29 July 2012
A good point to start is where it all began, when describing an atom and modelling its structure. Under the classical atomic model, why does Hydrogen's orbiting electron not collapse into the nucleus? One answer is that the electron is really just a cloud of probabilities, which never comes to rest and has a minimum energy even at absolute zero. The minimum energy is generally called zero point energy (ZPE) or vacuum energy (For anyone who has read my stories, I call this energy Logos but that's fiction) but it gives huge projections for its maximum energy, even when it is confined by boundary conditions in QED (Quantum Electrodynamics, which I will use to represent the conventional interpretation of the quantum world), so its renormalised. To put it more simply it is removed from the solution. You could say the electron gained itself a wave-particle duality, described as a wave-function but behaving like a quantum particle. However, this isn't the entire picture.
Nevertheless, there is another explanation on the reality of the orbiting electron, which in itself puts forward a somewhat deeper understanding of the quantum world and our Cosmos as a whole. Stochastic electrodynamics with spin (SEDS), is a recent improvement on the original SED, which has been around for a long time but didn't pick up until about the 1960s. This interpretation answers the question by suggesting that the electron while radiating its energy also absorbs a compensating amount of energy from an all pervasive electromagnetic field of ZPE, which is called ZPF or vacuum field. This process was dubbed the quantum regime and it has been experimentally tested and documented; in favour of the theory its results agreed with the predictions of QED. However, where SEDS says the field is real, QED says it is virtual; QED sees the field as a sea of virtual particles popping in and out of existence. There were other questions raised and in fact even with all the improvements in SEDS and its ability to explain some phenomena that QED can't, it is still heavily contested and you will find it hard to buy many books on it. On that note I have so far only found one dedicated book on the topic, most of the material is in articles, journals and letters, some of which are costly. For more information on both sides of the discussion, see web of knowledge and google scholar. I wont go into the details of the debate in this piece, maybe another time.
SEDS makes some fascinating suggestions on the reality of the cosmos but it is centred around a real ZPE and ZPF, which I should mention is the same everywhere, even inside our bodies. SEDS suggests that the Planck length is a length at which the 'smoothness' of space breaks down and becomes granular, consisting of Planck particle-antiparticle pairs; marking the cutoff wavelength for ZPF. After the big bang these pairs experienced inflation, which led to the expansion of the fabric of space and prevented recombination, and the spinning particle-antiparticle pairs produced electromagnetic radiation resulting in the ZPF. Mass-energy relationship applied and phase change occurred resulting in the 'evaporation' of other particles like Photons, etc. Controversial as it sounds, this does suggest its own implications for mass, i.e. all fundamental particles may have been manufactured this way including the Higgs Boson but this could be misunderstanding or speculation on my part.
Regarding the wave-particle duality, I reckon that the observed duality is a result of increasing frequency and carrier energy tending towards planck frequency (and maybe even granular space, where the fabric breaks down), with a tendency to particle behaviour at higher frequencies. This increasing tendency is mirrored up the electromagnetic spectrum, where photon energy increases with increasing wave frequency. However, this line of thought has its own fault, how do I account for X-Rays which are of higher photon energy but behave more like waves, even though they still travel as photons. Not to mention the fact that the duality could actually be an illusion but like I mentioned before, in a universe where reality is an illusion an illusion is also real.
#awesomeanchovy raised a very good question, why do things accelerate proportionally to their mass and I am going to attempt an answer. Consider a 2-Dimensional plane that is granular in nature, any impinging matter of a larger size than the spaces between the granules will experience resistance to motion and more mass suggests larger wavelength and lower frequencies. On the other hand, any matter of a size smaller or close to the spaces between the granules will experience less resistance to motion under the same hypothesis. It is in a sense the difference between pushing the flat side of a plate through the sand and pushing a pin. This is where the all pervasive field (ideas like the Higgs Field and even ZPF) comes into it.
Now this is all very interesting stuff but it still doesn't provide a definitive answer on the nature of reality. Are we all merely products of probabilistic wavefunctions that may or may not be real and only become certain upon observation, influencing the reality via our choices? Or are we the products of a quantum factory of sorts? Perhaps it is both or maybe the reality is that we observe what we look for and that reality itself is just an illusion, depending heavily on the level of perception and definition. It could even be none of the above, the truth is that with all that we know we are still uncertain about the certainty of reality.
On The Topic Of Reality • Opuss № I