QR3.5.2 Quantum Waves Restart

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, but a quantum wave delivers all its energy 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.

Current physics can’t explain how any wave could collapse instantly to 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, as if the photon wave 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 can quantum waves? They can if they are processing waves that restart when a network point reboots, as in computing a reboot:

1. Is irreversible. A reboot can’t be undone because all prior processing is lost.

2. Conserves processing. The processing before and after a reboot is the same.

3. Allows change. A reboot can allocate the processing involved in new ways.

When a phone, laptop, or printer reboots, it restarts its processing from scratch. A network point is the same, except it gets its processing from a server and so will try to restart its server processing

The trigger for a network point reboot is expected to be an overload, that it receives more processing than it can handle, as our devices do the same. A photon wave arriving at a screen will then overload its points, as they are already fully occupied generating its matter. If many points reboot at once, they will all request a server restart, but one photon has only one server, so only one request can succeed. The photon then restarts at that point, so it always hits a screen at one point, not many.

Quantum collapse is then a processing wave restart. The photon arrives at a screen as many instances spread over many points, but only one of them can restart it. When this happens, the instances with no server support just disappear, as quantum theory says. Quantum collapse is then the inevitable disbanding of child instances when their parent server starts a new child. The wave collapses instantly, as if it never was, because instances have no substance.

Why then doesn’t the reboot point overload again when its processing restarts? The pass-it-on protocol (2.4.4) avoids this, because the point passes on its processing before doing anything else, so the photon that caused the overload just starts to spread again.

To recap, a photon arriving at a screen isn’t a lonely particle heading for a single hit point but a wave of many instances, any of which can restart the photon. When a screen blocks this wave, the restart point depends on which reboot request the server recognizes, which to us is random. Many points may request a restart, but only one can succeed, so the first to do so is where the photon hits the screen.

Why then does quantum collapse occur faster even than light? The speed of light depends on how fast the screen of our space refreshes, but programs change screen pixels without any such movement. It just occurs directly, anywhere on the screen. Likewise, a photon server can directly alter its clients anywhere on the screen of our space. The point-to-point screen speed that defines the speed of light is thus irrelevant to the server-client effect of quantum collapse. Einstein’s objection that quantum collapse occurs faster than light doesn’t apply because it is a server effect, not a client effect.

Materialism sees quantum collapse as things disappearing but in computing terms, it is just client events that didn’t happen. When electrons collide and bounce apart, materialism sees the same particles entering and leaving, but quantum theory tells another story. It says that the electrons that left the collision are actually brand-new creations, fresh off the quantum press. And if physical events annihilate and recreate entities, no matter substance is needed because we live in a world of events not things.

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