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Quantum spin is so strange that when Pauli first proposed it, he wasn’t believed:

“… the spin of a fundamental particle has the curious feature that its magnitude always has the same value, although the direction of its spin axis can vary…” (Penrose, 1994) p270

A physical object like the earth spins in a rotation plane around an axis of rotation (Figure 3.17), so its spin on another axis is less than its total spin. If the spin axis is unknown, one must measure spin on three orthogonal axes to get the total spin. So that one can get the total spin of a quantum entity from any axis makes no sense in physical terms.

In quantum realism, a photon gives all its spin on any axis for the same reason that measuring either of Young’s slits gives all the photon. A physical event is an all or nothing restart that gives the entire photon, including all its spin. The spin result for a photon is, as expected, one quantum process in radians, or Planck’s constant in radians.

Imagine a coin spun on a table too fast to see its spin direction so the only way to see if it is clockwise or anti-clockwise is to touch it, after which it spins again, again too fast to see so it could spin either way. Spin is a basic property of every quantum entity because quantum processing spreads not only in linear directions but also in angular directions. Spin is a basic property of every quantum entity because quantum processing spreads not only in linear directions but also in angular directions.

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According to physical realism, quantum spin is a mathematical construct not what actually occurs but according to quantum realism, quantum spin really happens.

QR3.7.1. The Curious Case of Quantum Spin

QR3.7.2. Quantum Directions

QR3.7.3. Spin in Four Dimensions

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Super-computers running a million-million cycles a second take millions of seconds (months) to simulate not just what a photon does in a million-millionth of a second, but in a million-millionth of that (Wilczek, 2008) (p113). How can these tiniest bits of the universe with no known structures make such complex choices? The answer now proposed is that “a photon” is not a particle following a line path but a cloud of processing instances.

Feynman’s sum over histories method predicts how light goes from A to B by calculating all the paths, then choosing the one with the least action integral (Feynman et al., 1977) p26-7. It was accepted as a method because it works but not as a theory because a physical particle can’t do that. Like the rest of quantum theory, it was a physical impossibility that just happened to predict perfectly.

Now suppose that Feynman’s method works because it describes what actually happens. Photon instances do take all available paths and physical reality is decided down the line by the first one to trigger a server restart. The instance that happens to take the fastest path to a detector reincarnates as the photon in a physical event, making its path the one the photon took. The server restart makes all other instances disappear, like a clever magician removing the evidence of how a trick is done.

Indeed, how else could the law of least action arise? A photon particle can’t know in advance the best way to an unknown destination before it leaves, so the photon wave takes them all and the first to arrive restarts it in a physical event.

In a virtual reality, calculating and taking a path are the same thing. Knowing nothing in advance, the photon spreads instances down every path and the first to overload a detector becomes “the photon”. What reaches a detector by the fastest route isn’t a solitary particle magically knowing the best path in advance but a quantum ensemble that explores every path and disbands when the job is done.

It follows that every physical event comes from a myriad of quantum events. The quantum world tries every option and the physical world takes the best and drops the rest, so if this isn’t the best of all possible worlds, it isn’t for lack of trying.

The physical law of least action then derives from the quantum law of all action that:

Everything that can happen in physical reality does happen in quantum reality.

Gellman’s quantum totalitarian principle that “Whatever isn’t explicitly forbidden must happen” is equivalent to Feynman’s “Everything that can happen does happen“. Both imply that the photon takes every possible path and the instance that arrives first becomes “the path the photon took”. Yet again, quantum realism explains what physical realism cannot.

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In 1662 Fermat amended Hero’s law to be the path of least time, as when light enters water where it travels slower, it refracts to take the fastest path not the shortest path. In Figure 3.15, light takes the path that “bends” as it enters water not the shortest path.

To understand this, imagine the photon is a lifeguard trying to save a drowning swimmer as quickly as possible. The fastest path to the swimmer isn’t the dotted straight line but the solid bent line because lifeguards can run faster than they swim, so it is faster to run further down the beach then swim a shorter distance. The dotted line is the shortest path but the solid line is the fastest and that is the path light takes (Figure 3.15). But again, how does a photon of light know in advance to take this faster path?

In 1752, Maupertuis generalized further that:

“The quantity of action necessary to cause any change in Nature always is the smallest possible”.

Euler, Leibnitz, Lagrange, Hamilton and others then developed the mathematics of this law of least action, that nature always does the least work, sparking a furious theoretical debate on whether we live in “the best of all possible worlds”. Despite Voltaire’s ridicule, how light always finds the fastest path remains a mystery today.

For example, light bouncing off the mirror in Figure 3.16 could take any of the dotted paths shown but by the principles of optics, it always takes the solid line fastest path. But as the photon moves forward in time to trace out a complex path, how does it at each stage pick out the fastest route? As Feynman says:

“Does it ‘smell’ the neighboring paths to find out if they have more action?” (Feynman et al., 1977) p19-9

To say that a photon chooses a path so that the final action is less is to get causality backwards. That a photon, the simplest of all things, with no known internal mechanisms, always takes the fastest route to any destination, for any media combination, any path complexity, any number of alternate paths and inclusive of relativity, is nothing short of miraculous.

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He was correct that if light moves as a wave, it should bend round corners as sound waves do, but it turned out that it does. In 1660 Grimaldi found that light does bend but less than sound as its wavelength is shorter. This changed the question to how can a spreading wave travel in a straight line?

Detecting photons by screens at different distances confirms this, as the results aren’t a perfect straight line but randomly spread about (Figure 3.14). A physical particle would have to travel in a zigzag path to explain this! When a photon moves, its maximum probability of existence is a straight line but the wave itself spreads in all directions!

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That light always finds the best path to any destination has puzzled thinkers for centuries. Hero of Alexandria observed that light always takes the shortest path but how does it know that path? It might seem obvious that it is a straight line but how, at each step, does light know what straight is? How light always travels the best path to any destination has always been a mystery and it still is today.

QR3.6.1. A Wave Moves

QR3.6.2. The Physical Law of Least Action

QR3.6.3. The Quantum Law of All Action

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What decides where a photon hits a screen when it arrives? In quantum theory, the quantum wave defines the probability it will hit at any point but where it actually hits is a random choice from those probabilities. The probabilities are exact but the actual hit point varies with no known physical cause.

Quantum theory calculates the probability a photon will hit a screen point as follows:

1. The wave equation describes how the photon cloud spreads through both slits.

2. Given two paths to a screen point, positive and negative wave values add to a net result.

3. The net amplitude squared is the probability the photon will physically exist at that point.

Quantum theory then explains Young’s experiment as follows:

The photon quantum wave spreads through both slits, then its positive and negative values add or cancel at the screen to give interference that affects the probability of where it hits.

All this quantum activity is seen as entirely imaginary so it doesn’t really happen but in quantum realism, there really is a quantum wave that really does generate physical events. If a quantum wave is a processing wave and a physical event is a node overload that restarts the server, what decides that? Servers have many clients so a quantum server response to a client node reboot request could be:

1. Access. The server restarts its processing at that node, which denies all other nodes access to it and collapses the quantum wave. This then is a physical event.

2. No access. The server doesn’t respond as it is busy elsewhere so the node drops the process and carries on. This then was a potential physical event that didn’t happen.

Quantum collapse is random to us because it is a winner takes all lottery run by a quantum server we can’t observe. When many nodes reboot, the first to initiate a server restart locks out the others and wins the prize of being the photon, leaving other instances to wither on the grid. It follows that screen nodes with more server access are more likely to reboot successfully.

Quantum theory defines its probabilities based on the square of the quantum wave amplitude because a quantum wave is a sine wave and the power of a sine wave is its amplitude squared. This power defines the processing demand that determines access to the photon server. That positive and negative quantum amplitudes cancel locally is an expected efficiency. Nodes that access the server more often have a greater probability to successfully reboot and host a physical event.

When many screen nodes overload at once, where a photon actually hits depends on server activity that is to us random, as quantum theory says. But quantum theory can deduce the probability of where a photon hits from the square of the quantum wave amplitude at each point because the power of the quantum wave at a node defines its server access. Quantum realism derives what quantum theory declared based on known data, so it describes Young’s experiment in server access terms as follows:

a. The photon processing wave spreads instances through both slits.

b. If they reach the same node by different paths, positive/negative values cancel or add.

c. When many screen nodes overload and reboot, the net quantum amplitude squared defines the probability of server access that results in a physical event.

In Young’s experiment, the photon server supports client instances that pass through both slits then interfere as they leave, even for a single photon. This interference alters the server access that decides the probability a node overload will succeed. The first screen node to overload and restart the server is where the photon “hits”. If detectors are in both slits, both fire equally because both have equal server access. If a detector is in one slit, it only fires half the time because the server is attending to instances going through the other slit half the time. Table 3.1 below interprets Feynman’s summary of quantum mechanics (Feynman et al., 1977) p37-10 as a calculation of server access.

This model now answers questions like:

a. Does the photon go through both slits at once? Yes, photon instances go through both slits.

b. Does it arrive at one screen point? Yes, photon processing restarts at one screen node (point).

c. Did it take a particular path? Yes, the instance that caused the node reboot took a specific path.

d. Did it also take all other possible paths? Yes, other instances, now disbanded, took every path.

If quantum theory is literally true, a photon really is a “wave” that goes through both Young’s slits but it arrives at a screen point because a physical event is a server restart triggered by one node. A photon as server processing never dies because it can be born again from any of its legion of instances. Quantum realism explains what physical realism cannot: how one photon can go through both Young’s slits at once, interfere with itself, but still arrive at a single point on a screen. It can explain a mystery of light that has baffled scientists for centuries.

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Table 3.1. Quantum theory as server access
Quantum theory	Server access
1. Existence. The probability a quantum entity exists is the absolute square of its complex quantum amplitude value at a point in space	1. Restart.The probability a quantum entity restarts a server in a physical event depends on node access, which is the absolute quantum amplitude squared
2. Interference. If a quantum event can occur in two alternate ways, the positive and negative amplitudes combine, so they interfere	2. Combination.If quantum processing can arrive at a node by alternate network paths, the positive and negative values combine, so they interfere
3. Observation.Observing one path lets the other occur without interference, so the outcome probability is the simple sum of the alternatives, so the interference is lost	3. Interaction. Interacting with a quantum wave on one path lets the other occur without interference, so the probability of either path occurring is the simple sum of the alternatives, so the interference is lost

 

If a photon is a spread-out wave, as quantum theory says, how can it arrive at a point? A wave should hit a barrier as a smear but a photon hitting a screen gives a dot instead. Radio waves are many meters long and so should take time to arrive, even at light speed, but they don’t. If they did, in the delay between a wave front’s first hit and the rest arriving, the tail could hit something else. One photon could hit twice which it never does! A physical wave delivers its energy of its entire wavelength so how does a quantum wave deliver all its energy instantly at a point? As Walker says:

“How can electromagnetic energy spread out like a wave … still be deposited all in one neat package when the light is absorbed?” (Walker, 2000) p43

The fact is that physics doesn’t know how a quantum wave collapses to a point in a physical event:

“After more than seven decades, no one understands how or even whether the collapse of a probability wave really happens.” (Greene, 2004), p119

Einstein didn’t like quantum collapse because it implied faster than light travel. He argued that if a photon is a wave that spreads as quantum theory says:

Before the photon hits a screen, its wave function exists at points A or B with some probability but after it is entirely at point A say not at B. The moment A “knows” it is the photon then B “knows” it isn’t. Now as the screen moves further away, eventually A and B could be in different galaxies but if the collapse is immediate, how can this be? That two events anywhere in the universe are instantly coordinated faster than light contradicts special relativity.

In quantum theory, quantum waves are waves that spread to any size then collapse to a point when observed. Nothing physical can do this but processing spreading on a network can overload a node, giving reboot that:

1. Is irreversible. A reboot can’t be reversed.

2. Conserves processing. The processing before and after a reboot is the same.

3. Allows change. A reboot can re-allocate processing in potentially new ways.

When a photon wave arrives at a screen, the extra processing is expected to overload nodes that are already maximally occupied with the screen matter. This will restart the photon server supporting the quantum wave. If many nodes reboot, the first to access the photon server will succeed. If a parent server maintaining many child instances restarts for one node, it will immediately stop supporting all other instances, so they “disappear”. The collapse of the quantum wave function is then just the inevitable disbanding of child instances when a server process restarts. A quantum wave of any size can instantly disappear, as if it never was, because it is a wave of processing instances, not a “thing”.

When a photon hits a detector screen, what arrives isn’t a lonely particle looking for a point to hit but a cloud of instances requesting action from nodes already busy with screen matter. When a screen node overloads, it requests the server to restart the process, and since one photon has only one server, only one such request can succeed. The first node to successfully request a server restart is where the entire photon restarts and that point becomes where the photon “hits” the screen.

How can a quantum wave that could spread over a galaxy instantly collapse to a point in it? When our computers change a screen point, the program doesn’t “go to” the screen pixel to change it. It can change any screen point directly and likewise a quantum server is directly linked to nodes anywhere on the screen of space. The node-to-node transfer rate that defines the speed of light is irrelevant to the server-client link that governs quantum collapse. If the quantum wave is a processing wave, what troubled Einstein, that quantum collapse is instant regardless of distance, isn’t a problem.

Seeing quantum entities as processing not material things changes everything. When two electrons collide and bounce apart, we assume that what leaves the collision is the same matter that entered it, but if the “collision” is a node overload and server restart, the “particles” that leave are actually brand-new creations just off the quantum press. The conservation of processing in the reboot maintains the illusion that a matter “substance” continues to exist but physical events annihilate and create quantum entities just as quantum theory says.

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Einstein, like Newton, believed that a photon particle traveled a fixed path from its start to hit a screen at a point, so when quantum theory declared that where the photon hit the screen was random, and the data agreed, he had two options: either quantum theory was incomplete or there were hidden physical causes:

“This is the fundamental problem: either quantum mechanics is incomplete and needs to be completed by a theory of hidden quantities, or it is complete and then the collapse of the wave function must be made physically plausible. This dilemma has not been solved until today, but on the contrary has become more and more critical.” (Audretsch, 2004) p73

The problem Einstein raised still haunts physics today, as his attempt to find hidden physical variables to explain the facts failed and attempts to make quantum collapse “physically plausible” have also failed It has become clear that the rules of the quantum world defy those of the physical world.

The fact that no hidden physical variables have been found and that no attempt to make quantum theory physically plausible has worked is yet another failure of physical realism. In quantum realism, quantum theory is neither incomplete nor physically plausible. It isn’t incomplete because it always works and it isn’t physically plausible because nothing physical can do what it does. A quantum world that generates physical reality has no need to follow the rules of what it creates, so physics will never solve this dilemma until it rejects physical realism.

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Quantum theory says that quantum waves spread until they collapse in a physical event, but what is quantum collapse How does a quantum wave that canspread over a galaxy instantly “collapse” to a point? All we know is that nothing physical can do this.

QR3.5.1. Hidden Variables?

QR3.5.2. Quantum Waves Restart

QR3.5.3. The Quantum Lottery

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