Re: Dirac's negative energy sea

island

"Of course, the "negative energy sea" is sort of an outdated way of
looking at the Dirac equation. A more elegant approach treats the
"negative-energy" (really, negative-frequency) states as
positive-energy states of antiparticles."

There is another way to look at this that treats negative energy states
as having negative pressure, where...

P=-u=-rho*c^2

The energy density of the vacuum is less than the matter density, so
antiparticles don't arise until vacuum energy gets condensed down over a
finite enough area of space to attain positive matter density. In this
case, the antigravity effect of the negative pressure vacuum mimics the
effect of Dirac's negative mass states, which takes modern physics all
the way back to 1917:

http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2005-06/msg0069755.html

Modern science has some remedial homework to do before it can make any
claims about superior "elegance".