If a photon is a spread-out wave, as quantum theory says, how can it arrive at a point? A wave should hit a barrier as a smear, but a photon hits a screen as a dot instead. Radio waves are many meters long, so they should take time to arrive, even at light speed, but they don’t. If they did, in the delay between a wave front’s first hit and the rest arriving, the tail could hit something else. One photon could hit twice, but it never does! Physical waves deliver their energy over time and space, so how does a quantum wave deliver all its energy instantly, at a point? As Walker says:
“How can electromagnetic energy spread out like a wave … still be deposited all in one neat package when the light is absorbed?” (Walker, 2000), p43.
The fact is that physics doesn’t know how any wave could collapse instantly at a point:
“After more than seven decades, no one understands how or even whether the collapse of a probability wave really happens.” (Greene, 2004), p119.
Einstein rejected quantum collapse because it implied faster than light travel. He pointed out that if a photon is a wave that spreads, as quantum theory says, then:
Before the photon hits a screen, its wave function exists at points A or B with some probability but after, it is entirely at point A say not at B. The moment A knows it is the photon, then B knows it isn’t. Now suppose the screen is moved further away, eventually A and B could be in different galaxies, so how can the collapse happen instantly? That two events anywhere in the universe are instantly correlated faster than light contradicts special relativity.
Physical waves can’t collapse instantly, so how do quantum waves do this? It is now proposed that they are processing waves that restart when a network point reboots, where a reboot:
1. Is irreversible. A reboot can’t be reversed.
2. Conserves processing. The processing before and after a reboot is the same.
3. Allows change. A reboot can re-allocate the processing involved in new ways.
Why then might a network point reboot? Computers reboot when they overload, so a network point can be the same. When a phone, laptop, or printer reboots, it restarts its processing from scratch, and on a network, that restarts its server processing. It follows that if a quantum network point overloads and reboots, it will try to restart its server processing from scratch.
Now imagine a photon arriving at a screen as a processing wave. It will overload the screen points generating matter, and if many points reboot, each will request a photon server restart. But the photon has only one server, so only the first request can succeed, and the others will fail. The photon will then restart at one point, not many, so it will always hit a screen at a single point.
Quantum collapse is then the photon process restarting at a point. A photon arrives at a screen as a wave of instances spread over many points, but only one can restart it. When this occurs, the server restarts at a point, leaving other instances with no support, so they disappear instantly, as quantum theory says. Quantum collapse is the inevitable disbanding of child instances when their parent server restarts. The quantum wave collapses instantly, as if it never was, because instances have no substance.
Why then doesn’t the point that rebooted overload again when the photon restarts? The pass-it-on protocol (2.4.4) avoids this, as the point passes on the photon before it does anything else, so the photon that caused the overload just starts spreading again.
To recap, a photon arriving at a screen isn’t a lonely particle heading for a predictable hit point, but a wave of instances spread over many points, any of which can restart the photon. When a screen blocks this wave, where it restarts depends on what its server is doing at the time, which to us is random. Many points may request a server restart but only one can succeed, because one photon has one server. The first point to successfully restart the photon processing wave is where it hits the screen.
How then can a quantum wave bigger than a galaxy instantly collapse to a point in it? The answer proposed is that quantum collapse isn’t based on any movement. When a program changes a screen, it doesn’t move to each pixel to change it, but changes the whole screen instantly, so a quantum server changing the screen of our space can do the same. The point-to-point transfer rate that defines the speed of light is irrelevant to the server-client link behind quantum collapse. Einstein’s objection that quantum collapse is faster than light doesn’t apply to a processing wave, as it disappears instantly when no longer generated, whatever its size.
Physical realism sees a world of particles that mostly persist but quantum realism sees a world of events generated by quantum processes. These processes aren’t fanciful, as real equations describe them and they predict physical events. The evidence supports quantum theory not materialism, so if the quantum world is real, our view of the world has to change.
For example, when electrons collide and bounce apart, it looks like the same particles left as went in, but quantum theory tells a different story. It says that the quantum waves entering the collision restarted, so the electrons that went in aren’t the same as those that came out, but actually brand-new creations, just off the quantum press. According to quantum theory, physical events annihilate and recreate entities so what persists is what generates them, not some matter substance. We know that movies don’t exist between their frames, but not that the physical world is similarly empty.