The processing model of Figure 4.19 needs neither particles nor virtual agents to activate them. It is based on one process, that of light, which spreads on the quantum network as a wave. This lets our universe boot-up from one photon in one unit of space, both of which increased rapidly, until the expansion of space diluted light enough to stop its creation. The result was a plasma of pure light, with no matter at all, but this highest-frequency light did what ordinary light can’t, namely collide. In processing terms, it overloaded the quantum network to create matter as a standing wave.
Extreme light colliding on one axis produced leptons, either an electron or neutrino, depending on the phase. The same collision on three axes also gave up or down quarks, again depending on phase. In both cases, the overload was mass and its remainder was charge, including the one-third quark charges.
Quarks then combined into protons and neutrons by sharing photons, to give the nucleus around which electrons orbit in atoms. The first atom, Hydrogen, was just one proton and one electron, but adding neutrons to the nucleus let other atoms of the periodic table evolve, based on nucleosynthesis.
This model differs from the particle model as follows:
1. The links in Figure 4.19 signify an evolution, as light evolved into matter, and matter evolved into higher atoms, while the links in Figure 4.18 are categories not causes.
2. The processing model needs no virtual agents because processing always explores every option.
3. The particle model doesn’t predict anti-matter, but processing can run in reverse to cause it.
4. In Figure 4.18, the neutrino seems pointless, but Figure 4.19 makes it an electron byproduct.
5. The particle model doesn’t explain charge, but in processing terms it is a mass byproduct.
6. The particle model doesn’t explain the one-third charge of quarks, but the processing model does.
The processing model of Figure 4.19 is simpler because it has no virtual agents, and one fundamental process, that of light, produces all matter. Instead of many fundamental particles, many of which do nothing, one process does everything. It is also causal, so it answers questions that a particle model can’t, including:
1. Why does matter have mass and charge? (4.3.2)
2. Why do neutrinos have a tiny but variable mass? (4.3.3)
3. Why does anti-matter exist? (4.3.4)
4. Why don’t we see anti-matter around us today? (4.3.5)
5. Why are quark charges in strange thirds? (4.4.3)
6. Why does the force binding quarks increase with distance? (4.4.4)
7. Why don’t protons decay in empty space? (4.4.6)
8. Why does the energy of mass depend on the speed of light? (4.4.8)
9. How did atomic nuclei evolve? (4.6.1)
10. How did electron shells evolve? (4.6.2)
11. Why does mass vary enormously but charge doesn’t? (4.7.3)
12. Why is the universe charge neutral? (4.7.4)
13. What is dark matter? (4.7.6)
14. What is dark energy? (4.7.7)
Some of the above are covered shortly. If a quantum network defines the pixels of space, nothing is needed to keep point matter entities apart. If the quantum network transfer rate is one node per cycle, the speed of light will be constant. If electrons and neutrinos are phases of the same interaction, they will be brother leptons. If up and down quarks are phases of a three-axis interaction, there will have charges in thirds. If a quantum process creates matter, there must be anti-matter. Quantum processing can explain what inert particles pushed around by forces can’t.
It’s time to abandon Newton’s idea that God put the world together, like a clock, from existing bits. If the standard model describes God’s Lego-set, why do many of its supposed fundamentals play no part at all in the world we see? To think that all the bits of our universe were lying around before it began, so it was made as we make things, is to underestimate what happened.
The alternative is that before it began, our universe didn’t exist at all, only a reality that had to create from itself alone. There were no divine shortcuts, as even matter had to be made! This couldn’t occur in one step, so light, being simpler, was made first, and matter followed in due course. Essentially, complex outcomes evolved from a simple process.
The Mandelbrot set illustrates this, as one line of code repeated gives rise to complex forms (Figure 4.20). The complexity of the Mandelbrot set isn’t based on complex bits, but on a simple process that endlessly evolves.
If the null process of space became light that became matter that became us, then the complexity of our universe came from the simplicity of nothing, or as Douglas Adams put it:
“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it’s just wonderful.” Douglas Adams, quoted by Dawkins in his eulogy for Adams (17 September 2001).
This extraordinary idea, of complexity from simplicity, is exactly what quantum theory describes.