A wave, by definition, is a vibration that spreads in a medium, so what moves when light does? It is said that the electromagnetic field does, but that movement isn’t physical. Given no physical ether, current physics has to just declare that:
“… we accept as nonexistent the medium that moves when waves of quantum mechanics propagate.” (Laughlin, 2005), p56.
After all, if quantum waves don’t exist, no medium is needed to transmit them! Electromagnetic field theory then glibly explains light by saying that electric changes cause magnetic changes, and magnetic changes cause electric changes, in a circular fashion, so light is said to be a:
“… self-renewing field disturbance.” (Wilczek, 2008), p212.
Yet what renews the fields that renew? That an electric field powers a magnetic field that powers the electric field is like Peter paying Paul’s bill, and Paul paying Peter’s bill. With such logic, I could borrow a million dollars now and never pay it back. If light waves self-renew, light is a cosmic Ponzi scheme, and physics has found the long-sought perpetual-motion machine of medieval alchemists to be the photon!
Light waves never fade but physical waves that move matter up and down (Figure 3.10) produce friction by the second law of thermodynamics, so they eventually fade, with no exceptions. Yet light that has traveled in space for billions of years hits our telescopes the same as local light, so is it a frictionless wave? If so, it can’t arise from matter moving, but how can vibrating nothing (space) create something (light)?
Light could be particles passing through empty space but by the evidence, it is a wave, so empty space must be its medium. If as concluded earlier, empty space isn’t empty, just a quantum network null result, then space can be the medium of light because the:
“… vacuum state is actually full of energy…” (Davies & Brown, 1999), p140.
Rather than little particles moving in empty space, light is now a wave on a surface that actively supports it. Instead of vibrating nothing, it now vibrates something, namely the quantum network. Instead of electrical and magnetic fields mutually causing each other, which is illogical, the quantum network causes both. Space then has energy because the quantum network is always on, to power any light that passes, just as an idle computer is always on to respond to any keystroke (Note 1). Physical waves fade but quantum waves don’t, because they are sustained by a network that can also restart them if they fail. Instead of being mostly dead, our universe is now literally pulsing with activity. What then moves when light does? In network terms, the answer is processing.
In computing, processing sets values, so when a laptop runs a game, it just sets values. In a game like Warcraft, these values generate the virtual world but have no meaning within it. We see monsters, not the values set by computer code. Likewise, quantum values have no meaning to us, but they generate what we see. Feynman called these values vector potentials, Born called them probability amplitudes, Hiley called them quantum potentials (Davies & Brown, 1999) p138, and others refer to the quantum function (ᴪ).
Whether we call quantum activity a vector, probability, potential, or function result doesn’t matter. What matters is that it happens, and it causes physical events, so quantum theory predicts those events because it models what actually causes them.
Note 1. Processing must always run, so an “idle” computer still runs a null cycle, so it isn’t doing nothing.