• ryannathans@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    Why would inverting charge make particles go backwards in time? Electrons have opposite charge to protons and they don’t seem to. Positrons have the opposite charge to electrons and as far as I know they don’t go backwards?

    I think you’re misinterpreting cpt reversal symmetry, which is if you mirrored the universe in terms of charge, time and parity it would essentially evolve the same

    • i_love_FFT@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      It’s been many years since I was invited with particle physics, so it’s a bit muddled in my memory… i could be wrong on the details here. It could be the CP symmetry instead of the CPT symmetry.

      It’s not that positrons go back in time, but more like “if an electron went backwards in time, it would look exactly like a position”. The Feynman diagram of an electron and position annihilaton is the same as that of an electron bouncing on photons, expect the angle is rotated such that the electron bounces backwards in time.

      https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feynman_EP_Annihilation.svg#mw-jump-to-license

    • Blóðbók@slrpnk.net
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      1 year ago

      I believe a crucial detail here is mirroring a particle vs the whole universe. Mirroring the whole universe you get the same dynamics described by our laws due to CPT symmetry. If you mirror a particle alone, I think you get an anti-particle.