this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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You know how when you put magnet faces together with the same polarity, they push against each other. If you squeeze them together they will pop away. When an atom has an extra electron, it makes its charge more negative. If all of the atoms have extra electrons, all of their charges will be more negative. Now imagine every single atom in the universe was suddenly the same polarity and began pushing all other atoms away. I'll let your imagination take over from there.
For some reason you just explained the probability of the big bang. Some idiot made a wish, and poof, new universe.
You've clearly never met a 5-year-old
Extra electrons make atoms go 'splodey.
When I was younger, I would often splodey too when thinking about Carmen electron
It would probably go crunch not boom. https://whatif.xkcd.com/140
In the example in from that what if, they are putting a universe's worth of mass in the volume of the moon, so it would create a super massive singularity. That's not what is happening in here.
If every atom suddenly gained an electron, they would indeed increase in mass. But a hydrogen atoms would gain the most relative mass as it is the lightest atom, and that would only be an increase of 1/1837th of its total mass now, so... not that much. Masses of heavier atoms and the macro level matter made from them would increase in mass even more marginally. It would be a negligible difference, definitely not be enough for a singularity to form from this increase alone unless a star's core were already riding that edge.
So their original determination would still be correct, that molecules would fly apart (atomized) and explode outward into the vacuum of space. Now, maaaaybe if the explosive force were enough to cause atoms to collide in space and at relativistic speeds, tiny singularities might form. But their combined negative charge would be far more powerful than their gravitational pull, and they would decay almost immediately, so... no crunch.
Not quite, xkcd put a moons worth (by mass) of electrons together, so if we add an electron to each atom we go down four to five orders of magnitude.
The black hole came about, because the electric charge creates a electric field in which the electrons have a potential energy that by E=mc^2 is equal to the mass of the universe. If we apply our scaling factor we still end up with black holes everywhere.
Lets play with those numbers:
Scale factor between Sagittarius A* and the observable universe 10^37 / 10^53 = 10^-16
Mass of Moon 10^23
Mass of electron cloud equivalent to black hole 10^23 * 10^-16 = 10^13
mass of electron added object equivalent to black hole 10^13 * 10^5 = 10^18
That means adding an electron to each atom is enough to rival the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Even if I miscalculated by many orders of magnitude, at least each planet collapses into one.
I'm really not even a little bit following what you're trying to say. What units are you using? What does the Sagittarius A* have to do with anything? What scale factor are you talking about? Mass? Volume? "Mass of electron cloud equivalent to black hole" what electron cloud? Where are you pulling these numbers?
Mass isn't what determines if a singularity forms. Density is. Enough mass has to be formed in small enough volume to form a singularity. Mass more most matter would have to multiply by many many orders of magnitude for a planet to form one. Adding a single election to each atom doesn't do that.
Maybe charge can play a factor, but I don't really have any idea how exactly or how significant it is.
The first half of my comment is the one that matters, the second half is a sleep deprived Wikipedia binge.
The units are kg rounded to the next power if 10. The numbers come from reverse engineering the article and Wikipedia. Sagittarius A* was a the first black hole I could think of. The scale was between mass of electron (like in the article) and mass of an atom (relevant to the post).
An imaginary cloud of electrons similar to the one in the what-if. One that has the energy equivalent of the mass of a black hole. Due to the reduced charge density there would be less energy and therefore black holes, but I am convinced that a lot of objects would collapse.
Much better!
Oh, I see. I read it wrong at first. I thought it was saying add one electron total, I didn't realize it meant one to each atom. It makes a lot more sense now.
Same. And it sounded so silly I could imagine the look of hatred. But this explanation makes more sense.
Yeah, my first thought was "does that just break supersymmetry or something? What happens then?"
I'm sorry but applying negativity or positivity to atoms and electrons is classic anthropomorphism.
Does anyone have a real explanation?
Hey those fucking atom bastards are nothing but negativity. They know what they did.
No no no you misunderstand the atom! At their heart they’re all positive, it’s just a shell of negativity due to fear of attachment!