• Because of The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, even in the lowest energy state, you cannot have both energy and time fluctuations vanish

  • Quantum jitters / zero-point energy: constant fluctuation motion even at absolute zero

  • For every point of space: quantum fields to fluctuating (zero energy violates the uncertainty principle)

  • Leading to energy (and gravitational field) in empty space

  • not a classical force, but a property of spacetime

  • Because positive pressure pulls together, a negative pressure (wanting to shrink to reduce energy, from positive vacuum energy that has constant density) causes repulsion & space to expand

  • Positron

  • Electron going back in time

  • Hole in the vacuum

    In an ordinary atom an electron can absorb the energy of nearby photons and be “kicked up” into a more energetic configuration. 4 Dirac now showed his real brilliance. He reasoned that the same thing could happen to the negative-energy electrons that fill the vacuum; photons could kick negative-energy electrons up to positive-energy states. What would be left over would be one electron with positive energy and a missing negative-energy electron—a hole in the Dirac Sea. Being a missing electron, the hole would seem to have the opposite electric charge from the electron and would look just like a particle of positive charge. This, then, was Dirac’s prediction: particles should exist identical to electrons, except with the opposite electric charge. These positrons, which Feynman would later interpret as electrons going backward in time, Dirac pictured as holes in the vacuum.

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