Current physics calls a photon a massless particle that can also be a wave, but can’t say how it can be both. We see it hit a screen at a point like a particle but that it travelled there by one path as particles do is an assumption tacked onto the facts, so when quantum theory says a photon is a wave that collapses at a screen point, its critics couldn’t fault that logic because it has no fault. The evidence as usual supports quantum theory, that photons travel as waves but arrive as particles, and that is why it works.

Quantum theory describes a photon as a quantum wave that spreads until it restarts at a point when observed, to look like a particle. This model adds that what spreads is a cloud of instances that go through both slits at once, but which one then is the photon? The question betrays our particle bias, that the photon has wave function, but it isn’t possible for a thing to have wave properties. It follows that rather than having a wave function, the photon is the wave function, or in this model, what generates it.

Physicalism assumes that a particle seen at a point was always so, but a process that restarts at a point can just spread again, which particles can’t do. It follows that the photon is never a particle, even when it hits a screen, because quantum processing always spreads, even after it restarts. The photon we see is then more like a bubble on a surging river that appears then pops instantly, and even matter is just foam on the flow of quantum reality. 

A photon from a distant galaxy can spread for millions of years before a telescope observes it, so it can arrive as a cloud bigger than our galaxy, but how can it instantly collapse as quantum theory says? A physical wave can’t do this, as Einstein noted, but nor can a processing wave. Processing spreading can’t stop itself for no reason, and the quantum network proposed has no central control to stop it. An overload can stop one point but all the wave points don’t overload, so a network wave alone can’t stop itself

It follows that quantum waves collapse instantly because their server support stops. The trigger proposed is that any point in the wave overloads and requests a server restart that begins the wave again, which inevitably stops all other client instances instantly, even for a cloud as big as our galaxy. A client-server model then supports quantum collapse as described by quantum theory

Note that this assumes the photon server connects directly to each wave instance, so it acts like a computer that is wired directly to each pixel point on a screen, to be equidistant to every point. Quantum collapse then occurs at the same speed, which is instant to us, regardless of the size of the quantum wave, just as the time to make a laptop image disappear doesn’t depend on how big it is. This analogy of course doesn’t imply that quantum reality works like a big computer.

What then is the photon? In this model, it isn’t its quantum wave but the server process that generates it. Quantum waves never die because they just restart, to rise again from the ashes of quantum collapse like a phoenix. The photon then isn’t the physical events it causes, which make it look like particle, or even its wave instances, which are many, but the server that causes both, which is one. If all the matter we see, as the next chapter suggests, came from light, then it is light in another form. That light never dies and space always abides can be described as Act I of the drama of our universe, so if all the world’s a stage (Note 1), classical mechanics describes the stage but quantum mechanics describes the backstage events that make it happen, and they never stop.

Note 1. As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, Line 139

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A process can spread on a network by instantiation, an object orientated design method that lets one source class direct many objects. For example, for many similar screen buttons, instead of duplicating the same code for each, programmers let one class direct them all. This saves time and lets all the buttons of a class be changed in one place. Instantiation works for all screen objects like pop-up or drop-down menus and can set feature parameters like color. Computing calls such objects instances of a source class.  

A quantum wave can then be a cloud of instances directed by a server with a frequency parameter. Why then does the wave weaken as it spreads? If a network server instantiates many buttons on different screens, feeding them preferentially might give some screens a complete button but others nothing at all, so it is better to feed one instruction to every button, then repeat, to keep every client busy. A server that supports all its clients equally will then inevitably weaken its support as their number increases.

If quantum servers instantiate the same, more photon instances each get fewer up-down instructions per cycle so their amplitude reduces. Quantum waves then weaken as they spread, just as a water waves do, because the quantum flux follows Gauss’s law. As the wave spreads to give more instances, each gets fewer vibration instructions which reduces its amplitude, but not its frequency which depends on wavelength. But if one server supports all the instances of a photon cloud, what is actually meant by the term photon? 

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In physics, light is an electro-magnetic wave whose wave lengths give a spectrum (3.3.1), but how this wave restarts at a point is unknown. In this model, light is a processing wave that does the same but can also collapse and be restarted. Quantum waves then spread at the speed of light because each cycle, every network point passes its processing equally to all its neighbors in every direction. 

Huygen’s Principle that light is a wave where each point is a new wave source then describes how processing spreads on a network but why does it travel forward rather than in all directions? Each point spreads the wave equally, but points at the front start after those at the back, so they are out of phase. As a result, the spread behind the wave front mostly cancels out, but the spread forward doesn’t, so the wave moves forward. Light thus moves forward because its wave front spreads freely but behind it the wave cancels out. Light as a processing wave spreading on a network then supports Huygens waves rather than Newton’s particles.

That a photon is a process distributed over its wave length points explains its frequency but what happens as it spreads? Gauss noted that a pebble dropped in a pool creates ripples that decrease in strength as the initial activity is divided more. In his words, the flux per ripple is constant but for friction, so if each ripple spreads the same activity over a larger circle, it becomes weaker (Figure 3.12).

If this principle also applies to quantum waves, they will also weaken in amplitude as they spread, for any frequency. Note that distributing a quantum wave more reduces its frequency but not its amplitude, while spreading it out more weakens its amplitude but doesn’t alter its frequency.

However unlike a pond ripple, quantum waves spread on a three-dimensional surface, in an expanding sphere, and so weaken as an inverse square of distance. Chapter 5 deduces the inverse square laws of electricity, magnetism, and gravity from Gauss’s principle, but how exactly can processing spread on a network?

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We know how physical waves spread but how do quantum waves spread on a network? That they spread every network cycle explains the speed of light, but how does it happen? The method proposed is instantiation, which is a server delegating a process to run at many locations. The quantum no-cloning theorem (Wootters & Zurek, 1982) doesn’t let us copy quantum states, but a server can easily instantiate many client instances.

3.4.1 Light Spreads.

3.4.2 Instantiation.

3.4.3 What is a Photon?

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In this model, Planck’s constant is the smallest unit of energy because it represents the core network operation, and a photon is the simplest entity possible because the network can’t do less than that. Yet if Planck’s constant was less, atoms would be smaller, so why does it also define the size of space? The equations of physics don’t say why the same constant affects both energy and space, just that it does.

In a physical world, energy could get smaller and smaller, but a processing world needs a core process, here defined as a discrete circle (3.3.1). The photon’s energy is then a vibration that sets values in a discrete transverse circle at right angles to our space, so the smallest energy unit that is Plank’s constant, depends on the size of that circle, which is the number of values set. The transverse circle size that defines Plank’s constant then depends how many neighbors a network point connects to in a plane.

The last chapter also defined a planar circle in our space that limits how a photon vibration is passed on (2.2.10). The circumference of this circle defines the radius that separates adjacent network points, and so is the smallest distance of our space. The smallest unit of our space is then defined by the size of a planar circle, which again depends of how many neighbors a network point has in a plane. 

The size of a transverse circle then defines the unit of energy, and the size of a planar circle defines the unit of space, so if the quantum network is symmetric, both will be the same size. It follows that if Planck’s constant reflects the size of a transverse circle, it will also reflect the size of a planar circle. The basic units of energy and space then relate because both derive from the same network feature, of how many neighbors a point can connect to in a plane. Planck’s constant defines the units of both space and energy because both reflect the connectivity of the quantum network.

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Planck’s constant is the smallest possible unit of energy. Energy, like space and time, is a key concept of physics that was initially thought to be continuous. It was defined in the nineteenth century as the ability to move matter around, which was called work, so burning coal in a steam engine produced work by converting coal energy to the kinetic energy of the moving train. That energy allows work that transfers energy explained how engines operate, but there was a problem.

The problem was that light didn’t follow the rules. The furnaces of the day gave off light at many frequencies, so as they got hotter, all the frequencies should increase equally, including the dangerous ones. But hot furnaces don’t give off lethal doses of x-rays that kill their workers, so physicists called this blessing the ultraviolet catastrophe because that their laws didn’t apply was a disaster for them. 

The relevant law was that a physical wave’s energy increased as its frequency squared, so doubling its frequency should quadruple its energy. Heating a furnace to increase all its light frequencies should then make it lethal. Why it didn’t wasn’t explained until Planck proposed that atoms emit light energy in multiples of a basic amount, later called Planck’s constant, by the equation:

Light Energy = Plank’s constant x Frequency

That light energy varied linearly with frequency matched the observed result but no-one knew why. In theory, waves are continuous, so adding energy to high frequency light should just increase it, but heating a furnace didn’t affect all frequencies equally. Einstein then showed that light comes in packets called photons based on the photo-electric effect. Heating a furnace then didn’t produce as many high frequency photons because they required more energy, so the ultraviolet catastrophe was avoided.

It follows that energy isn’t continuous but comes in basic units of Planck’s constant and light comes in indivisible units called photons, but why remained a mystery. This model attributes both to the quantum network having a core process, so nothing can be simpler than a photon and Planck’s constant represents the basic network operation. Light then comes in indivisible packets because each photon is an indivisible Planck process, and Planck’s constant is the smallest energy transfer because it represents the basic transfer operation.

Energy in network terms is then the processing available per cycle at a point. If every photon is the same process distributed, short wavelength photons transfer more processing at each point and so have more energy, while long wavelength photons transfer less processing at each point, so have less energy. The energy of a photon then depends linearly on its wavelength, and hence its frequency, as Planck described. By this logic, the equation Planck assumed can be derived from processing principles (Note 1).

To summarize, one photon is one Planck process divided over its network wave length, so it must increase or decrease discretely. Adding a point distributes the process more, to make the energy transfer rate less, while reducing a point makes the energy transfer rate increase. The photon’s energy then increases linearly with frequency because distributing the same process more is a linear effect. 

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Note 1. Let one photon be a Planck process divided over the points of its wavelength, and the constant h represent that process as a quantum network transfer. Let energy E be the processing transfer rate at a point and W be the number of points in the photon wavelength. Every photon is then one Planck process divided between W points, so the processing transfer rate at a point E = h/W. If f is the number of network cycles each point takes to run a Planck process that it can complete in one cycle, then f = 1/W. The equation E = h.f then follows, where E, h, and f are defined in quantum units. Converting these units to per second terms then gives E = h.f, which is Planck’s equation. Plank’s constant then represents the transfer of one Planck process.

Processing systems need fundamental processes as particle systems need fundamental particles. The fundamental processes of a computer are called its instruction set, so if “add one” is fundamental, it adds a hundred by adding one a hundred times. As computing evolved to include databases and networks, the instruction set got bigger to give Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC). Then it was realized that fewer instructions run faster and give less to go wrong, so Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) is better. The ultimate RISC design is one process that does everything, and the quantum network instruction set seems to be just that, based on the process:

Set the next value in a circle

This process, to set values in a circle, is now proposed to underlie space and light. It is reliable because each cycle ends where it began, ready to run again. It is bipolar, so if it runs at a point, the positive and negative values cancel to give a null result that can be space. It can also be passed on, so a moving circle can give the sine wave of light. The same process can then represent space or light, depending on whether it runs at one point (space) or is distributed over many points (light).

In quantum theory, quantum waves spread at the speed of light then collapse to restart at a point when observed. This model (2.5.4) allows that because the server that generates processing waves can also restart them as needed. One quantum process can then create the entire electro-magnetic spectrum depending on how it is distributed.

Figure 3.11 shows one core process distributed over a wavelength of points, where distributing a process runs it slower, just as dividing a workforce makes each job take longer to finish. Short wavelength light is then that process distributed less, so it runs faster at each point, while long wavelength light is the same process distributed more, so it runs slower at each point. Light then, in all its forms, is one process distributed more or less to give high or low wave frequencies on a network.  

In Figure 3.11, one core process (1), is distributed (2) more or less between client points (3), to give electro-magnetic waves (4), that are passed on at the speed of light (5). The core process is a rotation that spreads as a sine wave that can have many wave lengths, where shorter wave lengths run each point  faster, and longer wave lengths run each point slower.

As the process spreads, new points begin the process as those at the rear are finishing. Each network cycle, new points begin as those behind finish, so the total server demand per photon stays the same. Every photon in the electro-magnetic spectrum, whether a radio wave or an X-ray, is then one process distributed more or less, and the same process is also the null process of space, so light is, in effect, space on the move. 

This fundamental process can be called a Planck process because it is the smallest activity of the quantum network, just as Planck energy is the smallest activity of our world.

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If light is a quantum wave, and quantum waves are processing waves, what is quantum processing? Whatever it is, it has to generate the entire electro-magnetic spectrum, from radio-waves to gamma rays, and the null process that represents empty space. 

QR3.3.1. The Fundamental Process

QR3.3.2. The Planck Process

QR3.3.3. Network Symmetry

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Einstein deduced that the speed of light is constant from how our world behaves, not from any cause, so why does light have a constant speed? If light is particles moving, why can’t we nudge them to go just a bit faster, at the speed of light plus one? According to current physics, our universe has a speed limit because:

“… the speed of light is a constant because it just is, and because light is not made of anything simpler.” (Laughlin, 2005), p15.

Yet “because it just is” has never been a good reason in science. Particles move according to their mass, so shouldn’t photons with no mass go at any speed? In contrast, the speed of a wave should depend on the medium that transmits it, but there is no ether so light has no medium. However light as a wave on a network will move at the rate of that network, so how fast is that?

A 5GHz computer network runs at 5,000,000,000 cycles per second, which seems fast but Planck time suggests that the quantum network cycles at an astonishing 1045 times a second! Planck time is the smallest possible time, and Planck length is the smallest possible distance, so dividing one by the other should give the speed of light, and indeed it does (Note 1). The speed of light then, like every wave, is limited by the speed of the medium that transmits it, which here is the quantum network.

The term speed of light is a misnomer, as it assumes light is a thing that sets its own pace but it isn’t. It is a wave, a disturbance spreading in a medium that defines its speed, and a wave of processing spreading on a network is the same, so light always travels at the same speed in space because the quantum network is the same everywhere. What we call the speed of light is then a property not of light but of how fast the medium of space passes on processing, so it should be called the speed of space.  

Why then does light slow down when it moves in water? Again, our particle bias assumes that it moves in the water, so its medium is water, and if it moves in glass, its medium is glass, but if it moves in space we call it a wave of nothing! This is inconsistent so in this model, light has the same medium in every case. If the medium of light in empty space is the quantum network, it is also the medium of light in water or glass. Light then doesn’t slow down because water is a denser medium, but because the quantum network is busy generating the water as well. It follows that light slows down in water for the same reason that a game slows down when your computer is busy.

Light moves at different speeds through different materials because they slow down the quantum network, but the network still processes photons in sequence, one after another, like cars in a queue. Each point handles the photon it has before accepting the next, so even if it runs slower, they still arrive in lock-step order. This maintains causality as if one photon could overtake another, we could see an object arrive before it left! Causality requires photons to stay in sequence and the quantum engine rigorously maintains this.

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Note 1: The speed of light c = L_P/T_P, where L_P is a Planck length of 1.616×10⁻³⁵meters and T_P is Planck time of 5.39 × 10⁻⁴⁴ of a second. This gives the speed of light as 299,792,458 meters per second (see here).

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A wave by definition vibrates in a medium, so what moves when light does? It is said that the electro-magnetic field does, but that movement isn’t physical, so physics just declares 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, their medium can be the same! Electro-magnetic 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 self-renews, it is a cosmic Ponzi scheme, so the perpetual-motion machine of medieval alchemists is the photon!

Light waves never fade but waves that move matter up and down (Figure 3.10) produce friction by the second law of thermodynamics, so they always fade, with no exceptions. Yet light that has traveled in space for billions of years still registers on our telescopes, so is it a frictionless wave? If so, it can’t arise from matter moving, but how can vibrating nothing (space) create something (light)?

If light is a wave that can travel through space, empty space must be its medium, so empty space isn’t empty. In this model, empty space is always actively generating a null result, so the:

“… vacuum state is actually full of energy…” (Davies & Brown, 1999), p140.

Instead of particles moving in nothing, light is now a wave on the surface of space that vibrates something not nothing, namely the quantum network. Instead of electrical and magnetic fields mutually causing each other, which is illogical, that 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 can always respond to any keystroke (Note 1). Physical waves always fade but quantum waves don’t, because they are sustained by a network that can also restart them if needed. 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 that sets values, just as a laptop runs a game by setting values. For example, in World of Warcraft it sets the values that cause the game monsters we see, but we don’t see that processing. Likewise, the quantum values that generate our world have no meaning to us but we see their effects. 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), but whatever we call them, what matters is that quantum processing causes physical events and this is why quantum theory works. 

Note 1. Processing must always run, so an “idle” computer still runs a null cycle, so it isn’t doing nothing.

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