Transverse waves vibrate at right angles to their movement, so if light vibrated in a physical direction, it couldn’t move that way. Light moves in every direction and space is isotropic (the same in every direction), so light can’t vibrate in space. Once space lets light move in three dimensions, there are no free directions for a transverse wave to vibrate into. Light is then a transverse wave that moves in space but doesn’t vibrate within it, yet complex numbers can describe it, so why is that?

Consider Abbot’s story of Flatlanders who lived on a two-dimensional surface that was all they knew (Abbott, 1884), so they could see a circle but had to imagine a sphere. Now suppose a point entity moved in their world that set values in a transverse circle at right angles to the surface of their space (Figure 3.8a). They couldn’t see that rotation but could explain it as a vibration in an imaginary plane just as we explain light with complex numbers. As the point moves, it would have a polarization plane in their space just light has in ours (Figure 3.8b). If they called this moving point a photon, it would be a sine wave with a frequency and an imaginary amplitude just as a photon is for us (Figure 3.8c). We then describe light in our space just as Flatlanders might describe a wave that vibrates outside their space, so are we in effect three-dimensional Flatlanders?

If our space is a surface, light could move on it as waves do on a lake but in three dimensions not two. Complex numbers then explain electro-magnetism because light really does vibrate outside space, so:

“In quantum mechanics there really are complex numbers, and the wave function really is a complex-valued function of space-time.” (Lederman & Hill, 2004), p346.

Complex numbers describe a rotation that occurs outside our space (Note 1) (Figure 3.9). We call this rotation imaginary because our space doesn’t allow it, but Flatlanders would say the same of a vibration in a third dimension that we know is possible. There is then no logical reason why our space can’t be a surface in a higher dimensional reality, so light can vibrate into another dimension as the equations say.

In this model, our space is a surface inside a four-dimensional quantum network, so light can vibrate transversely. It can’t leave that surface, just as water waves can’t leave the surface of a pond, so we can’t see anything outside our space. We are three-dimensional Flatlanders who call vibrations transverse to our space, like light, imaginary, but what vibrates when the electro-magnetic field does?

Note 1. Complex number theory describes a rotation into an imaginary plane. In normal multiplication, multiplying a number by two doubles it, e.g. 5 x 2 = 10. Multiplying by 4 adds it four times, e.g. 5 x 4 = 20. In complex multiplication, i is a 90° rotation into an imaginary plane, so times 2i is a 180° rotation that turns a complex number into its negative, e.g. 5 x 2i = -5. Times 4i is a 360° rotation that has no effect, so 5 x 4i = 5.

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Current physics describes light as the vibration of an electro-magnetic field that exists throughout space. When this field vibrates slowly, it is radio waves, faster vibrations are visible light, and very fast vibrations are x-rays or gamma rays (Figure 3.5). Visible light is the part of the electro-magnetic spectrum that vibrates about a million-billion times a second, gamma rays are a billion times faster, while radio waves vibrate just a few times a second. All these waves are then the same vibration at different frequencies, so the term light will from now on refer to any electromagnetic wave.

In optics, light moving on an axis is a ray that can polarize in many ways, but filters can produce a ray that is polarized only one way. Lasers can also produce a single pulse, which is one photon at one frequency polarized in one plane.

Such techniques can produce light rays that are out-of-phase, so the crests of one ray can cancel out the troughs of another. Each ray is then separately visible, but they combine to give darkness, as out-of-phase light rays cancel out just as out-of-phase water waves do. This light + light = darkness result confirms that light is a wave, because particles can’t do this. Note that flashlight beams never do this because they aren’t polarized.

Light is also a sine wave, which in mathematics maps to a moving circle (Figure 3.6), so a pointer turning in a circle like a clock hand produces a sine wave as it moves (Figure 3.7). Water waves are also sine waves, caused by forces acting at right angles to the water surface.

When a water wave arrives at a point on a pond surface, it pushes water molecules up until gravity pulls them back down, then the elasticity of the water pushes them back up, etc. The water molecules move up and down, so corks on a pool just bob up and down as a wave passes. What travels as a wave across a pond is the transverse up-down vibration not the water itself, and this vibration maps to a moving circle.

In theory, light should work the same way, but when an electro-magnetic field vibrates, nothing physical goes up or down in any spatial direction to provide a physical basis for light. Naming a cause doesn’t explain it, so the term electro-magnetic field is just a placeholder for a vibration that isn’t understood. It is then possible that our space is a surface that transmits light waves in three-dimensions just as a pond surface does in two.

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Quantum waves aren’t physical because according to the equations of physics they vibrate in a plane outside our space. Light waves also travel in empty space, but emptiness can’t vibrate, so physics has to call it a wave of nothing that vibrates nowhere. But if light is a processing wave spreading on a network surface, it can really be a transverse wave as the equations describe. Light then spreads on a quantum network that is the “… primary world-stuff” (Wilczek, 2008, p74), whose points are essentially the “atoms of space” (Bojowald, 2008).

3.2.1. Light is a Wave

3.2.2. We are Flatlanders

3.2.3. The Medium of Light

3.2.4. The Speed of Space

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Feynman once famously said:

“… all the mystery of quantum mechanics is contained in the double-slit experiment.” (Satinover, 2001), p127.

Quantum theory explains the double-slit experiment as follows:

A photon is a quantum wave that spreads in space by the equations of quantum theory. This wave goes through both slits to interfere with itself as it exits, but if observed immediately collapses to be a particle at a point, as if it had always been so. If we put detectors in the slits, it collapses to one or the other with equal probability. If we put a screen behind the slits, it goes through both, interferes with itself, then collapses to a point on the screen based on the prior interference.

This explanation works but doesn’t say what sort of wave goes through both slits, or why it collapses to a point when observed, hence Wheeler’s question: How come the quantum?

To understand how strange this is, suppose the first photon in a two-slit experiment hits the screen at a point to become the first dot of what will always turn into an interference pattern. Now suppose that in another experiment with a detector blocking the other slit, the first photon goes through the same slit to hit the screen at the same point, to be the first dot of what will never be an interference pattern. The difference between interference or not should be in the first physical events, but they are identical – a photon goes through the same slit to hit the same screen point.

The only difference is that the slit the second photon didn’t go through is blocked, but how can blocking a path a photon didn’t take stop the interference pattern? Equally, how can leaving open a slit the photon could have gone through but didn’t cause the interference? This implies that in our world, a counter-factual event that didn’t physically happen can change a physical outcome.

In a purely physical world, counter-factual effects are impossible, as is quantum theory’s unlikely tale of waves that collapse to a point when observed. Quantum theory is the most successful theory in the history of science, but why it works baffles physics by raising two key questions:

1. What are quantum waves? What exactly spreads through space as a wave? The current answer, that quantum waves don’t exist so it doesn’t matter, is unsatisfactory.

2. What is quantum collapse? How do quantum waves collapse to a point when viewed? The current answer, that they collapse because they do, is equally unsatisfactory.

Until it answers these questions, quantum theory is a recipe with no rationale, not a theory of reality. In the story of Pinocchio, a man wanted a son but couldn’t have one so he made a puppet instead, but it wasn’t a real boy. Likewise, physics today wants a real theory of sub-atomic events but can’t have one so it made quantum theory instead, but it isn’t a real theory, just a puppet of physics that is useful but unreal. But if it becomes a real theory, then the above questions can be answered.

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In the 1920’s, after centuries of dispute over whether light is a wave or particles, Bohr devised the compromise that holds today, that they are complementary views, so both are true, and nothing better has been found since:

“…nobody has found anything else which is consistent yet, so when you refer to the Copenhagen interpretation of the mechanics what you really mean is quantum mechanics.” (Davies & Brown, 1999), p71.

This don’t ask, don’t tell policy lets a photon be a wave when we don’t look, as long as it’s a particle when we do, so physics can use particle or wave equations as convenient. In no pond do rippling waves behave like particles, and on no pool-table do billiard-ball particles behave like waves, but Bohr managed to sell the big lie [Note 1] that light is a wavicle as Gell-Mann noted in his 1976 Nobel Prize speech:

“Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem (of the interpretation of quantum mechanics) had been solved fifty years ago.”

Bohr’s interpretation of quantum theory was that it can be true for equations but not in reality, so physics can use it to calculate results without believing it exists. Figure 3.4 shows the options available to interpret quantum theory. The first is physicalism, that only the physical world exists, so there are no quantum waves (Figure 3.4a). Physicists who use quantum waves that don’t exist to predict the future are then like shamans who use spirit messages that don’t exist to do the same.

Bohr avoided the criticism that physics is like shamanism by making the quantum world real in equations but not actually real. This double-think let the quantum world exist for the purposes of physics, so it in effect somehow co-exists with the physical world (Figure 3.4b). This quantum-physical dualism, like Descartes’s mind-body dualism before it, is then a mystical marriage of convenience between incompatible domains. 

In public, Bohr accepted quantum theory but in private, denied that the quantum world existed at all. He accepted its benefit to physics while denying what it meant, but that its events can exist for the equations of physics was an admission of failure not a theory success (Audretsch, 2004), p14.

In contrast, the quantum realism interpretation is that physical events are a subset of quantum events (Figure 3.4c), so classical mechanics is a subset of quantum mechanics. Instead of the quantum world existing to serve the physical world, it is the other way around, but what then is it?

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Note: A “big lie” is a statement so outrageous that people think it must be right or it wouldn’t be said.

Young’s double-slit experiment is a simple result discovered over two hundred years ago that still baffles physics today. Light shone through two slits gives an interference pattern on a screen (Figure 3.2). Only waves interfere like this, so light must be a wave, but why then do its rays hit at a point? Conversely, if light is made of particles, why do they interfere like waves?

To explain this puzzle, physicists used lasers to send one photon at a time through the slits. Each photon then gave a dot on the screen, as a particle would, but over time the dots formed the familiar interference pattern, whose most likely impact was behind the barrier between the slits! The effect was independent of time, so one photon shot through the slits each day still gave the same result. Since each photon doesn’t know where the last one hit, how they interfere with each other?

Was each photon going through both slits to interfere with itself? In an objective world, we could just observe whether a photon went through both slits, but our world doesn’t work like this. Detectors placed in both slits to see where the photon goes just fire half the time as expected, so one photon always goes by one slit or another, never through both. How then is interference possible?

It seemed that when we look at the slits, we just see a photon particle, but when we don’t look, they interfere. It is as if a skier set off, skied around both sides of a tree, but still arrived at the finish line as one skier (Figure 3.3).

In summary, the problem is:

1. If a photon is a wave, how can it hit the detector screen at a point not a smear?

2. If a photon is a particle, how can going through one slit give an interference pattern?

And this wave-particle duality doesn’t just apply to light, as electrons, atoms, and even molecules exhibit Young’s two-slit interference (M. Arndt, O. Nairz, J. Voss-Andreae, C. Keller, & Zeilinger, 1999), so they also act like waves.

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The question of whether light is a particle or a wave has a long history. In the seventeenth century, Huygens observed that light beams at right angles pass through each other but arrow-like particles would collide, so it must be a wave. He deduced that light is a wavefront spreading in all directions, with each point the origin of a new little wavelet. The wavelets behind the wavefront interfere, as the trough of one cancels the crest of another, so the result is a forward moving wavefront that acts like a ray of light (Figure 3.1a). Huygen’s Principle, that each point of the light wavefront is a new wavelet source, explained reflection, refraction, and diffraction and implied that light is a wave.

In contrast, Newton observed that light travels in straight lines rather than bending round corners as sound does when someone talks in the next room, so his optics described light as corpuscles that traveled in straight lines (Figure 3.1b). This model explained only reflection and refraction but it carried the day, so light was then seen as particles.

So it remained until two hundred years later, Maxwell used Faraday’s field idea to write down the equations of light as an electro-magnetic wave, based on a mechanical model of rotating vortexes. The equations worked and were accepted, so light was then assumed to be a wave.

Yet waves need a medium, so light would need an invisible ether to travel in space. The speed of light on earth should then vary relative to its direction, as the earth was spinning and moving around the sun, but the Michelson-Morley experiment showed that it didn’t, so light couldn’t be a wave because there was no physical ether. Then Einstein concluded from the photo-electric effect that light comes in particle-like packets called photons, so light was again made of particles!

The scientific answer to what light is has swung from Huygens’ waves, to Newton’s corpuscles, to Maxwell’s waves, to Einstein’s packets, with no clear winner, so physics finally gave up. It decided that light is wave and a particle, even though that seems impossible. Three centuries after Newton, we still don’t know whether light is a wave or a particle, and calling it a wave-particle essentially enshrines our ignorance. Science can explain light as a particle, or as a wave, but how it is both is inexplicable.

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In science, what light is should explain what it does but even after centuries of study, physics still can’t explain why light:

1. Doesn’t fade. All physical waves fade over time by friction but light doesn’t, as a photon from a distant star that has traveled for millions of years still produces a dot on a screen.

2. Has a constant speed. The speed of a wave depends on the medium it travels through, but light travels at a constant speed in empty space for no apparent reason.

3. Is like a wave and a particle. Waves aren’t particles nor are particles waves, but light is sometimes like a wave and sometimes like a particle, which doesn’t make sense.

4. Always takes the fastest path. A particle can’t know the fastest path to any destination in advance, but light always finds that path, somehow.

5. Defines its path when it arrives. A particle can’t pick the path it took to a destination when it arrives but light seems to do just that, which is very strange.

6. Can reveal an object it didn’t physically touch. In a purely physical world, it should be impossible to detect an object without touching it, but light can do exactly that.

7. Seems to vibrate outside space. Light waves vibrate as other waves do, but according to the equations that describe it, do so in a dimension outside our space, which is odd.

Current physics describes light as an electro-magnetic wave made of photon particles, but how can it be both? A water wave doesn’t arrive at a point like a particle, but a photon does. A particle doesn’t take many paths at once like a wave, but light seems to. Physical waves don’t act like particles and particles don’t act like waves, so surely science can decide if light is a particle or a wave?

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Long before science began, light was considered primal, as the Egyptian sun god Aten sustained all, and in the bible, light was created before the sun, moon, stars, or man. In physics today, light is made of the simplest of all particles, and it is all around us, but how it operates remains a mystery for as Einstein wrote not long before he died:

“All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question ‘What are light quanta?’ Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken.” (Walker, 2000), p89.

Even today, science still can’t answer the apparently simple question, what is light?

QR3.1.1 Light is a Mystery

QR3.1.2 Particle or Wave?

QR3.1.3 The Double-Slit Experiment

QR3.1.4 The Copenhagen Compromise

QR3.1.5 How Come The Quantum?

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Quantum Realism Part I. the observed Reality…

Chapter 3. The Light of Existence

Brian Whitworth, New Zealand

“There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

Douglas Adams, 1995.

In the beginning, there was light, but not as we know it today. In the last chapter, our universe began as one white-hot photon in one unit of space, but this first event instantly led to the chain-reaction that physics calls inflation. Inflation then created all the light that has ever existed in a million, billion, billion, billionth of a second, until the accompanying expansion of space diluted the light enough to stop it. The result was a small plasma ball of white-hot light and space that then expanded at light speed to form all the galaxies and stars we see today. In this view, light alone was the first existence, so what is it? Download Whole Chapter

QR3.1.   What is Light?

QR3.2.   Quantum Waves

QR3.3.   Quantum Processing

QR3.4.   Processing Spreads

QR3.5.   Processing Restarts

QR3.6.   How Light Travels

QR3.7.   Quantum Spin

QR3.8.   Physics Revisited

QR3.9.   Reality Bites

Summary Table

Discussion Questions

References

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