Something Weird Happens When E=−mc²

Derek Muller takes us on the wild ride of Paul Dirac’s quest to make sense of “negative energy” in quantum theory. We start by poking holes in Schrödinger’s equation, meet the enigmatic Dirac and his hunt for a relativistic wave equation, and discover how his famous Dirac equation not only fixed things but also predicted a mirror universe of antiparticles.

Along the way, we learn why the positron (the anti‐electron) was the “saddest chapter” turned triumph in physics, how antiparticles can be thought of as particles traveling backwards in time, and just how bizarre our universe looks once you flip E=mc² to E=−mc².

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