way they are in the common explanation of hawking radiation - that is, in a way that can help laypeople understand, but ultimately falls apart under closer scrutiny.

[@ChillyJackFrost]

I always get the impression that we're dealing with more and more clever contrivances. I think may be the best we can do. Every thing stands in relation to everything else. But we dissect the world into things and their mutual associations. The "reality" behind the symbols is weird af.

[@DrDeuteron]

no, he's describing well known Feynman diagrams. The only difference is that I think the experts don't try to imagine it as animatable time-ordered process, e.g. the one where the virtual positron annihilates a real electron is drawn as a single straight line electron from left to right, where, going from left to right, a photon is emitted up, and photon is emitted down, the up photon is reabsorbed, the down photon is reabsorbed. That's equivalent to the drawing at 9:50 when you apply "the Feynman rules" (the the things that turn a diagram into a math expression).

[@garethdean6382]

You'd use the math of waves, perturbation and interference, building the electron up from a series of 'pure' waves. This is somewhat what the virtual particle approach allows us to do; the electron is a complex waveform in space that can be split into a 'nucleus' and a set of virtual particles surrounding it, which all interfere to give us a smeared out, messy, complex entity.

[@JustSuperLightning]

It looks like something I've never seen before!

[@JustSuperLightning]

"no matter how far we zoom out." And apparently I still won't see it... 😁

[@einfisch3891]

as a chemical engineer, I am frequently thinking about and using the properties of electrons every day to do chemistry. And in general, the properties of these little things are pretty well understood, and we've gotten really good at making them do what we want. And yet, when you start to ask the question "what actually IS it?", all the sudden, the answers we have start to get more and more uncertain and fewer in quantity. Its crazy, the way the universe is just endless layers of complexity in both directions of scale.

[@dubplatenate]

Your animations about electrons looked like gravity interacting with particles going from our reality to an infinite amount of realities and back and away.

[@TheGodParticle333]

Very good stuff

[@PerpetualScience]

You should've talked about the black hole electron, a Kerr-Newman black hole with the mass, charge, and angular momentum of the electron and how it's super-extremal and has Closed Timelike Curves(CTCs). Those are always fun.

[@kokiriforistima]

as far as I can tell, the only guy who works on that now is some old Russian physicist guy. I feel like it would be fun to play with that model some more, even if we know that it's wrong. I'm not a physicist though

[@samueldrapeau9106]

Love the diminished chords in the background music

[@darioinfini]

Every time I think about the quantum world it always comes to mind if you were going to create a reality of the hard and fixed, earth, water, flowers, rocks -- would you start with a cloud of uncertainty? It seems pretty bizarre to think the chair you're currently sitting on is at core a concept of uncertainty.

[@jorymil]

It's mind-boggling! We can measure it, so we know it works, but at its core, it's amazing that nature works this way. The fields of solid state physics, chemical physics, materials science, etc. try to bridge the gap between the quantum and the tangible. It's super-cool stuff!

[@robertcoplin2830]

One reason I like your show is that I've had neither a Physics class, nor the higher math you toss around. I have a window into another world. I have had a bit of Chemistry and so I watched this and was stricken with the thought that the fabric of our world must be tenuous indeed.

[@Jhawk_2k]

Keep zooming in on the ocean until you see water An informed understanding of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics makes this the most intuitive explanation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle I'm aware of

[@dr.merlot1532]

Sometimes when I have low blood pressure, I can see dozens of electrons.

[@Axios-Lux]

I feel like im still missing a piece of the "why" behind the increase in activity due to the act of trying to more precisely measure. I thought I understood this with the idea that to get a perfectly localized image, we have to give up measuring momentum (like taking a photo turns anything into a still image and you have no idea how fast the thing is going). Essentially going too 100 on the sale if one, forces the other scale to be 0... but this video here makes it seem (to me) there is some mechanism that prevents us bringing a scale to 100 on anything, simply because we're trying.

[@theWinterWalker]

The outro music triggers a deep, mystical, nostalgic, deja vous, uncanny energy in me that I cannot explain

[@ExtraTrstl]

This was a freaking banger! Thanks Matt & Co.! I can’t wait for the next in the series!

[@alienbroccoli8296]

Cannot wait for the follow up video!

[@iambiggus]

An electron and positron walk into a bar.. Positron: "You're round" Electron: "Are you sure?" Position: "I'm positive."

[@andyk2181]

It doesn't matter what the positron thinks

[@b.clarenc9517]

Hi positive, I'm round.

[@Zeegoku1007]

I have a question, if we don't know how it actually looks like...how exactly do we know that we are firing just 'one' electron during a double slit or some other experiment involving an electron gun ?

[@sparking023]

probably by measuring the charge, though I'm sure that measurement will also be prone to some uncertainty if you look close enough

[@jaredbutler957]

It depends on the device. Most electron guns produce many electrons that are sent to a detector via EM fields that is only sensitive to a single electron at a time. Another technique like single electron transistors use the architecture of the transistor and very precisely calibrated voltage pulses that physically can only generate a single electron at a time. None of this really requires any knowledge of what an electron “looks like”, just an understanding of its behavior.

[@Raine247]

I don't think they do know. They just guess

[@herrfriskytten7994]

Friday, beer and space time, a good combo :)

[@SmogandBlack]

Very good: I'm happy that you decided to tackle such a challenging subject...

[@osmosisjones4912]

If subatomic particals could take any shape how deep can information get incoded

[@sergey_a]

It seemed to me that I had already watched the video, but it turned out that I had several videos mixed up in my memory: what the spin looks like, a photo of an atom, and a few more.

[@aalhard]

The single electron theory has been a favorite 😂

[@vagueratcooltrain4266]

I love that I can rely on you to not show me JUNK. When you do show popular JUNK, you shot it full of holes and move on. That makes me feel GOOD all over!

[@CrackHead330]

Friedwradt Winterberg, Takaaki Matsumoto, Vladimirovic Dubovik, Kenneth Ratford Shoulders, etc. etc.

[@DaveyL2013]

Ah so the next video will be on the unrenormalizability of the graviton! :)

[@PedroHenriquePS00000]

I still dobt understand what in the act of looking collapses quantic physics... what exactly is the minimum state of "looking"

[@knightning3521]

this was incredible

[@fluffy_tail4365]

I really liked this one, I like how it also gives you a feeling for QFT as well

[@danberm1755]

Very much looking forward to this series on the electron 👍

[@PersimmonHurmo]

it feels like half of this episode was left on the other side of electron's point dimension

[@windfoil1000]

That was a god talk. The knitting together of scales is interesting.

[@TARUNSHARMA-jn7nu]

Its the most detailed explanation for Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle ive ever heard

[@benoitpelletier5287]

While it's still complex to understand, I think it's one of the best "what is an electron" explained deeply enough but in a simple way.

[@ThomasJr]

The problem with the question "What Does An Electron ACTUALLY Look Like?" starts with the fact that the way we see things is not absolute. It depends on a myriad of things, part of which is light bouncing off of things and then hitting our eyes, where it's decoded by our brains to produce an image, a useful but not absolute image. It's like a similar code as language, which is also a code and relative. What would be a different way to see the electron that was less relative and more absolute?

[@RALLIR]

This is eye opening to me thank you i need time to mull this over more

[@UODZU-P]

been waiting on Space Time to report on this

[@exharkhun5605]

Kids these days don't know how good they have it. In my time we had only 1 electron and everyone had to wait for their turn to have a go with it.

[@DarkskiesSiren]

Finally getting to the good stuff

[@judgeyzip53]

Wow, maybe I should have watched more of your vids, but now I understand the quantum field effect on particles better! while I understood virtual pair annihilation it never occurred to me to link the „real particle“ with the virtual pair. A real light bulb moment! Cheers Matt

[@TheSteakStyles]

nothing derails me from work faster than these kind of videos. Yes, I ABSOLUTELY needed to know what an electron looks like. Sorry, Boss

[@RydarkVoyager]

How can you tell? Every time you try to shine a light on it, it moves off. They're very shy. And when they gather in numbers, they electrocute you.

[@TheYeIIowDucK]

this is a great episode

[@feynstein1004]

So, you have a particle for me? No, sir, I don't

[@ObjectsInMotion]

Probing the infinitesimal is TIGHT!

[@feynstein1004]

@@ObjectsInMotion Yeah yeah yeah

[@NVM_SMH]

I always like it when I'm told that anything I thought I knew about quantum is actually wrong.

[@leomuzzitube]

What an incredible video!!

[@JustSuperLightning]

One electron universe, my planet! Even a single electron doesn't remain itself.

[@vandorb12]

Its still a fin thought experiment !

[@drdca8263]

Sure, but in a sense the way that it “doesn’t remain itself” is kind of what the “one electron universe” idea is about? And, while I don’t think the one-electron-universe idea is really *true*, because, for one thing, there are other processes which emit and absorb electrons, like beta decay, I think there is still something to the idea, in how the annihilation with positrons and the production with a positron pair, and this whole thing with the virtual pairs, kinda makes it so “different” electrons in a sense sorta don’t really have distinct identities.

[@MCsCreations]

Fascinating!

[@StarkRG]

Me, before watching the video: Quanta are best assumed to be conceptual bags of different kinds of numbers that interact with the numbers in other bags (and sometimes other numbers within the same bag). Me, after watching the video: There's a lot of handwavy stuff going on and it's probably best to just assume quanta are conceptual bags of different kinds of numbers that interact with numbers in other bags.

[@brothermine2292]

If the Locality axiom doesn't hold, we shouldn't expect the "stuff" comprising an electron to be highly localized. And our confidence in the Locality axiom should be undermined by the Bell tests, which verified that nature violates Bell's Inequality (as predicted by quantum mechanics).

[@drdca8263]

By the locality axiom, are you referring to the axiom from AQFT (.. or QFT in general I guess?) that even-graded operators with supports that are space-like separated, commute (and if not requiring even grading, then super-commute) ? If not, what do you mean? My understanding is that even in the vacuum state, operators with spacelike separated supports needn’t be uncorrelated. Perhaps this could be enough for whatever it is you have in mind, despite being consistent with the aforementioned axiom of AQFT?

[@amihartz]

Bell tests only show that locality is violated _if you introduce hidden variables._ But quantum mechanics *_is not a hidden variable theory,_* so Bell's theorem simply does not demonstrate any nonlocality as part of quantum mechanics at all. Locality is only important because it is a necessary component of special relativity, which is experimentally verified repeatedly to very high precision, and is a necessary component to quantum field theory.

[@brothermine2292]

>drdca8263 : I'm referring to the more general axiom "nothing is influenced by anything outside its past lightcone."

[@drdca8263]

@@brothermine2292 so, by “influenced” you mean… the possibility of sending signals (which, if the influence is from outside the past light cone, would be an FTL signal)? or what? Because IMO the bell tests don’t seem to suggest the possibility of FTL signaling.

[@brothermine2292]

>amihartz : Although quantum mechanics doesn't contain hidden variables, it may be an incomplete theory that describes our incomplete information... there may be hidden variables, and Locality may be violated. Our understanding of space & time is only rudimentary. Einstein himself showed in the 1935 ER paper about wormholes that General Relativity can allow Locality to be violated.

[@jacquacooper]

I was just asking this question today! Oh my gosh! Is it cotton candy looking? I haven’t even watched it yet cuz of ads but I’m hype! #PBS #SpaceTime #SpaceTime

[@titusjames4912]

Two questions: 1) Is there more than one electron? 2) How many electrons are in an electron?

[@JackDespero]

There are a few things that hurt my brain when I learnt about them. Because they seem so obvious, so natural, so intrinsic to my understanding of the world that I never stopped to think "Wait, so how do we know this?" - One was the fact that we actually don't know whether the speed of light is isotropic or not. "We know that because of the experiment of Michelson and Morley that ruled out the aether!" In reality, all experiments that we have done to check precisely the speed of light are either light going back and forth, or light going in one direction and assuming the speed. What we experimentally know, in summary is 2c, from which we derive c. But we have never ruled out that it might not be c+c , but 0.5+1.5c, for example. I can imagine an experiment in which with very precise atomic clocks we can device a measurement that would peak only if the speed of light is c, so you would launch simultaneous photons to two of these clocks in let's say 90 degree angles, and you will check if the assumption that both had exactly c on their one way, thus triggering the measurement peak, is correct. The only problem is that the correlation between space and time is precisely c, so if c is anisotropic, that anisotropy is already "baked in" our current understanding of physics and thus on this experiment. For the curious, this is called the "One-way speed of light" problem. - The second was learning that we say that the electron is "point like" because we have pushed the theoretical problem under the rug, so to say. When calculating a theoretical finite size for the electron, or any other lepton, we get very uncomfortable infinite. Since we cannot determine the mass of the electron theoretically, we used the renormalization that the mass of the electron is whatever we measure experimentally, applied to a point particle. I thought that would have been a problem very early in physics (forgetting that the electron is, in fact, not that old) and I was surprised to learn that people like Dirac and physicist not that long ago were very interested in the topic. In fact, we have never measured independently the charge and the mass of the electron experimentally, only their ratio. Sometimes I forget that this "natural" paradigm of physics would either break or amaze the mind of some of the greatest scientists in History, who happened to pass away before 1900.

[@tobiasreiig5954]

If light had the speed of 0,5c in one direction it would have to be infinite in the opposite direction to be equivavalent to the c1=c2 model. Not 1,5c. Correct me if im wrong.

[@JackDespero]

​@@tobiasreiig5954You are right that I am wrong: I wanted to express it in terms of time, and then at some point I changed to speeds and i forgot to change it. What I meant is that you know the time t that takes the photon to go and back, t. We usually assume that it is divided as t = t1+t2 with t1=t2. If it took 1 second, we usually assume that it is 0.5 + 0.5, but the same result (the measurement of the time) can be achieved if the split were 0.3+0.7. EDIT: Now I know why you mentioned the infinity. Yes, I chose the worst possible example without realizing. I could have said something like 0.7 and 1.75, but no, I had to choose precisely 0.5 and 1.5. Good catch.

[@PaulMillard1973]

It's really bizarre. It's almost like, trying to probe the Electron ever closer, brings you to the event horizon of a black hole, the size of a quantum field electron. Uncertainty becomes the impossible barrier you can never pass.

[@garyshearer0]

fun fact: renormalization and regularization rely on ramanujan summation which Feynman suspect's "that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate."

[@garyshearer0]

Nothing is set in stone. if you have an idea go for it.

[@umblapag]

Looking forward to more particle videos!

[@rgarbacz]

Let's not forget Feynman's (I think) statement that there's only one electron in the Universe - traveling forward and backward in time.

[@garethdean6382]

The backwards traveling being hidden inside protons, of course.

[@rgarbacz]

@@garethdean6382 I think it was positrons - antiparticles traveling backward in time, BTW if it was true it would have interesting consequences to the age and size of the Universe, not to mention time boundaries.

[@leonhardtkristensen4093]

This is exactly where I think we should study a lot more. I think we should look at the basic building blocks of every thing and I believe Energy is the most fundamental. I believe we should look a lot more at EME like light and study it a lot more as I believe that to be the most fundamental form of energy.

[@null_s3t]

you mean THE electron 😁

[@eduardomartin9970]

As a biochemists that leans to physics I was expecting this video for so long.

[@mauleypeach]

Thanks Matt and a quick, good choice for the meta.

[@chadbailey3623]

I imagine the problem gets even bigger if the electron has a velocity affecting significantly a Lorentz transformation.

[@criznittle968]

"be quiet the devs will notice" if it's a simulation, this extends to quieting your mind as well

[@atheistaetherist2747]

All is photons. (Newton)(Jeans)(Williamson). Photons that have formed loops are particles. (Williamson) Photons that orbit a nucleus are one kind of electron. (Williamson)

[@arnorrian1]

Electrons are the friends we made along the way

[@djayjp]

Could you please do a video discussing Jacob Barandes' work? Thank you! 🙏

[@michaelmayhem350]

Electrons look like anion but reversed

[@GeoReset-PL]

Exactly the same happens to the center of a black hole. Generated virtual particles smears out location of the center, so below certain radius there is no possible to tell where the center is located. For example for black hole of 5 masses of the Sun the minimum radius would be about 1.8*10^-60 m. So it is definitely not a singularity.

[@claytonhollowell4488]

To explore that we'll need an instrument called "renormalization" AKA: we're gonna break mathematics and leave the mere mortal mathematicians screaming and running from the room in a panic (the immortal ones accept infinity breaks all rules, and fixes them all, at the same time: they're all crazy).

[@benjaminshort4169]

Therapist: "Legless Matt isnt real, he cant hurt you." Legless Matt: 5:30

[@garethdean6382]

But he can't hurt you, what's he gonna do, chase you down?

[@vaakdemandante8772]

every particle, including electron, is a standing wave of space-time/aether. The mode's of vibration determine its actual parameters like charge, spin etc.

[@charliethompson7942]

If there was a Nobel prize for teaching Dr O'Dowd would already be a Nobel laureate.

[@tomlyle4991]

OK. After learning so much (or not) about the "appearance" of an electron, in my mind I'm going to have to resort to picture an atom as I did as a kid, as a mini solar system - the nucleus in the center (the Sun), and its parts (electrons, etc.) revolving around it (the planets). As a child I grew up with The Jetsons, the Apollo space program, et al, so this it's something I can wrap my head around, regardless of its simplification (and untruths) - as compared to quantum entanglement, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and all that...not to mention wrapping my head how we will need to have flying cars somehow magnetically repel each other so they don't crash into one another, and that's why they don't have this problem in The Jetsons' universe. Thank you Space Time! I'm addicted to this KZbin channel, and enjoy it very, very much! Wonderful!

[@moisesbessalle]

you just explained how energy levels occupied by electrons seemingly "jump" from one level to another without travelling...always wondered how that happened

[@bgtyhnmju7]

Great episode - digging a bit deeper, describing things more as they are. Also, first time I've seem the standard model with the three ( possible ) kinds of bosons - very cool. Thanks for the great videos. Peace !