The current view is that an electron is a particle with a tiny mass and a negative charge that exists at a dimensionless point, but how can an entity with no size have properties like mass or charge? A particle implies a substance, but a particle with no size can’t have a substance. The standard model picture of an electron as a particle with mass and charge but no size seems seriously flawed. It also doesn’t explain why particles that have mass also have charge.
Instead, let an electron be processing in some form, as in the last chapter where light was processing passed on by a network. Our networks transfer data by communication channels, so we can take the quantum network to be the same. In computing, a channel is what transfers information, just as different channels on your TV present different shows.
It follows that when light rays pass through a point in space, many channels transmit them. If one channel is what passes on one photon with one polarization, there are many channels for each point. Most computer channels are duplex, as they transfer in both directions, so we assume the same here. Finally, each channel has a finite capacity, or bandwidth, which this model expects to be the quantum process defined earlier (3.3.1). Based on this logic, one channel can then:
1. Accept one photon with one polarization coming from one direction.
2. And at the same time accept a photon with the same polarization from the opposite direction.
3. Up to a bandwidth of one quantum process per cycle.
One channel is then represented by a line through a point, plus a plane cutting the line to represent the polarization it can accept. Hence, if two photons with the same polarization enter a point from opposite directions, the same channel can handle both, up to its bandwidth of one quantum process. Since one photon is a quantum process spread over many points, light rays in general don’t collide, as physics observes.
Yet this model suggests an exception, when the photons meeting in a channel are of the highest possible frequency. In this case, each photon is distributed over only two network points, with a wavelength of two Planck lengths, and no higher frequency is possible, as a photon in one point would be empty space. An extreme photon distributes one quantum process over two points, each handling half of it, so two such photons meeting head-on in a channel will overload it. Two photons that each present half a quantum process will overload its bandwidth of one quantum process. Instead passing right through each other, extreme photons that meet head on will then collide in a physical event!
What then is the expected result? Photons spin on their axis of movement, so the photons causing the overload will just restart in another channel, but this can’t occur if every channel overloads. It follows that if rays of light with extreme photons filling every axis channel meet head-on, every channel on the axis will overload at once (Figure 4.2), as there are no free channels for the photons to restart in. This then predicts that extreme light rays meeting head-on will collide irrevocably. Such an event is clearly unlikely, but it must have occurred in the early plasma by the quantum law of all action, that everything possible eventually happens (3.6.3).
Figure 4.3 shows the result for one channel, with every channel the same, where the photon head refers to its leading half, and its tail refers to its following half. Two heads, of half a quantum process each, overload the channel bandwidth, so both photons restart next cycle. Two new photons then set off in opposite directions, but now their tails collide in another overload that restarts the photons again. This recurring overload repeats every cycle because every axis channel is the same. The network that once hosted only waves now has a repeating processing bump, which we call an electron.
The resulting entity is stable, because any photon arriving on that axis finds all the channels taken, while a photon arriving at right angles passes right through it using different channels. An electron in these terms is a repeating overload, like a stuck record that endlessly repeats.
Is such a repetition physically possible? Experiments show that electromagnetic waves can repeatedly interact to form static states (Audretch,2004, p23), as frequent observations can maintain a quantum state if the time delay is short (Itao,Heizen, Bollinger, & Wineand, 1990). Feynman’s PhD partitioned the electron wave equation into opposing advanced and retarded waves but he didn’t pursue it. Other theories that let waves oppose include Wheeler–Feynman’s absorber theory where retarded and advanced waves give rise to charge (Wheeler & Feynman, 1945), Cramer’s transactional theory based on retarded and advanced waves (Cramer, 1986), and Wolff‘‘s suggestion that electrons are in and out spherical waves (Wolff,M.,2001). If electro-magnetic waves collide to form standing waves as other waves do (Figure 4.4), an electron could be a standing wave created when extreme photons collide.
This approach contradicts the standard model in several ways. Instead of a particle of matter with no size, which makes no sense, an electron now occupies a point of the quantum network that has a size, just as a screen pixel does. Instead of having no structure, an electron is now a one-dimensional collision. Instead of matter being inert, it is now light constantly stuck in a never-ending loop. Matter is now frozen light, a standing electro-magnetic wave that is static but still pulses at the speed of light. And as this only applies to the channels of one axis, an electron is now one-dimensional matter.
When a computer hangs in an infinite loop that a restart doesn’t fix, we call it a glitch, but for the quantum network, the matter glitch was an evolution not an error.