A wave by definition vibrates in a medium, so what moves when light does? It is said that the electro-magnetic field does, but that movement isn’t physical, so physics just declares that:
“… we accept as nonexistent the medium that moves when waves of quantum mechanics propagate.” (Laughlin, 2005), p56.
After all if quantum waves don’t exist, their medium can be the same! Electro-magnetic field theory then glibly explains light by saying that electric changes cause magnetic changes and magnetic changes cause electric changes in a circular fashion, so light is said to be a:
“… self-renewing field disturbance.” (Wilczek, 2008), p212.
Yet what renews the fields that renew? That an electric field powers a magnetic field that powers the electric field is like Peter paying Paul’s bill, and Paul paying Peter’s bill. With such logic, I could borrow a million dollars now and never pay it back. If light self-renews, it is a cosmic Ponzi scheme, so the perpetual-motion machine of medieval alchemists is the photon!
Light waves never fade but waves that move matter up and down (Figure 3.10) produce friction by the second law of thermodynamics, so they always fade, with no exceptions. Yet light that has traveled in space for billions of years still registers on our telescopes, so is it a frictionless wave? If so, it can’t arise from matter moving, but how can vibrating nothing (space) create something (light)?
If light is a wave that can travel through space, empty space must be its medium, so empty space isn’t empty. In this model, empty space is always actively generating a null result, so the:
“… vacuum state is actually full of energy…” (Davies & Brown, 1999), p140.
Instead of particles moving in nothing, light is now a wave on the surface of space that vibrates something not nothing, namely the quantum network. Instead of electrical and magnetic fields mutually causing each other, which is illogical, that network causes both. Space then has energy because the quantum network is always on, to power any light that passes, just as an idle computer can always respond to any keystroke (Note 1). Physical waves always fade but quantum waves don’t, because they are sustained by a network that can also restart them if needed. Instead of being mostly dead, our universe is now literally pulsing with activity.
What then moves when light does? In network terms, the answer is processing that sets values, just as a laptop runs a game by setting values. For example, in World of Warcraft it sets the values that cause the game monsters we see, but we don’t see that processing. Likewise, the quantum values that generate our world have no meaning to us but we see their effects. Feynman called these values vector potentials, Born called them probability amplitudes, Hiley called them quantum potentials (Davies & Brown, 1999) p138, and others refer to the quantum function (ᴪ), but whatever we call them, what matters is that quantum processing causes physical events and this is why quantum theory works.
Note 1. Processing must always run, so an “idle” computer still runs a null cycle, so it isn’t doing nothing.