Background
Back in September 2012 I wrote a book review (at Amazon) of one my
favorite coming-of-age novels - The Merry Go Round
in the Sea. In the novel a six-year-old boy, Rob
comes to the realization that in his words “It will never be that minute again. It will never be today again.”
The concept of time has always been a recurrent matter for me. The notion
of the passage of time, the arrow of time, our perception of time, our belief
that times goes faster when we’re having fun, etc. And of course there is relativistic
time, viz-a-viz Special Relativity.
Until the early 20th century when Einstein
published his theory of Special Relativity our classical understanding of time was
unambiguously framed within the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension
independent of events, in which events occur in sequence. This is sometimes referred
to as a realist view. And unless when traveling at speeds approaching the speed
of light (299,792,458 meters per second) the classical treatment of time is (have
been) adequate.
QED
When Rob made that remark he didn’t know the half of
it. I don’t know the half of it. I’d like now to deal with an aspect of time
closely linked to the infinities associated with electron-photon couplings as
introduced in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and diverge from classical notion
of time.
Renormalization
was first developed in QED to make sense of infinite integrals in perturbation
theory. Although renormalization was first seen as a provisional procedure by
some of its originators, it is now embraced as an important and self-consistent
tool dealing with arising infinities
associated with electron-photon couplings.
A process
creating new moments in time
Is it possible that infinities arising at these couplings
are due to a lack of a more generalised and fundamental understanding of time? If
for example time is not regarded as a smooth continuous flow then there may be a
process that creates new moments in time and moments of infinity.
What if each electron-photon coupling represents such
moments in time? This then may in itself explain the generated infinities that
require cancellation through the renormalization procedure.
The idea is that from
each electron-photon coupling Electro
Magnetic Radiation radiates out in light spheres of quantized wave fronts until
they come in contact with electrons on the surface of other atoms. At this
point the wave function collapses into new quantum particles in the form of
photons that will have their own position in time and space.
A quantum leap of energy creating new wave functions
of future possibilities occurring in a continuous process (or stimulated
emissions - in which an electron interacting with an electromagnetic wave of a
certain frequency may drop to a lower energy level, transferring its energy to
that field.) to generate a
chain-reaction of electron-photon coupling.
Our
world-time
This chain-reaction of electron-photon coupling may
provide the substrate on which our world-time is based. Our world-time might be
a kind of left over of light emitted by an atom (now) that is absorbed by
another (later on) creating the time continuum. The momentum of time (as we
know it) may therefore be a function of light (seemingly continuous) that is
radiating outwards from its centre source.
A possible
conclusion
We can choose when and where to collapse this wave
function giving us the perception of free will in creating our own future.
However, the uncertainty principle (Heisenberg principle)
will apply to the us in any future event. The quantum particle will only have a
position and time in space when the wave particle collapses. If on the other
hand we don’t observe – i.e we don’t collapse the wave particle function into a
moment of time then the quantum particle will only have the momentum of its own
wave particle function.
Put simply, to observe a quantum particle we have to
create an electron-photon coupling thus collapsing the particle wave function into
a new quantum particle in space, and importantly a new moment in time. This
action forms our created space-time experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment