Transverse waves vibrate at right angles to their movement but light moves in every physical direction, so it must vibrate outside our space. If light vibrated in a physical direction, it couldn’t move that way, so space wouldn’t be isotropic (the same in every direction). In simple terms, after space gives light three movement dimensions, there are no free directions for a transverse wave to vibrate into, so a physical vibration can’t explain light waves at all.

But if our space is a surface then light could move on it as waves do on a lake, except in three dimensions not two. If light is a transverse wave vibrating outside our space, just as complex number theory describes it, then we are 3D “Flatlanders”.

In Abbot’s story, Flatlanders were beings who lived their lives on a surface that had only two dimensions (Abbott, 1884), so they could see a circle but had to imagine a sphere. Now suppose a point entity moved on their land but set values in a circle at right angles to it (Figure 3.8a). Flatlanders could then explain it as a vibration in an imaginary  plane, just as we explain light in complex number theory. As the point moves, it would also have a frequency and a polarization plane in their space (Figure 3.8b), again as we have for light. They could then explain these moving points as imaginary vibrations, just as we do for electromagnetism (Figure 3.8c).

Complex numbers then explain electromagnetism because light really does vibrate outside space, so:

“In quantum mechanics there really are complex numbers, and the wave function really is a complex-valued function of space-time.” (Lederman & Hill, 2004), p346.

Complex numbers describe light as rotating into a plane outside our space (Note 1), see Figure 3.9. Science calls this rotation imaginary because it doesn’t exist in our space, just as Flatlanders might call a rotation outside their space imaginary. But in their case, there really is a third dimension, so our case could be the same. If our space is a surface in a higher dimensional network, then light can vibrate into another plane as the equations say.

In the quantum model, our space is a surface inside a quantum network, so light can vibrate transversely. Quantum waves like light can’t leave that surface any more than waves on a sea can leave its surface, so if we are the same, we can’t leave our space. We are then three-dimensional Flatlanders, but what then vibrates when light does?

Note 1. Complex number theory describes a rotation into an imaginary plane. In normal multiplication, multiplying a number by two doubles it, e.g. 5 x 2 = 10. Multiplying by 4 adds it four times, e.g. 5 x 4 = 20. In complex multiplication, i is a 90° rotation into an imaginary plane, so times 2i is a 180° rotation that turns a number into its negative, e.g. 5 x 2i = -5. Times 4i is a 360° rotation that has no effect, so 5 x 4i = 5.

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Current physics describes light as the vibration of an electromagnetic field that exists throughout space. When this field vibrates slowly, it is radio waves, faster vibrations are visible light, and very fast vibrations are x-rays or gamma rays (Figure 3.5). Visible light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that vibrates about a million-billion times a second, gamma rays are a billion times faster, while radio waves vibrate just a few times a second. All these waves are then the same vibration at different frequencies, so the term “light” will from now on refer to any electromagnetic wave.

In optics, light moving on an axis is a ray of light. A ray of light can still polarize in many ways, but filters can produce a ray that is polarized only one way. Lasers can also produce a light pulse that is one photon of one frequency polarized in one plane.

Such techniques can produce polarized light rays that are out-of-phase, so the crests of one ray oppose the troughs of another. Each ray is then separately visible, but they combine to give darkness, as the out-of-phase rays cancel each other, just as out-of-phase water waves do. This light + light = darkness result confirms that light is a wave, because particles can’t do this. Note that flashlight beams can’t do this because they aren’t polarized.

We also know that light is a transverse sine wave, which in mathematics maps to a moving circle (Figure 3.6). A pointer turning in a circle like a clock hand produces a sine wave, as shown in Figure 3.7. Water waves are also sine waves, caused by forces acting at right angles to the water surface.

When a water wave arrives at a point on a pond surface, it pushes water molecules up until gravity pulls them back down, then the elasticity of the water pushes them back up, etc. The wave just moves water molecules up and down, so corks just bob up and down as a wave passes. What travels as a wave across a pond is the transverse up-down vibration, not the water itself.

In theory, light should work the same way but when the electromagnetic field vibrates, nothing physical goes up or down and there is no physical direction for it to do so. Physics says light is an electromagnetic vibration, but there is no physical basis for that. Naming an imaginary cause doesn’t explain it, so the term electro-magnetic field is just a placeholder for what we don’t know. However a surface in the quantum network could transmit light as a wave, just as a two-dimensional pond surface does, but in three-dimensions.

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Quantum waves can’t be explained in physical terms. The equations of physics describe waves that vibrate in a complex plane outside our space, so light can travel in empty space, but emptiness can’t vibrate. The only possible conclusion is that light is a wave of nothing that vibrates nowhere. This section proposes an alternative, that light is a processing wave spreading on a three-dimensional network surface, so it really is a transverse wave, just as the equations describe. Quantum waves are then passed on by a quantum network that is the “… primary world-stuff” (Wilczek, 2008, p74), whose points are essentially the “atoms of space” (Bojowald, 2008).

3.2.1. Light is a Wave

3.2.2. We are Flatlanders

3.2.3. The Medium of Light

3.2.4. The Speed of Space

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As Feynman famously said:

“… all the mystery of quantum mechanics is contained in the double-slit experiment.” (Satinover, 2001), p127.

Quantum theory explains the double-slit experiment as follows:

A photon is a quantum wave that spreads in space by the equations of quantum theory. This wave goes through both slits to interfere with itself as it exits, but if observed immediately collapses to be a particle at a point, as if it had always been so. If we put detectors in the slits, it collapses to one or the other with equal probability. If we put a screen behind the slits, it goes through both, interferes with itself, then collapses to a point on the screen based on the prior interference.

This explanation doesn’t say what the wave is that goes through both slits, or why it collapses to a point when observed, hence Wheeler’s question: How come the quantum?

To understand how strange this is, suppose the first photon in a two-slit experiment hits the screen at a point to become the first dot of what will always turn into an interference pattern. Now suppose that in another experiment with a detector blocking the other slit, the first photon goes through the same slit to hit the screen at the same point, to be the first dot of what will never be an interference pattern. The difference between interference or not should be in the first physical events, but they are identical – a photon goes through the same slit to hit the same screen point.

The only difference is that the slit the photon didn’t go through is blocked, but how can blocking a path the photon didn’t take stop the interference pattern? Equally, how can leaving open a slit the photon could have gone through but didn’t cause the interference? It seems that in our world, a counter-factual, an event that didn’t physically happen, can change a physical outcome.

In a purely physical world, the double-slit result is impossible, and quantum theory’s unlikely tale of waves that collapse when viewed makes no physical sense. It is the most fertile theory in the history of science, but quantum theory doesn’t answer two key questions:

1. What are quantum waves? What exactly is proposed to spread through space as a wave? The current answer, that quantum waves don’t exist so it doesn’t matter, is unsatisfactory.

2. What is quantum collapse? Why do quantum waves collapse to a point when viewed? The current answer, that quantum waves collapse “because they do”, is equally unsatisfactory.

Until it answers these questions, quantum theory is a recipe without a rationale, not a real theory. Real theories describe real causes not imaginary ones, so quantum theory is, like Pinocchio, a mechanical version of the real thing. It works as a puppet of physics, so physicists use it, but they don’t listen to anything it says, because it isn’t real. This won’t change until the question of how quantum waves work is answered.

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In the 1920’s, after centuries of dispute over whether light is a wave or particles, Bohr devised the compromise that holds today, that they are complementary views, so both are true, and nothing better has been found since:

“…nobody has found anything else which is consistent yet, so when you refer to the Copenhagen interpretation of the mechanics what you really mean is quantum mechanics.” (Davies & Brown, 1999), p71.

This don’t ask, don’t tell policy let a photon be a wave when we don’t look, as long as it’s a particle when we do, so physics can apply particle or wave equations as convenient. In no pond do rippling waves behave like particles, and on no pool-table do billiard-balls behave like waves, but Bohr managed to sell the big lie [Note 1] that light is a wavicle. As Gell-Mann said in his 1976 Nobel Prize speech:

“Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem (of the interpretation of quantum mechanics) had been solved fifty years ago.”

Quantum theory describes light as a wave that vibrates outside space, in a quantum world, as Maxwell’s equations specify, but how can the physical world support that? Figure 3.4 shows the possibilities. The first is physical realism, that only the physical world exists, so there is no quantum world with waves of light (Figure 3.4a). But if so, how do physicists who use quantum waves to predict what light does differ from witch doctors, who invoke imaginary spirits to heal people?

Bohr then argued that the quantum world is real for the purpose of physics, so physicists aren’t witch doctors. He proposed the dualism that the quantum world does exist for our equations, but otherwise it doesn’t, so in effect, the physical world and the quantum world co-exist somehow (Figure 3.4b). But that the quantum world exists for the convenience of physics was an admission of failure, not a theory advance (Audretsch, 2004), p14.

Bohr publicly accepted the quantum world but in private, denied that it existed at all. He wanted the best of both worlds, to use quantum theory but deny what it meant. Copenhagen dualism, like Descartes’s mind-body dualism before it, is a mystical marriage of convenience between incompatible domains, accepted because we want it to be true.

Figure 3.4c shows the quantum realism alternative to physical realism and Copenhagen dualism. It is that physical events are a subset of quantum events, because the quantum world generates the physical world within it, so classical mechanics is a subset of quantum mechanics. This then answers Wheeler question, how come the quantum?

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Note: A “big lie” is a statement so outrageous that people think it must be right or it wouldn’t be said.

Young’s double-slit experiment is a simple test carried out over two hundred years ago that still baffles physics today. Light shone through two slits gives an interference pattern on a screen (Figure 3.2). Only waves interfere like this, so light must be a wave, but why then do its rays hit at a point? Conversely, if light is made of particles, why do they interfere like a wave?

To explain this puzzle, physicists used lasers to send one photon at a time through the slits. Each photon then gave a dot on the screen, as a particle would, but over time the dots formed the familiar interference pattern, whose most likely impact was behind the barrier between the slits! The effect was independent of time, so one photon shot through the slits each day still gave the same pattern. Since a photon can’t know where the last one hit, how can interference occur?

It seemed that each photon was going through both slits to interfere with itself! In an objective world, we could just observe whether a photon went through both slits, but our world doesn’t work like this. Detectors placed in both slits to see where the photon goes just fired half the time, as expected, so one photon always went by one slit or another, never through both. How then is the interference observed possible?

The puzzle is that when we look at the slits, there is just a photon particle, but when we don’t look, it produces interference. It is as if one skier set off, went around both sides of a tree, but then still reached the finish line as one skier (Figure 3.3).

In summary, the problem is:

1. If a photon is a wave, how can it hit the detector screen at a point not a smear?

2. If a photon is a particle, how can going through one slit give an interference pattern?

And this wave-particle duality doesn’t just apply to light, as electrons, atoms, and even molecules exhibit Young’s two-slit interference (M. Arndt, O. Nairz, J. Voss-Andreae, C. Keller, & Zeilinger, 1999), so they also act like waves.

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The question of whether light is a particle or a wave has a long history. In the seventeenth century, Huygens observed that light beams at right angles pass through each other like waves, while arrow-like particles would collide. He concluded that light is a wavefront spreading in all directions, with each point the origin of a new little wavelet. The wavelets behind the wavefront interfere, as the trough of one cancels the crest of another, so the result is a forward moving wavefront that acts like a ray of light (Figure 3.1a). Huygen’s Principle, that each point of the light wavefront is a new wavelet source, explained reflection, refraction, and diffraction, so light is a wave.

In contrast, Newton observed that light travels in straight lines, rather than bending round corners as sound does when someone is talking in the next room, so he concluded that light consisted of corpuscles that traveled in straight lines (Figure 3.1b), as in the optics of the day. His model explained only reflection and refraction but he carried the day, so light was then seen as particles.

So it remained until two hundred years later, Maxwell used Faraday’s field idea to write down the equations of light as an electro-magnetic wave, based on a mechanical model of rotating vortexes. The equations worked and so were accepted, and that seemed to confirm that light was a wave.

However, waves need a medium, so light should travel by means of an ether that permeated space. The speed of light should then vary relative to that ether, but the Michelson-Morley experiment showed that it didn’t. Light couldn’t travel in a physical ether, so it couldn’t be a wave. Then Einstein showed, from the photo-electric effect, that light comes in particle-like packets, called photons. The evidence now suggested that light was made of particles!

The science of light had swung from Huygens’ waves, to Newton’s corpuscles, to Maxwell’s waves, to Einstein’s photon packets, with no clear winner, so physics finally gave up. It decided that light is wave and a particle, even though that seems impossible. Three centuries after Huygens and Newton, we still don’t know whether light is a wave or a particle, and the current wave-particle duality essentially enshrines our ignorance. Science can explain light as a particle, or as a wave, but it can’t explain how it can be both.

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In science, the question of what light is reduces to what it does, but what it does is often inexplicable. Even after centuries of study, physics still can’t explain why light:

1. Doesn’t fade. All physical waves fade over time, by the second law of thermodynamics, but light doesn’t. A photon that took a million years to hit a screen gives the same result as one just made.

2. Has a constant speed. The speed of a wave depends on the medium it travels through, but light travels at a constant speed in empty space for no apparent reason.

3. Is like a wave and a particle. Waves aren’t particles nor are particles waves, but light is sometimes like a wave and sometimes like a particle, which doesn’t make sense.

4. Always takes the fastest path. A particle can’t know the fastest path to any destination in advance, but light always finds that path, somehow.

5. Defines its path when it arrives. A particle can’t pick the path it took to a destination when it arrives but light seems to do just that, which is very strange.

6. Can reveal an object it didn’t physically touch. In a purely physical world, it should be impossible to detect an object without touching it, but light can do exactly that.

7. Seems to vibrate outside space. Light waves vibrate as other waves do, but according to the equations that describe it, do so in a dimension outside our space, which is odd.

Most scientists assume that light is physical, but it often behaves in non-physical ways. For example, current physics says that light is particles that can also be waves, but physical particles can’t do that. A water wave doesn’t arrive at a point like a particle, but light does. A particle can’t take many paths at once like a wave, but light seems to. Physical waves don’t act like particles, and particles don’t act like waves, so how can light be both? Surely science can decide if light is a particle or a wave?

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Long before science, light was considered primal. In Egypt, light from the Sun god Aten sustained all, and in the bible, God created light before the sun, moon, stars, or man. Light is all around us today but what it is remains a mystery. As Einstein wrote just before he died:

“All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question ‘What are light quanta?’ Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken.” (Walker, 2000), p89.

Even today, science still can’t answer the question what is light?

QR3.1.1 Light is a Mystery

QR3.1.2 Particle or Wave?

QR3.1.3 The Double-Slit Experiment

QR3.1.4 The Copenhagen Compromise

QR3.1.5 How Come The Quantum?

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Quantum Realism Part I. the observed Reality…

Chapter 3. The Light of Existence

Brian Whitworth, New Zealand

“There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

Douglas Adams, 1995.

In the beginning, there was light, but not as we know it today. In the last chapter, our universe began as one white-hot photon in one unit of space, but this first event instantly led to the chain-reaction that physics calls inflation. Inflation then created all the light that has ever existed in a million, billion, billion, billionth of a second, until the accompanying expansion of space diluted the light enough to stop it. The result was a small plasma ball of white-hot light and space that then expanded at light speed to form all the galaxies and stars we see today. In this view, light alone was the first existence, so what is it? Download Whole Chapter

QR3.1.   What is Light?

QR3.2.   Quantum Waves

QR3.3.   Quantum Processing

QR3.4.   Processing Spreads

QR3.5.   Processing Restarts

QR3.6.   How Light Travels

QR3.7.   Quantum Spin

QR3.8.   Physics Revisited

QR3.9.   Reality Bites

Summary Table

Discussion Questions

References

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