Truth can only be found through the window of observation while “OUR reality” is determined by what we see in that window.
But some say what we see in it does not define “THE reality” because of the limitation of our senses. For example humans can only see a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum therefore, because of those limitations they say that our senses should not be the only arbiters of “THE reality”.
In other words because our instruments tell us that reality extends far, far beyond what our senses see, many feel the only way to find it is through the window they provide instead the one provided by our senses.
However, our impression of “THE reality” is made up of a combination of what our senses see around us and what our instruments tell us about that world.
In other words each is an integral part of how we and science views “THE reality” and therefore the different realities they show us cannot be treated as separate.
For example the instruments we use to observe it tell us that a fundament component of a quantum environment is that all objects exist simultaneously as both particles and waves.
However, our senses tell us objects cannot be both a particle and wave at the same time.
But how can we merge or integrate these two realities and determine their fundamental component when what our instruments “tell” us about our world appears to conflict with what our senses see in it.
Einstein gave us a clue when he said “If a new theory was not based on a physical image simple enough for a child to understand, it was probably worthless.”
Yet how can we form a physical image of the quantum world when its fundamental component, the wave particle duality of objects is contradictory to the physicality of our sensory environment.
We can start by reexamining how we define our sensory environment.
For example Einstein told us that our physical environment is made up of four dimensional space-time however no one has ever observed the physicality of time or a space-time dimension.
Therefore it is extremely difficult to form a physical image of the quantum world or any other based on the existence of time or a space-time dimension because it is not part of our sensory environment.
Granted Einstein’s theories give us a detailed and very accurate description of how an interaction of time with the three *spatial* dimensions is responsible for the “reality” of the sensory world we inhabit and he was able to give us a clear physical image how a curvature in space-time can be responsible for gravity.
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For example the most common physical image use to explain gravity does not use time but instead extrapolates the image of an object moving on a curved two dimensional “surface” in a three dimensional environment to four dimensional space-time. However this image only contains reference only to our sensory reality of the spatial dimensions and not a time or space-time dimension.
However, the fact that most humans define our physical “reality” in terms of the spatial dimensions instead of a time or space-time dimension suggests that one may be able to form a physical image of how and why the quantum world is what it is by viewing our universe in terms of its spatial instead of its time properties.
Einstein gave us the ability to do this when he used the velocity of light to define the geometric properties of space-time because it allows one to convert a unit of time in his four dimensional space-time universe to a unit of a space identical to those of our three-dimensional space. Additionally because the velocity of light is constant it is possible to defined a one to one correspondence between his space-time universe and one made up of four *spatial* dimensions.
In other words by mathematically defining the geometric properties of time in terms of the constant velocity of light he provided a qualitative and quantitative means of redefining it in terms of the geometry of four *spatial* dimensions and gave us the ability to redefine the curvature or displacement he associated with energy/mass in a space-time environment to a spatial displacement in a fourth *spatial* dimension.
On pages 17 thru 23 of Richard P Feynman book “QED The Strange Theory of Light and Matter” he address the conflict between our sensory world and the particle wave reality of a quantum environment by describing what happens when light when it is partially reflected by two surfaces,
On those pages he writes that by placing two glass surfaces exactly parallel to each other one can observe how the photons of light reflected from the bottom surface interact with those reflected from the top surface. Depending on the distance between the glass surfaces he can determine, by using a photo detector, that four percent or 4 out of 100 photons reflected from the lower surface of the glass could add up to as many as 16 or none at all when they interact with the photons reflected from the upper surface of the glass because of the reinforcement of the reflected wave energy from the bottom and top surfaces of the glass.
In other words the 4 photons reflected from the surface of the bottom piece of glass would interact with the incident ones to that surface creating from 0 to 8 photons while the 4 photons reflected from the surface of the top piece of glass would interact with the incident ones to it creating 0 to 8 more photons for a total of 0 to 16 photons.
These observations by Mr. Feynman support a wave theory of electromagnetic radiation because according to it, the energy associated with the interference of the 4 photons reflected from the bottom surface with 4 from the top will result in energy variations that corresponds to the energy of 0 to 16 photons.
However, wave theory also predicts the energy variations should be continuous.
In other words, the energy of the reflected photons should be able to take on any value between 0 and the combined energies associated with 16 photons.
The fact that the energy of the reflected photons Richard Feynman observed in the above experiment only took on integral values equal to the energy of the photons that originally struck the surface of the glass indicates that their energy is not transmitted by a wave but by a particle.
This shows that in a quantum environment a photon can either be a particle or a wave. However, our senses tell us objects such as photons cannot be both a particle and wave at the same time.
Yet as mentioned earlier we may be able to merge or integrate these two realities and determine the fundamental component of “THE reality” by viewing them, as mentioned earlier in terms four *spatial* dimension instead of four dimensions space-time.
For example in the article “Why is energy/mass quantized?” Oct. 10, 2007 it was shown one can derive both the wave and particle properties of objects and a photon by extrapolating the physical image of a wave in a three-dimensional environment to a matter wave moving on a “surface” of a three-dimensional space manifold with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension. Additionally it showed that all energy must be propagated in these resonant systems.
Briefly it showed the four conditions required for resonance to occur in a classical environment, an object, or substance with a natural frequency, a forcing function at the same frequency as its natural frequency, the lack of a damping frequency and the ability for the substance to oscillate spatial would be meet by a matter wave on a “surface†of a three-dimensional space manifold with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension.
The existence of four *spatial* dimensions would give the “surface†of three-dimensional space (the substance) the ability to oscillate spatially with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension thereby fulfilling one of the requirements for classical resonance to occur.
These oscillations would be caused by an event such as the decay of a subatomic particle or the shifting of an electron in an atomic orbital. This would force the “surface” of a three-dimensional space manifold with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension to oscillate with the frequency associated with the energy of that event.
Therefore if one extrapolates the physical image of a wave in a three dimensional environment to a fourth *spatial* dimension one could understand how these oscillations in a “surface” of a three-dimensional space manifold would generate the wave properties of objects in a quantum environment.
However we know from observations that tell us resonant system can only have the incremental or discrete energy associated with its fundamental or a harmonic of its fundamental frequency. Similarly the incremental or discrete energies associated with individual photons in Richard Feynman’s experiment could be understood in terms of the physical image of the resonate properties of wave in four *spatial* dimensions. However, one can also describe the physical boundaries of a particle in terms of the wave properties of its resonant structure.
In classical physics, a point on the two-dimensional surface of paper is confined to that surface. However, that surface can oscillate up or down with respect to three-dimensional space.
Similarly an object occupying a volume of three-dimensional space would be confined to it however, it could, similar to the surface of the paper oscillate “up” or “down” with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension.
The confinement of the “upward” and “downward” oscillations of a three-dimension volume with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension is what defines the spatial boundaries associated with a particle in the article “Why is energy/mass quantized?“
This would allow one to merge or integrate the wave particle duality of a quantum environment into our sensory world by extrapolating, as was show earlier the physical image of wave moving on water to a matter wave moving on the “surface” of a three dimension space manifold with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension or four dimensional space-time environment because remember, as was also show earlier they are equivalent.
For example, the wave like interference of photons Richard Feynman’s experiment observed in his experiment would be due to the wave properties of the resonant “system” defined in the article “Why is energy/mass quantized?“.
If the distance between the two glass surfaces was equal to half of the wavelength of the resonant “system” associated with a photon, classical wave mechanics tell us the interference of its wave properties would interfere and will, as mentioned earlier yield the energy associated with 0 photons.
If the distance between two glass surfaces is equal to its wavelength of they will reinforce each other and yield the energy associated with 16 photons.
However, it also tells us the reason the energy variations caused by their interference are quantized and not continuous as wave theory predicts they should is because, as was shown in the article “Why is energy/mass quantized?” the resonant properties of four *spatial* dimensions means that their energy must be propagated through space in the discrete quantized values associated with the fundamental or harmonic of fundamental frequency of four *spatial* dimensions or space-time environment they are occupying.
Yet this also defines reason the wave properties of 8 reflected photons reinforce themselves to create the energy associated with16 photons is because in our sensory environment when two waves in phase interact they will reinforce each other. Therefore if energy is propagated in discrete quantized values associated with the wavelength or frequency of a resonant system the reinforcement of the wave properties of 8 photons must be carried away in the integral or discreet energies associated with resonant systems of up to 16 photons of the same frequency as those original 8 photons.
This demonstrates how one can project the “structure” of “OUR reality” beyond our sensory environment to explain and understand the quantum world. It also demonstrates why forming a physical image of a process is so valuable to science because it shows that one can integrate or merge the reality shown to us by our instruments into “OUR” sensory reality in terms of “THE reality” of four *spatial* dimension or four dimensional space-time.
It should be remember Einstein’s genius allows us to choose if we want to resolve all paradoxes between the readily of microscopic world of quantum mechanics and that of macroscopic world of Relativity either a space-time environment or one consisting of four *spatial* dimension when he defined the geometry of space-time in terms of the constant velocity of light. This interchangeability broadens the environment encompassed by his theories by making them applicable to both the sensory spatial as well as the non-sensory time properties of our universe thereby giving us a new perspective on the physical relationship between them.
Later Jeff
Copyright Jeffrey O’Callaghan 2014