An objective space has only one type of movement, of the object, but virtual spaces allow two. In Figure 5.7, we can move the car by shifting its pixels one way, or 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 the car stays still as its background moves. To distinguish these two methods, let moving an image across a screen be absolute movement, and moving the background behind a stationary image be relative movement.
If our space is virtual, movement can be absolute or relative, so Einstein’s claim that light moves absolutely but matter doesn’t could make sense, but how can matter change its background?
In this model, matter moves by teleport, but is it absolute or relative? A teleport is an entity restart from a new point, and the simplest way to do this is to use the new point’s connections from where it is. Processing at a point can’t instantly relocate to a new point but it can change its connections, which in effect changes the space around it.
This is possible because the space around a quantum entity is its distribution, each point of which is a source with its own distribution. Matter can then teleport by acquiring a new distribution, or space, but actually stay at the same point. It then moves by changing the space around it, just as special relativity says.
This logic 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 is odd but no other theory explains special relativity. Particles that move absolutely can’t, but the evidence for relativity is firm. Einstein’s equations don’t explain how dead matter changes space and time, but processing does.
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 your space is moving but you aren’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 throughout 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 only a millionth of a second until a neutrino hit decays it 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 teleport 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.
Relativity gives every bit of matter its own frame of reference, as if it had its own clock and map, and quantum realism agrees. Matter maps the space around it by its quantum distribution, and its time ticks by as life cycles complete, but a teleport changes both. Time then dilates and space contracts as matter moves, but what decides the direction in which it moves?