The quantum network never stops, nor do the waves upon it. A quantum wave, of light or matter, starts at a point that runs it, then passes it on to its neighbors, that also run and pass it on, and so on. Each point runs and passes on what it gets, in a ripple of processing that travels at light speed because the quantum network is so fast. This ripple, or quantum wave, is a wave of processing not data. The next chapter explains how these waves explain the miracle of light.
A processing wave can spread like a wave across network points but if any point reboots, it will restart its processing again. This what happens if you turn your smartphone off and on again – it reboots and tries to restart its processing again. A phone can also reboot itself if it runs out of processing, so reverse engineering suggests that when a network point overloads its processing capacity, it will reboot and restart the quantum wave. It follows that as quantum waves spread on the network, they will eventually overload a point, that will then reboot and restart the quantum waves involved. Chapter 4 details how these reboots can give rise to matter.
In this view, electrons and photons are like apps spreading on a network that restart if a point reboots. We call an app that spreads itself on the Internet a virus, but a photon on the quantum network acts like this. Like a virus, it spreads itself around until a reboot restarts it. As will be seen, this model can explain how quantum waves spread, collapse, and restart in network terms.
But while our networks transfer information, the quantum network transfers processing, and while processing produces our apps, photon and electron “apps” produce physical events. The principles are the same, but the quantum network is based on processing while our networks are based on information. For example, as quantum waves spread, they create processing not information. This makes what we call quantum processing very powerful. To double the power of one of our computers power needs twice the bits, but adding just one qubit to a quantum computer doubles its power (Note 1). Quantum processing is to classical processing as a nuclear bomb is to a classical bomb.
Our computers are lightning fast but each bit is one choice between two physical states, while a qubit includes the choice of both states at once, so while a physical electron can spin up or down, its quantum equivalent can spin both ways at once. Schrödinger’s example of a cat that is both alive and dead at the same time shows how strange this is to us (3.8.2). Hence, it is possible for quantum currents to travel both ways around a circuit at once, which is physically impossible (Cho, 2000).
Quantum theory’s description of photons and electrons, as waves that restart when observed in physical events, predicts their behavior brilliantly, so Heisenberg saw the quantum world as one of possibilities:
“The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.” (Rosenblum & Kuttner, 2006) p104.
Einstein ridiculed quantum theory, because it was physically impossible, so Bohr proposed the compromise we have today, that the quantum world is imaginary, but we can still use its equations:
“There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description.” (Petersen, 1963).
Essentially, the physical events that quantum theory predicts are real, so we can use its equations, but what it describes is imaginary. This classic example of doublethink lets physicists use equations based on quantum waves, but still deny that they exist! If astronomers used equations based on the earth orbiting the sun, but denied that it did, there would be outrage, but in current physics, it is allowed!
Despite its relegation to the realm of fantasy, quantum theory’s revelation that quantum events cause physical events was the greatest discovery of last century, on a par with evolution the century before, and that the earth orbits the sun centuries earlier. But while religion opposed the earlier advances, physics is in denial this time. That orthodoxy denies innovation is no surprise, but who expected the denier to be science itself?
If quantum events generate physical events, the physical world we see just reflects the quantum world we can’t see. Most of us assume that we see reality, but the evidence is that we only see its manifestations. It follows that our space and time could be generated, so we now explore how that could be.
Note 1. A quantum computer of N qubits equates to a classical computer of 2N bits.