TL;DR: Veritasium’s video dives into Paul Dirac’s quest to reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity, showing how the usual Schrödinger equation broke down and led him to formulate the Dirac equation. In wrestling with “negative energy” solutions, Dirac unwittingly predicted the existence of antimatter—specifically the positron, or anti-electron.
It turns out these mirror particles behave as though they travel backward in time, hinting at an entire “anti-world.” Along the way, the video highlights Dirac’s fascinating personality, outlines key equations (Klein-Gordon, Heisenberg’s uncertainty, Dirac’s), and pays tribute to experts Graham Farmelo and Cumrun Vafa who helped illuminate this weird corner of physics.
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