Changing the world, one idea at a time
Special relativity explains that being inside a plane going at a constant speed is like being stationary because time and space adjust to keep it so. General relativity extends special relativity to attribute the acceleration caused by gravity to changes in space and time as well.
QR5.4.1. Free-fall is Acceleration
QR5.4.2. The Gravity Gradient
QR5.4.3. Gravity And Photons
QR5.4.4. Gravity Bends Light
QR5.4.5. Gravity Slows Time
QR5.4.6. Black Holes
An objective world has only one type of movement, that of the object, but virtual worlds always have two. In Figure 5.6, one can move the avatars to the left by moving their pixels left or by moving the forest pixels behind them right. A program can create movement by moving the object or its background as the avatars move relative to the forest. Programs can move images by bit-shifting the foreground or the background. In the first case, avatar pixels move across the screen and in the second case, the background pixels scroll behind the center-screen object’s frame of reference.
Our reality also has two movement types, of light that is absolute and of matter that is relative to its frame of reference. Light and matter move differently in our reality just as in a virtual reality. Light moves like a pixel crossing a screen while matter moves like a center-screen image whose background scrolls. The standard model assumes particles move on a stationary background but relativity describes the option to bit-shift the background. In a fast car, one can imagine being still with the world scrolling by, perhaps because it is actually so.
Light has radiant energy from its frequency but matter has kinetic energy from its movement. They seem unrelated but a solar sail moves when light hits it, so radiant energy somehow gives it kinetic energy. If matter is made of photons, then perhaps photons don’t just disappear when they hit a solar sail but join with the photons that give it mass.
If an electron point of matter can become a higher generation muon by adding photons, then every matter node has spare channels so all matter can add more photons. If a solar sail acquires photons with one direction, its quantum field will increase one way causing movement that way. If each matter node in the sail reboots every cycle at a random point depending on its quantum field, increasing the field density in one direction will increase the restart probability that way. The result over time is the macroscopic movement of the solar sail in the direction of the photons hitting it. In general, when matter acquires photons in one direction, its quantum tremble will move it that way
That matter moves when it acquires directional photons suggests that kinetic energy is passed on when one moving body hits another because the photons causing the movement are passed on. If kinetic energy arises when matter acquires photons, it has the same basis as radiant energy.
That matter moves by acquiring photons also explains why mass increases as objects go faster. The added photons increase the interference between photons competing for channels that increases the processing that in this model is mass. As more photons make matter go faster, the increase isn’t linear because interference doesn’t increase linearly with load, as networks like the Internet show. As relativity says, the mass increase tends to infinity as movement approaches the speed of light.
Kinetic energy based on photon acquisition isn’t quantized because any mass size can add one photon so the change can divide to any degree. A large mass shares the effect of adding a photon so its inertia, or resistance to movement, is more because it takes more photons to move it. The kinetic energy of matter and the radiant energy of light interact because both are based on photons.
If matter moves by teleport, how does that affect time and space? In quantum realism, a photon arrives at a screen as a cloud of client instances and the first node overload to successfully restart the photon server is where it hits. Many instances arrive but only one collapses the wave function by restarting the photons server at its point. The photon spreads as a quantum wave but is detected by a point physical event.
The same applies to quantum matter but its distribution spreads around it in a sphere. Before a physical event occurs, an electron is an instance ensemble just as a photon is. But it is many photons constantly restarting in a node and servers restarting at the same time and point entangle. They jointly run all the instances distributed around the electron so any successful restart involves them all. As a result, an electron restarts as an entity every cycle and where it restarts depends on its distribution, just as for a photon. The electron’s ability to restart at a new point allows it to tunnel to a new point regardless of any intervening barriers.
For matter, a “tick” of its time passes for every processing cycle it completes in the same node but each cycle it may also interact with something else. For example, a muon hit by a neutrino decays into an electron, an antineutrino and a muon neutrino. It takes about a millionth of a second for this to happen and this is the muon’s lifetime.
Now suppose that one quantum cycle the muon restarts at another point so it moves. As the distribution around a muon is weaker than at the center, a neutrino strike there won’t give a decay. If a neutrino was about to strike where the muon was, moving extended its lifetime by one cycle. By moving the muon dodged the neutrino bullet so the teleport cycle added to its lifetime.
For a muon, life events and movement events share a fixed resource, quantum cycles, that give one or the other but not both at once. A quantum cycle can be either a life event or a teleport so as a muon moves faster, more teleports replace life events so its lifetime increases. Time dilates for the muon as it moves faster as relativity says.
Any quantum matter entity that spends a quantum cycle “in transit” loses a life event cycle. Restarting at a new point in its distribution stops a life cycle occurring so as matter moves faster, its time dilates. If it restarts one node to the right say, any measure made in that direction is a pixel less. If one measures distance from where it is, a teleport one way shortens distance that way, and if time is measured in life events, every teleport steals a life event. Together, these two effects keep the speed of light constant as matter moves.
Figure 5.5 shows the space-time diagram of a photon passing stationary matter. The photon moves one point of distance per point of time to give a 45º line, which is the speed of light. Now suppose the matter point moves one unit towards the photon by teleport. If the axes stay as they are, it moves a distance unit closer to the photon in a unit of time but the teleport shifts the axes by a distance unit and a time unit as well. Since the photon still passes through the zero-point, shifting both axes by one means the photon line is still 45º, which is the speed of light. Relativity arises because matter movement changes the origin of time and space.
Recall the earlier example where the same photon from the sun passes rockets going in different directions from the earth at the speed of light (Figure 5.4). If the rockets and the photon move in the same way this is very strange but they don’t, as matter alters its time and space as it moves. The photon doesn’t change what it does but each rocket alters its time and space as it moves to keep the speed of light constant.
Each bit of matter has its own frame of reference, as if it had its own clock and map. Matter time is relative because it changes its reference frame as it moves. In contrast, light moves on every quantum cycle so for it, time passes absolutely. For matter to move at the speed of light, it would have to teleport every quantum cycle leaving no time for life events so its time would stop. This isn’t true for light because matter time doesn’t apply to light, as time is absolute for light but relative for matter.
Light moves forward because, as Huygens proposed, it is a wave that spreads at every point, so the front of the wave spreads out before the back of the wave does. The backward spread of the wave front is cancelled by the forward spread of the wave rear but its forward spread isn’t, giving a forward moving wave. A quantum processing wave spreading on a network can do this.
In contrast, a standing quantum wave spreads on the network equally in all directions so it has no front or back in any direction. Light then is a moving quantum wave while matter is a standing quantum wave that should be inherently stationary. A photon is like a moving boat spreading ripples behind it while matter is like a stationary boat whose engine still spreads waves in all directions.
According to quantum theory, point matter entities don’t sit at a fixed point but tremble about their quantum distribution. Schrödinger deduced this zitterbewegung or “quantum fuzziness” from the Dirac electron equation. Light and matter then act alike in that while a measurement locates a photon or electron at a point, in quantum terms they exist throughout their distribution. A photon only restarts when measured but electron matter restarts every cycle based on its quantum distribution. A matter point is like a dot that is redrawn each cycle but not at the same point so it appears as a fuzzy patch not a clear point.
Quantum matter randomly trembles based on its distribution. If the distribution is symmetric, there is no average movement but if for any reason it is asymmetric, it will restart in a particular direction more often. As quantum events occur at a fantastic rate, this adds up to cause macroscopic movement in our time. If the distribution of a point matter entity is symmetric, the trembles cancel but if not, any restart asymmetry will give rise to visible movement.
Quantum trembling explains why matter doesn’t move as light does. Light moves by node-to-node transfer but matter moves by a point restart that is in essence a teleport. This movement allows quantum tunneling where an electron within an impenetrable Gaussian field suddenly pops up outside it, like a marble suddenly appearing out of a sealed bottle. It didn’t travel a path out as light does because it can’t exist in the field around it, it just teleported out. A quantum matter entity can tunnel to any point in its quantum distribution by restarting there.
If matter moves by teleport not the path transfer of light, how does it change space and time?
In physical realism, movement is a natural property of matter so there is no reason why it can’t just go faster and faster but special relativity is clear that matter can never reach the speed of light. Physical realism has no explanation at all for the universal speed limit that relativity describes.
In quantum realism, light is a constantly spreading wave of quantum processing and matter is the same processing as a standing wave that constantly restarts. This explains why light inherently moves but matter is inherently stationary but raises the unexpected question: If matter is a standing quantum wave, how does it move at all? Quantum theory suggests that it is because matter trembles.
QR5.3.1. How Matter Moves
QR5.3.2. How Matter Changes Space and Time
QR5.3.3. Kinetic Energy And Photons
QR5.3.4. Bit-shifting Reality
Light goes at the fantastic speed of 670 million miles per hour, all the way to the moon in a second. Can we achieve this speed? What about a leap-frog method, like a rocket going at half the speed of light that shot a bullet forward at half the speed of light? Unfortunately, doing this changes time and space so the bullet only goes at four-fifths the speed of light!
What if we gradually accelerate a rocket up to the speed of light? Nature again intervenes by increasing the rocket mass until at near the speed of light its near infinite mass needs a near infinite force to move it. This contradicted the conservation of mass and the law of thermodynamics, that energy in a closed system can’t be lost, but Einstein’s answer was that energy and mass convert by E=mc2, so nothing is really lost. He didn’t say whether mass was a form of energy, energy was a form of mass, or both were aspects of something else.
In theory, in a rocket going 5mph slower than the speed of light one could throw a ball at 5mph per hour to reach the speed of light but in practice one can’t produce the force needed to throw the ball. If the rocket had headlights, one might expect light to leave it at almost twice the speed of light but again Nature plays with space and time to keep the speed of light the same.
Relativity contradicts all our intuitions about movement. For example, if we sent two rockets from the earth at half the speed of light, one to the sun and one to Pluto (Figure 5.4), relativity requires that light from the sun passes both rockets and the earth at the same speed! How can the same photon pass both rockets, one going to the sun and one away from it, at the same speed? This makes no sense in classical or indeed any other terms.
In relativity, as in quantum theory, the equations work but again they don’t make any sense. How can space that is the measure of movement, itself “move”? How can time that is the measure of change, itself change? It cannot be, yet the evidence we have suggests that it is so.
Einstein deduced how space and time had to change for our world to be as it is, but he didn’t explain it, no doubt expecting physics to unravel the mystery in time but it is now a 100 years later and we are none the wiser! How matter changes space and time must relate to how it moves but the current assumption that inert matter has a natural property of movement offers no clues. What then does quantum realism suggest?
Relativity says the speed of light is constant because time slows and distance shortens as matter moves faster. In a classic thought experiment, Einstein imagined a twin leaving on a rocket who returns after five years of high-speed travel in space to find his twin brother is an old man of eighty! This could happen because a muon traveling at 99.5% of the speed of light travels 3000 meters when it should travel only 300 meters in its millionth of a second life, so speed extends its life tenfold. Relativity lets in a rocket accelerating at one g get to our nearest galaxy and back in 60 years but a traveler would return to find the earth four million years older (Harrison, 1986, p157). The evidence suggests that matter time slows down as matter moves faster but what does this mean?
For Newton, God “painted” matter objects on a universal canvas of space and time. Einstein replaced this view with equations that we know are true but can’t explain. If we keep the analogy, then what is painted isn’t just the object but also its time. This is hard to imagine, but if the object’s time and its movement come from the same finite “painter”, increasing one demand by moving an object faster will decrease the other, so time passes slower for faster moving objects because the same finite source gives rise to both. This is what the theory of relativity implies.
According to Einstein’s equations, time stops at the speed of light so a matter clock on a photon wouldn’t tick at all. A photon from the Andromeda galaxy takes 2.5 million years to get here but according to relativity, no time at all passes for the photon itself. It also starts and ends its journey at the same location by length contraction! Needless to say, this makes no sense, as how can light move at all if its time stops? The obvious conclusion is that matter time doesn’t apply to light.
Why is the speed of light constant instead of say, the speed of lead? What makes light the gold standard of movement? The answer lies in the role of light in causality. Imagine a rocket going to a planet at nearly light speed and then returning to earth. If the rocket’s speed affected the speed of light, a message sent on the journey to the planet might arrive after one sent on the way back. If the rocket exploded after rounding the planet, one might first see the blast then get a message from the crew that all is well, like getting a cheery Facebook message from a person after attending their funeral. Relativity keeps the causality given by light messages in the right order.
It turns out that if a rocket could leave the earth faster than light, it could in theory go back in time to return before it left. As Buckley points out, given faster than light travel, relativity and causality, the universe can support two but not all three at once. It can’t go faster than light because that would breach the causality of events we observe. It doesn’t happen because light, the constant messenger of causality, never gets it backwards.
It follows that light moves differently from matter. If matter and light moved the same way, then light would need a push to go faster again after it slowed down in water say but needless to say, it isn’t so. Light speeds up when going from water to a vacuum with no push needed. In general, it takes work to move matter but to stop light moving takes work. If I drive at 100mph and throw a brick forward at 10mph, it goes at about 110mph. But on a rocket going at half the speed of light, torchlight goes forward at exactly the speed of light! How does light, and only light, do this?
Einstein analyzed what is necessary to maintain our reality bubble as follows. He imagined a moving train where a floor light reflects from a mirror up on the ceiling. A train passenger sees the light go straight up and down but a platform observer sees it travel a longer path in the same time (Figure 5.2). If time and space are the same for both, they get a different speed of light and different physics. Einstein deduced that space had to shrink and time dilate to keep the speed of light constant. Lorentz saw his transformations as mathematical curiosities but to Einstein they were what made Poincare’s relativity work. Einstein saw that for the universe to be as Poincare described, space and time had to change as Lorentz described. Space and time had to change to make physics invariant or torches might not always shine and mirrors might not always reflect!
The implications of this are strange indeed. Imagine a rocket flying past a space station in orbit (Figure 5.3). It seems impossible that people on the rocket and on the space station both get the same speed of light, but they do! If they didn’t, our physics wouldn’t work on Mars.
But who is really moving – is the rocket going past the space station or is the orbiting space station passing the rocket? It turns out that it doesn’t matter. If the rocket moves, its space and time contract and dilate, or if the space station moves the same applies. Regardless of how the rocket and station move relative to each other, distance and time change just enough to keep the speed of light the same for both. For a particle model, this extraordinary finding makes no sense at all.
Experiments have verified that time and space change as matter moves. It seems weird that time and space change with speed but as Einstein said, this is why the universe isn’t weird. That the speed of light is constant for all movement is why we appear to live in a “normal” universe.
