Dear Daniel,
In your very lucid essay you write:
-"According to one point of view, particles are an "epiphenomenon" and the fundamental theory is one of fields. [..] What is a quantum particle? "-
This suggests that the field is the primary phenomenon, the cause of the particle. In my essay I start from the assumption that in a self-creating universe particles have to create themselves, each other. This means that (the properties of) particles must be as much the product as the source of their interactions and fields. As the same holds for the force between them, a force cannot be either attractive or repulsive (at least at quantum level) so there are no infinite interaction energies at infinitesimal distances. Since a universe which finds a way to create itself can hardly stop creating, this continuing creation process leads to effects we associate with a gravity which seems attractive at one scale, and repulsive at the other. Being as much the product as the source of their interactions, quantum particles then might be defined as particles which cannot be distinguished from their interactions, their function. being as much the cause as the effect of its interactions, a quantum particle has no reality, does not exist outside its interactions. For a massive quantum particle 'to be' then is not a state, a noun, but an activity, a verb.
-"So we detect certain quantum events, the absorption of single particles, and we have good reasons to assume that each event is correlated to an event occurring at the source, the emission of one particle. It's then natural to view the particle exactly as this correlation between two observed events. Though our (classical) mental habits would suggest that 'something' has traveled from the first event to the second, this is not the right description at a more fundamental level. The two events and their (abstract) correlation are just everything that can be regarded as "real". Now suppose that some external Observer looks at our universe, not being subjected to our universe's time, and sees the whole spacetime at one glance (the cosmos from the beginning to the end). This object looks to the Observer as a [..] network of correlated events. Considering a particular photon, the Observer might see that a certain event, occurred at recombination era 400,000 years after the big bang, is correlated with an event occurred at a radio telescope on Earth 14 billion years after the big bang. He might say that a photon was emitted at the recombination era and detected 14 billion years later, but not that something was wandering all this time through the cosmos, waiting to be detected. For the Observer, only events and their correlations exist. " -
Indeed: if particle A emits a photon which is absorbed by particle B, a transmission changing the state of both particles, then A sees the state of B change at the time it emits the photon, whereas B sees the state of A change as it absorbs the photon. (That is, unless B after absorbing the photon sends back a photon to A to confirm the receipt of the photon, a thank-you-note saying that A can from this moment start to see B in its new state, altered by its absorption of the photon.) So though an observer certainly measures a transmission time equal to the AB distance, the photon bridges this spacetime distance in no time at all. (see for a more elaborate discussion about the speed of light, the UPDATE 2 post at my thread).
As to the 'external Observer': as any observation is a physical interaction, this would incorporate the observer into the universe he observes: he cannot see the universe from the outside, it doesn't exist to him. This is not an irrelevant philosophical point. If a universe creates itself out of nothing, then the sum of all things and events inside of it, including spacetime itself, must remain nil, so the universe can have no particular property as a whole. It also cannot evolve as a whole as this would require the existence of a clock outside of it the pace of which doesn't depend on whatever happens inside of it. A universe only can have properties as a whole if it has been created by some outside intervention, with respect to that creator, its evolution be timed using his/her/its watch. Though things inside the universe certainly keep evolving with respect to each other, a self-creating universe cannot evolve as a whole: if there's no time outside of it, then we cannot ask what causally precedes what, the photon emission by A or its absorption by B. The idea of photons buzzing trough spacetime, as tiny bullets, 'wandering all this time through the cosmos' is a classical way of looking at what in fact is a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon, that is, a non-causal phenomenon. It doesn't, then, make sense to ask how much energy it contains, how large it is or how old it is. Only in a big bang universe, which necessarily, implicitly must has been created by some Outside Intervention, we can ask such questions. However, the price we pay for this naïve, religious view on the universe is high as it affirms our classical notion of particles only being the source of their fields and interactions. By clinging to the bigbang scenario, to the idea that particle properties are independent from their interactions, we make them incomprehensible. The result is that we doom ourselves to invent unnecessary, nonsensical hypotheses and theories like cosmic inflation and string theory, and fictitious (Higgs) particles. Being the product of fundamental misconceptions, intended to reconcile the many inconsistencies of present physics, these theories and particles are part of the problem, not of its solution. I like to think that my essay offers a 'ansatz' to a solution of some of these problems.
Best regards, Anton
