If a photon is a spread-out wave, as quantum theory says, how can it arrive at a point? A wave should hit a barrier as a smear, but a photon hits a screen as a dot instead. Radio waves are many meters long, so they should take time to arrive, even at light speed, but they don’t. If they did, in the delay between a wave front’s first hit and the rest arriving, the tail could hit something else. One photon could hit twice, but it never does! Physical waves deliver their energy over time and space, so how does a quantum wave deliver all its energy instantly, at a point? As Walker says:
“How can electromagnetic energy spread out like a wave … still be deposited all in one neat package when the light is absorbed?” (Walker, 2000), p43.
The fact is that physics doesn’t know how any wave could collapse instantly at a point:
“After more than seven decades, no one understands how or even whether the collapse of a probability wave really happens.” (Greene, 2004), p119.
Einstein rejected quantum collapse because it implied faster than light travel. He pointed out that if a photon is a wave that spreads, as quantum theory says, then:
Before the photon hits a screen, its wave function exists at points A or B with some probability but after, it is entirely at point A say not at B. The moment A knows it is the photon, then B knows it isn’t. Now suppose the screen is moved further away, eventually A and B could be in different galaxies, so how can the collapse happen instantly? That two events anywhere in the universe are instantly correlated faster than light contradicts special relativity.
Physical waves can’t collapse instantly so how do quantum waves do this? They can if they are processing waves that restart when a network point overloads and reboots. In computing, a reboot:
1. Is irreversible. A reboot can’t be undone because all prior processing is lost.
2. Conserves processing. The amount of processing before and after a reboot is the same.
3. Allows change. A reboot can allocate the processing involved in new ways.
When a phone, laptop, or printer overloads it reboots, to restart its processing from scratch. A network point is the same, except its processing comes from a server. It follows that when a network point overloads, it will reboot by trying to restart its server processing.
A photon processing wave arriving at a screen is expected to overload its points, as they are already fully occupied generating its matter. If many points reboot at once, they will all request a server restart but one photon has only one server, so only one request can succeed. The photon then restarts at that point, so it always hits a screen at one point not many.
Quantum collapse is then a processing wave restarting at a point. The photon arrives at a screen as many instances spread over many points, but only one of them can restart it. When this happens, the other instances have no server support, so they disappear instantly, as quantum theory says. Quantum collapse is the inevitable disbanding of child instances when their parent server support ceases. The quantum wave collapses instantly, as if it never was, because instances have no substance.
Why then doesn’t the reboot point overload again when a photon restarts? The pass-it-on protocol (2.4.4) avoids this, as the point passes on its processing before doing anything else, so the photon that caused the overload just starts to spread again.
To recap, a photon arriving at a screen isn’t a lonely particle heading for a single hit point, but a wave of many instances, any of which can restart the photon. When a screen blocks this wave, the restart point depends on what its server is doing at the time, which to us is random. Many points may request a restart, but only one can succeed, so the first point to do so is where the photon hits the screen.
Why then does quantum collapse occur instantly, faster even than light? The speed of light depends on the screen transfer rate but when a program changes a screen pixel, no movement is needed. It doesn’t move to a point to change it, but does so directly, anywhere on the screen. Likewise, a photon server can instantly alter its clients anywhere on the screen of our space, regardless of distance. The point-to-point screen transfer rate that defines the speed of light is thus irrelevant to the server-client cause of quantum collapse. Einstein’s objection that quantum collapse occurs faster than light doesn’t apply because it is a server effect, not a client effect.
Materialism sees a world of things that persist but quantum realism sees a world of quantum events that don’t. Yet these events aren’t fanciful, because the equations describing them predict physical events. The evidence supports quantum theory, not materialism, so a new world view is needed.
For example, when electrons collide and bounce apart, we see the same particles leaving as went in, but quantum theory tells another story. If the quantum waves entering the collision restarted, the electrons that went in aren’t those that came out, but actually brand-new creations, fresh off the quantum press. Quantum theory implies that physical events annihilate and recreate entities, so there is no need to assume some matter substance. Physics suggests that we live in a world of events, not things.