Changing the world, one idea at a time
According to special relativity, being inside a plane going at a constant speed is like being stationary because time and space change to keep it so. General relativity extends special relativity to explain gravity by changes in space and time as well.
QR5.4.1. Free-fall is Acceleration
QR5.4.2. The Gravity Gradient
QR5.4.3. Unstoppable
QR5.4.4. Matter Changes Space
QR5.4.5. Matter Changes Time
QR5.4.6. Black Holes
Electrons always move because they are only one-dimensional matter, so photons can fill their other dimensions to cause movement. The matter-photon hybrid is held together because quantum entanglement unifies entities that restart at the same point. Electrons then always move, as light does, but are light-like on only two dimensions as one dimension is matter-like, so are slower.
In contrast, when quarks combine into atoms, the distribution is symmetric, so they don’t naturally move as electrons do. Yet quarks still have free channels for photons to occupy, as their higher generations show, so atoms can acquire extra photons to move as electrons do. Light hitting a solar sail then moves it because its matter absorbs photons that bias the quantum field around it in their direction. The sail matter is already trembling in all directions, so adding photons that increase that tremble one way make it move.
The alternative that photon particles push the sail struggles because photons have no mass, so energy is said to cause momentum, but relativistic mass is a troublesome concept in physics. The simpler view is that the sail moves when its quantum field changes, not because particles push it.
Adding photons also explains why mass increases as objects go faster, as more competition for channels produces more interference, which increases the processing that in this model is mass. The increase isn’t linear because interference doesn’t increase linearly with load, as networks like the Internet show. Mass then increases as movement increases, as relativity states.
This also explains inertia, the tendency of matter to keep on moving, because when matter acquires photons that make it move, they stay with it, so it carries on moving the same way.
That matter can acquire photons explains how it moves but not how gravity works, so how does a large mass like the earth move the matter around it, even at great distances?
According to quantum theory, a point of matter doesn’t sit at a fixed point but trembles about its quantum distribution. Schrödinger deduced this quantum fuzziness from the Dirac equation and he called it zitterbewegung. Point matter is then indeed at a point but not always the same one, like a dot constantly redrawn by a painter whose hand trembles, so it appears as a fuzzy patch.
Light advances every quantum cycle, at about 1043 times a second, so it travels about 300 million meters in a second. If matter moved like this, rockets could go to the moon in about a second, but it can’t. Matter restarts as often as light moves but can’t teleport every time, or it would have no life, so matter trembles slower than light moves. Yet atoms still constantly jiggle about at a fantastic rate, so why don’t they move as light does? The answer lies in their quantum distribution. If it is symmetric, or equal in every direction, these tiny movements cancel out, so quantum trembling itself doesn’t make matter move.
But that matter constantly trembles means it don’t need a push to make it move, as it is already moving, just equally in every direction. It follows that if the quantum processing around matter becomes asymmetric, it will tremble one way more often, to move in our time. Matter will then move if the quantum field around it is stronger in one direction, so what could cause that?
An objective space has only one type of movement, of the object, but virtual spaces allow two. In Figure 5.7, we can move the car by shifting its pixels one way, or leave the car center-screen and scroll the background behind it. Click on the Figure link to see a video of a car moving, then note that the car stays still as its background moves. To distinguish these two methods, let moving an image across a screen be absolute movement, and moving the background behind a stationary image be relative movement.
If our space is virtual, then movement can be absolute or relative, so Einstein’s claim that light moves absolutely but matter doesn’t could make sense, but how can matter do this?
If matter moves by teleport, is that then absolute or relative? A teleport restarts an entity at a new point, and the simplest way to do this on a network is to reset its connections. Processing can’t just instantly relocate to any other point, but it can instantly reset its connections to those of another point, so quantum tunneling is a connection reset rather than a relocation.
The space around a quantum entity is its distribution, each point of which is also a source with its own distribution. Matter then teleports by changing its distribution, or space, but actually stays at the same point. It in effect moves by changing the space around it, as special relativity says.
The speed of light then ignores the speed of matter because matter is only changing its own space when it moves. Light always leaves a moving rocket at the speed of light because in absolute terms, the rocket isn’t moving at all! Light from the sun also passes rockets going to and from the sun at the same speed because their position on the quantum network isn’t actually changing (Figure 5.6). Relativity is then valid because light moves absolutely but matter moves relatively.
The idea that we move by changing our space but stay in the same absolute place is strange, but what other theory explains special relativity? Particles can’t explain it, as they move absolutely, and Einstein’s equations give no hint as to how dead matter alters space and time. Common sense tells us that we move, but relativity tells us that our space moves but we don’t.
For example, imagine sitting in a moving car and watching trees and houses scroll by. It feels as if the world is moving around you, and special relativity agrees that space is moving but you aren’t. A ball thrown up in a speeding car acts as if the car is still because it is, and light always leaves it at the speed of light however fast it goes for the same reason.
Why then does special relativity dilate time when matter moves? For matter, time ticks by as physical events but if it teleports, the cycle ends with a connection reset not a life event. For example, a muon in space lives for only a millionth of a second until a neutrino hit decays it, but if it moves faster, it lives longer because a teleport before a neutrino hit dodges the bullet. A quantum cycle can be a life event or a teleport, so matter can live or move but not both at once. A teleport movement loses a life event, so time dilates as predicted. Equally, when matter teleports one way, any measure made that way is less, so space contracts in that direction as special relativity says.
Relativity gives every bit of matter its own frame of reference, as if it had its own clock and map, because its distribution maps the space around it and every life cycle completed is a tick of its clock. Moving by teleport changes both, to dilate time and contract space, but what decides the direction in which it moves?
Light has a constant speed in this model because the quantum network passes it on every cycle. Every point of a light wave is then a new wave source as Huygens proposed, so it moves forward because its wave-front advances but its backward spread cancels out (3.1.2). It is also a processing wave that can restart at any point where it overloads the network, in a physical event.
Light then moves constantly and occasionally restarts, but if matter is a standing wave that is always restarting, it shouldn’t move at all. We can imagine light as like a boat with one engine that moves it forward, while matter is like a boat with two engines that oppose to keep it in one place. Yet both have active engines that spread ripples, so matter has a quantum distribution like light.
Matter as a standing wave shouldn’t move, yet it can go where light can’t. Light from a lamp in a box can’t escape but an electron in an impenetrable Gaussian field can suddenly appear outside it, like a marble in a sealed bottle popping up outside it. Physics calls this quantum tunneling, when an electron just appears at a point without taking a path there, in what to us is a teleport.
How is this possible? Particles can’t tunnel but quantum theory lets the electron collapse and restart at any point in its distribution, just as photon does when it hits a screen. This collapse occurs instantly and ignores any obstacles, so if an electron’s distribution extends beyond the Gaussian field, it can just arrive there. Note that light in a box can’t do this because its wave front reaches the walls as its distribution does, so it always teleports back into the box. Quantum collapse then explains quantum tunneling as the electron restarting at a point in its distribution.
To sum up, light is a wave that moves by point-to-point transfer and sometimes teleports, but matter is a standing wave that only moves by teleport. Quantum tunneling then isn’t just how matter sometimes moves, but how it always does. Matter can only move by a quantum collapse teleport, but light can do the same, so the same quantum rules apply to both. But if light always moves and matter doesn’t, why does light still leave a speeding rocket at the speed of light? The answer lies in what Einstein didn’t explain, which is how matter changes space and time.
Light as photon particles that move by themselves alone could just go faster and faster, but it doesn’t. Current physics agrees that light has a fixed speed in space but can’t say why, so it is just given. However light as a processing wave spreading on a network can only go as fast as it is passed on, so the speed of light in space is 299,792,458 meters per second, no more and no less, because that is how fast space refreshes. The speed of light is then actually the speed of space (3.2.4).
Likewise, matter particles moving by themselves should be able to go at any speed, but special relativity requires them go slower than light, and common sense can’t say why. It also makes light from a speeding rocket still leave it at the speed of light, but why light ignores the relative movement of matter is just as obscure. The key question then is how does matter move?
QR5.3.1. Matter Teleports
QR5.3.2. Space Moves
QR5.3.3. Matter Trembles
QR5.3.4. Photons Cause Movement
Light goes at the fantastic speed of 670 million miles per hour, which is to the moon and back in less than a second, so can we achieve this speed? What if a rocket going at half the speed of light shot a bullet forward at half the speed of light? Unfortunately, doing this changes time and space, so the bullet only goes at four-fifths the speed of light.
What if we gradually accelerate a rocket up to the speed of light? Nature again intervenes by increasing the rocket mass until at near the speed of light its near infinite mass needs a near infinite force to move it, so this doesn’t work either. In theory, in a rocket going 5mph slower than the speed of light, one could throw a ball at 5mph per hour to reach the speed of light but in practice, we can’t produce the force needed to throw the ball. And if the rocket had headlights, one might expect light to leave it at almost twice the speed of light, but again nature plays with space and time to keep the speed of light the same.
This seems to deny the conservation of mass and the thermodynamic law that energy in a closed system can’t be lost, but Einstein noted that energy and mass convert by E=mc2, so nothing is really lost. And if mass equates to energy, both could be aspects of something else.
Relativity contradicts all our intuitions about movement. For example, if two rockets left the earth at half the speed of light, one to the sun and one to Pluto (Figure 5.6), relativity requires light from the sun to pass both rockets at the same speed! But how can the same photon pass rockets going to the sun and one away from it at the same speed? This makes no sense in classical terms.
The equations work but, like those of quantum theory, deny common sense. How can space which is the measure of movement, itself move? How can time which is the measure of change, itself change? Einstein deduced that space and time had to change for our world to be as it is, but didn’t say why. Perhaps he expected physics to explain it later, but a century on, we are no wiser.
In this model, light sets the speed limit of our universe because if the network of space passes it on every cycle, nothing can go faster, but the same model also portrays matter as a stationary standing wave, so it raises the question how does matter move at all?
Special relativity makes time slow down for matter objects as they move faster to keep the speed of light constant. Einstein didn’t explain why, but the reason given here is that moving faster increases the load on the quantum network. Our game of life then slows down at high speed for the same reason that a game screen slows down when there is lot of movement in a big battle (2.3.1).
His example of an astronaut who returns after years of high-speed space travel to find that his twin on earth is an old man then could happen. Experiments confirm that a muon traveling at 99.5% of the speed of light, which should travel 300 meters in its millionth of a second life, actually travels 3,000m, so speed extended its life tenfold. Relativity lets a rocket accelerating at one g go to our nearest galaxy and back in 60 years, but it would return to an earth that is four million years older (Harrison, 1986, p157). For the rocket crew, time would pass as usual, but as thousands of years pass on earth for each of their years, they are actually in slow motion.
Relativity implies that time stops at the speed of light, so a matter clock sitting on a photon wouldn’t tick at all. Light from the Andromeda galaxy takes 2.5 million of our years to arrive on earth but according to relativity, no time at all passes for the light itself. It also starts and ends its journey at the same location by length contraction! Needless to say, this makes no sense, as how can light move at all if its time stops? It can’t, so matter time doesn’t apply to light.
Time passes for matter when physical life events occur, but light can travel for millions of years without a physical event, so its time doesn’t pass that way. For light, time ticks by as the network passes it on, but for matter, time only passes as life events occur. The definitions are different, so time for light is absolute, based on quantum cycles, but time for matter is based on life events which, as will be seen, don’t occur when it moves. Light then is the ultimate messenger because it never stops for itself, to exist in our time, but constantly moves forward in absolute time, at the maximum speed that our universe allows.
Why is the speed of light constant instead of say, the speed of lead? What makes light the gold standard of movement? One reason is its role in causality. Imagine a rocket going to a planet at nearly light speed and then returning to earth. If the rocket’s speed altered the speed of light, a message sent on the way to the planet could arrive after one sent coming back. Hence, if the rocket exploded after rounding the planet, one might first see the blast then get a crew message that all is well, like getting a cheery email from a person after attending their funeral. In our world, causality is always maintained because the speed of light is always constant.
In theory, a rocket that left earth faster than light could go back in time to return before it left. As Buckley points out, given faster than light travel, relativity, and causality, a universe can support two but not all three at once. Going faster than light would breach the causality of events we observe, but it can’t happen because light, the messenger of causality, doesn’t allow it.
Does light then move differently from matter? If matter and light moved the same way, then light would need a push to go faster again after it slowed down in water say, but needless to say, it doesn’t. Light speeds up when going from water to a vacuum with no push needed.
In general, it takes effort to move matter but it takes effort to slow light down. A brick thrown at 10mph from a car going at 100mph leaves at about 110mph, but light leaves a rocket going at half the speed of light at exactly the speed of light! How does light, and only light, do this?
To simplify the problem, Einstein reduced it to why the speed of light is the same for two observers. He imagined a train, with a light on the floor that shines up to a mirror on the ceiling, then reflects back (Figure 5.4). A train passenger sees the light go straight up and down, and when the train moves nothing changes, but an observer on a platform watching the train go by sees it travel a longer path. If both observers have the same time and space, the speed of light will be different, but in our world it isn’t. Einstein concluded that space and time had to change to get the same speed of light.
Lorentz saw his transformations as mathematical curiosities but Einstein saw that they made Poincare’s relativity work, so for the universe to be as Poincare described, space and time had to change as Lorentz described. If space and time didn’t change to make physics invariant (Note 1), the speed of light would vary with every observer!
The implications of his conclusion are strange indeed. For example, imagine a rocket flying past a space station in orbit (Figure 5.5). It seems impossible that people on the rocket and on the space station both see light moving at the same speed, but they do! If they didn’t, our physics wouldn’t work on Mars.
One could ask who is really moving, the rocket or the space station, but it doesn’t matter. If the rocket moves, its space and time contract and dilate, and if the space station moves, the same applies. Regardless of how the rocket and station move relative to each other, distance and time change to keep the speed of light the same for both.
This defies common sense but experiments have verified that time and space really do change as matter moves faster or slower. It seems weird, but as Einstein said, this is why our universe isn’t weird. The speed of light is invariant because time and space change to make it so.
Note 1. Einstein preferred the term invariance for his theory but relativity stuck.