The idea that physical events are generated is radical but not new, given the following proposals:

1. Fredkin. Proposed that for physical events to be generated “…only requires one far-fetched assumption: there is this place, Other, that hosts the engine that “runs” the physics.” (Fredkin, 2005) p275.

2. Wilczek. Proposed that what generates the physical is “… the Grid, that ur-stuff that underlies physical reality” (Wilczek, 2008 p111).

3. Wheeler. Proposed that some sort of processing generates matter “… every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits … a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit.” (Wheeler, 1989).

4. D’Espagnat. Proposed that a “veiled reality” generates time, space, and matter. (D’Espagnat, 1995).

5. Campbell. Proposed that a “Big Computer” generates our reality (Campbell, 2003).

6. Barbour. Proposed that time is generated by a landscape where “The mists come and go, changing constantly over a landscape that itself never changes” (Barbour, 1999) p230.

These proposals suggest that something else generates physical events, so let Fredkin’s engine, Wilczek’s ur-grid, Wheeler’s bit source, D’Espagnat’s veiled reality, Campbell’s big computer, and Barbour’s landscape all refer to a primal network that existed before our universe began. Our cellphone networks consist of stations that actively support local phones, where each station connects to its neighbors (Figure 2.1), so let the network proposed be the same, except each station is a point of space that supports local entities, not phones. Space itself is then a network of points, just as Feynman viewed it, according to Hiley:

“I remember … Richard Feynman … saying that he thought of a point in space-time as being like a computer with an input and output connecting neighboring points.” (Davies & Brown, 1999) p138.

Feynman imagined space as a network, whose points had inputs and outputs like a computer. Let us therefore also imagine space as a network, which is empty when its output is null, and when it isn’t, shows something else, like a photon or electron. Behind this concept is the same processing that runs our quantum computers.

But if quantum processing generates matter, is matter just information, as Wheelers It from Bit implies? Before exploring how a quantum network could create a space and time like ours, let us clarify what information is.

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Quantum theory describes the quantum processes that generate physical events. We know that quantum processing occurs because quantum computers use it and they work, but how does it run and what does it do? This section suggests that it runs on a quantum network and is, in our terms, the creation of processing.

QR2.1.1  The Quantum Network

QR2.1.2  What is Information?

QR2.1.3  Reloading Reality

QR2.1.4    Quantum Cloning

QR2.1.5  Processing Waves

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Quantum Realism Part I. The Observed Reality

……Chapter 2. Creating Space and Time

Brian Whitworth, New Zealand

…

“To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,…Every cubic inch of space is a miracle”

Walt Whitman

A virtual world can represent a space and time to its inhabitants. This chapter analyzes how a virtual world could generate a space and time that would appear to its residents as ours do to us.                             Download Whole Chapter

QR2.1 Quantum Processing

QR2.2 Creating Space

QR2.3 Creating Time

QR2.4 Implications

QR2.5 Re-engineering Physics

Summary Table

Discussion Questions

References

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The following questions are addressed in this chapter. They are better discussed in a group to allow a variety of opinions to emerge. The relevant section link is given after each question:

1.   In what sense is current physics a hollow science? What is missing? (QR1.1.2)

2.   Why is it hard to argue for dualism, for a mental world as well as a physical one? (QR1.2.2)

3.   How does an objective reality differ from a virtual reality? (QR1.2.3)

4.   Has science proved that the physical world is an objective reality? (QR1.2.3)

5.   How does quantum realism agree with The Matrix movie? How does it differ? (QR1.2.5)

6.   How are quantum realism and physical realism the same? How are they different? (QR1.2.5)

7.   Could science still operate in a virtual reality? (QR1.2.6)

8.   What physical evidence fits the theory that the physical world is a virtual reality? (QR1.3.1)

9.   Why do many physicists deny that quantum events cause physical events? (QR1.3.2)

10.  Can the physical world compute itself? Give reasons. (QR1.4.1)

11.  Could a physical universe that is all there is create itself in a big bang? Give reasons. (QR1.4.2)

12. How did our space begin if there was no time for it to begin in? (QR1.4.2)

13. How did our time begin if there was no space for it to begin at? (QR1.4.2)

14.  How can space be both nothing and something? (QR1.4.3)

15.  Why can’t anything go faster than light? (QR1.4.4)

16.  Is physics more scientific because it studies real physical events? (QR1.4.5)

17.  Is quantum realism falsifiable? Is physical realism falsifiable? (QR1.5.1)

18.  How can quantum realism be evaluated scientifically? (QR1.5.2)

19.  What is Occam’s razor? Does it support physical realism? (QR1.6.1)

20.  Is the physical universe eternal, all-pervasive, all-powerful, and self-existing? (QR1.6.2)

21. Does quantum realism change the equations of physics? If not, what does it change? (QR1.6.3)

22.  Is quantum realism a theory of everything (TOE)? If not, why not? (QR1.6.4)

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Thanks to Onofrio Russo (NJIT) who aroused my interest in this by telling me what Dirac told him about light.

Thanks for helpful comments and advice to (in alphabetical order):

Akram Ben Aissi, Steve Alvarez, Mehmet Ata, Alethea Black, Gayle Dean, Tom Campbell, David Chartrand, Jonathan Dickau, Andrew Eaglen, Kent Forbes, Robert Frot, Carl Grove, Kevin Hyndman, Lucian Ionescu, Ben Iscatus, Tim Jones, Bogdan Lazar, Alex Lightman, Alexander Macris, Bruce Maier, Mason Mulholland, Paul Olivier, Ervin Olah, Kevin Player, Ross Rhodes, John Ringland, Paul Smith, Claudio Soprano, Gunnar Jörgen Viggósson, Ram Vimal, Bryan Warner, Marty Wollner, Ian Wilson and Eden Yin.

Especial thanks to Celso Antonio Almeida, Matthew Raspanti and Belinda Sibly for detailed edits of the rough early chapters.

I also thank my son Alex who always helps me think more clearly. Still, the mistakes are mine alone.

Science has long challenged our human tendency to make ourselves the center of things, so:

“Since our earliest ancestors admired the stars, our human egos have suffered a series of blows.” (Tegmark, 2007).

For example, we once thought we were the center of the universe, because we thought the sun and stars moved around us. Being the center of it all made us feel good, so the question “Where are we?” didn’t arise because we already knew the answer. We were obviously at the center of everything, so when Galileo and Copernicus challenged geocentrism, they also challenged the ego idea that the universe revolves around us. Science now tells us that we live on a little planet circling a medium star, in a galaxy of a hundred billion stars, in a universe of at least that many galaxies. Mankind is like a colony of bacteria dominating one leaf of one tree in a vast forest, but this ego blow was the price we had to pay to understand astronomy.

We also thought we were the center of all life, because we thought that animals and plants were put there just for us. Being at the center of life made us feel good, so the question “When did we begin?” wasn’t asked either, as again we thought we knew. The center of life was obviously there from the beginning, so when Darwin challenged creationism, he also challenged the ego idea that life revolves around us. Science now tells us that humans only evolved from animals a few million years ago, after dinosaurs had ruled the earth for two-hundred million years, until a meteor wiped them out. Mankind is just another species, and bacteria, insects, and plants all exceed us in biomass, but this ego blow was the price we had to pay to understand biology.

Today, we think we are the center of our body, because we think we are in charge it. Being in charge makes us feel good, so the question “Who am I?” isn’t asked because yet again we think we know. We are obviously at the center of the body because we can observe it, so when science now challenges the dualism that a mind controls the body, it also challenges the ego idea that our bodies revolve around a central self. Science now tells us that our brains have no center, equivalent to the central processing unit of a computer, so if the cortical hemispheres are surgically “split”, each takes itself to be “I” (Sperry & Gazzaniga, 1967). We aren’t even the center of our own bodies, but this ego blow is the price we have to pay to understand neurology.

The trend is clear, our ego puts us at the center of things and science repeatedly shows that we aren’t. We aren’t the center of the universe, or of life, or even of our own body, but old habits die hard. We still think that reality revolves around us, that what we see is real because we see it so. Being the knower of reality makes us feel good, so the question “What is real?” isn’t asked because again, we think we know. Obviously, matter is real, so when quantum realism challenges materialism, it also challenges the ego idea that we know reality. Science is now telling us that the physical world isn’t reality central because something else causes it. If physical reality existed by itself alone, it couldn’t have begun, but it did. Light couldn’t travel in empty space, but it does. Space couldn’t curve nor time dilate, but they do. And random events that physical history can’t predict would be impossible, but they aren’t. We aren’t at the center of anything physical, but this ego blow is the price we have to pay to understand our existence. 

Table 1.1 (see Next) shows that there is nothing illogical or unscientific about quantum events causing physical events. It may shock the ego but it fits the facts of physics. The only thing denied is the delusion of scientific omniscience (Sheldrake, 2012), the egoism that we already know everything, or are about to but for some loose ends. This delusion implies a Theory Of Everything (TOE) but what if everything doesn’t objectively exist? The idea that we are in a local reality makes quantum realism a query of everything not a theory of everything.

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The philosopher Kuhn distinguished normal science that grows theories, from paradigm shifts that change their foundations, where the foundations of a theory are the axioms it is built on. Changing foundations is hard, so Kuhn argued that science involves long periods of normal science interspersed with occasional revolutionary paradigm shifts (Kuhn, 1970).

For example, Euclid’s assumption that parallel lines can’t converge was accepted for two thousand years, until it was realized that on curved surfaces like the earth, parallel longitudes do converge (at the poles). Changing that axiom gave hyper-geometries that work on curved surfaces, and made Euclid’s geometry the special case of a flat surface. Einstein’s relativity was also a paradigm shift that made its predecessor, Newton’s mechanics, a special case. Science sometimes has to change its foundations to advance.

What then are good theory foundations? Chaitin argued that good axioms support more than one fact (Chaitin, 2006), based on Gödel’s proof that all theories are incomplete (Gödel, 1962). Good theories use a few axioms to predict many facts. Ignoring this criterion by adding new axioms for every new fact increases size not success, just as putting a shack on every new plot of land gives a shanty town not a city of skyscrapers. That a theory isn’t increasing knowledge is a sign that a paradigm shift is needed. It is increasingly obvious that particle physics today is in this category, as:

“One experiment after another is returning null results: No new particles, no new dimensions, no new symmetries.” (Hossenfelder, 2018).

It is also obvious that it has had to add new axioms to explain new facts for a while now, so particles and fields have increased but not their predictions. Gravitons were assumed to explain gravity, but predicted nothing new. Virtual particles with mass were assumed to explain neutron decay, but again predicted nothing. A Higgs field was assumed to explain how those particles had mass, but it also led nowhere. The field has increased in complexity but has made no breakthrough in decades, suggesting the need for a paradigm shift.

The shift proposed is to base physics on waves, as quantum theory does, not on particles, as materialism does. This change seems radical but disruptive innovations are often the price of progress (Sandström, 2010) and physics already uses wave equations, so the practice won’t change. For example, Schrödinger’s equation stays the same but it now describes what exists, not what doesn’t. In general, the equations don’t change but their meaning does. Giving quantum theory a semantic heart might not seem important but just as giving up geocentrism led to new directions in astronomy, giving up materialism suggests new directions in physics, like colliding light not matter (4.5.9). Yet this paradigm shift challenges the belief that we have all, or nearly all, the answers already.

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Modern science began when Aristotle concluded that, for all practical purposes, physical events have physical causes. Physics today now argues that physical reality, defined as matter and energy in space and time, is all there is. Physical reality is said to be conserved, continuous, complete, and fundamental, but lately cracks have appeared in these foundations that required theoretical patches, as follows:

1. Conserved. If physical reality is all there is, it must be conserved in total. Parts of it can transform, as water turns into vapor, but the total must be in an eternal steady state. Unfortunately, big bang theory cracked this pillar last century, as what suddenly began isn’t eternal. One patch used to cover this fault is the speculation that a big crunch will follow the big bang, in an ongoing oscillation that is in effect a steady state.

2. Continuous. If physical reality is all there is, space and time must be continuous, without gaps. If time had gaps, matter wouldn’t exist continuously and so couldn’t be all that exists. If space had gaps, something beyond space would have to cause that. Unfortunately, assuming continuity in field theories creates infinities, and what is infinite is impossible. The patch used to cover up this crack was a mathematical method called renormalization, that Feynman called a “dippy process”. Essentially, it just defines the problem away.

3. Complete. If physical reality is all there is, everything must have a physical cause, but events like atomic decay have no physical cause. No physical history can explain when a radioactive atom emits a photon. Quantum theory adds that quantum collapse is random, so every physical event involves randomness. The patch in this case was the ludicrous idea that every random choice creates an entire new universe, to give a multiverse that has no randomness.

4. Fundamental. If physical reality is all there is, particles of matter or energy should be fundamental but according to quantum theory, entities exist as quantum waves that only become particles when observed, and the evidence agrees. The patch for this crack is the standard model of physics, that uses virtual particles to explain observed effects like gravity. It lets physicists talk about particles while using equations based on waves.

Figure 1.7 shows the four pillars of physical realism, their cracks, and the resulting patches. This model survives by being well-established not by being well-founded, for if physical reality is always:

1. Conserved, then it must be eternal,

2. Continuous, then it must be all-pervading,

3. Complete, then it must be all-powerful, and

4. Fundamental, then it must self-existing.

That physical reality is conserved, continuous, complete, and fundamental therefore equates to saying that it is eternal, all-pervading, all-powerful, and self-existing, all properties once attributed to God. Physical realism essentially uses scientific terms to dress up physical reality with the same properties that were once attributed to the divine, so it is an ideology as well as a theory of science.

The tradition of materialism is routinely defended rather than questioned, but science can’t prove its assumptions about physical reality any more than religion could prove its beliefs about God. Instead of thinking a book has all the answers, it is now thought that physical reality does. But if physical reality is eternal, why did it begin? If it is all-pervading, why are there Planck limits? If it is all-powerful, what explains random events? If it is self-existing, why does quantum theory say that it is generated?

To accept physical realism today one must believe that matter began itself, that infinities can be defined away, that photons can spawn new universes, and that virtual particles can cause real effects. To say that physical realism has shaky foundations is an understatement, but what is the alternative?

Science can’t challenge physical realism until an alternative is proposed, and that is quantum realism. It proposes that physical reality is virtual and so impermanent, digital, contained, and dependent. A universe that began is impermanent, not eternal. A universe of pixels and cycles is digital, not all-pervading. A universe that has random events is contained, not all-powerful. A universe that is generated is dependent, not self-existing. To attribute divine properties to what is impermanent, digital, contained and dependent is foolish, so quantum realism is proposed to replace it.

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Occam’s razor is to not multiply causes unnecessarily by preferring the simpler theory. A century ago, Bertrand Russell argued that life isn’t virtual by appealing to common sense and Occam’s razor:

“There is no logical impossibility in the supposition that the whole of life is a dream, in which we ourselves create all the objects that come before us. But although this is not logically impossible, there is no reason whatever to suppose that it is true; and it is, in fact, a less simple hypothesis, viewed as a means of accounting for the facts of our own life, than the common-sense hypothesis that there really are objects independent of us, whose action on us causes our sensations.” (Russell, 1912).

Does the same argument still apply today? It is still common sense that there is a reality out there apart from us, but that our entire universe once existed at a point isn’t common-sense at all. Today, common-sense is just as likely to accept that our universe booted up from a small beginning. 

The direction of Occam’s razor has also changed. In Russell’s time, physics was based on a few particles, each with mass, charge, and spin, but now it needs forty-eight particles, that have twenty-four properties, plus five invisible fields, that generate fourteen virtual bosons, just to explain the basics. To explain inflation, neutrinos, or dark matter, needs even more fields, particles, and bosons. And our best universal theory, string theory, needs eleven dimensions to work at all.

It’s hard to imagine anything more complex than physics today so if it is preferred, it isn’t because of its simplicity! In contrast, the following chapters explain the same facts using one quantum process, one extra dimension, and one quantum field. Last century, physical realism may have been the simpler theory, but not today. Fast forward a hundred years and quantum realism is far simpler than physical realism, so now Occam’s razor cuts the other way.

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