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That our space and time are virtual has  implications for physics:

QR2.4.1 Space is a Surface

QR2.4.2 Big Bang vs Little Rip

QR2.4.3 Losing Transfers

QR2.4.4 The Pass-it-on Protocol

QR2.4.5 Empty Space is Full

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To Newton, time as the universal stream that carried all before it was the dimension in which all change occurs so time itself shouldn’t also change, but Einstein showed that it did. How can a time that defines all change be itself subject to change? In calculus, a time change would be dt/dt which is a constant, so that time itself changes is impossible. That our time actually does change has led some physicists to suspect that time and space aren’t as fundamental as Newton thought:

“… many of today’s leading physicists suspect that space and time, although pervasive, may not be truly fundamental.” (Greene, 2004) p471.

We conceive a dimension of time extending from past to future but the past is only known from its present effects and the future is unknown until it occurs. We deduce the past and predict the future from the present so all we really have is “now”. We infer the universe from the light that hits the earth but again we only really have “here”. We can imagine a past and future but all we know for sure is that there is a here and a now.

From the here and now we infer that time and space are dimensions but if the physical world is virtual, they are virtual too. Quantum realism suggests that our space is simulated by three orthogonal rotations on a network and our time is simulated by processing cycles in another orthogonal rotation. If so, time and space are results not causes and that is why our space can contract and our time can dilate as relativity experiments confirm. To create our time and space, the quantum network only needs to create the here and now and we infer the rest.

The quantum network needs four degrees of freedom, to simulate three directions of space and one of time. These degrees of freedom are equivalent, so it doesn’t matter which create space or time, suggesting that there were initially four equal dimensions until the creation event broke that symmetry by causing one of four equivalent dimensions to become time and the rest to become space(S. W. Hawking & Hartle, 1983). But if four dimensions separated into three of space and one of time, what were they dimensions of? Physics has no abstract dimensionality that can separate into space or time but the degrees of freedom of a quantum network can do this.

Quantum realism has no time dimension, only network cycles with a time byproduct. It has no space dimension, only network transfers whose number and direction imply space. For a quantum network to create time that passes and space that extends requires only the here and now. The implication is that physical reality is an observer-observed interaction where quantum reality provides both the observer and the observed. Time then passes because every photon we observe had to complete a definite number of cycles to reach us and distance extends because it also had to complete a definite number of network transfers.

Relativity gives every object its own spatial frame of reference and as its own relative clock. This implies not only a “Physics of Now” (Hartle, 2005) p101, with no past, future or time travel, but also a “Physics of Here” that remains even as we move. Quantum realism only requires an ever-present here and an eternal now.

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A time like ours must support the following properties:

1. Sequence. Events occur in a sequence.

2. Causality. Earlier events cause later events.

3. Unpredictability. Future events are not entirely predictable.

4. Irreversibility. Events cannot be reversed.

A virtual time that acts like ours must support sequence, causality, unpredictability and irreversibility.

1. Sequence

Sequence means that one event follows another, as in a movie. Movies achieve this by storing the sequence but storing quantum states in a database has two problems:

a. Size. The quantum states in our universe at any moment are innumerable and its cycle rate is unimaginable, so the storage needed is beyond belief.

b. Inefficiency. Why fill a database with quantum events that almost never happen? Why even store physical events, as no-one wants to read a “history” of World War II as atomic events? Or if only what is important is put on the record, how are the events to be stored selected? If the physical world is a quantum simulation it does not make sense to store every event when one can just run the simulation again.

Storing quantum events isn’t possible because quantum processing doesn’t allow the static storage that physical computers use, as concluded earlier. But in quantum theory, quantum events do occur in sequence as the quantum wave evolves, so it may be that the physical world the quantum world’s solution to its storage problem as a physical event is a selection from many quantum events. A physical event is in essence a report – we query quantum world to get the status update we call physical reality. This present report also contains the past, as neural memories exist now and dinosaur fossils exist today to tell us about what happened long ago. DNA “remembers” not just our ancestors but all life on earth. Genes (Dawkins, 1989), memes (Heylighen, Francis & Chielens, K., 2009) and norms (Whitworth & deMoor, 2003) survive by their generative power while that which lives for itself alone passes away. Regardless, the sequence of quantum wave evolution that quantum theory describes ensures that one physical event follows another, as quantum states:

“… evolve to a finite number of possible successor states” (Kauffman & Smolin, 1997) p1

2. Causality

Causality is the lawful connection between a sequence of physical events.

We know that quantum reality is also lawful when quantum waves evolve in step-wise cycles, as processing does. These waves collapse to physical events only where quantum laws permit so if the quantum world is real, physical lawfulness follows from quantum lawfulness. If each quantum event causes the next lawfully, the physical events they ultimately cause will be the same. Physical causality thus arises from quantum causality, as described by quantum theory.

This doesn’t imply that causality in time derives from information processing:

“Past, present, and future are not properties of four-dimensional space-time but notions describing how individual IGUSs {information gathering and utilizing systems} process information.” (Hartle, 2005) p101

It is correct to say that processing creates time but quantum processing can’t be based on physical information, as McCabe observed, as information can’t cause the physical events that cause it. In contrast, quantum processing isn’t based on the physical states it generates, so it can generate the physical causality we see.

3. Unpredictability

A choice by definition has a known “before” and an unknown “after”. Before there are many options but after there is only one, the choice result. In quantum theory, a photon approaches a screen as a wave of options that then collapses to the point where it physically hits. That point is randomly chosen from many options in a way that no physical history can predict. Even knowing every physically knowable thing, we can’t predict quantum collapse because no prior physical “story” can explain why one option was chosen and no other. Quantum theory adds that every physical event involves a quantum collapse, so if our world is a machine, it is one with:

“…roulettes for wheels and dice for gears.” (Walker, 2000) p87

If quantum waves are processing waves, quantum collapse is a process restart. When many network nodes report an overload error, where the process restarts is a server choice made elsewhere. If the physical world is a virtual reality created by distributed quantum processing, quantum collapse is a server choice made outside the virtual reality so it is random to us. The result of quantum collapse is a physical event that always has a lawful causal history but also always contains an element of unpredictability.

4. Irreversibility

All the laws of physics are time reversible and reversing time doesn’t break any laws of physics so if objects exist in a time dimension, why can’t we reverse time? If quantum events create physical events, the question becomes why is quantum collapse irreversible? Physics has no answer but in computing, a node reboot is irreversible. Rebooting a computer restarts its processing from scratch, so any ongoing work is lost – unless you saved it! Processing is always sequential, as one step leads to the next, but one can’t undo a reboot because the restart loses the previous event sequence. The sequence before the reboot is gone forever and the same is true when a quantum node reboots. Physical events are irreversible because quantum collapse as a successful node reboot is irreversible. Quantum collapse creates the arrow of time.

Quantum processing spreading down every network path until a node reboot restarts it in a physical event gives a time that is sequential, causal, unpredictable and irreversible, just like ours.

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Physical realism assumes real objects that constantly exist in time and space, so if an object has left and right parts in the dimension of space, perhaps it has past and future “parts” in time. Minkowski interpreted Einstein’s theory of relativity using a four-dimensional space-time matrix, so instead of existing at an (x, y, z) point in space, objects now exist at an (x, y, z, t) point in space-time, where t refers to time. An object now exists on a world line that extends in space and time, so one can talk of its “location” in time as one does for space and this enhanced idea of how objects self-exist has been generally accepted.

The Minkowski interpretation allows a block theory of time, where all past, present and future states exist in a “timeless time” (Barbour, 1999) p31 and a “time capsule” can be browsed like the pages of a book. That spacetime is the landscape that physical objects endure within implies that time travel is indeed possible. The equations of relativity work but equations are not reliable indicators of reality, as assuming all the mass of a body exists at its center of gravity works to calculate trajectories but no-one believes it is actually so. When physicists say that time travel is “based on General Relativity” they actually mean it is based on Minkowski’s interpretation of relativity, which is just a mathematical model.

Actually, no physical evidence at all supports time travel and assuming it creates impossible paradoxes.For example, Minkowski’s interpretation predicts closed time-like curves, where an object’s spacetime world line returns to its starting point, just as an object in space can curve back to where it began. This implies that a physical object can collide with itself, which is impossible. Other paradoxes include:

1. The grandfather paradox: A man who travels back in time to kill his grandfather couldn’t be born and so he couldn’t kill him. Reverse time travel allows an entity to interfere with its own cause, so that causality breaks down. It follows that one can have going back in time or causality but not both.

2. The Marmite paradox: I see forward in time to me having Marmite on toast for breakfast but next morning I decide not to, so I didn’t see forward in time. If reality is a sequence of pre-existing states run forward, as block theory suggests, then life is a movie already made so there is no choice. It follows that one can have going forward in time or choice, but not both.

Such paradoxes suggest that spacetime is a mathematical artifact and so time travel is a fantasy. Physics turned Newton’s canvas of space upon which objects were painted into a spacetime canvas, but it still doesn’t work. After all, if we ever do travel in time, surely our first job would be to go back in time to stop the stupid things we are doing now! Like the multiverse fantasy, time travel is great science fiction but poor science because it denies both causality and choice.

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In an objective reality, time passes inevitably as matter exists by itself alone. In a virtual reality, time passes as processing cycles generate pixels. In Conway’s Life simulation (Figure 2.10), pixel patterns are born, grow and die as if they were living entities. Their “lifetime” is measured in processing cycles just as atomic clocks measure our time by atomic cycles.

If a pattern that repeats for twenty minutes of our time is run on a faster computer, it might only repeat for a few seconds so does its lifetime alter if the processing runs faster? It might seem so but its virtual lifetime, as measured in cycles, is the same because exactly the same virtual events occurred. It follows that virtual time depends only on the number of processing cycles completed regardless of the processing rate. It also follows that if two patterns that lived for the same number of processing cycles were run by different computers, one fast and one slow, they would last for different times to us even though their virtual lifetimes were the same.

Now consider Einstein’s twin paradox, where one twin travels in space in a very fast rocket and returns a year later to find his brother is an old man of eighty. Neither twin was aware their time ran differently but one twin’s life is nearly over while the other’s is still beginning. Yet the eighty-year-old twin wasn’t cheated of time, as he still got eighty years of heart beats and grandchildren to boot. The rocket twin only became aware that his brother’s time had passed faster when he re-united with his twin to find that he was an old man. What relativity predicts in this case is exactly what we would expect if two patterns in Conway’s Life were run at different processing rates!

When people first hear that time dilates they suspect a trick, that only perceived time changes, but it is actual time as measured by instruments that changes, so it’s no trick. And it’s not just theory, as short-lived particles live many times longer than usual when they are accelerated. Physical realism can’t explain this, as an objective time shouldn’t vary according to how fast one goes.

Time dilation occurs in games as all gamers know that the screen frame-rate lags in a big battle as the increased processing load makes events take longer. Game events slow down if the computer has a lot to do but the avatar’s choices aren’t affected. In other words, game time isn’t affected by the screen slowdown. Likewise, for the rocket twins, it is as if the processing load that runs the life of one is greater so their time passes more slowly.

Relativity predicts that the faster one object moves relative to another, the more its time slows down. Quantum realism concludes that this is because increasing an object’s speed increases the quantum processing load so the quantum cycles that define our time slow down. In the twin paradox, the rocket twin’s speed increased the quantum workload leaving less processing available for his life, so he only aged a year. The twin on earth had no such load, so eighty years of his life cycled by in the usual way. Our virtual time “ticks” with each quantum cycle so what slows those cycles down also slows down our time. Time in our world behaves exactly like time in a virtual reality.

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In physical realism, time is a dimension into which substantial objects extend themselves as they do in space. In quantum realism, objects are images generated, whose time arises from the processing cycles generating them. This section argues that time as processing cycles better explains time in our world than time as a dimension:

QR2.3.1 Time Dilates

QR2.3.2 Is Time Travel Possible?

QR2.3.3 Specifying Time

QR2.3.4 Reality is Here Now

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On a flat surface, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. The general term is geodesic, as on a curved surface like the earth, the shortest distance between the poles is a curved longitude. The shortest path between two points in all cases is a geodesic. Objects were said to move in straight lines by a property of their inherent mass called inertia. Newton showed that matter curved this path by the “force of gravity” then Einstein deduced that this “force” actually works by “curving” space to change the geodesic. Newton saw the earth as exerting a force to attract an apple but Einstein saw it bending space-time so the apple naturally “falls” to earth. He attributed object movement to matter’s ability to alter space and time.

If entities move by network transfers, light moves in straight lines by how the network transfers it, not by itself. Now suppose:

“A point in spacetime is … represented by the set of light rays that passes through it.” (S. Hawking & Penrose, 1996) p110

In network terms, a point in space is represented by the transfers available to a node, so the question of direction becomes “How does a node pass on a photon?” If a point in space is a quantum network node, all the ways it can receive a photon package from a neighbor and pass it on represent what it “does”. The photon doesn’t “decide” by itself where to go in empty space but is just passed on in a certain way by the network.

Every photon has a polarization plane at right angles to its transverse oscillation, so its transfer direction must be in the same plane. Let us call the set of neighbor transfers for any given plane a planar circle. Planar circles simplify the situation to an in-node/out-node transfer as shown in Figure 2.8, just as planar anyons simplify the quantum Hall effect (Collins, 2006).

The shortest “distance” between two network nodes that we call a straight line is then the path with the fewest transfers. The path of fewest transfers is then the fastest path of a constantly expanding wave, Chapter 3 argues that quantum entities move in “straight lines” because that is the fastest network route. Network transfers also explain why the sun’s gravity bends light around it, as in Chapter 5 the sun’s mass redefines the fastest path by changing the network load differentially around it. In both cases, the direction taken is defined by the fastest transfer path not the choices of the entity.

Figure 2.9 shows that for one node, a planar circle defines its transfer direction and a transverse circle defines its processing cycle. It is now proposed that just as planar circles define the directions of space, so processing transverse circles defines the passage of time.

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Electromagnetism is the general term for what we call light, which is known to be a wave although Einstein found that it is also particle-like. The advantage of space as a surface is that it allows waves to travel upon it. In current physics, light is a transverse wave whose amplitude is said to be imaginary but space as a surface allows light to vibrate into quantum space. A transverse wave needs a surface to vibrate upon so since light can travel in the vacuum of space, it must also be a surface. If a pool top is sealed in concrete, no waves can travel on it because the water can’t move up and down, so if our space is similarly “sealed”, how can light move as a transverse wave? Light as a wave has to vibrate at right angles to its direction in space but it is sequestered from that dimension because a wave cannot leave the surface it vibrates upon.

Imagine a pond of water with waves on its surface – there is the movement of the waves and the movement of the water. The waves move across the surface but the water moves up and down transversely, hence a cork just bobs up and down as a wave passes. What moves horizontally is a pattern of transverse displacements not the water. Likewise, light is a pattern of electromagnetic displacements into quantum space that move in our space. As a light wave can’t travel in the direction of its amplitude, the quantum dimension is indeed “imaginary” to us.

That we are sequestered from the quantum dimension doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If light waves arise from positive and negative displacements on a surface just as a water wave does, this requires a surface for them to vibrate upon and that surface is our space. The only question is, what moves when light moves? Current physics doesn’t accept that this displacement is real but quantum realism does. It sees light as processing waves spreading a quantum process on a network. It is now proposed that this quantum process is a rotating circle of values at right angles to space, in what from now on is called a transverse circle.

To set a circle of values is efficient because the processing end begins another cycle. If quantum processing is like our processing, there are no half-cycles so a cycle must complete once begun. When this quantum process runs in one node, equal positive and negative displacements in the same cycle cancel out to give space. The same processing distributed over more nodes gives the wave pattern of light (Figure 2.7) as the next chapter explains.

If light waves are processing waves, the process is a rotation into an unseen dimension, exactly as the complex numbers that explain it assume. Schrödinger’s equation describes an electron as a three-dimensional wave whose value at any point is set in an imaginary dimension. He called it a matter density wave because high values make matter more likely to exist there, but quantum waves act nothing like matter. Born called it a probability wave because its amplitude squared is the probability an entity exists there, but a probability is just a number. We expected the ultimate formula of reality to be physical but it isn’t. The quantum waves that predict physical events aren’t based on mass, momentum, velocity or any other physical property.

That the unreal creates the real makes no sense to physical realism but physicists who use complex numbers to predict physical events implicitly accept this. They also accept that an electron is a wave and a particle, that space is discrete in quantum theory and continuous in field theory, that the universe began at a big bang and is complete, and so on, until they call logic “philosophy” and give up on it. Quantum realism concludes that light is a quantum processing wave setting circular displacements transverse to the surface of our three-dimensional space.

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If our space is a surface contained within a network, it is in effect a space within a larger space, which oddly enough isn’t a new idea. In 1919, Kaluza successfully derived Maxwell’s equations from relativity theory by expressing Einstein’s equations in four dimensions. He essentially unified quantum theory and relativity but his discovery was ignored because a physically real extra dimension would make gravity vary as an inverse cube so the solar system would collapse. Kaluza’s extra dimension was denied because it contradicted physical realism, so when mathematicians discovered that electromagnetism could be explained by complex numbers rotating into a fourth dimension, they called that dimension imaginary. This was then accepted because it didn’t contradict physical realism.

Klein then tried to rescue Kaluza’s extra dimension by saying it was compactified, curled up in a tiny circle so entering it returned you to the start but this was also seen as unlikely. Years later, when string theorists needed to explain the six extra dimensions their mathematics required, they suggested that space contains extra dimensions curled up within it. But why would nature create extra dimensions that do nothing except make our equations work?

In contrast, a virtual reality that appears on a screen surface is contained in a space with an extra dimension. If our space is a three-dimensional surface, there must be another non-physical dimension as well as the three physical dimensions of the virtual reality. Unlike string theory, this dimension extends at right angles to our space rather than curls up within it. Quantum space is the four-dimensional space that contains our three-dimensional space as a surface within it. It implies an extra dimension that we can no more enter than a game avatar can leave its screen world to enter ours.

Physicists express this idea by saying that space is a brane in a higher-dimensional bulk and conclude that if the extra dimension of that bulk is sequestered from our space, the gravity problem that denied Kaluza’s theory long ago can be avoided (Randall & Sundrum, 1999):

“Physicists have now returned to the idea that the three-dimensional world that surrounds us could be a three-dimensional slice of a higher dimensional world.” (L. Randall, 2005) p52

If this higher dimensional space is quantum space, our space is a polar surface rather than a Cartesian “slice”.

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Space generated by a network will have a density based on the number of links each node has to others. In the polar space derivation, this density is the number of steps in the rotations that create the space. A discrete rotation can have any number of steps, so if a perfect circle has infinite steps, a triangle is a “3-circle”, a square a “4-circle”, a pentagon a “5-circle” and so on (Figure 2.6). These N-circles approximate an ideal circle as N increases. It might seem that more rotation steps are better but wargamers and online games don’t use octagons because they don’t “fill” a flat surface, as side-by-side octagons leave gaps. Squares fill the board but only give four interaction directions so wargamers prefer hexagons as they both fill the board and give six interaction directions.

If the quantum network emulating space is dense, each point will have many connection directions but a large N-circle can’t fill a Euclidean space perfectly. Does this exclude it from emulating our space? For example, not all paths in such a space would be reversible, so following a route taken in reverse may not return to the exact same node, though it would be a true vicinity. In essence, a discrete space based on polar coordinates will have “holes” in it, so billiard ball point particles could pass right through each other!

This might seem to disqualify a space based on discrete rotations but entities in our world are described by quantum probability clouds not billiard balls. When quantum entities “collide” they overlap over an area, so a space with a few holes in it doesn’t matter. That quantum entities exist as quantum probability clouds avoids the problems of N-circle space. Since a polar space must have a finite number of directions for any quantum event, quantum realism predicts that direction, like length, is quantized, so there will be a minimum Planck angle.

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