In the course of the subsequent paragraphs of this page it is more and more necessary to have red TONE, the storyline of my Theory Of Nearly Everything.
For abbreviations of storyline names, see the Contents page.
Environment-induced decoherence
Is this soup eaten as hot as it is being served? Well, let's try to investigate a little further.
Imagine a photon in the box on its way from the inner wall toward the body of a person that is present in the box. This photon doesn't see that person yet. For the photon the person is in a box in a superposition of all its possible states. When the photon hits the person's body this acts as a measurement, opening that box. While at the same time another box has formed around the person and the photon hitting it and has closed. In fact, when the photon hits the person, it is as if the photon has permeated through the wall of the box that person is in, adding itself to its content. Somehow it has doubled itself as many times as there were different states in the box and then each single photon enters one specific possible state. It must be like that since when in one of the possible states in the box the photon was missing this would violate the law of energy conservation, which is one of the most founded laws in nowadays physics. Remember any of those possible states is a world on its own, with its own reality experience, but not seeing the other worlds. And every state obeys the same laws of physics. Up until now there are no signs of a different view about that.
The inner observations in the box cannot significantly alter the motion of the objects in the box but they do "nudge" the wavefunction of the things they encounter. These encounters disturb the wavefunction's coherence, its neat order of wave crests and troughs, necessary for generating neat interference effects. In doing so messing it up to some average smeared-out state.
The more smeared out it is, the lesser one can infer from it the existence of different worlds in superposition. But this doesn't say those worlds are not there. You have the smeared-out state interference pattern and in the box is the superposition of all possible worlds that possibly could have led to it. That includes the worlds we know are in there PLUS the worlds that too can lead to precisely the same smeared-out pattern observed by us, Outside Observers.
Environment induced decoherence, as the smearing out is called, works fast. A grain of dust in empty space decoheres in about a millionth of a second, due to the photons of the 2.7 K microwave cosmic background radiation present everywhere in outer space. I now regard CMB at page 4 of EXPAN as favorite view. In Standstill at page 5 of EXPAN the background radiation is presented as a kind of riddle.
The famous two-slit experiment doesn't suffer from decoherence. Decoherence is not a fundamental feature of empty space. In principle one can think of ways making decoherence as slow as desired. Decoherence explains why special interference effects of wavefunctions do not show off at the earth surface or such place, long enough to measure them.
Is it possible to sufficiently slow down decoherence? We shall see. Decoherence bridges between the quantum realm and our every day reality as we experience it. But, as Brian Green points out at the end of his chapter about decoherence, far from everyone is convinced that the bridge has yet been fully built.
did you know the cat escaped?
Gravitation
Gravitation is the biggest box-opener, choice-maker, realizator of the wavefunction's superposition. In doing so gravity tends to annul quantum mechanics' superpositions. GR fights QM, as to speak.
In page 3, 4 and 5 of the storyline NEG I develop a new approach to gravity. In brief, mass absorption from the Higgs field curves space and the subsequent act of gravity curves it back. As a result the background grid of space is not curved, it only looks like that.
How does gravity opens boxes? Consider a mass in empty space. At every coupling of its constituting particles is absorbed mass from the Higgs field. According to my theory of gravitation , a tiny parcel of vacuum is absorbed along with the mass absorption and subsequently the resulting hole is filled in by the surrounding parcels of the vacuum. This is the act of gravity. Every coupling in the mass (that it must have to maintain its coherence) betrays the location and orientation of the coupling particles in the mass by means of the (in principle) observable changes in motion or observable forces (like weight) of the surrounding matter (like gas molecules). The changes and forces may be too tiny for us to actually measure, but in principle they are. The result is that the wavefunction of masses collapses every single moment by means of the act of gravity.
More about it in paragraph Tone at page 6 of TIMEDIR. (For abbrev's, see the Contents page.)
Does the box gain extra mass in the process of photon-doubling? Well, according to NEG photons have no rest mass and do not gravitate. The photon has no net absorption from the Higgs field. But for other particles one must regard this in a quite straightforward way. The interference pattern of the wavefunctions in the box is all we can know about the box's content until we open the box. From that interference pattern is derived a probability division of objects and particles that precisely predicts how much mass of particles and objects can be expected where and when. The observed mass of the closed box is just the end result of this probability division.
Subsequently it depends on e.g. the (in principle observable) change of movement of e.g. air molecules surrounding the box, caused by the gravitation of the mass inside the box. Each of that movements betrays the content of the box to a certain extend and to that extend the wavefunction of the inner part of the box collapses partially.
Renormalization
QED reduces all things with photons and electrons (in fact electric charges in general) to three fundamental actions:
1) an electron goes from point A to point B;
2) a photon goes from point C to point D;
3) an electron and a photon couple, the photon is gone then. (3.1)
There are no interactions at 1) or 2). Higgs absorption only takes place at 3), the coupling between an electric charge and a photon. When A = C we may assume that the electron emits the photon. When B = D then the electron usually absorbs the photon.
Key point of QED is that the electron traverses from A to B along every possible route through spacetime. In QED this means that the electron that is going from A to B, splits at A in an infinite number of electrons and each individual electron visits one point in spacetime, couples there with a virtual photon and returns to point B. ALL points of spacetime are visited once in this way, also the most distant ones in the uttermost far future or past.
(Also the photon traverses all possible routes from C to D and visits all points of spacetime. There it couples to a virtual electric charge, a virtual electron. But the photon is absorbed by the electric charge and then is gone. Re-emission of the photon by the virtual electron gives the Feynman diagram one coupling extra, diminishing its amplitude by a factor 10.)
The infinite number of split-off electrons and photons are immoral
as Feynman called them. Where necessary the electrons go back in time and go faster than light. The photons can bow into curved paths where necessary. It are not the usual particles, not quite. Or the picture is incomplete yet.
To me it appears as if the immoral particles act in a kind of primordial
space, where spacetime properties are partially present and partially not yet accomplished.
And at every point in spacetime that the virtual electron couples with a virtual photon, the electron absorbs one vacuum marble from the Higgs field in order to gain mass, causing one unit of gravitation. One unit of gravitation caused at every point of spacetime, how can that be?
Regard point A, where our real electron e- starts its route to point B. Regard one of the split-off immoral virtual particles, an e- that goes to a point P in the past of A. The e- that travels backward in time is in fact a positron e+. When at P it absorps a photon there, after which it returns from P to B as an e-. The immoral e+ transforms at P from a e+ to an e-. But wait, the situation is identical to a photon at P that spontaneously decays into a e+ and an e-, the e+ going to A and the e- going to B. The e+ e- are still immoral: if P is too far away, the e+ and e- travel faster than light. According to the view presented in page 2 of EXPAN, at coupling point P the e- absorbs mass while the e+ emits the same mass to the same Higgs field (e+ and e- are standing still relative to each other). So there is no net mass absorption (or emission) at P, so no units of gravitation caused by that either.
Energy and impulse conservation laws are not obeyed, the e+ e- are immoral still.
The immoral electrons don't see each other, they don't react with each other. They are superposed to each other. It is for sure the virtual photons they couple with, do not exist all in the same universe. Such a universe would be filled with photons at every point in spacetime.
In QED renormalization procedure, in each Feynman diagram the amplitude of such an immoral electron is reciprocal to r, where r is covered distance. So the paths of the infinite split-off immoral electrons lay in spacetime, their routes have a definite shape in spacetime. The vacuum sees them. Important is whether the routes traversed in each contribution, in each Feynman diagram, are dragged along with the shell after shell falling into the hole
action of gravity as described in the NEG storyline. (3.2)
We adopt the description of gravity as is given in page 3 up to and including page 6 of NEG. IF the rearrangement of vacuum marbles is a process THEN renormalization procedure applies to it. When a vacuum marble at the edge of a hole falls into that hole
(a spherical or shell-like hole) it does so along all possible routes. All those routes start at the vacuum marble at the liquid
outside of the hole and end at the solid
inside of the hole. Every process, as is one vacuum marble passing over the width of the hole, disrupts the Bose condensate the vacuum is in.
In paragraph Sagging-in propagation speed and the preceding paragraph Vacuums that are Bose condensates that are superfluids
at page 6 of NEG is chosen for an infinite propagation speed, all sagging-ins executed in one single moment. This in order to let the vacuum remain a bose condensate.
In NEG space starts out flat, that's the assumption. Regard (3.1), the three fundamental actions of QED. The instantaneous sagging-in all over space only occurs in 3), at the moment of Higgs field absorption. Along with absorption from the Higgs field, necessary for the electron to gain mass, a tiny parcel of space is absorbed. I tried to describe this step-by-step in page 5 of NEG. After the instantaneous sagging-in all over space, the Bose condensate with all that is floating in it, has contracted a tiny little bit towards the Higgs absorbing spot in such a way that it obeys Newton gravitation law. Instantaneous sagging-in does not occur in 1) or 2). So 1) as well as 2) occurs in flat spacetime. At the moment of 3) there are no routes of virtual particles, so when 3) occurs, no routes of virtual particles are dragged along with the instantaneous sagging-in. The renormalization procedure of a particle is not dragged by the act of gravitation of that particle. (3.3)
The immoral photons and electrons lay their routes through a spacetime that is continuously involved in the act of gravitation of innumerable other particles, other masses everywhere in the universe. Is the renormalization procedure of a real particle dragged by the act of gravitation of other particles? (3.4)
The dragging (caused by the sagging-ins of other particles' acts of gravitation) does NOT react with the dragged-by objects, in this case the renormalization procedure of the real particle. This is argued in (1.9) of paragraph Does the field sag in shell after shell? at page 6 of NEG, as well as in (2.5) in the next paragraph at the same page, Vacuums that are Bose condensates that are superfluids
. So the immoral particles might be dragged along with the vacuum displacement caused by the sagging-ins.
The character of the immorality of the electric charges and photons in QED renormalization is unknown. Except for this maybe spoiling the picture later, I should guess, yes, the routes of the immoral particles lay in space, space is dragged by, so the routes of the immoral particles are dragged by the sagging-ins caused by other particles. (3.5)