It took a while for science to realize that we live in a reality bubble. Maxwell’s equations describe light as a wave so in the nineteenth century, a superfine ether was assumed to propagate it in space. The earth orbits the sun to give the seasons and spins to give night and day, so that ether can’t always be stationary (Figure 5.3). The speed of light should then vary as the ether moves – light going against it should go slower, and light going with it should go faster. But in 1887, Michelson and Morley found, to everyone’s surprise, that the speed of light was the same in every direction, so there was no ether wind because the earth’s movement didn’t alter the speed of light.

Then in 1904, Lorentz showed that the speed of light would remain constant if the space and time of all reference frames changed by what became known as the Lorentz transformation. Shortly after, in 1905, Poincare deduced the relativity principle, that the laws of physics are the same regardless of the reference frame, so a ball thrown up in a moving car behaves as in a stationary car, and swinging a pendulum or shining a flashlight is the same on a satellite orbiting the earth at thousands of miles per hour as it is on earth.

This is fortunate, because our earth actually is a planetary platform carrying us through the cosmos. Its spin whirls us around at about 1,000mph, it orbits the sun at about 66,000mph, and the galaxy at an amazing 483,000mph. Our speed relative to the cosmic background radiation is said to be 1,300,000mph, but science still works on earth as it does in the rest of the universe. Einstein then wondered what others didn’t, which is why doesn’t reality change when we move?

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Quantum theory is strange because it lets objects do strange things, like be in two places at once, but relativity is stranger because it alters space and time, which is almost unthinkable. If an electron is a point on a screen, quantum theory describes how the point changes, but relativity describes how the screen itself changes in unexpected ways.

QR5.2.1. Our Reality Bubble

QR5.2.2. Invariance

QR5.2.3. Maintaining Causality

QR5.2.4. The Ultimate Messenger

QR5.2.5. The Universal Speed Limit

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Particle models assume that objects collide because their substances can’t occupy the same space at the same time. Waves superpose but substances don’t, so Newton concluded that matter only moves when other matter hits it.

Yet gravity ignores this convention, as the sun holds the earth in orbit from millions of miles away with only space between. Following Newton, the standard model concluded that graviton particles must cause gravity but Einstein’s cause wasn’t a particle at all. He concluded that the earth attracts objects around it by changing their space and time. More details follow, but experiments confirm that he was right, so matter can change space and time, but how can that happen? 

Particles can collide with other particles but not with the time and space they move within, so how does matter affect either? A billiard ball can’t contract the table it rolls on, or slow down a movie of it rolling, but relativity lets its matter do just that. The conclusion that matter changes space and time then challenges the idea that it is made of particles, as special relativity illustrates.

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A century ago, relativity and quantum theory replaced Newton’s vision of the universe as a big machine made by God with a world of malleable time, curved space, and quantum fuzziness. Today, these theories dominate their respective cosmic and sub-atomic domains, and neither has ever been found to be wrong, but they contradict each other, so:

“Mankind has uncovered two extremely efficient theories: one that describes our universe’s structure (Einstein’s gravity: the theory of general relativity), and one that describes everything our universe contains (quantum field theory), and these two theories won’t talk to each other.” (Galfard, 2016).

The schism between relativity and quantum theory divides physics today just as it did a century ago. It is as if reality has two different rule books, one for the very small and another for the very large, with nothing in common. The rules of the microcosm don’t work for the macrocosm, but doesn’t it produce the latter?

The divide persists because for small objects, gravity is weak and can be ignored, while for large objects, quantum effects can also be ignored, and trying to apply relativity to quantum points gives infinities, while the quantum field tricks that justify particles fail for gravity.

What then divides these two great theories? It is that each assumes what the other denies:

1. Quantum theory: Assumes that quantum states evolve on a fixed space and time background (Smolin, 2006), but relativity assures us that isn’t so.

2. Relativity theory: Assumes that foreground objects follow fixed paths, but quantum theory assures us that isn’t so either.

Quantum theory assumes that space and time are fixed, which relativity denies, and relativity assumes that objects follow a fixed path, which quantum theory denies. Each exposes a false assumption of the other but ignores its own, so how can they be reconciled?

The resolution proposed is that both theories are right, so both the foreground and background of our reality can change, because both are generated. A quantum field that generates matter, space, and time can then unite relativity and quantum theory, as will be seen.

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Gravity rules the universe at large and relativity explains it, but based on time and space not particles. Einstein’s deduction that gravity isn’t a force at all, but matter modifying space and time, divided physics into those who agree, and those who attribute it to graviton particles.

QR5.1.1. The Great Divide

QR5.1.2. Space and Time Change

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Quantum Realism Part I. The Observed Reality

……Chapter 5. The Quantum Field

   Brian Whitworth, New Zealand

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”  (Galileo Galilei)…

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The last chapter replaced three fields and twelve virtual particles of the standard model with one core quantum process running on the network of space that explained space, light, matter, anti-matter, nuclear bonds, and neutron decay (4.5.8). This chapter goes further, to replace the fields of gravity, electricity, and magnetism with one quantum field in space, so all the forces of nature have one source.

The founders of quantum theory saw the quantum field as a network of points, each oscillating like a mass on a spring in three directions outside space (Figure 5.1). Schrödinger based quantum mechanics on this model of quantum harmonic oscillators, but physical objects can’t vibrate in a non-physical direction, so the quantum field concept was rejected.

However in quantum realism, Schrödinger’s oscillations are the quantum events behind the physical events we see. The quantum field then arises when the network of space supports waves of light and lumps of matter, by vibrations that occur:

1. Outside space. Light vibrates on space (3.2.2).

2. On a surface. Space is a 3D surface (2.4.1).

3. As values. Set by one core process (3.2.3).

4. On a network. Space is a network (2.1.5).

5. To cause physical events. The strength of the quantum field at each point is the probability that a physical event will occur there (3.9.3).

Figure 5.2 envisages the quantum field as the vibrating surface that causes our physical world. Note that the picture shows a two-dimensional surface, but the quantum field fills three-dimensional space and sets values in a non-physical fourth dimension. 

QR5.1.  Gravity Rules

QR5.2.  Special Relativity

QR5.3.  How Does Matter Move?

QR5.4.  General Relativity

QR5.5.  Electricity and Magnetism

QR5.6.  Order and Disorder

QR5.7.  Why Does Anything Exist?

Discussion Questions

References

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Last century, physics invented a tale of quantum waves that spread at light speed then collapse instantly into physical events that begin the waves again. It made no sense, because physical waves can’t restart like that, but these strange waves predicted atomic events amazingly to give modern technologies like (Jenner, 2014):

• Transistors that run devices like smartphones work thanks to quantum laws.
• Medical devices like MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) look within the body without surgery thanks to quantum laws.
• Global Positioning Systems (GPS) let us navigate the world thanks to quantum laws.
• Lasers scan barcodes at supermarkets thanks to quantum laws.
• Solar panels convert sunlight into electricity thanks to quantum laws.
• LEDs (light-emitting diodes) run the sensor lights on TVs thanks to quantum laws.

Without quantum laws, these technologies wouldn’t exist. Last century, physics called the theory behind them imaginary because its physically impossible but if the technologies are real, surely the theory behind them is too! One possibility that wasn’t considered before computers came along is that quantum waves are processing waves spreading on a network. If so, quantum waves can:

• Evolve stepwise. Quantum theory describes waves that evolve discretely rather than continuously. Processing waves can do this because the network passes them on step-by-step each cycle. Quantum waves can then evolve as quantum theory says because they are processing waves spreading on a network.
• Superpose to a limit. Quantum theory describes waves that superpose like probabilities up to a limit of one, unlike physical waves that can be any height. Processing waves on a network can do this because each network point has a finite processing limit that it can handle. Quantum waves can then superpose to a limit because each network point has a bandwidth limit.
• Collapse instantly. Quantum theory describes waves that collapse instantly to restart at a point, which physical waves never do. Processing waves on a network can do this because a process can restart at a point. Quantum waves can then collapse instantly because a processing wave can restart at a network point.
• Entangle at a restart point. Quantum theory describes waves that entangle into one when they restart at the same point in a physical event, while physical waves just pass through each other and never merge. Processing that restarts at the same point could merge into one because two processes can be combined into one. Quantum waves could then entangle at a point because their processing merges.

Later chapters provide more details, but essentially quantum weirdness can be explained in computing terms. If processing waves on a network can evolve stepwise, superpose to a limit, collapse instantly, and entangle, then quantum theory describes what actually happens, as quantum events cause physical events given these concepts:

• Servers. A server is needed to generate and restart a quantum wave process.
• Network. A network is needed to spread and superpose quantum wave processing.
• Reboot. A network point that overloads must reboot to request a server restart.
• Physical event. A physical event must be a point overload that restarts and entangles the processes involved.

Figure 2.15 then summarizes how quantum events cause physical events.

A photon is a processing wave that spreads on a network until it overloads a point, in a physical event that restarts it again, so light is never lost. When we interact with a photon wave, the resulting physical event allows an observation, but reduces it to a particle-like point. Quantum waves then exist all around us, but when we “touch” them, they turn into physical events. The physical world we observe is then like a painting that appears only when painted, one brushstroke at a time, and we aren’t the only painters, as atoms also paint events. The surface painted on, which we call space, can curve, and the clock counting the strokes, which we call time, can slow down, as Einstein deduced. Relativity gives each painter their own canvas and clock, so space and time are generated locally, along with each physical event.

Hawking concluded that time and space began when our universe did, but also argues that nothing existed before that based on physicalism, that only the physical exists (Hertog, 2024). It follows that not only did something (our universe) come from nothing, its space and time did too, which makes no sense. The alternative proposed here is that the primal reality that began our universe also created its space and time. 

To think the first event just made light or matter is to underestimate it, as space and time were needed as well. We can imagine the making of objects but not of time and space. Science expected the first event to create matter, and theology expected it to include us, but the evidence is that our universe didn’t start with humans, animals, sky, or earth as they are now, but with what led to them, a primal seed that after fifteen billion years grew into galaxies, stars, planets, life, and us. If the first event made not only things but also space and time, and continues to do so today, the rabbit-hole of quantum reality runs deeper than even its advocates suppose. 

Table 2.1 compares quantum realism with physicalism for space and time, so the reader can decide which explains the evidence better. The following chapters extend the above model to explain light (Chapter 3), matter (Chapter 4), and relativity (Chapter 5). There is also a testable prediction that current theory denies – that pure light can collide (4.5.9). 

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Reverse engineering is grounded theory for computing, as it deduces what causes observed events. When we observe a screen, what changes it is unseen, but we can deduce the cause then refine that deduction by further observations until it reliably predicts what happens next.

Reverse engineering, a subset of design science, can apply to physical events produced by quantum waves. These waves can’t be observed physically, but if unseen wi-fi waves can fill our screens with images, unseen quantum waves could do a similar thing for the screen of space. Reverse engineering then explains physical events based on quantum events, given that quantum reality is:

1. A network. So physical events are discrete not continuous.

2. That transmits waves. So entities move as waves not particles.

3. That vibrate at right angles to space. So space isn’t complete in itself but contained.

4. Until they interact in physical events. So physical events aren’t fundamental but derived.

These features of quantum reality produce a world that isn’t as physics expected. Materialism assumes particles that move on single paths through empty space, but waves spread on many paths, so which view is right, particles or waves? For most empiricists, the answer is obviously particles that follow the laws of physics, but explaining what those particles actually do led physicists to imagine methods that particles can’t support. These methods were accepted because they worked, and because mathematics doesn’t make reality claims, but as a result physics now routinely uses methods that contradict physicalism, such as:

1. Calculus. The calculus used throughout physics began as a thought experiment, that infinitesimals predict physical events in the limit. It worked brilliantly, but that space and time change in tiny steps contradicts the assumption of continuity, so it became just a mathematical tool that is used but not believed in. Calculus was rejected as a reality description because it denied a canon of physicalism, but if space and time really do change in quantum pixels and cycles [Note 1], then physical events are discrete not continuous.

 2. Sum over paths. Feynman’s sum over paths theory also began as a thought experiment, that quantum particles take every path to a destination then pick the best one. Again, it worked brilliantly, but that entities move as waves contradicted the assumption that they are particles, so it also became a mathematical tool that is used but not believed in. Feynman’s theory was rejected as a reality description because it denied a canon of physicalism, but if quantum entities really do move as waves, then physical entities must also move as waves not particles.

3. Complex numbers. Complex number theory was another thought experiment, that electro-magnetic waves like light vibrate in a plane outside our space. Again, it worked brilliantly, but having a plane outside space contradicted the assumption that space is complete, so it also became a mathematical tool that is used but not believed in. Complex number theory was rejected as a reality description because it denied a canon of physicalism, but if there really is a dimension outside our space, then space isn’t complete but contained.

4. Quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics was yet another thought experiment, that unseeable quantum waves interact to cause physical events. Again, it worked brilliantly, but that quantum waves cause physical events contradicted the assumption that particles are fundamental, so it also became a mathematical tool that is used but not believed in. Quantum mechanics was rejected as a reality description because it denied a canon of physicalism, but if quantum events really do cause physical events, then physical events aren’t fundamental but derived.

All the above methods, of calculus, sum over paths, complex numbers, and quantum mechanics, are used in physics because they work, but what they imply is ignored because they are imaginary. But if a method is good enough to use, why isn’t it good enough to believe? The answer it seems is that if it denies our tradition of physicalism, it can’t be true. For if the method of calculus is true, then our world isn’t continuous. If the sum over paths method is true, then entities don’t move as particles. If complex numbers are true, then our space isn’t complete. And if quantum theory is true, then physical events aren’t fundamental. Physics is then caught between what it believes and what works, like a sailor who believes the earth is flat but uses global coordinates to navigate.

Yet when evidence contradicts belief in science, isn’t the latter supposed to win? If global coordinates work, doesn’t that mean the earth isn’t flat? Based on the evidence, it is physicalism that is imaginary not quantum theory, and the other methods suggest the same. But isn’t it better if the equations of physics are true, as they would be if quantum theory was? 

The answer seems to be the dread that accepting quantum reality will open the door to magical thinking, where quantum powers allow psychic healing, telepathy, psychokinesis, and other miracles (Chopra, 1989). That physics doesn’t want to revert to a dark age of God theories that explain everything but predict nothing is then quite natural.

Yet this fear is unjustified because reverse engineering doesn’t work like that. For example, quantum computers are powerful but not magical because quantum waves spread, collapse, restart, and entangle based on quantum laws, not an all-powerful being. They act in physically impossible ways but are lawful not miracles. That reality is quantum then doesn’t imply miracles, any more than that it is physical does. Quantum realism is no more a God theory than a quantum computer is a God computer.

Using reverse engineering to develop a model of how quantum processing works doesn’t open a door to quantum mysticism, but it can explain what physicalism can’t, which why quantum theory works in the first place.

Note 1. For any calculus involving time, replace dt by dp, a small number of processing cycles. Now dp can indeed tend to zero because there cannot be less than one processing cycle.

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When Europeans first visited China, its society made no sense to the colonial mindset, as the constant bowing seemed unnecessary and they didn’t understood the importance of  face. Only later was it realized that in China, groups create individuals not the other way round, so being excluded from one’s family, clan, or society was worse than a death sentence, while bowing and keeping face avoided this. Social scientists called the method that led to this discovery grounded theory, which as the name implies, is to first gather data, then theorize about it. Scientists studying new cultures learned to first watch, listen, and record, then form theories to test the next day. Repeating this method daily then produced a grounded theory, based on the data not bias.

Grounded theory avoids colonial bias but seemed at first to reverse normal science, until Kuhn noted that science has always advanced by paradigm shifts (Kuhn, 1970). Testing theory prediction against data is then normal science, that grows a paradigm, and using the data to generate a new theory by a paradigm shift is also science. Science then includes:

1. Paradigm growth: Theory generates data predictions (normal).

2. Paradigm shift: Data generates a new theory (revolutionary).

In paradigm growth, theory generates new data, while in a paradigm shift, data generates new theories (Figure 2.14). Normal science progresses gradually, as sediment builds up a rock, but paradigm shifts change the theory landscape suddenly, as an earthquake does. For example, the paradigm shift from Galen’s theory of miasma to a germ theory of disease was an intellectual earthquake that sunk one theory and raised another. Grounded theory is the scientific method that supports paradigm shifts.

Kuhn further suggested that in the history of science, paradigm shifts are needed when traditional theories stagnate, to raise a new theory from the data ground up. In Figure 2.14, science connects data and theory either way, to generate data from theory, or to generate theory from data. Both ways are science because both connect data and theory to increase understanding.

It follows that physics could be approaching quantum reality as the colonials did China, with a bias. The bias is materialism not colonialism but the problem is the same. Physics sees only particles not waves, but quantum theory is based on waves not particles, so it made quantum waves imaginary, but what if they aren’t? If a paradigm fails to predict year after year, as particle theory has, is the answer more of the same? Throwing ideas at a wall to see what sticks doesn’t work, so it’s time to revisit the data ground, based on grounded physics.

Grounded physics applies grounded theory to physics by looking at the data from a quantum wave perspective, not a matter particle perspective. It aims to explain quantum reality on its own terms not ours. As will be seen, taking off the blinkers of physicalism suggests a universe based on waves not particles, that pulsates with activity not emptiness. A grounded theory of physics is then based on data not bias.

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Modern physics has been stagnant for so long that some physicists predict the end of physics, as maybe:

“… for the first time in the history of science, we could be facing questions that we cannot answer, not because we don’t have the brains or technology, but because the laws of physics themselves forbid it.” (Cliff, 2015).

Yet in the history of science, it wasn’t the laws of nature that forbade questions but the laws of people, their dogmas. The main dogma of modern physics is physicalism, the idea that everything is physical. No-one has ever proved it, so it’s just an assumption, but it is said to be self-evident. Even so, the world of transistors, satellites, and cellphones we have today is based on equations about waves that aren’t physical. According to physicalism, quantum waves don’t exist, but how then does light travel? And if empty space can have a physical effect, why not quantum waves? Relativity and quantum theory began with causes that aren’t physical, like curved space and quantum waves, so why don’t we study them further? It isn’t nature that is stopping us, but our own dogma.

Last century, physics left the safe haven of classical mechanics, hoping to discover how light moves in a vacuum, and how gravity acts from afar. Wandering in the desert of physicalism they found not a promised land but the quantum jungle, a weird place that seemed to ignore physicalism laws. Those who entered it returned with strange stories, like that it guided matter (Bohm, 1980), so the expedition leaders fenced it off with equations, calling it mythical, and banned discussion of it. With nothing else to do, their followers built a great castle called the standard model, which today dominates a barren landscape because theories can’t grow in a semantic desert.

Sitting in their castle, physicists invented theories like supersymmetry that predicted new particles, so they built a big machine to find them, called the large hadron collider, but even its “God particle” led nowhere. Theories that didn’t work were altered to fit the data, but they still didn’t predict much. As one physicist observed, the trouble with particle physics is that it isn’t producing new knowledge (Smolin, 2006). For example, string theory makes no predictions at all, and the multiverse is an untestable speculation that isn’t even wrong (Woit, 2007). Even the weeds of error don’t grow in the desert of physicalism. Today, the fizz has gone out of physics because what baffled Einstein and Feynman seventy years ago still baffles physics today.

Speculating based on bad theories is bad but it still tells us what doesn’t work. In contrast, speculating with no theory at all is worse because nothing is learned. Just as people stuck in a desert start to see mirages after a while, physicists are now just imagining things, as these paper titles illustrate:

• We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time. (Cartwright, 2020).
• Neutrinos may explain why we don’t live in an antimatter universe. (Crane, 2020).

The key word in the above titles is “may”. Fifty years of physics can be described as maybe WIMPS, maybe strings, maybe time travel, maybe supersymmetry, maybe a multiverse, and so on, one mirage after another. There are papers on white holes, large extra dimensions, time travel, closed time loops, wormholes, heavy sterile neutrinos, and super-particles, all hoping to be the next revolution in physics, but they weren’t. In 2018, a New Scientist cover story speculated about axiflavons from a hypothetical flavon field and concluded:

“It’s thrilling stuff, if for the moment it is only conjecture”, New Scientist, August, 2018, p31.

It was a thrilling conjecture but years later, nothing has changed! Physicists sitting in a semantic desert are dreaming theories and if they stay there, the next fifty years will be as barren as the last. Trying to explain quantum theory based on physicalism is like looking for the keys you lost in a jungle in the desert around it because it is easier to look there. When physics quarantined the quantum jungle, it turned its back on the greatest discovery of humanity, that quantum events really do cause physical events.

The way out of this stagnation is to change the methods of physics, as Hossenfelder says:

“The major cause of this stagnation is that physics has changed, but physicists have not changed their methods…  Instead of examining the way that they propose hypotheses and revising their methods, theoretical physicists have developed a habit of putting forward entirely baseless speculations.”

Speculating without theory is like throwing mud at a wall and hoping for a portrait, and speculating based on invalid axioms is like designing castles the air with no foundations. For example, string theory has 10⁵⁰⁰ rooms based on no data, despite thousands of papers. So, is physics helpless before what makes no physical sense? How then can physics study the quantum mystery if physicalism can’t?

Luckily, science has a precedent. When other disciplines face what their conventions can’t explain, they use grounded theory. It works when other methods fail because it isn’t based on any assumptions at all, just the data. To use it, physics would have to abandon the axiom of physicalism, but it is leading nowhere so what is the loss? That particles can’t explain everything isn’t the end of physics, but a new beginning.

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