[jakeva]

> The odd but customary way certain physicists understand this movement is that the electron moves because space is filled with electron-positron pairs momentarily popping into and out of existence. One such pair appears so that the positron (the electron’s oppositely charged antiparticle) is on top of the original electron, and they annihilate. This leaves behind the electron from the pair, displaced from the original electron. As there’s no way of distinguishing between the two electrons, all we perceive is a single electron moving.

I've never heard this idea before. I haven't finished the article yet but this is fascinating to me.

[doctoboggan]

Check out this video describing the “one electron universe”

https://youtu.be/9dqtW9MslFk

[yborg]

So every powerline in operation is a high-intensity gamma ray emitter? This explanation seems to be missing something.

[phreeza]

I think the gamma gets absorbed when the next pair appears. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bhabha_S_channel.svg

[minitoar]

Virtual pairs virtually annihilate I suppose.

[akomtu]

So there's an entire virtual world that needs to exist, but only virtually, to support the real world? That looks like the modern Ptolematic system to me.

[Filligree]

They’re mathematical conveniences; they don’t really exist. There are formalisms such as quantum lattice models in which they aren’t needed.

[jd115]

This isn't really saying anything. What does exist then?

[ben_w]

A dozen (17?) complex-valued (some scalar, some vector) fields, where the square of the absolute value of a field gives the chance of seeing a particle in a given state.

I think. I’m still learning, and from MOOCs and YouTube not a university course.

[minitoar]

Yeah, I think this is the basis for Hawking Radiation as well.

[tabtab]

That sounds more like a computer simulation: you don't directly "move" an object, you copy it first and then delete the original.

"God" is the Matrix Server Admin?