Anti-matter time doesn’t work the same way that matter time does (Amjor,Jurkiewicz, & Loll, 2008). Strange as it seems, the Feynman diagram of an electron colliding with an anti-electron shows the latter going backwards in our time (Figure 4.8). Yet both the electron and anti-electron are entering the collision not leaving it.
Does this reversal of time reverse causality? Minkowski interpreted Einstein’s theory to let objects move in space-time dimensions. This allowed a block theory of time, where every event that ever was or will be can be paged like a book (Barbour,1999). If time is a dimension, an entity going backwards in time reverses causality, but the anti-electron in Figure 4.8 isn’t doing that. It is entering the collision just as the electron is, so there is no causal reversal. This approach then doesn’t explain how anti-matter time works.
Einstein’s conclusion that every object in the universe has its own clock means there is no space-time canvas upon which objects exist. A processing model explains this by saying that every point in the quantum network runs at its own rate, so time can vary. Time then ticks by for matter as clockwise cycles complete but for anti-matter, time ticks by as anti-clockwise cycles complete. Anti-matter then exists in anti-time as matter exists in time because its processing runs in reverse. It follows that to a matter entity, anti-matter runs time in reverse, but to the anti-matter entity, it is matter time that is running in reverse. If matter exists by processing and anti-matter exists by anti-processing, in both cases time passes as processing cycles complete.
An interesting corollary is that time can only run in reverse if it is virtual. It follows that Feynman diagrams need two axes for time, one for matter and one for anti-matter. Time has two flavors based on the processing direction, so not only does every entity in our universe have its own clock, it also has its own clock direction.
But if time is virtual, can we reverse an action, as the Back button of an Internet browser does? The browser back button can undo your last act, but it can’t undo interactions like online registrations. This would require both parties to undo, and with six degrees of separation, rolling back six events for one person could affect the entire web! Rolling back your time would require the entire network to roll-back!
Neither time nor anti-time can be reversed because a physical event is a reboot that can’t be undone. Anti-matter exists in anti-time between physical events, but it can no more undo its physical events than matter can. Time then can’t be reversed, rewound, or fast-forwarded, whether by matter or anti-matter, so there is no time travel.
Matter and anti-matter are equivalent opposites so while our atoms have negative electrons, anti-matter atoms have positive electrons. The laws of physics would be the same in an anti-matter universe but charge would be different. Why then don’t we see anti-matter around us? Did the big bang produce:
1) No anti-matter, for some unknown reason?
2) Matter and anti-matter equally, but the anti-matter in our universe is hidden?
3) Matter and anti-matter equally, but matter somehow overcame the anti-matter?
Physics dismisses the first option by its equations, and the second because no anti-matter meteors, planets, or stars have been seen, so it assumes the big bang made equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, then the former somehow overcame the latter to give our universe. That no evidence supports this view is called a mystery of physics:
“The lack of anti-matter is a deep mystery that cannot be explained using the Standard Model.” (Oerter,2006), p101.
Figure 4.7. Rotation in and on space
What then does a processing model conclude? A clockwise rotation in a space is anti-clockwise from the other side (Figure 4.7a), but a first-up rotation on a surface stays that way however it is viewed (Figure 4.7b). If our universe began with one photon, then it had to first vibrate up or down on the surface of space, and either way, all its offspring would follow suit.
It follows that our universe became matter not anti-matter because the first photon chose to vibrate first up not down. Light then evolved into matter only, so the anti-matter the standard model tries to explain away never was. The first event of our universe made it matter and from then on, anti-matter was a path not taken. Nothing in our universe will ever explain why it is made of matter not anti-matter because that was decided when it began.
A processing model explains why charge exists as well as mass, and why neutrinos exist as well as electrons, but what about anti-matter? Dirac’s equations predicted anti-matter before it was found, but why do the building blocks of our universe have evil twins of the same mass but opposite charge? The standard model just added an anti-matter column to fit the facts but that matter has an inverse is baffling to particle physics. If matter is a substance, what is an anti-substance, and why do the two annihilate each other?
Again, processing can explain what particles can’t. If matter arises from processing one way, that same processing can run in reverse. The basic quantum network operation was assumed to be a clockwise circle of values, but an anti-clockwise circle would have worked just as well. Essentially, processing allows the possibility of anti-processing, and this is proposed to be anti-matter.
For light, a clockwise process means photons go first up then down on the surface of space, but an anti-clockwise process means they go first down then up. This allows two types of photons, namely first-up and first-down, and they aren’t equivalent. The model so far assumes a universe of first-up photons but it didn’t have to be so.
What then would a universe based on anti-clockwise processing look like? For an electron, the result would have the same net processing or mass, but an opposite remainder charge, hence an anti-electron has the same mass as an electron but a positive charge. This then not only predicts anti-electrons, but also explains why they annihilate any electrons they meet. Anti-matter then is to matter as neutrinos are to electrons, a necessary alternative possibility.
Figure 4.6. Lepton photon structures
Figure 4.6 summarizes the basic leptons of the standard model by their photon structure as follows:
1. Matter. First-up extreme photons collide to give either an:
i. Electron (Figure 4.6a) First-up heads collide to give mass and a negative charge remainder.
ii. Neutrino (Figure 4.6b)First-up heads mostly cancel first-down tails to give a tiny mass but no charge remainder.
2. Anti-matter. First-down extreme photons collide to give either an:
i. Anti-electron (Figure 4.6c)First-down heads collide to give mass and a positive charge remainder.
ii. Anti-neutrino (Figure 4.6d) First-down heads mostly cancel first-down tails to give a tiny mass but no charge remainder.
All the basic leptons of the standard model then have the structure of a one dimensional collision.
Processing explains matter and charge but what about the electron’s little brother, the neutrino? The world we see needs electrons, as without them there is no chemistry, and so no life, but it also has vast numbers of a little nothing that until recently, we didn’t even know existed. The sun floods the earth with them every day but they mostly pass through it, like ghosts, so why did nature make so many of them?
The standard model expects neutrinos to have no mass at all because they have no charge, but their tiny mass was how we detected them in the first place. When asked why neutrinos have no charge but a tiny mass, the current answer is that they just do, but we knew that already.
Figure 4.5. A neutrino channel overload
However a processing model offers another possibility. If an electron arises when photons collide in-phase, they can also collide out-of-phase. In Figure 4.3, when extreme photons collide out of phase, the result is that two points overload and one successfully reboots. Again, all the channels of one axis overload, but while a head-head collision gives an electron bump, a head-tail collision gives the little nothing we call a neutrino. The neutrino is then the other option of an electron-type collision, rather than a useless building block.
Why then isn’t the neutrino’s mass exactly zero, as its charge is? If the quantum network was perfectly synchronized, it would be, but as concluded earlier, the flow of light doesn’t synchronize it perfectly (2.4.4). The photons in Figure 4.5 are thus slightly out of synch, so the heads and tails don’t exactly cancel, but the remainder always does, giving a tiny mass but no charge. Over many channels, the small asynchronies vary, so neutrinos vary in mass but always have zero charge. If an electron is a bump on space, a neutrino is a smudge, whose tiny mass comes from the imperfect synchrony of the quantum network.
Table 4.2 below describes leptons in terms of what photons meet and their effect on a channel axis bandwidth. Electrons and neutrinos then overload a point of space in different ways to produce:
1. Total processing. The total processing fills the axis bandwidth, so the entity produced is stable.
2. Net processing. The net processing after opposite displacements cancel defines its mass.
3. Remainder. The net remainder after opposite displacements cancel defines its charge.
Note that a tail-tail meet isn’t possible because it implies a prior head-head meet.
In summary, extreme light can overload a point of space to give a standing wave. In the initial plasma of pure light, these collisions happened occasionally to give electrons or neutrinos, depending on the phase. Electrons and neutrinos are then brother leptons because both overload the channels of one axis, though one is something and the other almost nothing. Electrons and neutrinos were then the first matter based on light colliding in one dimension, so they are one-dimensional matter.
In current physics, charge is what causes electrical effects, and electrical effects are those caused by charge, a circular definition that doesn’t tell us much. Hence, in the standard model, charge is considered to be fundamental, just as mass is, so no attempt is made to explain it.
Figure 4.3. An electron channel reboot
In contrast, if everything is based on processing, charge must be the same. Recall that in Figure 4.3, two extreme photons meet at a point, and mass is the net processing that repeats. If so, there will be negative processing that never runs, as shown by the dotted lines. The quantum network must keep its processing books in order, so let the charge of an electron be its constant processing deficit. If the net processing that repeats is mass, and the processing left over is charge, then charge is a necessary byproduct of mass.
This definition of charge fits its properties, as a processing remainder can:
1. Be positive or negative, as charge is.
2. Cancel its opposite, as opposite charges do.
3. Have a constant value, as an electron’s charge is.
If mass is the net processing that runs before the network overloads, and charge is the remainder that doesn’t get to run, an electron’s mass and charge come from the operation that creates it. This suggests that in general, mass and charge are related in a way the standard model doesn’t predict.
In the standard model, an electron particle exists at a point so it occupies no space, but how can it then have mass? The mass of a particle should come from its substance, but a particle with no size can’t have a substance. The idea that electron particles have mass but no size seems seriously flawed. But if an electron is processing in some form, as light was in the last chapter, it can exist at a network point that, like a screen pixel, occupies a space but can’t be divided.
Our networks also transfer data by communication channels. Each channel handles different data, just as different TV channels handle different shows. If the quantum network is the same, when light passes through a point in space, each photon is handled by one channel. A point then has a channel for each photon polarization, so there are many channels per point. And as our channels are mostly duplex (they work in both directions), we expect the same here. Finally, each channel has a finite bandwidth, which in this model is the quantum process defined earlier (3.3.1).
Based on the logic of processing, each channel of a point of space can:
1. Accept one photon with one polarization coming from one direction.
2. And at the same time accept a photon with the same polarization from the opposite direction.
3. Up to a bandwidth of one quantum process per cycle.
One channel is then represented by a line through a point, plus a plane cutting it to represent the polarization it accepts. Hence, if two photons with the same polarization enter a point from opposite directions, one channel can handle both, up to its bandwidth of one quantum process. Since each photon is a quantum process spread over many points, light rays in general don’t collide, as is observed.
Yet this model suggests an exception. One photon is one quantum process spread over its wavelength, and the channel bandwidth is also a quantum process, so dilute photons don’t overload it. But if very high frequency photons that divide over only two points meet, they will overload the channel. Each photon presents half a quantum process, so two of them meeting head-on in a channel will overload its one process bandwidth. Note that this wavelength of two Planck lengths is the shortest possible, as a photon at one point is empty space. An extreme photon distributed over two network points runs half a quantum process at each, so two of them meeting will overload the channel bandwidth of one quantum process. Instead passing through each other, extreme photons that meet head on will collide in a physical event!
Figure 4.2. Extreme light rays meet head-on on an axis
Yet photons spin on their movement axis, so this event will just restart them in other channels, but what if every channel overloads? If rays of light with extreme photons in every polarization plane meet head-on at a point, every channel on one axis will overload at the same time (Figure 4.2). There are no free channels for the photons to carry on, so they will restart at that point. This result seems unlikely but extreme light was common in the first plasma, so by the law of all action, that what is possible will happen (3.6.3), it had to occur.
Figure 4.3. An electron channel overload
Figure 4.3 shows the result for one channel, with every channel the same. Now let a photon head be its leading half, and its tail be its following half. Two heads, each of half a quantum process, overload the channel bandwidth of one, so both photons restart next cycle. Two new photons then set off in opposite directions from the same point, but they again collide in another overload that restarts them again. This recurring overload repeats every cycle because every channel is the same. The network that once hosted only waves now has a constant processing bump, which is an electron.
The result is stable, because any photon arriving on that axis finds all the channels taken, while a photon arriving at right angles passes through it using different channels. An electron is then a repeating overload, like a stuck record that keeps repeating the same song.
Figure 4.4. A standing wave on water
Is this repetition possible? In experiments, electro-magnetic waves can repeatedly interact to form static states (Audretch,2004, p23), as frequent observations maintain the quantum state if the time delay is short (Itao,Heizen, Bollinger, & Wineand, 1990). Feynman’s PhD partitioned the electron wave equation into opposing advanced and retarded waves, but he didn’t pursue it. Other theories that let waves oppose include Wheeler–Feynman’s absorber theory, where retarded and advanced waves give rise to charge (Wheeler & Feynman, 1945), Cramer’s transaction theory also based on retarded and advanced waves (Cramer, 1986), and Wolff‘s suggestion that electrons are in and out spherical waves (Wolff,M.,2001). If electro-magnetic waves form standing waves as other waves do (Figure 4.4), an electron could be a standing wave created when extreme photons collide.
This conclusion contradicts the standard model in several ways. Instead of a particle of matter with no size, which makes no sense, an electron now occupies a quantum network point that has a size, just as a screen pixel does. Instead of having no structure, an electron is now a one-dimensional collision. Instead of matter being an inert substance, it is now light pulsing constantly in a never-ending loop. Matter is now frozen light, a standing wave of light that seems static but being light, is always active. Yet as this result only applies to one axis, an electron is just one-dimensional matter.
When a computer hangs in an infinite loop that a restart can’t fix, it is a glitch, but for the quantum network, the matter glitch was an evolution not an error.
If our universe began as a cauldron of massless high energy light, how did matter arise? Electrons and neutrinos are the smallest matter entities, so they are the most likely candidates for the first matter.
The standard model of physics took over a century to build and summarizes:
“… in a remarkably compact form, almost everything we know about the fundamental laws of physics.” (Wilczek, 2008), p164.
It is currently considered by physicists to be:
“…truly the crowning scientific accomplishment of the twentieth century.” (Oerter, 2006), p75.
In the standard model, everything consists of particles that are either made of matter (Fermions) or carry a force (Bosons) (Table 4.1). For example, electrons and quarks are fermions made of matter, so they collide with each other, but photons of light are bosons that don’t collide with each other. It should follow that electrons and quarks cause all the mass of an atom, but as will be seen, they don’t.
Matter particles then divide into leptons, like theelectron and neutrino, and quarks that are up or down, where both also have unstable higher generations for some unknown reason. Up and down quarks combine into protons and neutrons that with electrons form the atoms of ordinary matter. Apart from neutrinos that whizz around for no reason, and anti-matter that wasn’t expected, it all seems fairly tidy, but as Woit notes:
“By 1973, physicists had in place what was to become a fantastically successful theory … that was soon to acquire the name of the ‘standard model’. Since that time, the overwhelming triumph of the standard model has been matched by a similarly overwhelming failure to find any way to make further progress on fundamental questions.” (Woit, 2007), p1.
For example, some key questions that the standard model doesn’t answer include:
Why don’t protons decay as neutrons do?
Why is our universe made of matter not anti-matter?
Why do neutrinos have a tiny but variable mass?
Why do leptons and quarks have three particle generations then no more?
Why do electrons half spin?
Why don’t particle masses add like charges do?
Why do neutrinos always have left-handed spin?
Why do quarks have one-third charges?
Why does the force binding quarks increase as they move apart?
What is the dark matter and dark energy that constitute most of our universe?
It isn’t just that these questions are unanswered, but that over fifty years has seen no progress at all in answering them, as the great hopes of string theory and super-symmetry led nowhere, so the next fifty years will be the same unless there is a change. The model now proposed, based on processing not particles, explains not just what the standard model does, but also what it doesn’t, as listed above.
In current physics, matter is fundamental, so it should break down into particles, and it seemed to. Electrons and quarks are examples, and even photons that have no mass or charge are said to be particles. This method, of breaking apart matter to find out what it is made of, began with the atom.
Initially, atoms were thought to be indivisible, like little billiard balls, but when Lord Rutherford fired alpha particles at a piece of gold foil, they mostly went straight through and only a few bounced back. It turned out that 99.9999…% of the mass of the atom is in its nucleus, and the rest is just a cloud of tiny electrons whizzing about.
Bohr then suggested that the atom is like a solar system, but held together by electrical forces not gravity. Yet electrons routinely pass right through each other which planets don’t, and different electrons can occupy the same orbit which planets can’t, and planet orbits are elliptical but electron orbits are perfectly spherical, so the atom isn’t like a tiny solar system! The modern view, called the standard model, summarizes what physicists know about atoms.
The previous chapters explained space, time, and light in network terms as follows:
1. Space. Space is a null process running at a network point, so it is something that outputs nothing in our terms.
2. Time. Time is processing cycles completed, so if the network slows down, time can dilate as Einstein says.
3. Light. Light is the process of space spread over many network points to give the entire electro-magnetic spectrum as it is passed on every cycle, so nothing goes faster than it.
Figure 4.1. If a photon is space stretched out, what is matter?
Space then is null processing not nothing, time is the completion of processing cycles not a dimension, and light is space spread out being passed on by a network, but can the same model explain matter? (Figure 4.1) If it can’t, the results this reverse engineering are mere curiosities.
In the last chapter, light was the first existence so the big bang exploded light not matter, but how then did matter arise? This chapter proposes that light alone created matter, but what then is matter?
