An objective space has only one type of movement, of the object, but virtual spaces allow two. In Figure 5.7, a program can move the car by shifting its pixels one way, or it can leave the car center-screen and scroll the background behind it. Click on the Figure link to see a video of the car moving, then note that actually the car is still and only its background moves. To distinguish these two methods, let an image that moves across a screen be absolute movement, and an image that is stationary as its background moves be relative movement.
If our space is virtual, light could move absolutely while matter moves relatively. The claim of special relativity that light moves absolutely while matter moves relatively then makes sense, but how can matter change the space around it?
Until now, quantum entities were assumed to teleport absolutely but what if they don’t? If a teleport is a server restart from a new point, it could just use the new point’s connections and stay where it is. This is easier than relocating to a new point, and the effect for us is that space moves. The space of a quantum entity is its distribution, each point of which is also a source with its own distribution. Matter then teleports by acquiring a new distribution, or space, but actually stays at the same point, so it moves by changing the space around it, as special relativity says.
This explains why the speed of light is constant. If matter moves relatively, by changing the space around it, light will always leave a moving rocket at the speed of light, because in absolute terms, the rocket isn’t moving at all! This also explains why light from the sun passes rockets going to and from the sun at the same speed (Figure 5.6).
That matter moves by changing its space seems strange, but no other theory explains why special relativity works. Particles can’t, because they move absolutely, but the evidence for relativity is firm. Einstein’s equations work but don’t explain how dead matter changes space and time, yet processing allows it.
To understand this, imagine sitting in a moving car and watching trees and houses scroll by. It feels as if the world is moving around you, and special relativity agrees that space moves but matter doesn’t. This why a ball thrown up in a moving car behaves just as if the car is still, and why the laws of physics on our moving earth are the same everywhere else in the universe.
Why then does time dilate when matter moves, as special relativity says? For matter, time ticks by as cycles complete but if it teleports, the cycle ends with a connection reset not a life event. For example, a muon in space lives for about a millionth of a second, until a neutrino hit decays it into an electron, anti-neutrino, and muon neutrino. But if it moves faster, it lives longer because a teleport before a neutrino hit dodges the bullet, so it lives on. In general, a quantum cycle can be a life event or a teleport, so matter can live or move, but not both at once. An entity that spends a cycle changing its distribution loses a life event, so its time dilates, as special relativity says.
Equally, when matter teleports in any direction, any measure made that way is reduced, so space contracts in that direction, again as special relativity says.
According to relativity, every bit of matter has its own frame of reference, as if it had its own clock and map, and quantum realism agrees. If matter maps the space around it by its quantum distribution, and its time is quantum cycles completed, both can change when it moves by teleport. This explains why time dilates and space contracts as matter moves, but what decides which way it moves?