Structurally they are the mirror image of electrons, and the Feynman-Wheeler theory posits that if you were able to force time's arrow to march backwards for an electron, it would look like a positron. Positrons can be found in natural phenomena like cosmic rays, or created in a particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider. Collectively these antiparticles are known as antimatter. Specifically, Neil refers to Feynman and Wheeler's idea that positrons could be electrons that are moving backwards in time.Įlectrons are particles that hold a negative charge, and positrons are antiparticles that have the same mass as electrons, with an equal-but-opposite positive charge. There are other types of antiparticles that mirror other types of particles, like antineutrons and antiprotons. They're actually name-dropped in the movie when Neil is musing about the meaning of inversion and what the turnstiles do, though it's a throwaway line that's easy to miss. Tenet's central idea of people and objects having their time inverted is based on a theory by physicists Richard Feynman and John Wheeler. So that's how you get around this paradox that, technically speaking, all of these things you're not used to seeing could happen. " It is in effect a zero probability that that's going to happen," says Harland-Lang. The probability weighs so heavily in favor of remaining smashed and against reforming that you will never see a broken egg reform. For the same reason you'll never see a bullet pull itself out of a wall and return cleanly back into a gun, or see a car perfectly repair itself after a collision. But for every molecule in the egg and its surrounding environment there are very few ways for the egg to reform, and billions upon billions upon billions of ways for it to remain shattered. So long as time is moving forward the egg can shatter (becoming more disordered), but it will never reform as a whole egg (becoming less disordered). The flow of entropy is the only thing preventing this from happening, since all the other relevant laws of physics are symmetrical: anything that can happen forwards can also happen backwards. " You don't see eggs reforming on the ground and jumping back up, but taken to a logical conclusion, physically speaking that would be allowed by the laws of physics," Harland-Lang explains.īecause of this symmetry there is actually a non-zero possibility that the egg could repair itself. For this to happen would require that the movement of all of the air and ground molecules - through which the sound and heat energy of the egg were carried when it originally cracked on the ground - occur in the reverse direction.
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