Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is that one can’t know both the exact position and momentum of a quantum entity at the same time. Physics calls these facts complementary, as they are separately knowable but jointly unknowable. This isn’t expected of a particle but quantum theory insists that measuring either property denies all knowledge of the other entirely.
To understand this, consider that every measurement transfers information:
“… a measuring instrument is nothing else but a special system whose state contains information about the “object of measurement” after interacting with it:” (Audretsch, 2004), p212.
Figure 3.25. Waves interacting
Now if every measurement is physical event, triggered when quantum waves overload a point, a measurement is one wave gaining information from another. Figure 3.25 shows a simple case of two waves interacting over two points of space. They can then combine to overload a point in two ways:
a. If they arein phase, one of the points can overload to give a position exactly, but no length information is provided.
b. If they are out of phase, both points overload to give an exact wavelength, but no position information is provided.
It follows that a known wave interacting with an unknown one can reveal a position or its wavelength, but not both, with no repeats. If the result gives a position, there is no wavelength data and if it gives a wavelength, there is no position data. In both cases, the observed wave has given all the information it can to the interaction, so one wave observing another can give position or wavelength, but not both. Since length is needed to define momentum, this is equivalent to the uncertainty principle.
The quantum uncertainty principle follows from the nature of wave interactions, based on De Broglie’s equation (Note 1). In this model, Planck’s constant represents a core network process that no information transfer can be less than, hence the change in position plus momentum can’t be less than Planck’s constant (Note 2). The uncertainty principle then just reflects how processing waves with a core process interact.
Our eyes see depth because light from different distances arrives slightly out of phase. Photos only store light intensity, so they don’t show depth, but holograms can show depth by storing the phase differences that encode it. A hologram is made by splitting laser light and letting the half that shines on the object interfere with the other half, to give a pattern (Figure 3.24). Light later shone on that pattern recreates the original object as a hologram.
The holographic principle is that we observe our universe like a hologram, or more precisely:
“Everything physically knowable about a volume of space can be encoded on a surface surrounding it” (Bekenstein, 2003).
This principle, widely accepted in physics, is that everything we observe about our world can be encoded on a flat surface, just like a hologram. The information in a space seems to depend on its volume, but if more and more memory chips are packed into a space, to increase its information, the end result is a black hole whose entropy depends on its surface area, not its volume.
Entropy, in physics, measures system disorder and directly relates to information. Black holes have more entropy than anything else, for a given volume, so the information of any physical object depends on its two-dimensional surface, not its volume. It follows that the holographic principle is maintained by the behavior of black holes (Bekenstein, 2003).
It is therefore interesting that if our world is a virtual reality, the same result applies. Every virtual event has to be observed from some direction, so the act of observing uses up one of the dimensions of space, which leaves only two dimensions to transfer the observation information. It follows that the information transferred to a point in a three-dimensional virtual world can always be painted on the surface of a sphere around it, because that is how it is delivered. That our physical world is a virtual reality then requires the holographic principle, and conversely, that the holographic principle applies to our world supports the idea that it is virtual.
The holographic principle doesn’t imply that our universe two-dimensional. It states that our world presents in two dimensions, not that it operates as such, so space still has three degrees of freedom. In our world, every observation comes from some direction, leaving only two dimensions to deliver theinformation across. The holographic principle implies that our world is virtual, not that it is two dimensional. It describes how physical events are observed, not how our space works.
Equally to imagine that our world is like a hologram is misleading. This is no Star Trek hologram that we can enter and leave at will, because our bodies are its images. If we left this hologram, or if it ever switched off, our bodies would disappear, along with everything else physical. The only way then to recover it would be to start it again from scratch, which last happened over fourteen billion years ago.
Quantum entanglement is another quantum concept with no physical equivalent. It lets quantum entities merge into one system, so any change instantly affects all of them, at any distance. When particles aggregate into systems, distance matters, but entanglement ignores distance entirely, as even photons that are light years apart can be entangled.
For example, when a Cesium atom emits two photons in opposite directions, they entangle into one system with net zero spin. Both photons still spin up or down randomly, but if one is measured to be spin up, the other instantly becomes spin down. Experiments show it is always so, but if each photon’s spin is random, how does the other instantly know to be the opposite, at any distance?
Einstein called this spooky action at a distance, because it implied a faster-than-light effect, so he suggested an experiment to disprove it (Einstein, Podolsky, & Rosen, 1935). When the test was made, based on Bell’s theorem, it supported entanglement, even for photons too far apart to communicate at the speed of light (Aspect, Grangier, & Roger, 1982). This was one of the most careful experiments ever done, as befits the ultimate test of quantum theory, and it found that entangled photons do adjust faster than the speed of light, despite Einstein’s objection!
How then can an event at one location affect another at any distance? According to particle physics, it can’t, but the evidence is that it does. If two photons heading opposite ways are distinct particles that spin randomly, why can’t both spin up, or both spin down? Quantum theory insists that the initial spin is conserved, but gives no clue as to how. Nature could conserve spin by making one photon spin up and the other down from the start, but apparently this is too much trouble. Instead, it lets both photons spin either way, until one is observed, then instantly adjusts the other to be the opposite, no matter where they are in the universe. Entangled states are now common in physics, but they have no physical explanation (Salart, Baas, Branciard, Gisin, & Zbinden, 2008).
Figure 3.23. Entanglement as merged processing
Particles can’t entangle as quantum theory describes, but processes can. We see two photon particles leaving the Cesium atom (Figure 3.23a) but what if they aren’t? When a Cesium atom restarts two photons at a point physical event, their processing can merge, or entangle. The merged photon process then just spreads, as processing does. Instead of each photon going its own way, both in effect spread both ways. Just as one photon can take many paths and let a later event decide the one it took, two entangled photons can go both ways and let a later physical event decide which went which way.
In network terms, the photon servers simply share the client work, so the wave front going left is run by two servers, as is the one going right (Figure 3.23b). The entangled photons look and act like photons, but each is in effect half spin-up and half spin-down.
Why then is the initial spin conserved? When a physical event restarts one photon, the merger ends, as one server restart leaves the other to run the other photon with the opposite spin. Which server restarts is random, as it depends on server access, but the result is always two photons with opposite spin. Spin is always conserved because the processing before and after a restart is always identical (Figure 3.23c).
Entanglement is then non-local for the same reason quantum collapse is, that client-server effects ignore the screen transfer rate we call the speed of light. The speed of a point moving across a screen depends on the screen refresh rate, but a CPU doesn’t have to move to a pixel to change it, it just acts directly. Likewise, photon servers ignore how far apart entangled photons are when they act on the screen of our space.
How then do entangled photons adjust spin instantly, faster than the speed of light? If both photon servers share the work of both wave fronts, they are already in place to handle any physical event, so nothing has to go anywhere to maintain the total spin. When either server restarts, the other just carries on running the other wavefront, so entanglement doesn’t contradict the speed of light limit.
Entanglement also underlies super-conductivity, where many electrons entangle, so every electron is run by all their servers. Electricity then flows with no resistance because, in effect, nothing is moving in a superconductor metal. Bose-Einstein condensates let any number of quantum entities merge in this way. Chapter 6 explores the implications of this unique quantum feature for consciousness.
Using quantum theory, physics has discovered how to detect an object without physically touching it, which in a purely physical world should be impossible. The amazing device that does this is called a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (Figure 3.22).
Figure 3.22. The Mach-Zehnder interferometer
This device works as follows. First, it splits light into two paths that go to the two detectors, where the mirrors make the paths cross. The result is that each detector fires half the time, as expected. Then a second light splitter is added where the paths cross to split the light again. To recap, half the light shining on the first splitter goes down path 1, and half goes down path 2, then a second splittersplits the light again, half to each detector, so there are four paths to the two detectors. Light going down path 1 goes to both detectors, as does light going down path 2, so how do they respond?
The result is that detector 1 still fires but detector 2 never does! There is no physical explanation for this, but quantum theory explains it, based on quantum waves, as follows:
As photon waves evolve down the paths, each mirror or splitter turn delays its phase by half. Both paths to detector 1 have two turns, so they add because they are in phase. In contrast, path 1 to detector 2 has three turns while path 2 has two, so they cancel out because they are out of phase. Detector 2 then never fires because the waves from the two paths to it always cancel.
This setup then allows a very unusual result. If a light sensitive object is put on path 2, the previously silent detector 2 sometimes fires, even when the object didn’t detect any light. This never happens if path 2 is clear, so this proves there is an object on path 2, yet no light went that way. The results (Kwiat et al, 1995) are unequivocal:
1. With two clear paths, only detector 1 fires.
2. If an object blocks path 2, detector 2 sometimes fires, even when no light touched the object.
Quantum theory then explains what materialism can’t (Audretsch, 2004), p29, as follows:
Light waves evolve down both paths, so they hit the path 2 object half the time. The other half of the time they go down path 1, but if path 2 is blocked, the waves to detector 2 no longer cancel out, so it fires sometimes, even when the path 2 object registers no light. Detector 2 then only fires if there is an obstacle on path 2.
To illustrate how strange this is, suppose a light sensitive bomb blocks path 2 but the experimenter doesn’t know this. If he is lucky, sending one photon down the system will trigger detector 2, proving the bomb is there, yet it didn’t go off. This isn’t a good bomb detection technique, as half the time it sets the bomb off, but it proves that it is possible to detect a bomb without touching it!
It follows that in our world, light can detect a physical object with no physical contact, but how can light detect a bomb on a path it didn’t take? Table 3.2 shows the four paths that quantum waves can take with their hit probability. As shown, half the time the bomb goes off, or detector 1 can fire, but also detector 2 can fire without triggering the bomb. The latter shows the bomb is there because it blocked the quantum wave that normally prevents detector 2 from firing.
Non-physical detection proves that quantum waves exist, because matter can’t do this, so why prefer the myth of particles to the evidence of waves? Science should be driven by evidence, not tradition.
That photons travel about a foot per nanosecond allows a delayed choice two-slit experiment. Two detection options are used, either the usual screen, or telescopes that focus on one slit or the other (Figure 3.21). The trick is that the choice between them is made after the photon passes the slits, when the screen is either quickly removed or not. If the screen is used, there is interference, so the photon had to pass though both slits, but if the telescopes are used, only one fires, so the photon just took one path. The inevitable conclusion is that a detector turned on after the photon passes the slits decides the path it took before that:
“It’s as if a consistent and definite history becomes manifest only after the future to which it leads has been settled.” (Greene, 2004), p189.
If the physical path a photon takes can change after it happens, then the future can change the past! The distances involved are irrelevant, so a photon could travel from a distant star for a million years, then decide, when it hits a telescope on earth,if it physically came via galaxy A or B. As Wheeler says:
“To the extent that it {a photon} forms part of what we call reality… we have to say that we ourselves have an undeniable part in shaping what we have always called the past.” (Davies & Brown, 1999), p67.
The problem is that if the future can affect the past, then all of physics is in doubt. A processing model avoids this by letting a photon take every path and pick one when it arrives. In computing, leaving choices until the last possible moment is called just-in-time management, as it lets supermarkets restock based on current point-of-sale data rather than historical estimates.
In Figure 3.21, the photon is immune to delayed events thanks to just-in-time management. It goes through both slits as usual, and if a screen is there gives interference, but if not, just carries on until it hits a telescope, which restarts it with a path that went through one slit. If the screen is there, we conclude the photon went through both slits, but if the telescopes are there, we conclude it went through one slit. Yet swapping the screen in and out after the photon passes the slits doesn’t matter at all, because the physical event that defines the path occurs on arrival.
If light is made of particles, delayed choice experiments imply backwards causality, but if it is a processing wave, the causality that physics relies upon remains intact.
Schrödinger found superposition so odd that he illustrated its absurdity by a thought experiment. He imagined his cat in a box with a device that would releaser fatal poison gas if it detected a photon of light, next to a radioactive source that randomly emitted photons. The box is closed, so no-one knows when the gas is released, but according to quantum theory, the source and device are a quantum system that superposes the photon being detected and not, until it is observed. As the box is also a quantum system, that the poison is released and not also superposes, so the cat is in an alive-dead superposition until Schrödinger opens the box! But how can a cat be alive and dead? Or if cats can’t be alive and dead, how can a photon exist and not exist? Or if a photon can do this but a cat can’t, when does the superposition stop?
Schrödinger’s example showed that what happens at the micro-scale makes no sense at the macro-scale. The idea that Schrödinger’s cat superposes being both alive and dead is ludicrous, but this conclusion assumes that only a human observation can collapse a superposition. But quantum theory doesn’t say that. It says that an observation is necessary, but not that it has to be human. It follows that if quantum theory is true, every physical event is an observation, not just those that involve us.
A processing model supports this, as any network overload that causes a physical event collapses the quantum wave along with any superpositions. This means that every physical event is an observation by something. It seems strange to say that everything observes, but the logic of quantum theory is, as usual, impeccable. If only humans could observe, then according to quantum theory, we would be needed to cause physical events, which can’t be. If it were so, the initial universe superposition couldn’t collapse until we evolved, but it did. That we are necessary for physical history to begin isn’t sensible. The alternative is that everything observes, not just our eyes or instruments, so quantum waves have been collapsing into physical events since the beginning of time.
For Schrödinger’s cat, this means the photon superposition collapses when the detector observes it, so it releases the poison regardless of what Schrödinger does. Before opening the box, Schrödinger doesn’t know if the cat is alive or dead, but the cat does, or did! Quantum superposition is stopped by any observation, not just ours, so there is no alive-dead cat.
This approach also clarifies the concern that quantum theory implies that observation creates events, as in a dream, which contradicts realism. If observation formally causes physical events, as quantum theory says, is our world a dream? If every physical event is a mutual observation, as it seems to be, then we aren’t the only ones causing physical events. In a dream, the observer alone causes the dream, but our world isn’t only caused by us, so it isn’t a dream. We aren’t creating the universe alone, everything is, so the photon we observe is also observing us. That every observation creates a physical event implies a virtual world, not a dream world.
Schrödinger’s alive-dead cat, intended to illustrate the absurdity of quantum theory, instead shows its depth. Machines that follow fixed laws don’t evolve, so your computer’s motherboard doesn’t update itself, but a child’s brain does. The difference is choice, as natural selection requires the ability to select. The quantum uncertainties we can’t see ensure there is always choice, so our universe was able to evolve, as it did.
One strange consequence of quantum theory is superposition. For example, when one photon goes through two slits at the same time in the double-slit experiment, it does so in a superposition. Solving an equation usually gives one solution that satisfies its conditions, but solving a quantum equation gives a set of solutions, each a possible physical event, where each solution is the probability that it will occur. These solutions evolve over time, as the wave spreads, but at any moment only one of them can actually happen.
Quantum mathematics also has the strange feature that for any two solutions, their combination is also a solution, called a superposition (Note 1). Yet while single solutions match familiar physical events, these combined solutions never physically occur, so quantum states can superpose in ways that physical states can’t. For example, in Young’s experiment, the photon wave goes through both slits at the same time in a superposed state, but we never observe a photon in both slits at once. This ability to superpose underlies the mysterious efficacy of quantum theory.
Figure 3.20. Ammonia molecule states
Superposition applies not only to photons but also to molecules. For example, ammonia molecules have a pyramid shape (Figure 3.20) with a nitrogen atom apex (1) and a base of hydrogen atoms (2, 3, 4). This molecule can occur in right or left-handed forms, but to turn a right-handed molecule into a left-handed one, a nitrogen atom must pass through the pyramid base, which is physically impossible (Feynman et al., 1977) III, p9-1. Yet according to quantum theory, both these states are valid solutions and so is their combination, so in the quantum world, an ammonia molecule can be in a right and left-handed superposition!
This explains the otherwise inexplicable finding that an ammonia molecule can be left-handed one moment and right-handed the next, even though it can’t physically change between these states. That the ammonia molecule is superposed between left and right-handed states lets us observe either one, just as a photon superposed between two slits can be observed in either one.
To think that superposition is just ignorance of a hidden physical state is to misunderstand it, as superposed quantum currents can flow both ways round a superconducting ring at once but physical currents would cancel (Cho, 2000). As Young’s experiment shows, the superposed photon really does go through both slits at once. Superposition is physically impossible but it is just business as usual in the quantum world.
Superposition occurs because on a network, processing spreads in every possible way, regardless of physical laws, so when a photon spreads through two slits, it literally half-exists in both. The photon as a process can spread itself around in ways that a photon particle can’t.
Why then don’t the combination states of quantum theory occur physically? This isn’t possible because a physical event is a processing restart that occurs at one point. Restarting a computer stops anything else it is doing and the same is true for a quantum process, so while an ammonia molecule can be in two quantum states at once, it can only restart from one of them. Superposed quantum states never occur physically because a physical event restarts one or the other, not both. Even so, we struggle to imagine how one entity can exist in incompatible ways at the same time, as Schrödinger’s cat illustrates.
If a photon is a processing wave, then quantum theory is literally true, so findings that have baffled physicists for decades can be explained. What makes no sense in terms of matter is now expected in processing terms.
Polarization is the property of a transverse wave that describes its vibration direction, so that light can polarize suggests that it is a wave. But if a filter that blocks a ray of polarized light is turned a bit, a few photons get through at full strength, and its angle decides how many photons do that. Yet turning an obstacle that blocks wave should weaken it as a whole, not let some waves through and others not, which is how particles would behave. Why then in this case, does light act like it is made of particles?
The answer lies in the nature of quantum spin. If this spin occurs, it will have a:
a. Rotation axis. Around which the spin occurs, and a
b. Rotation plane. In which the spin rotation occurs.
How then does a photon spin? Let us suppose that it spins on its movement axis, as a bullet does, so it rotates into the planes that cut that axis (Figure 3.19). Oddly enough, this spin won’t alter its polarization because it vibrates outside our space.
To understand this, consider a book sitting on its edge on a table. If the book spins in the rotation plane of the table, its height doesn’t change because it is at right angles to table. Hence, if the table surface is our space, a photon spinning in in our space doesn’t change its transverse vibration height. A photon that spins in our space doesn’t change its polarization because its vibration direction doesn’t change (Note 1), so its polarization plane doesn’t change either.
Now consider a filter that blocks light polarized one way. As it turns, more and more light gets through until eventually it all does. Why then does turning a filter have an effect but turning a photon doesn’t? In table analogy, the book represented a photon moving in some direction across the table surface, whose vibration amplitude was the book’s height. Spinning the book then didn’t alter either its height or its movement direction. But if the filter is like a thin wall that stops movement on the table when it is face-on, turning it will block the photon less. Turning a filter is like turning a wall on the table to obstruct a wave less (Note 2), while turning a photon in our space doesn’t alter its wave amplitude or direction. Of course it isn’t that simple, as in Chapter 4, matter fills many quantum directions not one, but the principle still applies.
Figure 3.19. A photon spins like a bullet
Why then do some photons pass entirely through a filter on an angle? Again, it is because a physical event is an all-or-nothing affair. The filter reduces the probability that instances get through, but if one is detected, the entire photon restarts there. By the same logic, what passes through the filter is also an entire photon. A photon then travels like a wave because it is a wave, but is detected like a particle because processing always restarts completely.
Note 1. Let the photon’s wave amplitude be in a direction Q, at right angles to its polarization plane XY. Now if the photon spins in the plane YZ, this swaps its Y and Z values but leaves Q unchanged, as it is at right angles to that spin. It follows that a photon can spin around its movement axis X without altering its amplitude vibration, and hence its polarization plane.
Note 2. If Q is the quantum amplitude it reduces as Q.Cos(q°), where q° is the angle between that amplitude and the filter direction in quantum space, so at a 90° angle it has no value, as Cos (90°) = 0.
In the last chapter, empty space is a three-dimensional surface that can transmit vibrations, so light waves travel on the surface of space as water waves travel on the surface of a pool.
One might think that adding one dimension to a three-dimensional space adds one new direction but in mathematics, it adds three new directions. In Figure 3.18, each of the three planes that cut through a point in our space has its own quantum direction outside space. Adding a dimension to our space then produces three new quantum directions, all at right angles to each other (Note 1).
Light is a transverse wave that vibrates at right angles to its polarization plane, in a direction outside our space that current physics calls imaginary. But if quantum directions exist, rays of polarized light passing through a point can vibrate in three directions at right angles to each other (Figure 3.18).
Figure 3.18. Quantum directions outside our space
Light moving in a given direction however has only two independent ways to vibrate, as its movement axis uses up one dimension. Light then can only polarize in two ways, vertical and horizontal, based on the two independent planes that cut its axis of movement. The quantum directions of these planes are at right angles to each other, so a filter blocking vertical polarized light doesn’t block horizontal polarized light, and vice-versa.
Vertically polarized light vibrates in a quantum direction at right angles to horizontally polarized light, so what blocks one doesn’t block the other, as they are independent vibrations. What then happens when a polarization filter is turned on an angle?
Note 1: If physical space has dimensions (X, Y, Z), let quantum space have dimensions (X, Y, Z, Q), where Q is a fourth quantum dimension. A point in physical space with three orthogonal planes XY, XZ and YZ through it then has three orthogonal quantum directions outside our space. A photon with any polarization plane can vibrate into a quantum direction at right angles to it.
