Understanding Our Unseen Reality

The following sections are included:

• Preface
• Contents

Imagine that you are on the deck of an ocean-going ship, approaching what looks like a small mountain of ice sitting on top of the water …

Quantum theory presents us with some very challenging riddles, to which a good interpretation must offer illuminating answers. But first, let us take a step back and consider the nature of riddles in general.

The original transactional interpretation (TI) of quantum theory was created by Professor John G. Cramer (1986). Dr. Cramer's inspiration for the ‘transactional’ picture came from the Wheeler–Feynman theory of electromagnetic radiation. This was a novel approach to classical electromagnetic theory, developed in the 1940s by Richard Feynman — who would later go on to win the Nobel Prize in physics for other important contributions — and his then-mentor, John Wheeler. These two eminent physicists created a theory in which radiation was a two-way process. This ‘transactional’ process, so named by Cramer because it reminded him of a financial transaction, involves an active response by an absorber. The transactional picture differs from the conventional one-way view of radiation, in which an emitter is considered to be the active donor of energy while an absorber is considered a passive receiver of that energy…

In this chapter, we'll be discussing the nature of quantum matter and forces, and the interactions between the two. This exploration begins at the relativistic realm, and it will help us to understand how the transactional picture successfully explains the transition between the microscopic and macroscopic realms. The transition between the microscopic and the macroscopic is where our theoretical description transitions from quantum physics to classical physics. This is the point at which the crucial process known as measurement occurs…

In the previous chapter, we saw how forces are conveyed by transient virtual quanta that are exchanged between offer waves. For example, virtual photon exchanges are going on all the time between the offer waves of charged quanta such as electrons and protons. These virtual quanta, which arise from quantum fields, are even more tenuous forms of possibility than the more persistent offer and confirmation waves. Yet they influence the behavior of those offers in a way that results in the measurable phenomena described by the laws of various forces…

In this chapter, we're going to consider some traditional philosophical questions about the nature of reality, and see how the transactional picture can shed new light on these questions. So far, we've considered the distinction between the macroscopic world and the microscopic world. We've seen that classical physics describes the macroscopic world quite well, but that it fails to adequately describe the microscopic world of atoms and other fundamental components of matter. We've also noted that the world of appearance corresponds to the macroscopic realm describable by classical physics, while the underlying, hidden reality can be seen as corresponding to the quantum level. It turns out that this distinction between the macroscopic and microscopic realms, and the need for different physical theories to describe them, is directly relevant to some longstanding philosophical puzzles.

We saw in the previous chapter how actualized transactions give rise to specific spacetime events: the emission is one event, and the absorption is another. The two are linked by the actualized quantum that is delivered from the emitter to the receiving absorber, and that link is a spacetime interval. In this chapter, we'll consider in more detail that new account of space and time. In this picture, neither space nor time exists as an independent substance or container ready to be filled with events. Instead, the transacted events themselves, together with their relationships, collectively form the structure that we call spacetime. This spacetime structure emerges, through the transactional process, from an underlying reality of possibilities: “Quantumland.”

In the previous chapter, we saw how the ‘fabric of spacetime’ is created through actualized transactions. In this chapter, we'll study more closely the nature of that spacetime fabric, and see how it allows for an ‘arrow of time,’ pointing in the future direction. We'll see how that future is not set in stone, but is genuinely open to many different possible events. This openness of the future provides an opening for genuine free will, rather than the necessary predestination of the block world picture…

In this chapter, we'll explore the concept of quantum information. We'll also take a brief look at some alternative interpretational approaches that attempt to explain quantum mysteries in terms of quantum information.

Science is the endeavor of gaining knowledge about reality. Its vital tools are: (1) empirical observation and (2) logical and mathematical reasoning in the form of theories. An important ‘quality control’ of scientific theorizing is that it must be supported by empirical observation. Observation alone is the mere cataloging of phenomena without explaining them, and theorizing alone is speculative ‘armchair philosophy’ that doesn't necessarily explain anything about the empirical world. So physical science needs both tools (1) and (2) in order to provide effective explanations of physical reality…

The following sections are included:

• Appendix A: How Absorption Illuminates the Measurement Theory of John von Neumann
• Appendix B: Free Will and the Land of the Quantum Dominoes
• Appendix C: The Pusey, Barrett, and Rudolph (PBR) Theorem
• Bibliography
• Index