WAVE-PARTICLE DUALITY AS LINEARIZATION-SINGULARIZATION
Warning: A subquantal conceptual big bang is applied to the Big Bang itself, sparks fly…
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Abstract: Conventional Big Bang Theory depends upon some unproven physics at the Quantum level. Although experiments, so far, show Quantum Mechanics to be 100% true, there is a good reason to believe that this will not perdure. The problem with Quantum Mechanics is that it violates Nothing Instantaneous at Distance ("NID"), an undeclared physics metaprinciple which has always triumphed, ever since the ape came down from the tree to preach man.
NID is not a physical law in the sense of the laws that allow to make computations, but it has always been found to be true… until today’s official formulation of conventional Quantum Mechanics, which blatantly violates it.
The author boldly sketches its own theory, which is driven by respect for NID. After rendering Quantum Mechanics obsolete, it is an easy task to dispose of one of the paradoxes of the present Big Bang Theory. We have nothing to fear, but fun itself. Not for those that the Philosophy of Quantum Theory frightens.
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Physicist Tamara Davis, writing in Scientific American, July 2010, tries to solve a paradox of Big Bang theory by getting rid of the law of conservation of energy. Quite a feat, since conservation of energy is exactly the deepest foundation of physics. Whatever I am going to do next to perspectives in physics in the present essay, it will not be as ridiculous. Thus encouraged, I will go boldly where no mind has gone before.
Dr. Davis exposes the problem this way: "Almost all of our information about outer space comes in the form of light, and one of light’s key features is that it gets redshifted—its electromagnetic waves get stretched—as it travels from distant galaxies through our ever expanding universe, in accordance with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. But the longer the wavelength, the lower the energy. Thus, inquisitive minds ask: When light is redshifted by the expansion of the universe, where does its energy go? Is it lost, in violation of the conservation principle?"
She then advocates that the cosmological redshift can be thought of as a photon making many tiny little Doppler shifts along its directory. According to her, Doppler shifts do not represent a true loss of photon energy, only a change of perspective (from one galaxy, to another receding galaxy).
Verily, in the (creationist) Big Bang Theory, physicists said: "Let There Be Light!" and so all was light in the beginning. Some of the light, in Big bang Theory (BBT) turned into matter, some kept on going, and we receive the later now as a diffuse 3 degree Kelvin radiation.
In more details, the paradox is this: say somewhat after the BB, some of the energy was light, E(L), and some was matter E(M). E(L) will be made of a given number of photons, say N, with average energy A. So E(L) = N A. Now, according to Planck’s inauguration of Quantum Mechanics, A = h V, where V is the average photon frequency. So E(L) = h N V. But, according to BBT, V goes down, as the universe expands. Nowadays V corresponds to very very cold light. But initially V was extremely, unimaginably incandescent gamma ray light. Thus E(L) has gone down from enormous to negligible! In other words, looking at BBT in the simplest fashion, a gross violation of energy conservation is in full evidence. Part of the problem is that in Einstein’s Relativity, spacetime has no physical reality (in contradistinction with the old ether theory, old ether being what electromagnetic waves were supposed to wave). Thus the energy lost by Big Bang light cannot be transferred to something else, since the only thing around is spacetime, and spacetime has no reality (not that simple, see P/S 4) .
Of these sorts of simple contradictions great scientific progress is made. Anybody could have pointed out to Aristotle that he had neglected air (or water) resistance. But one had to wait Buridan, 17 centuries later, to do so, discovering Newton’s First Law, more than three centuries before Newton was born… But I digress…
Dr. Tamara Davis escapes with a pirouette. She simply states that laws such as energy conservation does not apply to the universe as such. (Useless a pirouette it is, because a moment’s reflection show that energy conservation will also be violated for arbitrarily small subsections of the universe).
I have a simpler suggestion: to remake all of physics from scratch, while respecting the conservation of energy. Here is a sketch. First I do away with localized particle trajectory. So, when a particle goes from X to Y, according to me, it is not localized. A particle is not a particle until it has been localized. Proof: well, first we have no proof that they are localized, so why to suppose they are, as most physicists, even many Quantum physicists suppose? It’s not because, as monkeys, we found 20 million years ago that stones were localized when flying towards our opponents, that this is still true when the stone is a particle of light. Actually it is the opposite which is obvious.
The reasons to believe photons delocalize is the fact that photons (and all particles) take the entire geometry into account as they propagate: wherever they can go influences where they will end up. Propagating particles embrace the whole. They always end up in a particular place, but that place is computed by the implied order of the whole. This is the most basic idea in Optics, and Quantum Mechanics.
One way to partly say this is that light behaves as a wave. So light goes around a sphere from everywhere, goes through two slits, etc. The idea that light could be a wave came initially from Huyghens, but he did not have the wealth of examples that would be found in the next two centuries (Young’s slits and Poisson’s dot). This wave behavior is used in lenses.
So it was long anticipated that light would delocalize: a wave is intrinsically delocalized. So far, so good. Newton preferred to think of light as a particle (he was a great man, and wanted to be greater than Huyghens that way, so he had to contradict him!) It is easy to see why: the ancient Greeks had anticipated atoms, the smallest possible pieces. Newton just assumed there would be atoms of light. Experiences of Hertz, discovering the photoelectric effect, in combination with Planck’s atomization of light energy (one now says "quantization"), led Einstein to suggest the "heuristic viewpoint" that therein a proof that light was made of particles.
So wave or particle? The situation became more intriguing when photons (or, in general, particles) were fired in the apparatus (whatever it is), one photon (or particle) at a time. Photons (or particles) still behaved like waves.
The largest optical apparatuses (please excuse the Anglicized Latin grammar…) known are galactic clusters. They lens the light, using their formidable gravitation to do so. According to Einstein theory of gravitation, light follows geodesics of spacetime, and those are bent by mass. (Newton’s theory of light produces roughly the same gravitational lens effect, as Laplace, who predicted black holes, using Newton’s particle theory of light, would have pointed out.)
So far so good, but what does that mean? That means photons delocalize around galaxies themselves… since they interfere with themselves, around galaxies themselves. This, of course boggles the mind, so common minds do not like to consider the possibility. But there is no alternative.
Hence the atom of light, the photon, is, most of the time, quite far from being at a single point. Instead it can "localize" at points which are quasi infinitely large geometries. The astute mathematician will be reminded of Alain Connes’ "Non Commutative Geometry", where points can be spaces.
I say, "most of the time", because a cosmological photon is for billions of years out there… in its delocalized state. I am just observing this, as it is. Most physicists, including the honorable Tamara above, represent photons following trajectories, as if they were Newton’s particles. But they are not. even Einstein made that elementary conceptual mistake (he did not need to go into the subtleties of the EPR thought experiment to find delocalization!).
Usual Quantum Mechanics is an abstraction of what is observed in human sized laboratories. Although, recently, photon delocalization experiments were conducted over distances up to dozen of kilometers. The results respected scrupulously the QM predictions. However, I am persuaded that this will not be the case as the distances become astronomical. I have a reasoning for this that I borrowed from Newton: namely, nothing can be instantaneous and at a distance. Such was the objection of Newton to his own theory of gravitation (which was instantaneous, and at a distance. "Einstein’s" theory of gravitation uses Faraday’s field concept and the speed of light to address Newton’s worries).
That nothing can be instantaneous and at a distance ("NID") was already the core of the Einstein Podolski Rosen paradox ("EPR"). EPR pointed out that "elements of reality", according to QM, could be spread out arbitrarily wide, and that makes no sense (because they took it for granted that everybody believed in NID).
However, the Bell inequalities were checked by Aspect and others, showing that it is exactly what happens. So, now getting inspiration from Raymond Poincare’, I will paraphrase him faithfully: if something is exactly what always happens , then it is a law of nature. Poincare’ brandished this meta principle to justify his postulate that the speed of light would always be measured to be c (this idea is attributed to Einstein, who actually read it in a book of Poincare’; Poincare’, like Buridan, was French, so he could not possibly have had a deep idea, according to the Anglo-Saxon conspiracy which considers that French culture has to do with wine and cheese. Only).
So let’s be clear: experimentally, and from its very formulation, Quantum Mechanics violates NID, "No Instantaneous Distance".
Thus, if NID, "No Instantaneous Distance", is made into a metaprinciple, one has to deduce that Quantum Theory, as it is, is false. Or more exactly incomplete, the way Newton’s gravitation is incomplete.
In this view, to complete QT one has to do away with its instantaneous at a distance aspect, thus, one has to impose the existence of a SUBQUANTAL INTERACTION.
Some hypocrites will scream that I do not respect the metaprinciple of minimum logic ("Ockham’s razor"), that this is not worthy physical speculation anymore. But actually Big Bang Theory supposes an unobserved, and unobservable field, the inflaton. At least my subquantal field is observable, and I claim that a lot of the 3 degree Kelvin cosmological radiation is just such an observation (3K radiation actually sets detection level for detection of the subquantal field).
In truth, all and any Quantum process is all about widely spread elements of reality that QM claim instantaneously convert to the singular. This is the old "Collapse of the Wave Packet". I just say it proceeds at some speed, TAU (ten to the ten the speed of light at least). To simplify, I will also hypothesize that this the speed at which the linear quantum guiding wave also spreads. That wave is known as the Quantum Potential in David Bohm’s refurbished version of De Broglie’s guiding wave theory (ooopss, De Broglie was another Frenchman, he invented the full blown Quantum Theory in 1923; QM was attributed to others later, although de Broglie got the Nobel 6 years after writing his thesis).
The difference between me and Bohm is that I have no more particle, and the Quantum Potential spreads at TAU. The potential is actually a MATTER WAVE. De Broglie seems to have believed in the physics of matter waves all along (Schrodinger adopted the idea, but was subsequently ridiculed by over-smart types such as Von Neuman; Von Neuman claimed to have demonstrated that there was no Quantum mechanics but Quantum mechanics, but it is increasingly understood that this is not correct). De Broglie had tried a particle-less theory too, the "double solution" .
I have my own version of the "double solution". It exploits the instability of non linear waves. A stable non linear wave, such as a soliton, is a fine balance between linear dispersion and non linear singularization. I view elementary particles, including photons, as a dance between the two aspects: when there is linear propagation (at TAU), linear dispersion, what we hypothesize to be "particle" propagation, dominates. When the matter wave field becomes locally too strong, having interacted with a subquantal field, it singularizes itself, localizing itself in one point.
A number of thought experiments and real practical experiments with very low intensity lasers interfering, show that matter waves are real. The matter wave from one laser guides, through interference, the photon from the other laser.
OK, let’s back down from the conceptual edge, and go back to our cosmological photons. How does the guiding wave and its delocalization fit in all this? What does this theory of mine all mean? As a photon’s linear guiding matter wave approaches a galactic cluster at TAU, imagine the scene: the linearized, delocalized photon matter wave, ten million light years across, bearing down on a galactic cluster at ten billion times the speed of light. The delocalized photon’s matter wave has a high probability to encounter a (still hypothetical) graviton‘s matter wave, or other the matter wave of some other particle hanging around the cluster.
The sudden local non linearity in the photon’s guiding wave leads to a collapse of said delocalized linearized photon. Then the photon will suddenly singularize, namely appear and interact somewhere. However, over the cosmological distances the delocalized photon was spread about, NID says that some of the photon will be unable to singularize in that spot where the singularity has started. Thus a distant piece of the delocalized photon will get separated from the rest of the singularizing photon, and hang around as cosmological flotsam. The photon will have reddened. In the next cycle, the photon, now a bit weakened, will delocalize again, and repeat the process. If this is correct, and the mean free (delocalized) path of cosmological photons varies (according to whether they come around regions full of matter), photons flying more in extremely empty space will be more redshifted (which is contrary to common sense, and will compete with the fact that photons zigzagging in clusters will get redshifted just from said zigzagging; so the two effects will have to be carefully distinguished).
Some will say that my theory violates relativity in spirit, if not outright computations, etc. Sure. That Relativity’s equations have proven extremely precise, for example for GPS, does not say anything about whether it is still obviously valid at the scale of galactic clusters.
Anyway, there is much more to say, but not today.
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Patrice Ayme
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P/S 1: So, if light ages, for (sub) Quantum reasons, is the Big Bang completely false? Well, I do not know. Galaxies very far away seem younger, and all Quasars are very far away (at least 800 million light years) showing that, even if there was no Big Bang, the universe has been, in any case, changing, if not aging.
A reason to be extremely suspicious about the Big Bang is that the prima facie evidence for it, the expansion speed of the universe, is truly unknown: supernovas studies have shown it to be (incredibly!) accelerating (to be confirmed!). Moreover, conventional Big bang Theory has to hypothesize inflation, an expansion at gigantic multiple of the speed of light, for the entire universe. Differently from me here, the reasoning is ad hoc, and not from first, time honored principles. My motivation, as Nietzsche would insist, comes from the highest principles, saving the principle of energy conservation and NID, whereas the motivation of Big Bangers is as low as it can get, because they had to invent a field to save their creationism.
P/S 2: The famous Dirac pontifically declared in his text book that photons interfered (ONLY!) with themselves. But that was before the invention of lasers, which allowed to demonstrate that this statement was not correct. The fact that matter waves are real, if 100% confirmed, will probably be viewed, in the future, as the greatest discovery of Twentieth Century science.
P/S 3: The sketch of theory above was presented to some of the heroes of physics (LdB & RF).
P/S 4: "Spacetime is no real substance", hard core relativists love to claim, sounding a bit like hard core Muslims about the moon. But this is not clear, even in conventional Relativity. Indeed, spacetime can wave. By shaking the source of a field, any field with a finite propagation speed, one can shake said field at a distance, and thus shake an object responsive to said field, at a distance, after a while. Thus a finite propagation field carries energy away, and Einstein gravitational field does not escape to that rule.
But Planck had discovered that electromagnetic energy was quantized, i.e., made of lumps, quanta, particles. The particles are called photons. By logical simplicity, one assumes the same for gravitational energy. Hence the prediction of gravitons, in analogy with photons. But now, the gravitons are supposed to be particles like any other boson. Do they make spacetime or not? Do photons make the electromagnetic fields, or are just its quantal manifestations? Thus the question of the spacetime as a real substance becomes the question of the reality of the electromagnetic field as a real substance.
Simple questions, deep answers still unknown: for more than 30 years, it was obvious that potentials (by contradistinction with fields) could have a direct effect, being on the right hand side of the Schrodinger equation (which came from de Broglie). But one had to wait for Bohm and his student Aharanov to notice that (and it was immediately verified experimentally). By then the American born Bohm had been banned from the good old USA (for practicing all too advanced philosophy, apparently a no-no for the US Congress and Princeton University, in spite of Einstein just wanting him as assistant)…
P/S 5: The theory above in particular, and Quantum Theory in general, have absolute bearing on what philosophers call ontology, the study of existence. Indeed, Bohm posthumously published last book was: “The Undivided Universe: An ontological interpretation of quantum theory” (1993).
P/S 6: Naturellement, the theory above applies to (expected to exist by the field-wave-particle principle) gravitons. So gravitons ought to age, hence weaken, as they get away from dense sources of matter, and far out, for the same reason as the photons above.
This may relate to "Dark Energy": if there is less gravitational force to block the expanding force, expansion will accelerate. Notice in passing that this subquantal field of mine, which is each propagating particle, is expanding tremendously, at TAU (>>>>> c). So we may have the reason for the expansion of the universe below our noses, or more exactly between our eyelashes, as we see light waves interfere there… Any Quantum propagation is an inflationary universe, reduced to its simplest case, with, de facto, gravity zero (otherwise an interaction with a graviton would bring de-coherence).
In the present morass of General Relativity, gravitons are supposed to not interact with themselves (which makes no sense: they would be the only such particles). Speaking of morass, I did not stoop to mention the Copenhagen Interpretation (where TAU is hypothesized to be infinite, among other radical simplifications), and the Many-Worlds Interpretation (obviously a schizoid absurdity).
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