How Dirac's 1928 equation predicted the positron before anyone saw it
burny_tech · x · 2026-11-15
In 1928 Dirac set out to fix a clash: quantum mechanics worked for slow electrons, relativity for fast ones, and combining them gave nonsense. His fix required four components per electron instead of two, with the extra pair looking like negative-energy electrons.
He first tried to explain the states away, then took them seriously and predicted in 1931 a mirror twin of the electron with opposite charge. Carl Anderson found it in cosmic rays in 1932 and named it the positron; Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize with Schrödinger.
It was the first time an equation predicted a new kind of matter before anyone observed it. The accompanying infographic lays out the equation, the anticommuting gamma matrices, and the energy-level diagram with the 2mc² gap.
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