Uncategorized

Abbott, E. (1884). Flatland: A romance of many dimensions. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/201

Adams, D. (1995). The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Ballentine.

Aspect, A., Grangier, P., & Roger, G. (1982). Experimental Realization of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: A New Violation of Bell’s Inequalities. Physical Review Letters, 49(2), 91–94.

Audretsch, J. (2004). Entangled World: The fascination of quantum information and computation. Wiley.

Baggot, J. (2013). Farewell to Reality: How fairytale physics betrays the search for scientific truth. Constable.

Barbour, J. (1999). The End of Time: The next revolution in physics. Oxford University Press.

Barrow, J. D. (2007). New theories of everything. Oxford University Press.

Bekenstein, J. D. (2003). Information in the Holographic Universe. Scientific American, 289(2), 58–65.

Bojowald, M. (2008). Follow the Bouncing Universe. Scientific American, October, 28–33.

Bolles, E. B. (1999). Galileo’s Commandment: 2,500 years of great science writing. W. H. Freeman.

Cho, A. (2000). Physicists Unveil Schrodinger’s SQUID. Science, 287(31 March).

Cox, B., & Forshaw, J. (2011). The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen. Allen Lane.

Davies, P., & Brown, J. R. (1999). The Ghost in the Atom. Cambridge University Press.

D’Espagnat, B. (1979). The quantum theory and reality. Scientific American, 241(5), 158–182.

Deutsch, D. (1997). The Fabric of Reality. Allen lane.

Einstein, A., Podolsky, P., & Rosen, N. (1935). Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete? Phys. Rev., 47, 777–780.

Feynman, R. P., Leighton, R. B., & Sands, M. (1977). The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Addison-Wesley.

Greene, B. (2004). The Fabric of the Cosmos. Vintage Books.

Herbert, N. (1985). Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics. Anchor Books.

Hoffman, D. (2020). The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid The Truth From Our Eyes. Penguin Books.

Kwiat, P. G., Weinfurter, H., Herzog, T., Zeilinger, A., & Kasevich, M. A. (1995). Interaction-free Measurement. Phys. Rev. Lett., 74, 4763.

Laughlin, R. B. (2005). A Different Universe: Reinventing physics from the bottom down. Basic Books.

Lederman, L. M., & Hill, C. T. (2004). Symmetry and the beautiful universe. Prometheus Books.

682. Arndt, O. Nairz, J. Voss-Andreae, C. Keller, G. van der Z., & Zeilinger, A. (1999). Wave particle duality of C60 molecules. Nature, 401, 680–682.

Mermin, N. D. (2009). Whats bad about this habit? Physics Today, May.

Oerter, R. (2006). The Theory of Almost Everything. Plume, Penguin.

Penrose, R. (1994). Shadows of the Mind. Oxford University Press.

Salart, D., Baas, A., Branciard, C., Gisin, N., & Zbinden, H. (2008). Testing spooky action at a distance. Nature, 454, 861–864.

Satinover, J. (2001). The Quantum Brain. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Schiller, C. (2009). Motion Mountain: The Free Physics Textbook (http://www.motionmountain.net/index.html, Ed.).

Tegmark, M., & Wheeler, J. A. (2001). 100 Years of the Quantum. Scientific American, Feb, p68-75.

Walker, E. H. (2000). The Physics of Consciousness. Perseus Publishing.

Wheeler, J. A. (1983). Law without law. In J. A. Wheeler & W. H. Zurek (Eds.), Quantum Theory and Measurement (pp. 182–213). Princeton University Press.

Wilczek, F. (2008). The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether and the Unification of forces. Basic Books.

Wootters, W., & Zurek, W. (1982). A Single Quantum Cannot Be Cloned. Nature, 299, 802–803.

Zeh, H. D. (2004). The Wave Function: It or Bit? In J. D. Barrow, P. C. W. Davies, & J. Charles L. Harper (Eds.), Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity (p. http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0204088). Cambridge University Press.

Next

The following questions are addressed in this chapter. They are better discussed in a group to allow a variety of opinions to emerge. The relevant section link is given after each question:

1. Why is light still a mystery to science? (QR3.1.1)

2. Is light made of waves, particles, or both? (QR3.1.2)

3. In Young’s experiment, does a photon go through both slits or just one? Give reasons. (QR3.1.3)

4. What is the main issue that Bohr’s Copenhagen dualism faces? (QR3.1.4)

5. What is meant by a “Pinocchio” theory? Is quantum mechanics one in current physics? (QR3.1.5)

6. How do scientists know that light is a wave? (QR3.2.1)

7. What is meant by a three-dimensional “Flatland”? Could our world be so? (QR3.2.2)

8. According to current physics, is a photon a perpetual-motion machine? (QR3.2.3) 

9. Is the speed of light better described as the speed of space? (QR3.2.4)

10. What do X-rays, visible light, and radio waves have in common? (QR3.3.1)

11. Why does energy come in Planck units? Why does light come in photon units? (QR3.3.2)

12. Why does Planck’s constant also define the size of our space? (QR3.3.3)

13. If a quantum wave is a processing wave, how does it spread? (QR3.4.2)

14. According to quantum theory, does a photon have a quantum wave or is it one? (QR3.4.3)

15. Will hidden physical causes ever explain why photons hit a screen at random points? (QR3.5.1)

16. How can a quantum wave of any size collapse instantly to a point? (QR3.5.2)

17. Why does the power of a photon wave predict its probability of existing at a point? (QR3.5.3)

18. Can a particle always find the shortest path to any destination? (QR3.6.2)

19. How can a photon of light always find the shortest path to any destination? (QR3.6.3)

20. Why is the measured direction of quantum spin always random? (QR3.7.1)

21. Why doesn’t a filter that blocks horizontal polarized light block vertical polarized light? (QR3.7.2)

22. Why doesn’t a filter that stops most of a polarized light ray weaken those that pass it? (QR3.7.3)

23. How can quantum states superpose in physically incompatible ways? (QR3.8.1)

24. In quantum theory, observation creates physical reality, so is life just a dream? (QR3.8.2)

25. Do delayed choice experiments prove that the future can affect the past? (QR3.8.3)

26. Can light detect an object on a path it didn’t travel? Is this physically possible? (QR3.8.4)

27. How do entangled photons affect each other faster than light? (QR3.8.5)

28. Is our world distinguishable from a hologram? Why does a virtual reality require this? (QR3.8.6)

29. If there no evidence for the multiverse, why do many physicists accept it? (QR3.9.1)

30. Why is the observer necessary, even in physics? (QR3.9.2)

31. What is the quantum paradox? How has physics handled it? (QR3.9.3)

32. Does quantum theory deny realism, that there is a real world out there? (QR3.9.4)

33. In what way does evolution oppose science? (QR3.9.5)

34. Does quantum theory support Plato’s allegory? What then are his shadows on the wall? (QR3.9.6)

Next

Plato’s cave was presented as an allegory over two thousand years ago (Figure 3.27). It describes humanity as like cave dwellers, bound with chains so they can’t see the entrance through which sunlight streams. They can only see their shadows on the cave wall, and so take them as real and act accordingly.

Today, we see ourselves in the sunlight of science standing before the cave of quantum paradox, but according to Plato, it is the other way around. We are sitting in the cave of materialism, with our backs to the quantum sunlight, calling the shadows it casts on the wall of space real. If quantum theory is correct, then so was Plato, as both describe our reality as but a shadow of what causes it. And the chains that bind were made by evolution, so we have identified with this shadow-show for millions of years.  

Why then don’t we turn from the shadows to see their cause? Einstein tried but the quantum brilliance baffled him, so he decided that nothing was there. Bohr tried too, but his impenetrable Copenhagen suit only let him see more reflected shadows, so he called it imaginary. Physics then quarantined the source behind a wall of equations that only they could access. This let them use it without looking at it, as the first rule of the quantum club is that nothing quantum exists. There is no quantum light say those who use it to predict our shadow future, but making its own best theory about nothing made physics stagnate.

Quantum theory makes no more sense now than it did a hundred years ago, and the next century will be the same if we follow the same path, so it’s time to face quantum reality. The physicist Wheeler, who sought the truth more than most, called it a great smoky dragon (Wheeler, 1983), because it was both powerful and mythical. But if quantum theory is true, the quantum dragon is real and the world we see is its smoke (Figure 3.28). Quantum reality then isn’t a shadow world beyond physical reality, but the real world whose shadows are the physical world we see.

Table 3.3 compares quantum realism and physical realism for light. But if our universe began as light, how did matter arise? The next chapter addresses this question by challenging the assumption that pure light can never collide.

Next

Quantum theory describes another reality of which Bohr said we must not speak, but science is about asking questions so we wonder what the universe is like when it isn’t being observed:

“Little has been said about the character of the unmeasured state. Since most of reality most of the time dwells in this unmeasured condition …the lack of such a description leaves the majority of the universe … shrouded in mystery.” (Herbert, 1985), p194.

If quantum waves spread at light speed until a physical event restarts them to spread again, physical events are few and far between amidst a constant press of quantum events. By what logic then are these momentary restarts the reality of our universe? Surely reality is what is there most of the time? And if quantum theory is right, most of the time most of our universe exists in an unmeasured state.

If physical events only occur now and then, the rest of the time, physical things aren’t there at all. We see substances that constantly exist but if our world like a hologram that presents when we look, even matter has no substance. Quantum theory implies that the material world is, as Buddhists say, empty of self-existence, because it exists in appearance but not as a permanent thing.

We of course don’t see our world that way, but what if quantum events occur too fast for the gaps to be seen, like a movie but faster. The Dirac equation predicts that electrons have an ultra-fast tremble, called Zitterbewegung, that occurs 10¹⁵ times a second, so a quantum foam could flash the events we see faster than can be discerned. Obviously, reality carries on regardless of what we see, but if it is quantum waves, we can’t expect them to act at a rate convenient to our observations.

Yet even our physical world is an ultra-fast hologram, it still reflects the reality around us, so it is real in that sense. This means that when you kick a stone, it still hurts, because that is the lawful result of that act. We don’t need to know how quantum waves work to act in our world, only what we are given when we look, which is their irreversible result. Evolution may then have primed our species to see what we need to survive rather than the truth:

“You may want the truth, but you don’t need the truth. Perceiving truth would drive our species extinct. You need simple icons that show you how to act to stay alive. Perception is not a window on objective reality. It is an interface that hides objective reality behind a veil of helpful icons.” (Hoffman, 2020).

According to Hoffman’s interface theory, perceptions are like desktop icons, useful but not true. For example, if you see a blue email icon on a screen, that doesn’t mean the program that made it is blue. Likewise, seeing an object on the screen of space doesn’t mean an object made it. In fact the opposite is expected, as email icons serve to hide users from program details they don’t need to know about. It follows that the objects we see are also helpful icons that hide quantum reality details from us.  

Yet if science is the search for truth and quantum theory is true, does evolution incline us against it? Does the evolution that made us now oppose science? It probably does, but hasn’t it always been so? For a long time humanity didn’t know that bacteria cause disease, because we couldn’t see them, until science proved they did. And later, when atoms were proposed, Mach argued that they couldn’t exist because they were unseen, but today we accept them, again thanks to science.

But now, when quantum theory says that what we can’t see causes what we can, again we turn away, saying “Enough! It cannot be.” Even physicists struggle with the idea that the unmanifest causes the manifest. Do the certainties we see come from an unseen set of probabilities? Is the answer to life, the universe, and everything, just a set numbers? This, it seems, is a step too far, even for physics. After two millennia of scientific struggle, do we now abandon what science tells us? Can’t our brains handle the truth? Yet there remains hope because long ago, some of us believed the unbelievable.

Next

Materialism assumes that everything is made of matter so it leads to conclusions like:

“Observers have to be made of matter…Our description of nature is thus severely biased: we describe it from the standpoint of matter.” (Schiller, 2009), p834.

If matter is all around us, the observer must also be made of matter, even though as far as we know, simple matter doesn’t experience physical events. Yet we still describe everything in terms of matter, even space and time, which are probably human constructs (Chapter 2), leading to:

“… the dogma that the concept of reality must be confined to objects in space and time…” (Zeh, 2004), p18.

But quantum theory now challenges the dogma of materialism that was built into the foundations of physics. The main experiment that did that was Bell’s experiment which, according to D’Espagnat, tested the following axioms of current physics (D’Espagnat, 1979):

1. Reality. That “there is some physical reality whose existence is independent of human observers.” (D’Espagnat, 1979), p158.

2. Locality. That no influence of any kind can propagate faster than the speed of light.

3. Induction. That logical induction is a valid mode of reasoning.

The result showed that one or more of the above axioms must be wrong. If physical reality and induction are true, then locality must be wrong. If locality and induction are true, then reality isn’t physical. If physical reality and locality are true, then induction must be false. To this day, physics hasn’t been able to explain this result, which is based on quantum theory:

“According to quantum theory, quantum correlations violating Bell’s inequalities merely happen, somehow from outside space-time, in the sense that there is no story in space-time that can describe their occurrence:” (Salart et al., 2008), p1.

Bell’s experiment challenged the axioms of physics and there was no answer, so it’s time to go beyond materialism. If the quantum world described by quantum theory is real, then the first axiom must be changed by removing the word “physical”, so it becomes:

1. Reality: That there is a reality whose existence is independent of human observers. 

This allows quantum reality to exist independent of human observers, so there is still a real world but it isn’t the one we see. For example, consider the following statement:

“If one adopts a realistic view of science, then one holds that there is a true and unique structure to the physical universe which scientists discover rather than invent.” (Barrow, 2007), p124.

To adapt this statement to the new axiom, we need only remove the word physical, so it becomes: If one adopts a realistic view of science, then one holds that there is a true and unique structure to the universe which scientists discover rather than invent.

This simple change, based on quantum theory, lets reality exist without contradicting Bell’s result, as it challenges physical reality not quantum reality. The universe still has a true and unique structure that scientists can discover rather than invent, but it is quantum not physical. This only requires that all physical laws follow from quantum laws, as the evidence suggests they do. 

The second axiom must also be changed, but now by adding the world physical, so it becomes.

2. Locality: That no physical influence of any kind can propagate faster than the speed of light.

If locality applies only to physical influences, then Bell’s result no longer contradicts it, as quantum collapse is a server-client effect not a physical influence. Einstein’s law, that no influence is faster than light, apples to physical effects but not to quantum ones, so they can occur faster than light.

These changes mean that reality and locality still apply, but the first refers to quantum reality, and the second is limited to physical influences. The third axiom, of logical induction, then remains intact, and with it, the methods of science.

This then is quantum realism, that quantum reality exists just as quantum theory describes, so the quantum paradox disappears because quantum causes are now real. There is then no particle-wave duality, only quantum waves that take every path then pick one on arrival, so delayed choice experiments no longer imply reverse causality. Physical events are primal choices not physical effects, so randomness is real. Going beyond materialism reveals a universe based on choices not mechanics.

Changing the foundations of physics won’t end it but the current stagnation will. It just means new rules that make the equations physicists use every day real, not imaginary. Materialism was the mother of physics but every child leaves home one day, so it’s time to explore the unmeasured reality.

Next

The measurement problem in physics is that while Schrödinger’s equation predicts how a quantum wave evolves, nothing predicts the physical event produced when it is measured. The wave collapses randomly, so the problem is how do many quantum states instantly become one physical state? This problem was raised early last century, and no progress has been made on the matter since:

“The history of the quantum measurement paradox is fascinating. There is still no general agreement on the matter even after eighty years of heated debate.” (Laughlin, 2005), p49.

Essentially, we understand how quantum waves spread but not how they collapse, and but for this problem could accept that they are real, as after all:

“… why not simply accept the reality of the wave function? (Zeh, 2004), p8.

This didn’t happen because the measurement problem means that quantum theory:

“… paints a picture of the world that is less objectively real than we usually believe it to be.” (Walker, 2000), p72.

In other words, quantum theory makes no sense, so it can’t be real. Quantum collapse is part of quantum theory, so if quantum waves are real, it is too. If we accept that part of quantum theory is real, then we must accept that all of it is, including the jump of quantum collapse:

“… if we are to take y [the quantum field] as providing a picture of reality, then we must take these jumps as physically real occurrences too…” (Penrose, 1994), p331.

Schrödinger tried to explain quantum theory but failed, as did all who came after him, because its waves superpose in physically impossible ways, entangle to ignore the speed of light limit, and instantly collapse to a point when observed, but:

“How can something real disappear instantaneously?” (Barbour, 1999), p200.

When Pauli and Born defined the quantum field as the probability that a physical event will occur, quantum theory inevitably became about what wasn’t physical, so:

“For the first time in physics, we have an equation that allows us to describe the behavior of objects in the universe with astounding accuracy, but for which one of the mathematical objects of the theory, the quantum field y, apparently does not correspond to any known physical quantity.” (Oerter, 2006), p89.

The measurement problem, that quantum waves act in impossible ways, then produces the paradox that unreal quantum events cause real physical events, but as one physicist notes:

“Can something that affects real events … itself be unreal?” (Zeh, 2004), p4.

If the quantum states that predict physical states are unreal because they are impossible, then as Penrose says:

“How, indeed, can real objects be constituted from unreal components?” (Penrose, 1994), p313.

The quantum paradox is that if quantum unreality causes physical reality, then what doesn’t exist is causing what does, which is illogical. If one thing causes another, how can the effect be real if its cause isn’t? And if only one is real, surely it is the cause not the effect?

For over a century, physics has faced this paradox like a deer in headlights, blinded by the brilliance of quantum theory but stuck in the orthodox stance of materialism. No-one has resolved it in the past hundred years, so if nothing changes, the next hundred years will be the same! 

Yet paradoxes vanish when false assumptions are exposed. For example, Figure 3.26 seems to have two square and three round prongs, based on where you look, which is impossible. If you look at the top, there are two square prongs, but if you look at the bottom, there are three round ones! Both seem to be true, producing the paradox that the same object has two and three prongs! The answer isn’t to invent some sort of square-round duality, but to recognize that the same line can’t bound both a square and a round prong at the same time. When this false assumption is exposed, the paradox ceases to exist, and it becomes just an illusion.

Likewise, the quantum paradox, that unreal quantum events cause real physical events, arises from the false assumption that physical things constantly exist, so they can’t be generated. The answer to this paradox isn’t to institutionalize its illogic, by inventing impossible wave-particle dualisms, but to expose the fallacy behind it, of materialism. If matter doesn’t constantly exist, the quantum paradox disappears, because quantum waves can now create physical events as quantum theory says. What makes this possible is that processing waves on a network can spread, superpose, collapse, and restart just as described. This then is quantum realism, that all physical events are generated by quantum events beyond the grasp of materialism.

Next

Quantum theory works but is it good science? After all, quantum waves aren’t observable:

“The full quantum wave function of an electron itself is not directly observable…” (Lederman & Hill, 2004), p240.

Nature’s firewall separates us from quantum waves because any attempt to observe them just gives a point physical event, so is a theory about what can’t be seen scientific? The doctrine that only “…what impinges on us directly is real” (Mermin, 2009), p9, suggests that it isn’t, because:

1. Science is about reality, not imaginary things like fairies.

2. The only reality is what we can physically observe.

3. Thus, a theory about what can’t be observed is imaginary, and so it isn’t scientific.

By this logic, quantum theory isn’t scientific because it describes what can’t be seen, yet it is the most successful theory in the history of physics! The flaw in the argument is the second statement, that only what we see is real, which is materialism. It is true that what we see is our only reality, but that it is the only reality has never been proven. If only what we see is real, and science is about reality, then quantum theory isn’t scientific, but that we see all reality is just an assumption. The fact is that scientific theories aren’t restricted to what we can observe, and never have been.

For example, the theory of gravity is scientific but we don’t observe gravity, just its effects. Science is actually based on empiricism, as proposed by Lock and Hume. Empiricism is the idea that knowledge comes from experience not beliefs, so theory should be based on practice. Scientific theories then only have to predict physical events, not be about them, so quantum theory is scientific because it does just that.

The myth that science must only describe physical things is logical positivism, a philosophical movement based on materialism that began in the 1920s. It proposes that only what we observe exists, so science should be about nothing else. Rather than talking about thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that we can’t see, why not focus on what we can? Purging science of non-observables seemed good until it was realized that it made most mathematics unscientific, as the unknown x of algebra, the infinitesimal dx of calculus, and even the triangle of geometry, aren’t physical things. Logical positivism is materialism masquerading as an axiom of science when it isn’t, and never was.

This is why positivism didn’t work for any discipline that tried it. Behaviorism tried to reduce all psychology to behavior, until Chomsky showed that it couldn’t explain the productivity of language. Applying positivism to computing would deny human-computer interaction (HCI) concepts like polite computing, and socio-technical concepts like group agreement. Today, physics is the last bastion of positivism, but even there it is failing because it can’t do away with the concept of the observer.

According to logical positivism, physical reality exists objectively, whether it is observed or not, so it should be described that way. The observer is then a subjective concept that has no place in science because it can’t be seen. Unfortunately, the two main theories of modern physics both assume that the observer exists, as quantum theory needs an observer to trigger physical events, and relativity needs an observer frame of reference. If the attempt to ban the observer doesn’t work in physics, how can it work in other disciplines? Instead of an objective universe that we can impartially describe, modern physics now suggests that we live in a participative universe, where every physical event is an observer-observed interaction, so to ignore the observer is to ignore half of reality.

Quantum theory is scientific because science doesn’t have to describe physical things. After all, a ray of light can’t be seen from the side, but that doesn’t make it not exist from the side. Reality carries on whether we see it or not, and according to quantum theory, even causes what we see. If so, every observation is a quantum request for a physical view, just as every click in a game is a view request. The long-sought boundary between the classical and quantum worlds is then the click of observation, but this produces what physics calls the measurement problem.

Next

According to quantum theory, radioactive atoms emit photons randomly, and every physical event is the same because quantum waves predict the possibilities but what actually happens is a choice. This idea, that every physical event is a choice, contradicts Newton’s idea of a mechanical universe driven by physical laws, where each event causes the next.

Randomness was seen to undermine the laws of physics, so in 1957 Everett proposed the many-worlds interpretation, that every quantum possibility actually happens in another physical world, so if any photon is measured say spin up, another universe spawns in which it is spin down. Nothing is now random, because everything quantum theory says could happen actually does happen, somewhere, in what is now called the multiverse. Many-worlds theory then replaces Newton’s clockwork universe, which quantum theory destroyed a century ago, with a clockwork multiverse.

Everett’s idea was initially seen as absurd, as indeed it is, but physicists now prefer it 3:1 over the Copenhagen view (Tegmark & Wheeler, 2001, p6) because it denies randomness. Letting any photon create a new universe is preferred to randomness but with an estimated 4×1084 photons in our universe, it isn’t hard to see that the:

“… universe of universes would be piling up at rates that transcend all concepts of infinitude.” (Walker, 2000), p107.

For a scientist, this doesn’t just offend Occam’s razor, it outrages it. Do you believe that in the time it took to read this sentence, a billion, billion universes arose from the light that hit your eyes? Current physics does, to avoid randomness, but why? This theory isn’t testable, nor does it predict any new facts, yet it is accepted. To be clear, no facts at all support the multiverse, so its only purpose seems to be to support the idea that physical events cause everything.

An attempt to rescue this zombie theory (Note 1) by letting a finite number of universes repartition after each choice (Deutsch, 1997) just recovers the original problem, as what chooses the worlds to drop? Does nature, like a doting parent with a camera, record everything that our universe might do?

Swapping a mechanical universe for a mechanical multiverse makes physicists feel good but fairy tales aren’t good science (Baggot, 2013) while quantum theory, which is good science, is called a fairy tale!

Next

Note 1. Zombie theories make no new predictions and can’t be falsified. Like zombies, they have no progeny nor can they be killed by falsification, as they are already scientifically “dead”.

Science seems new but it began thousands of years ago, when Aristotle concluded that our reality consists of:

“… a multitude of single things (substances), each of them characterized by intrinsic properties …” (Audretsch, 2004, p274).

This view checks our boxes because it is simple, intuitive, and fruitful. It is simple because it allows particles of the matter we know to cause everything. It is intuitive because it allows a ray of light to strike a screen at one point. And it was fruitful because the study of matter allowed science to grow.

Materialism has served science well as a world view, but when reality bites, it has no answer. The harsh truth of modern physics is that particles can’t explain the facts observed, as light illustrates. In Young’s experiment, one particle can’t go through two slits to interfere with itself, but a photon can. A particle can’t detect an object without touching it, but light can. A particle can’t find the fastest path to any destination, but light can. A particle can’t alter its past path when the target changes but light can. Particles can’t interact faster than light, but entangled photons can. Reality won’t defer to us because it never backs down so the question is, how many reality bites can the myth of matter sustain? 

Then along came quantum theory with all the answers based on waves not particles. It was perfect but for one fact – it contradicted materialism. It described the physically impossible, so physics disowned it, calling it unreal, but nature accepted it, because it worked. Given a choice, between the evidence and what we believe, which one will prevail?

3.9.1. A Fairy Tale for Physicists

3.9.2. Is Quantum Theory Science?

3.9.3. The Measurement Problem

3.9.4. Beyond Materialism

3.9.5. The Unmeasured Reality

3.9.6. Plato’s Cave

Next