by Jeffrey H. Boyd

Copyright © Jeffrey H. Boyd, 2012

Most people are intimidated by quantum physics. Relax: this website will require no mathematics. We want you to stop being intimidated, so you can use common sense. The subjects we discuss here are not hard to understand. These are practical issues, like, “When you wake up in the morning and open your eyes, what do you see?” We propose to teach you an exciting new way to see yourself and your world.

Did you think that the previous paragraph was controversial? Did it made us sound like lunatics? From the viewpoint of mainstream quantum physics, that last paragraph was jarring. Why? To begin with, because we use the term, “common sense.” Second because we imply that reality is what you see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. Third because we do not draw a huge distinction between the quantum world and the macroscopic world that you can see.

Fuchs and Peres say that, according to quantum mechanics (QM), there is no such thing as “physical reality.” At the subatomic level all that exists is mathematics. This math lies outside space and time. The wave functions & probability waves are in control of what we take to be “physical reality.” Information can be transmitted a billion light years instantly. Cause and effect can be reversed in time. This is because it is the mathematical world that is in control. The waves are not real waves, they are probability waves that are behind the scenes, outside of space, below Planck time. Just as Plato thought his Forms were real and physical reality was merely an expression of the Forms, so also today most quantum experts think the math is what is “real” and at the quantum level. Quantum physics has said goodbye to reality. QM teaches that when you look at a physical object, your act of looking is what causes that thing to exist! Professor David Mermin said that science has proved that the moon only exists because people look at it. Does that make sense to you?

There is more than one way to look at QM experiments. We propose an entirely different way of thinking, a paradigm shift. We step outside the QM box and rethink everything based on experimental data. Keep in mind that our theory, the Theory of Elementary Waves (TEW) is primarily an unconventional way of viewing empirical data and designing new experiments.

We are renegades who look at quantum empirical data and draw drastically different conclusions than QM draws from those same experimental data. We are thinking outside the box. For example, we think that local cause-and-effect, and physical reality exist, even at the quantum level. This is a conclusion based on some of the same experiments from which QM arrived at the opposite conclusion. Based on the same experiments that lead QM experts to say that math lies outside of reality, we find empirical data that say that physical reality is not controlled by any “outside” mathematics. Quantum mathematics provides a roadmap to the world of elementary waves.

All previous “interpretations of QM” started with QM and tinkered with the details. For example, they are all based on the idea of non-locality. We have stepped entirely outside the QM box. In no way is ours an “interpretation of QM.”

We are producing videos to explain our viewpoint in plain language. The problem however is that scientific opinion will not be changed by a website like this. It requires publishing research articles in physics journals, which we are now doing. These journals generally require that the material cited in the submitted articles should never have been made public before. Thus we cannot put some of our rich ideas on this website until after they are published elsewhere.

It is often said that there is a mountain of empirical data supporting QM. We propose that the same empirical data supports our theory, in the sense that we have not yet found a quantum experiment that our theory cannot explain. We know of no quantum experiments that contradict our theory.

We start with what sounds like a preposterous idea: that wave particle duality is wrong. There is an ocean of zero energy waves, which we only know about when a particle follows one of the waves. Usually a particle follows a wave backwards, i.e. in the reverse direction.

When we speak of waves going backwards, we mean forwards in time, but traveling in the opposite direction as particles. Elementary waves should not be confused with John Cramer’s backwards-in-time waves. In general elementary waves travel from detectors to a particle source before the particle is emitted, and all wave interference occurs before a particle is emitted. Interference is usually located at the particle source. Once emitted, a particle follows its specific elementary ray backwards with a probability of one.

Lewis E. Little has written a short essay on the various “interpretations of QM.” TEW is not an interpretation of QM.

This website is designed with both physicists and non-physcists in mind. It consists of short videos (between 1 and 26 minutes), some of which are humorous. They can be found by clicking at the top of this page on “For non-physicists,” or “For physicists.”