Something Weird Happens When E=−mc²

Veritasium dives into Paul Dirac’s revolutionary journey from the failures of Schrödinger’s equation to the birth of the Dirac equation—unveiling the concept of negative energy solutions and the spooky implication of an “anti-universe.” Along the way, we meet the brilliant yet eccentric Dirac, trace the discovery of the positron (the anti-electron), and explore the mind-bending idea that antiparticles might just be regular particles moving backward in time.

Packed with expert insights from Graham Farmelo and Cumrun Vafa, archival treasures from FSU and Caltech, and a healthy dose of quantum weirdness, this video stitches together history, theory, and the human side of physics’ saddest chapter—to show how one equation reshaped our understanding of reality.

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