Quantum spin is so strange that when Pauli first proposed it, he wasn’t believed:

“… the spin of a fundamental particle has the curious feature that its magnitude always has the same value, although the direction of its spin axis can vary…” (Penrose, 1994), p270.

A physical object like the earth spins in a rotation plane around an axis of rotation (Figure 3.17), so this axis must be known to measure its spin. It turns out that measuring its spin on another axis, not the rotation axis, reveals less than its total spin. If the spin axis is unknown, one must measure spin on three orthogonal axes to get its total spin. In contrast, the total spin of a quantum entity can be measured from any axis, and is always the same, so quantum spin doesn’t work like physical spin.

However, detecting a photon’s spin on any axis could give all its spin for the same reason that detecting a photon anywhere gives all its energy. In both cases, measurement is a physical event, an all or nothing restart of the entire photon that includes all its energy or spin. This property of quantum spin is then expected.

In addition, quantum spin is measured in angular radians defined by Planck’s constant (Note 1). If Planck’s constant represents the transfer rate of a Planck process, as argued earlier, it will also represent its spin rate. Planck’s constant in radians is then expected to define quantum spin, as it does.

Finally, quantum spin is said to occur in both directions at once, and when measured, can give either direction randomly. This again recalls the earlier finding that a photon can go through two slits at the same time, not just one, and when measured, can also be in either slit randomly. The principle then is the quantum law of all action (that quantum reality tries every option) applied to rotational movement as well as linear movement. It makes sense that if photon instances can travel through two slits at once, they can also rotate in two directions at once. The result of measuring either case is then random because it depends on which instance accesses an unobservable server first. This property of quantum spin is then also expected by a quantum processing model.

In conclusion, spin is a fundamental property of every quantum entity because quantum processing spreads not only in every linear direction possible, but also in every angular direction possible.

Note 1. Quantum spin is defined as Plank’s reduced constant ħ = h/2p (in angular radians).

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In physics, quantum spin is a mathematical construct that explains what elementary particles do. But like quantum waves, it is said to be imaginary, so when electrons spin, nothing actually spins. After all, in current physics, an electron is a point particle that has no size, so it can’t spin. And if it had a size, its edges would have to move faster than light to explain the observed effects. The logic is that quantum spin isn’t real because it is physically impossible, just as quantum waves can’t really spread and collapse because that is physically impossible too.

 But if a photon is a processing wave, quantum spin can be that process rotating. This section explores the possibility that light not only spreads in all directions but also spins in all directions. Physical realism doesn’t allow this but quantum realism does.

QR3.7.1. The Curious Case of Quantum Spin

QR3.7.2. Quantum Directions

QR3.7.3. Polarization

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Super-computers running a million-million cycles a second take millions of seconds (months) to simulate not just what a photon does in a million-millionth of a second, but in a million-millionth of that (Wilczek, 2008), (p113). How can these tiniest bits of the universe with no known structures make such complex choices? The answer now proposed is that a photon isn’t a particle following a fixed path but a cloud of instances that take many paths.

Feynman’s sum over histories method predicts how light travels from A to B by calculating all the paths then choosing the one with the least action integral (Feynman et al., 1977) p26-7. It is based on quantum theory, so it predicts perfectly in practice, but like its parent, it was accepted as a method that works but not as a theory to believe because physical particles can’t do what it describes.

If a photon is a processing wave, Feynman’s method works because it describes real events, so its instances really do take all available paths, and the first to trigger a physical event is where we see it arrive. A photon doesn’t need to know the fastest path to a detector in advance if it takes every path, and the instance that happens to find that path then reincarnates it in a physical event. This makes its path the one the photon took, and that event is a server restart, so all the other instances disappear, like a clever magician removing the evidence of how a trick is done after it happens.

Indeed, if we consider the law of least action logically, how else could it arise? A photon particle can’t know in advance the best path to an unknown destination before it leaves, so the only way it can do what it does is to take every path and let the first to arrive restart it in a physical event.

To recap, knowing nothing in advance, the photon spreads itself down every path, and when it happens to hit a detector, restarts as only a processing wave can. What arrives at a detector by the fastest route isn’t a solitary particle that magically knows the best path in advance, but a quantum ensemble that explores every path and disbands when the job is done.

It follows that every physical event comes from a myriad of quantum events. The quantum world tries every option and the physical world takes the best and drops the rest, so if this isn’t the best of all possible worlds, it isn’t for lack of trying. The physical law of least action then derives from the quantum law of all action, which is that:

Everything that can happen as a physical event, does happen as a quantum event.

This is equivalent to Feynman’s “Everything that can happen does happen“, and also to Gellman’s quantum totalitarian principle that “Whatever isn’t explicitly forbidden must happen“. Both imply that a photon takes every possible path to a detector, and the first instance to trigger a physical event becomes the path it took. As will be seen, this law of all action, that quantum events explore all the possibilities before every physical event, is universal, so it applies not only to how light travels but also to quantum spin, as the next section explores.

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In 1662 Fermat amended Hero’s law to be the path of least time, because when light enters water where it travels slower, it refracts to take the fastest path, not the shortest path. In Figure 3.15, light takes the path that bends as it enters water, not the dotted shortest path.

To understand this, imagine the photon is a lifeguard trying to save a drowning swimmer as quickly as possible. The fastest path to the swimmer isn’t the dotted straight line but the solid bent line because lifeguards can run faster than they swim, so it is faster to run further down the beach then swim a shorter distance. The dotted line is the shortest path but the solid line is the fastest, and that is the path light takes (Figure 3.15). But again, how does a photon of light know in advance to take this faster path?

In 1752, Maupertuis generalized further that:

“The quantity of action necessary to cause any change in Nature always is the smallest possible”.

Euler, Leibnitz, Lagrange, Hamilton and others then developed the mathematics of this law of least action, that nature always does the least work, sparking a furious theoretical debate on whether we live in “the best of all possible worlds”. Despite Voltaire’s ridicule, how light always finds the fastest path remains a mystery today.

For example, light bouncing off the mirror in Figure 3.16 could take any of the dotted paths shown, but by the principles of optics, it always takes the solid line fastest path. But as the photon moves forward in time to trace out a complex path, how does it at each stage pick out the fastest route? As Feynman says:

“Does it ‘smell’ the neighboring paths to find out if they have more action?” (Feynman et al., 1977), p19-9.

To say that a photon chooses a path so that the final action is less is to get causality backwards. That a photon, the simplest of all things, with no known internal mechanisms, always takes the fastest path to any destination, for any media combination, any path complexity, any number of alternate paths, and inclusive of relativity, is nothing short of miraculous. The law of least action is a physical law that is no less a mystery today than it was centuries ago but like all physical laws, it has its basis in a quantum law, as the next module shows.

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He was correct that if light moves as a wave, it should bend round corners as sound waves do, but it turned out that it does. In 1660 Grimaldi found that light does bend but less than sound as its wavelength is shorter. This changed the question to how can a spreading wave travel in a straight line?

Detecting photons by screens at different distances confirms this, as the results aren’t a perfect straight line but randomly spread about (Figure 3.14). A physical particle would have to travel in a zigzag path to explain this! When a photon moves, its maximum probability of existence is a straight line but the wave itself spreads in all directions!

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That light always finds the best path to any destination has puzzled thinkers for centuries. Hero of Alexandria observed that light always takes the shortest path but how does it know that path? It might seem obvious that it is a straight line but how, at each step, does light know what straight is? (Note 1) How light always finds the best path to any destination has always been a mystery and still is today.

QR3.6.1. A Wave Moves

QR3.6.2. The Law of Least Action

QR3.6.3. The Law of All Action

Note 1. By relativity, light doesn’t always travel in a straight line, so “straightness” is not self-evident.

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What decides where a photon hits a screen? Light waves arrive at many screen points but for some reason, each photon only hits at one point. Quantum mechanics says that point is randomly chosen from the possibilities, so it’s like a lottery where many points have a chance, but some more than others as the probability to hit is higher where the wave is strong. The probabilities add up to one, so the photon always hits somewhere, but exactly where can’t be physically predicted. The quantum mechanism that explains the two-slit experiment is then as follows:

1. The photon wave equation describes how it spreads through both slits.

2. The wave then interferes with itself at the screen, to give a net amplitude at many points.

3. This amplitude squared is the probability the photon will physically hit at each point.

4. Where the photon actually hits is then randomly chosen from all the probabilities.

5. The result is the interference pattern seen.

This mechanism explains the observed result as follows:

The photon wave spreads through both slits, then its positive or negative amplitudes combine at the screen to predict its probability to hit at each point. A random value between zero and one then decides the point where it actually hits, which no physical history can predict.

This logic is useful because it predicts where photons will probably hit, but physics calls photon waves imaginary, so how can they predict this? Are physicists like shamans who dream the future? The alternative now explored is that photon waves are real and predict physical events because they cause them. This is possible if they are processing waves spreading on a network that restart at a point in physical events. What then would decide where such waves restart?

A processing wave reaching a screen is expected to overload it at many points. If they then reboot and request a process restart, the server response will be either:

1. Access. The server restarts its processing at that point, so it no longer supports other points of the wave, which collapses it. This then is a physical event at that point. OR,

2. No access. The server doesn’t respond that cycle, as it is busy elsewhere, so the point drops the process and carries on. This then was a potential physical event that didn’t happen.

Quantum collapse is then random to us because it is a winner takes all lottery run by a server we can’t observe. When many points reboot, the first to access a server restart locks out the others to win the prize of being the photon, leaving other instances to wither on the grid. What decides which point wins this lottery? This model expects the points with more server access to win more.

Why then is the photon’s probability to hit its wave amplitude squared? Light is a sine wave, so its amplitude squared is its power, which increases server access for a processing wave. If positive and negative amplitudes cancel at the server, a photon wave gets more server access where it is stronger, so it restarts there more often. The probabilities to hit of quantum mechanics are then based on the wave amplitude squared because a wave’s power decides its access to the server that restarts the photon at a point in a physical event. The strange mechanics of quantum theory are then sensible if a photon is a processing wave.

To recap, photon instances overload many screen points, but where it actually restarts depends on server access that is to us random, as quantum mechanics says. Even so, the amplitude squared of the wave predicts its probability to hit at each point because that defines access to the server that restarts the photon. The two-slit experiment can now be described in processing terms as follows:

a. The photon processing wave spreads instances through both slits.

b. Instances that reach the same screen point by different paths interfere.

c. When many screen points overload, the first to access the photon server is where it hits.

d. The photon’s probability to hit at each point depends on its amplitude squared because that determines access to the server that restarts it.

The mysteries of Young’s experiment, discussed earlier (3.1.3), are now resolved. How can one photon go through two slits but still arrive at one screen point? A particle can’t do this but a processing wave can spread on a network and still restart at a point. How can sending one photon at a time through two slits still produce an interference pattern? Again, one particle can’t go through two slits, or interfere with itself, but a processing wave can. Why then does light come in little photon packets, as Einstein showed? Physical waves don’t come in little packets but processing needs a fundamental process, and that is a photon. Why doesn’t the photon wave smear over a screen as a wave should? A physical wave doesn’t hit at a point, but a fundamental process with one server has to restart at one point.

If a detector is put in one of the two slits of Young’s experiment, it only fires half the time, but that isn’t because half the photons go through each slit. Photon instances always go through both slits, but the detector only wins the quantum lottery for server access half the time, because the rest of the time, the server is attending to instances in the other slit. Likewise, detectors in both slits fire equally often, but it isn’t because photon particles choose between the slits equally. Again, each photon always takes both slits but can only restart in one, as decided by a server that attends equally to all its instances.

This model now answers questions like:

a. Does a photon go through both slits at once? Yes, photon instances go through both slits.

b. Does it arrive at one screen point? Yes, the photon process restarts at one screen point.

c. Did it take a particular path? Yes, the instance that caused the restart took a specific path.

d. Did it also take all other possible paths? Yes, other instances, now disbanded, took every path.

Table 3.1 below compares Feynman’s summary of quantum mechanics (Feynman et al., 1977), p37-10 with a processing wave approach. Both approaches predict the observed results, but the first is a recipe with no rationale, while the second has reasons based on quantum processing. Given no physical basis for quantum mechanics, physics invented the myth of wave-particle dualism, that a photon can be a wave and a particle at different times. It is a myth because by definition, a wave depends on a medium while a particle depends only on its own substance. Wave-particle dualism, like the mind-body dualism of Descartes, is an impossible union of incompatible choices. A photon can no more be a wave and a particle than I can have my cake and eat it too, so that a photon is always a wave, even when it hits a screen point, is preferable.  

The next section addresses a mystery of light that has baffled scientists for centuries, namely how it travels.

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Table 3.1. Quantum theory as server access
Quantum Mechanics	Processing Wave
1. Existence. The probability a quantum entity exists is the absolute square of its complex quantum amplitude value at a point in space	1. Existence. The probability a processing wave exists in a physical event depends on the square of its amplitude that defines server access at a point in space
2. Interference. If a quantum event can occur in two alternate ways, the positive and negative amplitudes combine, so they interfere	2. Interference. If a processing wave reaches a point by alternate network paths, the positive and negative values combine, so they interfere
3. Observation. Observing one path lets the other occur without interference, so the outcome probability is the simple sum of the alternatives, so the interference is lost	3. Observation. Observing a processing wave on one path lets the other occur without interference, so the outcome probability is the simple sum of the alternatives, so the interference is lost

 

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.

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Einstein, like Newton, thought light particles followed one path from source to screen, so when the data favored quantum theory, that waves interfere then hit the screen at a random point of their spread, he had two options: either quantum theory was wrong or the physical causes were unknown:

“This is the fundamental problem: either quantum mechanics is incomplete and needs to be completed by a theory of hidden quantities, or it is complete and then the collapse of the wave function must be made physically plausible. This dilemma has not been solved until today, but on the contrary has become more and more critical.” (Audretsch, 2004), p73.

This problem, which Einstein raised and Bohr ignored, still haunts physics today. On the one hand, all attempts to find hidden variables that make quantum randomness physically plausible have failed. On the other hand, all attempts to show that quantum theory is incomplete also failed, so the rules of the quantum world predict perfectly but have no physical explanation.

What then is the solution? The two explanations, that quantum theory is incomplete and that it is physical both led nowhere, so the answer must lie elsewhere. The idea that quantum theory must be either physically true or wrong assumes that material things explain everything. But if materialism is wrong, then quantum theory can be true and also describe what isn’t physical. We know it is true because it always works, and we know it isn’t physical because nothing physical can do what it does. It is then possible that quantum events aren’t explained by physical events because they generate them, just as quantum theory says.

For example, the rules of Minecraft don’t explain how its blocks exist, nor do the rules of chess say how its pieces exist, because that is outside their domain. A created scene can never be fully explained by its local rules, so perhaps physical rules can’t explain photons for the same reason. The player of a game doesn’t have to follow its rules, as I can turn off a game or tip over a chess board. If physical events are also generated, then perhaps physical events can’t explain photons because they originate outside the physical domain. How this could occur is now explored.

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According to quantum theory, quantum waves spread until they collapse in a physical event, but what is quantum collapse? How can a wave spread to be bigger than a galaxy then instantly collapse to start again at a point? We know that nothing physical can do this, but what can?

QR3.5.1. Hidden Variables?

QR3.5.2. Quantum Waves Restart

QR3.5.3. The Quantum Lottery

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