Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is that one can’t know both a quantum entity’s exact position and momentum at the same time. These facts are said to be complementary, to be separately knowable but together unknowable. This isn’t expected of physical objects but quantum theory insists that measuring either one fully denies all knowledge of the other entirely.
This result, which has been verified experimentally, can be understood if measurement is an information transfer:
“… 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 to overload
Quantum realism adds that every measurement is an overload interaction between quantum waves. Figure 3.25 shows a simple case of two waves interacting to overload in two nodes:
a. If they arein phase, one node overloads to give a position exactly but the wavelength is unknown.
b. If they are out of phase, both nodes cancel to define the wavelength exactly but there is no position information.
The interaction can reveal position or wavelength but not both, with no repeats. If the result gives position there is no wavelength data and if it gives wavelength there is no position data. In both cases, the observed wave has given all the information it has to the interaction. It follows that one wave “observing” another can give position or wavelength information but not both.
The quantum uncertainty principle follows from the nature of wave interactions based on De Broglie’s equation of momentum and wavelength (Note 1). The information change in any photon interaction can’t be less than a quantum process so position plus momentum can’t be less than Planck’s constant (Note 2).
Our eyes see depth because light from different distances arrives slightly out of phase. Photos that only store light intensity don’t show depth but holograms can show 3D images because they store 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 a matched reference half to give an interference pattern (Figure 3.24). Light later shone on that flat pattern recreates the original 3D image as a holograph.
The holographic principle is that everything we know about the universe is essentially 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, which is widely accepted in physics, is that all the information we receive about the 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 one were to pack smaller and smaller memory chips into a space to get more information in it, the end result would be a black hole whose entropy depends on its surface area not its volume. Since black holes have more entropy than anything else for the same volume it follows that the information about any physical object can be encoded on a two-dimensional surface. The holographic principle is maintained by the behavior of black holes (Bekenstein, 2003).
Quantum realism interprets the holographic principle as follows. A virtual world must be observed from some direction so the act of observing uses one of the three dimensions of space. If an observation is an information transfer, as proposed here, that leaves only two dimensions to carry out the transfer, so the physical world registered at a point can always be painted on the surface of a sphere around it because that is the structure that delivers it. Quantum realism thus requires the holographic principle, and that this principle applies to our world supports quantum realism.
Does the holographic principle imply that our universe is really two-dimensional? That our world presents as a 2D image only means that one dimension must deliver it across two dimensions but space still has three degrees of freedom. The holographic principle implies that physical reality is virtual not that it is two dimensional. It is a result of how physical reality presents not how space operates.
Equally to say that the physical world is “like a hologram” is misleading, as this is no Star Trek hologram we can enter and leave at will because our bodies are its images. If this “hologram” ever switched off, the continuity of physical reality would stop and the only way to recover it would be to start again from scratch.
Quantum entanglement is one of the great mysteries of quantum theory. When a Cesium atom gives off two photons in opposite directions, quantum theory says they become entangled and evolve as one system with net zero spin, even though each photon can still randomly spin up or down. According to quantum theory, however far apart they get, if one photon is spin up the other must be spin down. Yet if both spin randomly, how does each instantly know to be the opposite of the other?
Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance” and devised a thought experiment to deny it (Einstein, Podolsky, & Rosen, 1935). When a test was devised, based on Bell’s inequality, it showed that entanglement occurs even when the photons are too far apart to exchange a signal 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 proved quantum theory right yet again, despite there being no physical means for it to occur!
Two photons heading in opposite ways are physically apart so if each spins randomly, as quantum theory says, why can’t both be up or both be down? What connects them if not physicality? Quantum theory requires the initial zero spin to be 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. It lets both photons have either spin until one photon’s spin is registered, then instantly adjusts the other to be the opposite regardless of where the photons are in the universe. Entangled states that defy physical realism are now common in physics (Salart, Baas, Branciard, Gisin, & Zbinden, 2008).
Figure 3.23. Entanglement as merged processing
Quantum realism explains what quantum theory describes as follows. The two photons emitted by a Cesium atom begin a node reboot that reloads two photon processes at once to entangle them, and the initial net spin of both photons is zero. To us, two photons leave the Cesium atom (Figure 3.23a) but the quantum situation is more complex: the two photon servers each handle half of both photons rather than each handling one, even though they set of in opposite directions. What appears to be us as two physical photons are at the quantum level two hybrid photons handled by both photon servers (Figure 3.23b).
What entangles isn’t the physical photons but their processing, which is that of a clockwise photon and an anti-clockwise photon. The photon going left is run by two servers as is the one going right. The photons are entangled at the quantum level not the physical level. When one of the photons is observed, the instance that generates that physical event randomly restarts one photon server, leaving the opposite spin server to run the other photon (Figure 3.23c).
To recap, photons entangle when their processing merges. From that point, two servers service both “photons” jointly until another physical event starts things anew. The entangled photons look like photons and act like photons but each is two “photon halves” in server terms. Spin is conserved because the start and end processing must be the same, just as quantum mechanics requires.
Entanglement effects are non-local for the same reason quantum collapse is, that client-server relations ignore the node-to-node speed of light transfer limit. By analogy, when pixels are produced on a screen, the processing doesn’t have to “go to” a point to do that. It can change any screen point directly and likewise photon servers act directly no matter how far apart entangled photons are on the “screen” of our space.
Entanglement also underlies super-conductivity where many electrons entangle and again the server processing merges, so every electron is a processing hybrid of all the electrons. Electrons “move” with no resistance in a superconductor because each one in effect exists everywhere in the metal. In Bose-Einstein condensates any number of quantum processes can merge in this way.
Quantum theory allows experimenters to detect an object without observing it physically in any way. This should be physically impossible but in our world it isn’t. The setup to do this is shown in Figure 3.22.
Figure 3.22. The Mach-Zehnder interferometer
A light source shines on a beam splitter that sends half the light down path 1 and half down path 2, so at this stage the detectors shown each fire half the time. Now a second splitter is added where the two paths meet that splits the light again, half to one detector and half to the other. Now detector 1 registers but detector 2 stays silent. Quantum theory explains this as follows:
As photon quantum waves evolve down the paths, each mirror or splitter delays the phase by half. The two paths to detector 1 have two turns so they are in phase but path 1 to detector 2 has three turns and path 2 has only one so they cancel at detector 2. Detector 2 never fires because the quantum waves from the two paths to it always cancel out.
This setup allows a very unusual result. If an object that registers any light is put on path 2, the previously silent detector 2 sometimes fires without the object registering any light. This never happens if path 2 is clear, so this setup can prove there is an object on path 2 without touching that object.
To recap, the results of this experiment (Kwiat et al, 1995) are:
1. With two clear paths, only detector 1 fires.
2. If a receptor blocks path 2, detector 2 sometimes fires without setting the receptor off.
This setup can detect an object without physically observing it (Audretsch, 2004) p29 and quantum theory explains how:
As photon quantum waves evolve down the paths, those on path 2 are now blocked by a receptor that registers light half the time. Since the path 1 waves to detector 2 no longer cancel out, it fires a quarter of the time even though no light is registered on path 2. The other quarter of the time the path 1 light registers on detector 1. Detector 2 firing proves there is an obstacle on path 2.
To show how strange this is, suppose that unknown to the experimenters, path 2 contains a bomb so sensitive that even one photon will set it off. If they send one photon down the system and get lucky – detector 2 fires to prove the bomb is there. The bomb has been detected without physically touching it in any way, though this is a bad bomb detection technique because half the time it sets the bomb off!
Non-physical detection supports quantum theory but again physical realism can’t explain it at all. If a physical thing is out there, how can we register it without physical contact? How can one photon detect a bomb on a path that it didn’t take?
In contrast in quantum realism, quantum theory is literally true. The photon instances travel along four paths to the two detectors, where Table 3.2 shows the results. Non-physical detection occurs when an instance that travels along path 1 to detector 2 registers a physical event. This result confirms that quantum waves exist but physical realism has no explanation for it at all.
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 two 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, the result is the usual interference so the photon passed though both slits but if the telescopes are used only one fires, so the photon took one path or the other. It follows that a detector turned on after the photon passed 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 an observation made after a photon travels a path decides the path it took before that, physical realism must conclude that the future can affect the past! The distances involved are irrelevant, so a photon could travel from a star for a billion years then decide when it arrives at earth if it physically traveled 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
That time flows backwards puts all physics in doubt but quantum realism concludes that the photon takes every path and chooses a physical event when it arrives. Computing calls leaving all processing choices until the last possible moment just-in-time processing and it lets point-of-sale systems base supply orders on what customers actually buy rather than historical estimates.
Applying this method to Young’s experiment, photon instances go through both slits and if a screen is there they give interference but if it isn’t there, they just carry on spreading until an instance registers a telescope to restart there. Since that instance went through one slit, we call that the photon’s “path”. If on the other hand the screen is left there, we conclude that the photon went through both slits. On the quantum level, swapping the screen in and out after the light goes through the slits doesn’t matter at all because the physical event that defines the path occurs on arrival.
Every photon observation involves a specific instance whose path history becomes that of “the photon”. Photon instances take every path until an observation restarts the photon, making its path the photon’s physical path. According to physical realism, the delayed choice two slit experiment implies backwards causality but in quantum realism there is no time reversal and causality remains intact.
Schrödinger found superposition so odd he tried to illustrate its absurdity by a thought experiment. He imagined his cat in a box with a radioactive source that could randomly emit a photon to trigger a deadly poison gas. In quantum theory, a photon plus detector is a quantum system that both detects and doesn’t detect the photon until observed. If the box is also a quantum system it also superposes and the poison is both released and not, 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 photons exist and not exist? Or if photons can do this but cats can’t, when does the superposition stop?
In quantum realism, a photon wave spreads on the network until an overload restarts it, in what we call an “observation”. Observing the world formally causes what we see but it isn’t a sufficient cause as every observation is a mutual interaction between parties. Quantum realism isn’t that we alone are dreaming the physical world but that our interaction with the quantum world generates a physical view.
If quantum collapse is a quantum network overload, then any overload can cause it not just those that involve us, o the quantum superposition collapses immediately the detector records a photon. It then releases the poison regardless of whether Schrödinger sees it or not. Likewise, the cat interacts with the poison whether Schrödinger sees it or not. Before opening the box, Schrödinger doesn’t know whether the gas was released but the cat does (or did). Quantum superposition stops the moment any observation occurs. It is not delayed until we interact with the system. In quantum realism, quantum collapse occurs with any observation, not just those that involve human eyes or instruments.
We aren’t the only observers of physical reality. If every physical event is an observation, when we observe a photon it also “observes” us. The universe is a virtual reality not a dream just for us, so quantum events were generating physical events long before our species came along. Quantum realism implies that everything is observing everything else in a fundamental sense.
According to quantum theory, every photon goes through both Young’s slits at once in a superposition. While solving a normal equation gives one solution that satisfies its conditions, solving the quantum wave equation gives a set of solutions, each of which is a physical event with a known probability. These orthogonal solutions evolve over time as the wave spreads but at each moment only one can occur as a physical event. The mathematics has the strange feature that given any two solutions, their linear combination is also a solution, but while single solutions match familiar physical events these combination solutions never physically occur (Note 1). It is in just such a combination that one photon goes through both Young’s slits at once. That quantum solutions can superpose underlies the mysterious efficacy of quantum theory.
Figure 3.20. Ammonia molecule states
Not only photons can superpose, e.g. 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 structure can manifest in either 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 isn’t physically possible (Feynman et al., 1977) III, p9-1. Yet in quantum theory, if two solutions are valid then so are both at once. This explains how an ammonia molecule can be left-handed one moment and right-handed the next, even though it can’t physically change between these states. To call superposition ignorance of a hidden physical state is to misunderstand it, as superposed quantum currents can flow both ways round a superconducting ring at once even though physical currents would cancel (Cho, 2000).
In quantum realism, superposition is quantum processing simultaneously spreading to two or more outcomes regardless of their physical compatibility, so when a photon wave spreads through two slits in Young’s experiment, it literally half-exists in both. If the photon is later observed in a physical event, that photon restart is based on a specific instance. Superposition is physically impossible but is just business as usual in the quantum world.
If a photon isn’t just a wave but a processing wave, a photon can travel like a wave but still arrive at a point like a particle because processing can restart. A quantum processing model of light lets us revisit some well-known problems of physics.
The above explains what happens when light meets a filter on an angle. Experiments show that a filter at an angle to the polarization plane of light reduces the light that gets through but still lets some photons through entirely. A filter at bigger angle to the light polarization lets fewer photons through, so a filter at 81º to the polarization plane lets only 10% of the photons through but some still get through entirely. How can a photon pass entirely through a filter that mostly blocks it? The answer now proposed is that quantum spin works in four dimensions.
To recap, spin in general involves a:
a. Rotation axis. Around which the spin occurs.
b. Rotation plane. In which the spin occurs.
Imagine a spinning propeller that rotates round an axis into the rotation plane that we see from the front. From the front, the blades rotate into the vertical and horizontal but the axis is just a point. From the side, the axis line is seen but the blade “disappears” as it spins into an unseen depth dimension.
Figure 3.19. Polarization planes
Spin in four dimensions works like spin in three but with more options. If a photon spins on its movement axis as a bullet does, it spins into all the planes that cut its movement axis (Figure 3.19). This allows it to pass through a filter on an angle to its polarization plane. But as it spins, its quantum amplitude direction doesn’t change because it isn’t on the rotation plane (Note 1). So when a vertically polarized photon spins into the horizontal plane it disappears entirely, like a piece of paper on edge that can’t be seen. As a photon spins on its movement axis, its amplitude varies according to angle. The quantum amplitude of a spinning photon appears and disappears like a propeller seen from the side. Some light gets through a filter on an angle because its amplitude projects into the planes that cut its movement axis according to angle (Note 2).
Why then do some photons pass entirely through a filter on an angle? Again, it is because physical measurement is an all-or-nothing affair. The filter reduces the probability that instances get through a filter but if one does and is detected, the entire photon restarts at the point. The entire photon gets through a filter for the same reason that a screen point registers the entire photon. A physical event always delivers “the photon” because it restarts all the quantum processing that is the photon.
Note 1. The Planck transverse circle already turns around the X axis into the YQ plane, but the photon can still spin in the YZ plane. This swaps its Y and Z values while leaving Q and X unchanged. Q remains perpendicular to XY, so as Y and Z swap it becomes invisible, as it has no extension orthogonal to the XZ plane.
Note 2. If Q is the quantum amplitude it reduces as Q.Cos(q°) as it spins, where q° is the angle from the polarization plane. So at a 90° angle it has no value as Cos (90°) = 0.
Physical space as a surface within a higher dimensional quantum space gives quantum directions that aren’t physical. In current physics, light vibrates into an imaginary dimension at right angles to its polarization plane but in quantum realism, light really does vibrate in a quantum direction that doesn’t exist in our space. The amplitude of a light wave is at right angles to its polarization plane, setting values in a transverse circle that we cannot see.
Figure 3.18. Quantum directions
One might think that one extra dimension adds one quantum direction but it isn’t so. The three dimensions of our space allow three orthogonal polarization planes that give three orthogonal quantum directions. Mathematics agrees that adding a fourth dimension to space gives three quantum directions not one, all at right angles to each other (Figure 3.18). This lets light at a point vibrate in three ways at right angles to the three polarization planes through it.
Light moving on an axis can thus polarize in two ways, called vertical and horizontal, where a filter that blocks vertical polarized light doesn’t block horizontal polarized light and vice-versa. This is because light traveling in a direction has two different quantum directions to vibrate into. These are at right angles to each other, so what blocks one vibration doesn’t block the other.
Note: If physical space has dimensions (X, Y, Z), quantum space has dimensions (X,Y,Z,Q), with Q a fourth quantum dimension. Physical space has three planes XY, XZ and YZ but quantum space adds three more planes XQ, YQ and ZQ, so a photon vibrating into quantum space can do so in three orthogonal planes.
