Photons: Our Passport to the Stars

A mind-blowing insight into the true nature of Material Reality

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The photon is the fundamental currency of the cosmos. Nothing happens without photons. More than this, nothing exists without photons (the jury’s out on dark matter and dark energy - but the odds are this applies there too, and that these are both something quite different from the current perception of them).

It’s now abundantly clear that particles of matter are photons of electromagnetic energy curled up into tight bundles - we might say ‘localised’, but this, too, is likely to be an over-simplification. Keep on reading …

We also know that, of course, photons carry energy from one place to another - from one material object to another. Energy is photons. This combination of photons forming physical particles and photons also forming the energetic connections between those particles is what gives us the physical realm. Hence the Tapestry of Light referred to in yours truly’s first book on this subject.

That’s only the beginning of the story, though. When we take the trouble to look more deeply into the behaviour of these elementary constructs we discover aspects of them - and so also of our own material existence - that can only be described as remarkable. Some might even say disturbing.
All the signs are that the humble photon is in fact the bridge between the dimensionless realms beyond spacetime and the dimensionality of spacetime itself.
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Let’s look first at the most obvious consideration: a single photon can exist - in fact, always does exist - in multiple places at the same time. This is the underlying truth behind the discovery that light travels as a wave. Over 200 years ago Young’s 2-slit experiment showed photons of light passing simultaneously through two separate slits, to recombine with themselves on the other side so as to form interference patterns (a giveaway that they had travelled by two different routes simultaneously). This has since been shown to apply not only to collections of photons but also to individual photons: a single photon effectively splits to take routes through both slits, then rejoins itself on the other side to contribute to that interference pattern.

Ok, so that’s weird enough. But it gets even weirder when we consider the timing of this process. The reason for that self-interference is because the two legs taken by that photon can be very slightly different lengths, and so take slightly different times. This results in them being out of phase when they meet up again at the screen they land on - so they may cancel each other out, double up, or anything in between. This results in some points on that screen registering double-strength light exposure, some getting no light at all, and points in between getting, well, in between - multiple bars of light spaced at gaps based on multiples of that light’s wavelength.

So far, so good. But now figure this: since this interference depends on these strands of each photon taking different times to get to a point on the screen that’s dark, or maybe extra light - how come they interfere with each other as if they’re travelling in concert at the same time??? If a single thread of photon energy can cause a spot of light to register on a screen, how does a follow-up thread of that same photon nullify that effect after the event by arriving later? More than this, how can that second thread now be out of step with the first, if they both travel at the same speed and the same frequency?? Consider, as an analogy, two joggers running at a matched pace and a matched speed, who part company and take different routes but agree to meet again at some lamp-post, say - and also agree to maintain their jogging pace until they meet. One gets to the lamp-post first and continues running on the spot, or maybe in small circles around the lamp-post, at the same step-pace until the other arrives - at which point they will still both be pacing exactly in time with each other, if they’ve both kept true to form. How can one now be out of step with the other?

In the same way, two threads of our photon can never become out of synch by the time they re-connect, if they’re both still photons - and if they’re not, how can they interfere with each other, destructively or constructively? What does this tell us about the fabled quantum leap, that process in which an electron disappears from its orbit around an atomic nucleus and reappears at a higher-energy orbit around that same atom, supposedly having not at any time existed at any point between those two orbits, on receiving energy from an incoming photon?

More on this another time.

Now let’s consider another aspect of that photon-registration process.

A photon expands as it travels, in the form of a steadily-expanding wavefront. A single photon of light energy emitted from a light bulb or a star spreads out as it moves through space, so that photon’s presence, in the form of its wavefront, extends over a larger area for each metre that it progresses along its path.
But now here’s something truly remarkable, absolutely incredible: at any point along that path, any point on that ever-expanding wavefront, this photon may encounter an atom - of a receptor in someone’s eye, for example, or a leaf on a plant, or a photo-diode, or even a drop of water in the ocean - and with a clearly-definable statistical likelihood, may be absorbed by that atom. At that instant the whole of that photon’s energy will be concentrated from its potentially vast wavefront (covering millions of square miles, if this photon is from a distant star) to be poured totally into this one atom at one point in space; at that same instant the photon’s wavefront will simply cease to exist across the vast area of space it covered just a moment ago - referred to as the collapse of the wavefunction - no delay whatsoever. This is faster-than-light communication if you like - no speed-of-light delay in our photon communicating its new state to its extended being across potentially numerous light years of space (as must be the case for a distributed entity that spends itself totally and instantaneously at a single point).
Needless to say Maxwell’s equations, which define the form of light and other electromagnetic waves, have nothing to say about this process. Not totally surprising, since those equations are all about time and space; it’s outside their remit to speak on phenomena that have their roots in the regions beyond spacetime.

So how could all this possibly happen? A clue lies in Max Planck’s discovery in the early 1900s, which brought us Quantum Theory - though this, like so many results in this field, is almost certainly being misinterpreted. Planck’s discovery led to the view that energy can only exist in discrete amounts, or quanta; any given frequency of electromagnetic energy can only exist in one (or multiples of one) specific amount - a photon of that frequency. So we have a Quantum Theory that first defines what possible values the frequency of a photon may take, and from this what energy such a photon will hold (using the formula: energy = frequency x Planck’s constant).
Notice now, though, the amazing truth brought to us by that process of ‘photon absorption’ we just talked about: every point on the vastly outspread wavefront of a photon, however thinly stretched, carries an indicator of the total energy content of that photon - its frequency; every point on that wavefront has the potential to deliver all of that energy at that point, instantly reducing the potential of every other point on that wavefront to zero.

We’re used to the idea that everything we might need to measure must be measured, wholly and solely, at the location in space where that object exists at the time of measuring; mass, length, temperature, etc etc are all characteristics of an object existing specifically in a given place at a given time. Here, though, we have something that has a measurement - energy content of a photon - at any number of places across space. More than that, this apparently wide-spread energy can be ‘cashed in’ at any one of those points and will then no longer be available anywhere else; it can be used - completely - anywhere over a wide range of locations, but can only be used once.

What makes this possible? Very obviously, the measure of that energy content, which is intrinsically non-local. If a cannonball, for example, were to be spread out over a wide area, it wouldn’t be possible to read the total mass of that cannonball by weighing just a part of that spread-out object. By contrast, a photon seems to have been purpose-built to be measured in full at every point in its being, no matter how widespread.

So here’s a thought: the fundamental property of a photon is not its frequency but its energy content. First and foremost, a photon consists of a certain energy content (potentially infinitely variable); the frequency of that photon then adjusts to reflect that energy content.
This interpretation is borne out by the phenomenon of Compton Scattering, which won its discoverer a Nobel prize: a high-energy photon can give up some of its energy to an electron by colliding with it and giving it momentum; the photon then continues on its way with reduced frequency - the difference in frequency, as a measure of energy content, precisely matches the loss in energy of that photon [the energy loss, and so also the resulting final frequency of the photon, is infinitely variable depending on the angle of impact]. In other words, the frequency of a photon is most definitely not immutable; it depends absolutely on the energy content of that photon. Not the other way round. Frequency is simply a measurement of a photon, like the mass of a spatially-limited object - not its intrinsic fundamental value.

The logical (obvious!) conclusion from this indifference as to spatial location is that photons are not subject to the constraints of space (or time, judging by the fact from the 2-slit experiment that a thread arriving late to the party can cancel the effect of an earlier thread). Using a term coined by noted physicist David Bohm, photons are alocal, i.e. spatial dimensions have no meaning for them. At the photon level, space simply doesn’t exist (nor, possibly, time also).
[Note the distinction between nonlocal and alocal: ‘nonlocal’ means that the concept of locality exists but doesn’t apply to the phenomenon being considered; ‘alocal’ means that, in the realm of the phenomenon under consideration, the very idea of locality has no relevance.]

We’ll look at another photon weirdness in a moment. First, though, let’s take in this fact, with an eye to our discovery that particles of matter are formed from photons. This tells us that, at a deeper level, all matter - including your body and mine - is also alocal; at a deeper level our perception of us, and everything else, existing at a specific point in space and time, is an illusion . . .

Here we encounter the mind-bending concept that something can, at one and the same time, be both real and illusory: there’s no doubt that, from the spacetime perspective, distance is a very real phenomenon; pretty well all scientific formulae refer to distance in some form or another (including speed, acceleration, even force); at the same time, to the physics of the realms beyond spacetime, the home ground of photons, distance is apparently irrelevant, illusory.
[Elsewhere we explore the concept of time, and find that, too, whilst very real to us, is meaningless when we venture into the regions beyond spacetime. That’s for another time . . . Just as a simple analogy, though, a little closer to home: weight is a very real thing to us, it’s a fundamental aspect of our day-to-day reality. A couple of hundred years ago the idea of something not having weight would have been seen as totally fanciful. In the past century or so, though, as mankind has ventured out into space, we’ve found that weight effectively ceases to exist at any significant distance from a planet or star, or even if we’re in free fall. Weight both is and isn’t a reality, depending on context. The experience, or not, of weight depends on circumstances, weight is itself the consequence of some deeper truth; so may it also prove to be for our experience of time and space as our understanding broadens.]

Spooky action at a distance

Now, though, back to photons, and another situation in which they seem to have a fine contempt for what we’d always previously seen as the immutable laws of physics. So much so that Einstein himself referred to this behaviour as ‘spooky’.

This quirk of quantum weirdness first came to light as a theoretical feature of the quantum wave equation. In the small print of this equation was hidden the notion that under certain conditions two quantum particles, such as photons, could become entangled. This meant that the behaviour of each was in very specific ways dependent on the other - even if they may have gone their separate ways and now be many miles apart - with absolutely no time between action and response.
Together with two colleagues, Podolsky and Rosen, Einstein pointed to the apparent ludicrousness of this idea, in what’s now become famously known as The EPR Thought Experiment. They politely suggested that the Quantum Mechanical interpretation of reality might be incomplete. How right they were! But not at all in any way that they might have imagined!

Various suggestions were put forward that photons may contain hidden variables which hadn’t previously been detected. This idea was knocked on the head both theoretically by John Bell, who showed that the statistics didn’t add up for this proposal, and by increasingly definitive practical experiments showing that this effect is most definitely very real.
This effect isn’t confined to photons; the same entanglement is enshrined in the quantum wave equation, and proved by practical experiment, for elementary material particles such as electrons: two electrons linked by the same quantum event (such as simultaneous release from an atom) can be prompted to adopt complementary spin states, potentially over vast distances, with zero time delay - far faster than the speed of light. Since an electron is simply a curled-up photon this comes as no surprise given photon entanglement.

So here we have a clear situation of interaction - which unquestionably implies communication of some sort - between particles at way faster than the speed of light. Physicists go to great lengths to point out why this can’t be used for FTL (faster than light) communication between people or physical devices, but that’s beside the point: Einstein’s speed-of-light limit wasn’t just about human-usable communications, but about any form of communication at all. No wonder he found entanglement ‘spooky’ - it clearly contradicts his stated limit.
So how about we re-state that limit, without denying the point Einstein was making: no object, or information, can travel faster than the speed of light within the limitations of space and time. Once we step outside of space and time, though - as photons (and electrons) clearly do, then this limitation no longer applies.

If you haven’t grasped the implications of this then you haven’t been paying attention. Photons definitely operate beyond spacetime; their fundamental structure appears to be purpose-built to do so. Constructs of photons, such as electrons, can also do the same.
Now the conceptual leap: we are constructs of photons; everything in the physical realm is a construct of photons. The logical conclusion is that, if we can figure out the rules of physics as they apply beyond spacetime, then it should be possible for us, too, to overcome the limitations that spacetime thinking imposes on us.

This isn’t just wishful thinking, it’s demonstrable fact. Particles of matter - electrons - have shown the ability to operate outside spacetime constraints. Just as we have harnessed other aspects of the quantum realm - such as quantum tunnelling - to our inestimable advantage, so we should be seriously addressing the potential that’s shouting at us from photons and entangled electrons to overcome the limitations imposed on us by our own blinkered thinking.

The stars are calling. When are we going to answer?

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Next up:

Antimatter: Another Mega Cosmic Clue.
A deafening message from the dawn of time.

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