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 allows quantum entities to merge into one system where any change instantly affects all of them, at any distance. When particles aggregate into bigger systems, distance matters, but entanglement ignores distance entirely, as photons can be entangled even when they are light years apart.
For example, when a Cesium atom emits two photons in opposite directions, they entangle into one system with a net zero spin. Both photons still spin up or down randomly, but if one is measured to be spin up, the other is instantly adjusted to be 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, and so suggested an experiment to disprove it (Einstein, Podolsky, & Rosen, 1935). When the test was made, based on Bell’s theorem, it supported quantum entanglement, even for photons too far apart to affect each other 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!
Yet how 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 separate 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 are processes? When a Cesium atom restarts two photons at one point in a physical event, their processing merges or entangles. The merged processing of both photons then just spreads, as processing does. Instead of each photon going its own way, both spread both directions. Just as one photon takes every path and lets a later event decide its path, so entangled photons 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 restarting 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 then 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 maximum speed of a point moving across a screen depends on the screen refresh rate, but a CPU doesn’t have to move to a screen 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. They then move 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, so now there are four paths to the two detectors. To recap, light shines on the first splitter, to send half down path 1 and half down path 2, then a second splittersplits the light, again half to each detector. Light going down path 1 now 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 always stays silent! This finding has no physical explanation 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 now 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 result 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 what they do, but physics still denies them. It prefers the ancient myth of particles to the evidence of waves, so quarks we can’t see are accepted but quantum waves we can’t see aren’t. Yet isn’t science supposed to be driven by the evidence, not past 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 of which to use 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, but 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, alongside 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, on what scale does the superposition stop?
Schrödinger’s example shows that what physics accepts at the micro-scale makes no sense at the macro-scale. If a superposition doesn’t stop until it is observed, Schrödinger cat is both alive and dead before that, which is ludicrous. This conclusion assumes that only human observation triggers quantum collapse, but quantum theory doesn’t say that. It just says any observation.
In processing model, any network overload that causes a physical event collapses the quantum wave. It follows that anything can observe a quantum wave to collapse it, as quantum theory describes, not just us. It seems strange to say that everything observes but the logic of quantum theory is, as usual, impeccable. If the observation of quantum theory was only of humans, we would be needed to cause physical events, which can’t be. If only we could cause quantum collapse, physical history couldn’t begin until we evolved, but it did. The only sensible conclusion is that everything observes, and every observation causes quantum collapse, not just those that involve our eyes or instruments.
For Schrödinger’s cat, this means the photon superposition collapses when the detector observes it, so it releases the poison that kills the cat regardless of what Schrödinger does. Before opening the box, Schrödinger doesn’t know if the gas was released, but the cat does! The quantum superposition is stopped by any observation, not just ours, so there is no alive-dead cat.
This interpretation also clarifies another concern, that quantum theory implies that we create what we observe as in a dream, which contradicts realism. If observation formally causes physical events, as quantum theory says, how is our world still real? The answer is that every physical event is a mutual observation, so we aren’t the only cause. In a dream, the observer alone causes the dream, but our world isn’t just caused by us, so it isn’t a dream. We do indeed create the physical world, but so does everything else, because when we observe a photon, it also observes us. If every observation creates a physical event, we aren’t creating the universe alone, everything is.
Schrödinger’s cat example was meant to illustrate the illogic of quantum theory but actually reveals its depth. We think we see the world around us objectively, as it is, but quantum theory tells us that what we observe is a generated view, just as in a virtual reality.
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, but each solution is only the probability that it will actually happen, physically. These solutions evolve over time, as the wave spreads, but at any moment only one physical event can occur.
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. Quantum states can then superpose in ways that physical states can’t. For example, in Young’s experiment, one photon goes through both slits at the same time in a superposed state, but we never observe the 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 both right and left-handed at the same time!
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 limits, 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 process stops anything else it is doing and the same is true for a quantum process, so while a photon or ammonia molecule can be in two quantum states at once, it has to restart from one of them. Superposed quantum states then 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 two incompatible states at the same time, as Schrödinger’s cat example 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 the filter 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 more how particles behave. Light is sometimes like a wave and sometimes like a particle, but why?
The answer lies in the nature of quantum spin. If this spin is real, it should 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 all the planes that cut its movement axis (Figure 3.19). Oddly enough, this spin doesn’t alter its polarization because its vibration occurs outside our space.
To understand this, consider a book sitting on its edge on a table with some height. If the book now spins in the rotation plane of the table, its height doesn’t change because it is at right angles to table. Likewise, if the table is our space, spinning a photon within in our space doesn’t change its transverse vibration height. Hence, a photon spinning in our space, as assumed, doesn’t change its polarization because its vibration direction is unaffected (Note 1). A photon can spin in our space around its movement axis without changing its polarization plane.
Now consider turning a filter that blocks light polarized one way. As it turns, more and more light gets through until eventually all the light does. Why then does turning a filter have an effect but turning a photon has no effect? In above example, the book represented a photon moving in a given 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. Now if the filter is like a wall that stops the photon moving on the table, turning it will then block the photon less because it is a wave. Turning a filter is like turning a wall on the table to obstruct a wave less (Note 2), while turning the photon in our space doesn’t alter its 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.
The last chapter concluded that our space is a surface within a higher dimensional network, so light can travel in empty space by vibrating at right angles to it. Light then travels on the surface of our space as waves travel on the surface of water.
One might suppose that adding a dimension to a three-dimensional space adds one new direction but in mathematics, the result is three new directions at right angles to each other. In Figure 3.18, each of the three planes that cut through a point in our space has a quantum direction outside our space, and they are all at right angles to each other. Adding a dimension outside our space allows three new orthogonal quantum directions (Note 1).
Light as a transverse wave vibrates at right angles to its polarization plane. Current physics calls this direction imaginary, but quantum realism allows three real quantum directions outside our space. Figure 3.18 then suggests that light passing through a point can vibrate in three orthogonal quantum directions, one for each of the three polarization planes it can have.
Figure 3.18. Quantum directions outside our space
However, light moving in a given direction has only two independent quantum directions, as its axis of movement uses up one dimension. Hence light can polarize in two independent ways, called vertical and horizontal, as two independent planes cut its axis of movement. The quantum directions of these polarization planes are at right angles to each other, so a filter blocking vertical polarized light doesn’t block horizontal polarized light, and vice-versa.
A filter that blocks vertically polarized light by stopping vibration in one quantum direction doesn’t block the other quantum direction, so horizontally polarized light can pass right through it. Light can vibrate in two orthogonal quantum directions, so what blocks one vibration doesn’t block the other. 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.
