The quantum network is a processing network that never stops, nor do the quantum waves upon it. A quantum wave, of light or matter, starts at a point that runs it and passes it on to its neighbors, that also run and pass it on, and so on. Each point passes on what it gets, in a ripple of processing that travels at light speed because the quantum network is so fast. This network transfers processing not data. A quantum wave is a wave of processing that spreads on the quantum network. Chapter 2 details how quantum waves explain the miracle of light.
Quantum waves as processing waves can spread like waves but still restart as processing. Rebooting a cellphone by turning it off and on restarts its programs, so rebooting a network point can restart a quantum wave. If quantum waves overlap on the network until a point overloads and reboots, that can restart them. Chapter 3 details how these reboots can give rise to matter.
Electrons and photons are then 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 entities on the quantum network do this until a reboot restarts them. This explains how quantum waves spread, collapse, and restart in network terms.
But while our networks transfer information, the quantum network transfers processing, and while processing generate our apps, quantum entities are generated by creating processing. Quantum processing isn’t processing but the creation of it, so it is very powerful, as doubling a computer’s power needs twice the bits but adding one qubit to a quantum computer doubles its power (Note 1). Comparing quantum processing to ordinary processing is like comparing a nuclear bomb to an ordinary bomb.
Our computers are lightning fast but each bit must choose one of two physical states, while quantum processing can choose both states at once, which is a qubit. So while a physical electron can spin up or down, its quantum wave can spin both ways at once. Schrödinger’s example of a cat that is alive and dead at the same time shows how strange this is (3.8.2). It is even possible for quantum currents to travel both ways around a circuit at once, even though this is physically impossible (Cho, 2000).
The quantum description of photons and electrons as waves that restart when observed in physical events predicts their behavior brilliantly, so Heisenberg envisaged a world of quantum 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 this 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).
This denies quantum theory by calling it unreal but still lets us use it. It allows physicists to 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, that would be preposterous, and so it is in current physics.
Despite its relegation to the realm of fantasy, the revelation that quantum possibilities cause physical certainties 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 denied the earlier advances, science is denying this one. That orthodoxy denies innovation is no surprise, but who expected the denier to be science itself?
If quantum processing generates physical events, what manifests isn’t what exists. Most of us think that we see reality, but the evidence implies that what is seen doesn’t exist but what isn’t seen does. If so, how could a quantum network create space and time as we know it?
Note 1. A quantum computer of N qubits equates to a classical computer of 2N bits.