Events, Intervals and Speed

[Faradave]

The Minkowski spacetime graphics provide a geometric means of applying the coordinate transformations.

Good! But I'll still interpret a worldline with mathematical span = zero to be 4D "contact".

P.S. I'm close to initiating the new gravity thread in Personal Theories but high winds have led to 3 power outages … so far. Short posts only for now.

Is it just possible that you are contemplating this form of contact through mechanisms of the virtual transactions of Cramer's Relativistic Transactional Interpretation?

No. I comment & encourage those who realize the infinite abundance of 4D contact compared to classical. But he seems to confuse lightlike intervals (for massless energy communication) and spacelike intervals (allowing instantaneous correlation of conserved properties.)

Further, my model "Phyxed" eliminates all virtual and massless particles. Also, While I recognize 4D contact to be mutual, I still consider it to be one-way in accordance with a fundamentally unidirectional time. The way I see emitter (e) and absorber (p) communicating is via future light cones. This is how an emitter "finds" an absorber in a future low energy state. An absorber could also sense the emitter. Conceivably, any spin phase requirement could be communicated as well, permitting lightlike "entanglement".



P.S. You haven't wasted your earlier, more substantial posts. As for phyti, I await a reliable window as I'm quite a pokey editor.

[hyksos]

Case in point (literally). Even in a particular inertial frame, a single spacetime event may have infinite unique coordinate designations. In its proper geometry (a sphere), all observers agree that earth's south pole is a single geographic location with infinite (longitudinal) coordinate designations. Your apparently Euclidean avatar may affect your intuition on this.

Ooo.. zang.

[BurtJordaan]

The Bob & Alice Story
A Ralf Entertainment Production

Entertaining and valid, but I don't quite get the relevance to the issues of this thread, which runs in circles around the meaning of "interval time" and "interval speed" of Faradave.

[BurtJordaan]

P.S. You haven't wasted your earlier, more substantial posts. ...

Yes, the hope is that it at least retard the spread of "FaraScience", although it seems as persistent as C-19... ;-))

[Faradave]

The electron jumping orbitals does not cut it … it is quite reasonable to say that such an event is instantaneous

Agreed. Distracting, sorry I brought it up. We'll focus on transmission of the light quantum.

emission and absorption, are not "instantaneous", or rather simultaneous in any inertial frame whatsoever.

It's instantaneous from the photon's perspective. No inertial frame, no photon (fine with me). But then lightlike field propagation doesn't have a frame either. To keep the field, it's easiest to allow a "degenerate" inertial frame. (Virtual particle explanations are no better an explanation than magic.)

fundamental disagreement starts. You define a "4D separation" and equate it to a light-like interval. From that it is an easy step to define "4D contact", but without a very tangible physical example.

Not guilty.

"In other words, the spacetime interval between two events on the world line of something moving at the speed of light is zero. Events which occur to or are initiated by a photon … all have light-like separation." - spacetime interval

"Where light goes from a given point is always separated by a zero interval." - Feynman p.99

The displacement four-vector correlates to the worldline of an observer and will become important in these discussions.

If you insist, fine. But I find your reference to be daunting and it fails to specifically address the very 4-vectors in question (i.e. zero, null). I much prefer this reference. It makes an arbitrary distinction between "zero" and "null" 4-vectors but don't get your hopes up. They all have zero magnitude. A "zero" 4-vector indicates classical contact, where all four coordinates (they list time first) are zero. The "null" 4-vectors, differ not in magnitude but in direction, pointing out of (to the future) or into (from the past) the origin. This corresponds to my characterization of classical and remote interval contact.



"We call a 4-vector A timelike if A² > 0, null if A² = 0, and spacelike if A² < 0." - Rindler p.101

[Faradave]

Ooo.. zang.

Maps influence the way people think. Ask yourself and some friends which is bigger (geographically), Greenland or Australia? Those who spent many childhood hours playing the popular game Risk are likely to answer Greenland because of this map.

One of the most frequently recalled world maps has some distortions.

Actually, it's Australia (area = 7,692,024 km² or 2,969,907 sq mi) over Greenland (area = 2,166,086 km² or 836,330 sq mi) by over 2½ times!

[Faradave]

In an XY-Cartesian plane y as a function of x describes a line with slope m and y-intercept b
(b = 0 as shown). m is rise/run, which can be expressed in terms of angle.
m = ∆y/∆x = tanθ = 1/tanß = cotß

Slope can also be given in terms of hypotenuse ∆r.
sinθ = ∆y/∆r so, θ = arcsin(∆y/∆r) which can be substituted in tanθ above.
So, the slope of a straight line can be given in terms of its own length.

Just for fun, cosß = ∆y/∆r so, ∆r/∆y = 1/cosß = secß.

If we switch to spacetime coordinates, one would expect similar relationships. However, spacetime coordinates are not Euclidean, as evident from the minus sign in the spacelike interval expression: (∆d)² = (∆x)² – (∆t)². This is remedied by rearranging to:
(∆x)² = (∆d)² + (∆t)², which suggests Euclidean interval-time coordinates.

Then with conventional speed (the magnitude of velocity) as: ∆v = ∆x/∆t,
we find: cosß = ∆t/∆x, so ∆v = 1/cosß = secß.

Let "interval speed": ∆d/∆t = tanß = cotθ (using spatial units for ∆d). Interval speed can be expressed numerous ways relating to slope. Most importantly, when ∆d = 0 interval speed is zero because no interval span is being traversed. Despite the relative nature of ∆t all inertial observers agree when ∆d = 0 makes interval speed zero, a uniquely invariant interval speed. This corresponds to the condition ∆x = ∆t, which supplies explanation to the invariance of speed c = ∆x/∆t (also uniquely under that condition). Phyxed offers the only valid explanations for Einstein’s second postulate c = c’.

[Faradave]

What you and I are doing is searching for alternative diagramming in order to make it more intuitive, but this cannot alter the inherent principles of physics. … The applicability of SR is limited to flat spacetime… so I disagree. In a particular inertial frame, a single spacetime event may not have infinite unique coordinate designations.

Even with local flatness, we still have to come to grips with the non-Euclidean relation of space and time in the interval formulas. We might argue for locally flat space but there is no flat spacetime. When spacetime is forced on a flat map, some single events get s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d, as they do with Mercator projections.

"Although the geometry of space-time is not Euclidean in the ordinary sense, there is a geometry which is very similar, but peculiar in certain respects. …the interval between two space-time points [events]…We give it a different name because it is in a different geometry…some signs are reversed and there is a c in it." - Feynman p.97

I have a problem with many of your out of context little quotes.

I'll try to provide better context. But do parse my posts ad lib. It helps focus on exactly where we disagree. Such as…

"4D contact" is really at the core of our disagreements.

That's progress. So is this...

...this thread, which runs in circles around the meaning of "interval time" and "interval speed" of Faradave.

I don't recall using "interval time" but certainly I use "interval speed". What a great concept! I think a "real" physicist almost beat me to it. Let's examine the relevant quote you most wish to ignore.

Richard Feynman is a hero to most physicists.
He was a grad student of the great teacher, John Wheeler.
He earned a Nobel prize for QED which deals with light.
This is from his book on Relativity and Spacetime (excerpted from his revered lecture series).
Heck, I'd wager even hyksos thinks he was pretty bright.

You've seen part of the quote before. I got a bit more (asterisks for context, bold = mine).

"In our diagram of spacetime, therefore, we would have a representation something like this: at 45° are two lines (actually,…light cones) and points on these lines are all at zero interval from the origin. Where light goes from a given point is always separated by a zero interval as we see from equation. (5.5)*. Incidentally, we have just proved that if light travels with speed c in one system, it travels with speed c in another, for if the interval is the same in both systems,** i.e. zero in one and zero in the other, then to state that the propagation speed of light is invariant is the same as saying that the interval is zero." – Feynman p.99

*refers to these equivalent interval expressions as seen in two different inertial frames:
t’² – x’² – y’² – z’² = t² – x² – y² – z²
**"systems" refers to different (primed & unprimed) inertial frames.

Am I the only one who thinks that's worth reading a few times? He refers to zero interval separation no less than five times! Maybe that's important. And you've got to ask, how in the world did he intuit c = c’ from a zero interval? Don't dismiss this lightly. Feynman's not kidding around. He considers this a proof!

I believe he subconsciously sensed what I've explicitly stated in two equivalent ways:
If he sensed that two different coordinate designations with zero interval separation are the same 4D event then:
c is an absolute speed limit because nothing gets closer than contact!

If Feynman considered interval speed as analogous to conventional speed and realized zero interval speed is uniquely invariant:
c is an absolute speed limit because nothing is slower than absolute rest!

Unfortunately, Feynman's wonderful lectures flow like free association. He moves on to the light cone and causality so, there’s nothing more there to give you. Pity, if he had gone just two sentences deeper, he might have gotten a second Nobel prize. Still, we shouldn't blame Feynman. After all, he never had the opportunity to discuss physics with me.
What's your excuse?

[bangstrom]

[@bangstrom]I think you are confusing the virtual transaction that happens through virtual photons and is therefore instantaneous, with the real transaction involving real photons that transfers the energy by propagating real waves through space and time.

I don’t think I am confusing “virtual photons “with “real” photons that transfer the energy by propagating real waves through space and time” because, in my view, the latter does not exist in Cramer's theory. But Cramer always leaves the possibility open for the reader who wants to interpret that it does.

Cramer replaced the virtual photons of the W-F Absorber theory and QED with his offer and confirmation waves and he describes “virtual photons” as one of these waveforms that fails to get a response and vanishes but he never claims there are “real” photons carrying energy through space and time. On the other hand, he never claims they are not so he leaves the door open for that interpretation.

If there is what you call a “real” photon transferring energy through space in Cramer’s theory, I have never found it. The action is nonlocal except in the view of the observer who sees a time delay between events and imagines there must be a particle in between.

[BurtJordaan]

Unfortunately, Feynman's wonderful lectures flow like free association. He moves on to the light cone and causality so, there’s nothing more there to give you. Pity, if he had gone just two sentences deeper, he might have gotten a second Nobel prize. Still, we shouldn't blame Feynman. After all, he never had the opportunity to discuss physics with me.
What's your excuse?

That you are reading into Feynman what Feynman did not say or even implied. Neither has Wheeler, nor any of his peers. Not even the next generation, of which Stephan Hawking jumps to mind.

Go forth, show the great scientists of today that you can construct a "4-D contact", where all 4 axes are collapsed to null, and win that prize! I'm demonstrably not scientist enough to comprehend that, so you are wasting your effort on me. But there are many around that should...

I have hinted that you should look into Hilbert space, a subset of which Kastner and Cramer, in https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.04501, calls "Quantumland".

[BurtJordaan]

If there is what you call a “real” photon transferring energy through space in Cramer’s theory, I have never found it. The action is nonlocal except in the view of the observer who sees a time delay between events and imagines there must be a particle in between.

Have you read Kastner and Cramer's https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.04501 of 2018?

Thus, virtual photons (time-symmetric propagator) convey force only, while real photons (projection operators, quanta of a real-valued field) convey real energy and break linearity. The latter is just an expression of what Einstein noted long ago: real electromagnetic energy (the actualized photon) is emitted and absorbed as a particle (projection operator with definite spatial momentum).

[BurtJordaan]

@Faradave

Go forth, show the great scientists of today that you can construct a "4-D contact", where all 4 axes are collapsed to null, and win that prize! I'm demonstrably not scientist enough to comprehend that, so you are wasting your effort on me. But there are many around that should...

I guess that you will have to supply analysis of least of a level similar to the portion of the referenced document starting on p. 8/13, stating:

"Let us now do this calculation explicitly. Consider the amplitude for emission of a photon of frequency ωk by atom E and absorption of that same photon by another atom A."

I must confess that before that portion, the math is above my head, but from thereon it is standard RF-engineering with a sprinkling of QED mixed in.

[Faradave]

Re: Speed (c) Reading

"In our diagram of spacetime, therefore, we would have a representation something like this: at 45° are two lines (actually,…light cones) and points on these lines are all at zero interval from the origin. Where light goes from a given point is always separated by a zero interval ... Incidentally, we have just proved that if light travels with speed c in one system, it travels with speed c in another, for if the interval is the same in both systems, i.e. zero in one and zero in the other, then to state that the propagation speed of light is invariant is the same as saying that the interval is zero." – Feynman p.99

Am I the only one who thinks that's worth reading a few times? He refers to zero interval separation no less than five times! Maybe that's important. And you've got to ask, how in the world did he intuit c = c’ from a zero interval? Don't dismiss this lightly. Feynman's not kidding around. He considers this a proof!

you are reading into Feynman what Feynman did not say or even implied. Neither has Wheeler, nor any of his peers.

Reread & think a bit. I've justified my interpretation. How do you (any SPCF member) understand it?

projection operator

Incidentally, a pinhole represents projected contact, as projected in any valid inertial frame or even as curved trajectories around high gravitation.

[BurtJordaan]

Am I the only one who thinks that's worth reading a few times? He refers to zero interval separation no less than five times! Maybe that's important. And you've got to ask, how in the world did he intuit c = c’ from a zero interval? Don't dismiss this lightly. Feynman's not kidding around. He considers this a proof!

you are reading into Feynman what Feynman did not say or even implied. Neither has Wheeler, nor any of his peers.

Reread & think a bit. I've justified my interpretation. How do you (any SPCF member) understand it?

Nobody here argues that light-like separation between two events does not mean zero spacetime interval between them. I'm arguing that your interpretation that it represents 4-D spacetime contact is over-imagining things. 4-D spacetime does not imply only light-like intervals - it covers all of spacetime. Lightlike simply means that light could leave at the moment and place of the earlier event and arrive at the moment and place of the later event.

BTW, maybe you should read K&C again - projection operator does not mean projected contact:

The weighted projection operators for the outcomes, i.e., the components of the density
matrix resulting from measurement, represent incipient transactions.

[Faradave]

4-D spacetime does not imply only light-like intervals - it covers all of spacetime.

Of course! There are timelike and spacelike intervals as well. So from any single event there are in principle timelike, lightlike and spacelike trajectories (without regard to traversability). It's almost redundant to say that the lightlike trajectories are c-dependent.

Lightlike simply means that light could leave at the moment and place of the earlier event and arrive at the moment and place of the later event.

By what means? Without aging and with a degenerate inertial frame? A "photon" which only happens to act like a particle on emission and absorption?

Nobody here argues that light-like separation between two events does not mean zero spacetime interval between them. I'm arguing that your interpretation that it represents 4-D spacetime contact is over-imagining things.

Think about things in the opposite way. Of two timelike intervals, would anyone doubt what he meant if Feynman said that the one with larger magnitude represents a greater invariant separation of its defining events than the one with lower magnitude. A larger spacetime interval means larger geometric 4D separation.

So a zero spacetime interval (i.e. a lightlike one) means what kind of separation? I'm not "over imagining" 4D contact. There is no better geometric interpretation. I'm open to debate here. Why should Jorrie do all the heavy lifting? Also, does anyone have a better interpretation of the Feynman quote I gave above?

I own three of several books reciting the centuries-long struggle for zero to be accepted as a number. So, I'm not surprised if physics puts up as much resistance as mathematics did. Zero is a winner!

[BurtJordaan]

Lightlike simply means that light could leave at the moment and place of the earlier event and arrive at the moment and place of the later event.

By what means? Without aging and with a degenerate inertial frame? A "photon" which only happens to act like a particle on emission and absorption?

Photons at emission event and traveling e.m. waves through ordinary spacetime and then photons at the absorption event. Photons before emission and after absorption are essentially just standing e.m. waves bound to an atom - part of the more complex standing wave. This is very metaphorical and should not be taken too seriously. Only the math explains it properly...

A larger spacetime interval means larger geometric 4D separation.

Nope! You can get very small spacetime intervals from very large geometrical separations. You can get successive constant geometrical separations where the spacetime interval decreases.

So a zero spacetime interval (i.e. a lightlike one) means what kind of separation? I'm not "over imagining" 4D contact.

As I wrote above: "Lightlike simply means that light could leave at the moment and place of the earlier event and arrive at the moment and place of the later event."

I start to imagine infinite circles around the real issues here - ideas that stood the test of a century pitted against ideas that are still to pass the test of a single second...

[bangstrom]

If there is what you call a “real” photon transferring energy through space in Cramer’s theory, I have never found it. The action is nonlocal except in the view of the observer who sees a time delay between events and imagines there must be a particle in between.

Have you read Kastner and Cramer's https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.04501 of 2018?

Yes, I read Kastner and Cramer's article but where did you get your interpretation of “real” and “virtual” photons. I found something similar on page 3 of the article but page 3 and much of what followed is a discussion of Davies’ theory and not Cramer’s.
I’m not familiar with Davies theory but the article states that it is similar to the Wheeler-Feynman Absorber theory which does have photon particles carrying light energy through space and, unlike Cramer’s TIQM, the W-F theory is not a direct action theory.

Cramer’s TIQM is called a direct-action theory because one particle transfers light energy directly and instantly to a remote particle without an intermediary particle carrying light energy from one to the other.

Thus, virtual photons (time-symmetric propagator) convey force only, while real photons (projection operators, quanta of a real-valued field) convey real energy and break linearity. The latter is just an expression of what Einstein noted long ago: real electromagnetic energy (the actualized photon) is emitted and absorbed as a particle (projection operator with definite spatial momentum).

I understand the above quote as meaning, when superposition is lost, the system returns to the reality of being separate particles with individual energies. The transposition of which particle has the most energy restores lineality to the system.

Cramer’s theory is time symmetric in that the emitter and absorber are no longer isolated systems while in a state of superposition. Cramer describes a photon as a “quantum of energy” and he confusingly also calls that quantum of energy a “particle”.

I have never understood why Cramer separates force (recoil) from energy in his theory. Other direct-action theories don’t make that distinction and they also drop the word “photon” from their explanations so as not to confuse direct-action with the classical photon theory.

[BurtJordaan]

Yes, I read Kastner and Cramer's article but where did you get your interpretation of “real” and “virtual” photons.

Not in the article, but in the proper Phyiscis Letter, bottom/top of pages 10/11. This is Cramer's latest, updated paper, written together with Kastner, in response to valid criticisms of his earlier theory.

I understand the above quote as meaning, when superposition is lost, the system returns to the reality of being separate particles with individual energies. The transposition of which particle has the most energy restores linearity to the system.

It is not about superposition and the collapse of wave functions, but about transfer of real energy from one atom to another, separated by some arbitrary distance, by means of wave packets of energy, a.k.a. photons. This happens in the real world and has a propagation delay due to c. It is only the handshakes of TIQM that happen in what Kastner calls "quantumland", in a time-symmetric value.

It is quite a common practice to call photons particles.

[phyti]

BurtJordaan;

Entertaining and valid, but I don't quite get the relevance to the issues of this thread, which runs in circles around the meaning of "interval time" and "interval speed" of Faradave.

I should be more specific, especially with long response times.

(After 12+yrs, the Alice & Bob scenario for me, is forever associated with Ralf and his quest to reinvent SR.)

My purpose was to compare the complete analysis using the Minkowksi graph vs the deficiencies of the Epstein graph. If the ref. frame is moving in time, then light communication between 2 local positions would require instantaneous transmission.
That seems a step backward.

[BurtJordaan]

My purpose was to compare the complete analysis using the Minkowksi graph vs the deficiencies of the Epstein graph. If the ref. frame is moving in time, then light communication between 2 local positions would require instantaneous transmission.
That seems a step backward.

You didn't mean to say that the 'Epstein graph' has a "ref. frame moving in time", did you?

If you did, that's a false interpretation.

[phyti]

My purpose was to compare the complete analysis using the Minkowksi graph vs the deficiencies of the Epstein graph. If the ref. frame is moving in time, then light communication between 2 local positions would require instantaneous transmission.
That seems a step backward.

You didn't mean to say that the 'Epstein graph' has a "ref. frame moving in time", did you?

If you did, that's a false interpretation.

The Epstein graph was always presented with the idea of moving in time. I just avoid using them.

[BurtJordaan]

Always? By who?

[Faradave]

FD wrote: "A larger spacetime interval means larger geometric 4D separation".
Nope! You can get very small spacetime intervals from very large geometrical separations. You can get successive constant geometrical separations where the spacetime interval decreases.

My statement is a tautology. Yours is internally inconsistent, unless you restrict "geometrical separations" to a 3D space (i.e. t = constant). Then of course, ∆x may be any size.

Interval separation is geometric separation in 4D spacetime. An interval will nearly always have smaller magnitude than its spatial and temporal components* because it derives from the difference of their squares.

*except for classical contact, when ∆d = ∆x = ∆t = 0

…show the great scientists of today that you can construct a "4-D contact", where all 4 axes are collapsed to null…

No wonder you can't abide Phyxed! Only the light cones "collapse" to interval contact.** That's what I mean when I refer to it as c-dependent contact. You can send and receive energy that way but rest masses like us will never make the trip. The cosmos will always have plenty of size for astronauts to explore.

**If we heat shrink a Mercator projection of earth onto a sphere, only the poles shrink to single actual points of contact i.e. single points with infinite coordinate identities. Nothing about earth has changed. It's just a realization of former map distortion.

In any geometry (including spacetime) "zero separation" has no other meaning than contact, particularly a single point of contact (e.g. where a tangent meets a curve). Here again is Feynman referring to zero interval separation five times and a diagram of my interpretation subject to debate.

"In our diagram of spacetime, therefore, we would have a representation something like this: at 45° are two lines (actually,…light cones) and points on these lines are all at zero interval from the origin. Where light goes from a given point is always separated by a zero interval… Incidentally, we have just proved that if light travels with speed c in one system, it travels with speed c in another, for if the interval is the same in both systems, i.e. zero in one and zero in the other, then to state that the propagation speed of light is invariant is the same as saying that the interval is zero." – Feynman p.99

[BurtJordaan]

Interval separation is geometric separation in 4D spacetime.

This is your first false premise. Minkowskian 4D spacetime still has a simple Pythagoran geometrical spacetime separation from the origin d² = (ct)²+x²+y²+z²
The coordinates of all points on the spacetime diagram are plain Euclidean.

Added PS

Yes, the spacetime interval is different: s² = -(ct)²+x²+y²+z², giving us the hyperbolic spacetime interval structure above. The colored lines represent constant spacetime intervals, with green constant timelike intervals and pink constant spacelike intervals.

The feint borderlines between the two are lightlike intervals, which means zero spacetime interval, as you have said. But events on these borderlines still have non-zero geometrical 4D spacetime separation. They just have zero spacetime interval separation, which is a different thing altogether.

Zero spacetime interval means that the geodesic of light cannot be parametrized with proper time. You need a related affine parameter to parametrize the line and it so happens that good old coordinate time (ct) is the simplest valid affine parameter for null geodesics in flat spacetime. This justifies the statement about non-zero geometrical 4D spacetime separation for lightlike spacetime intervals.

I can carry on with you second and third false premises, which may perhaps depend on the first one, so rather than going in infinite circles, let's settle number one.


PS: BTW, your Feynman quote does not say what you say. He is just reiterating that the spacetime interval is invariant and when it is zero it implies a lightlike interval for everyone. That's standard and no one argues that. The issue comes when you equate it to 4D contact (whatever that may mean), because I do not read that in any of his lectures. In your diagram following the quote, the top line "these terms mean the same 4D event" leaves me speechless for its invalidity.

[bangstrom]

Yes, I read Kastner and Cramer's article but where did you get your interpretation of “real” and “virtual” photons.

Not in the article, but in the proper Phyiscis Letter, bottom/top of pages 10/11. This is Cramer's latest, updated paper, written together with Kastner, in response to valid criticisms of his earlier theory.

This is a quote from pages 10/11

"Cramer's transactional interpretation describes an electron as sending out probabilistic "offer waves" (OW) to potential absorbers. He adds what he calls "confirmation waves" (CW) incoming to an emitter from the many possible absorbers of an emitted photon. An offer wave is not an actual photon emission, and a confirmation wave is not an actual absorption or "detection" of a photon. But Cramer did see the two waves as connecting events in four-dimensional spacetime. Eventually, one advanced-potential confirmation wave indeterministically "handshakes" with the retarded-potential offer wave and produces an actual absorption.

This "handshake" completes the transaction, but perhaps not at a single point in spacetime. Cramer sees the transaction as "atemporal" in that it takes place all along the four-dimensional spacetime vector between the emission and absorption events. Because it happens over the extended space of a worldline of a photon between emission and absorption, Cramer says it is "explicitly nonlocal," but this linear space is tiny compared to the huge space of nonlocal behavior of two entangled particles in the EPR experiment,"

I understand the above as saying that the photon, as described in relativity as a energy carrying particle traveling through space, is ad hoc and imaginary.

Virtual photons are the unconfirmed connections between the offer and confirmation waves.
Real photons appear when the two waves merge and their vector states collapse. At this point the transfer of energy is complete and the transposed locations of the energy levels become apparent to observers.

Here is another article about real and imaginary photons by Ruth Kastner.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4007.pdf

I understand the above quote as meaning, when superposition is lost, the system returns to the reality of being separate particles with individual energies. The transposition of which particle has the most energy restores linearity to the system.

It is not about superposition and the collapse of wave functions, but about transfer of real energy from one atom to another, separated by some arbitrary distance, by means of wave packets of energy, a.k.a. photons. This happens in the real world and has a propagation delay due to c. It is only the handshakes of TIQM that happen in what Kastner calls "quantumland", in a time-symmetric value.

There are no "wave packets of energy, a.k.a. photons" in Cramer's TIQM and there is no travel through space at c. Where do you find that?

It is quite a common practice to call photons particles.

This is not the practice in other direct-actions theories because the word “photon” is associated with Einsteins little bullet like particle (or wave) carrying light energy from place to place at speed c. Cramer’s use of the language from classical photon theory is confusing because the energy transfer takes place nonlocally and there is no need for a photon to repeat the same action again in 3D spacetime. Cramer's "photon" is not the photon in the classical sense.

[bangstrom]

This is a brief description of Cramer’s TIQM.

https://www.informationphilosopher.com/ ... ts/cramer/

[BurtJordaan]

@Bangstrom:

We are talking about different papers. My reference is (as given it before):

Kastner & Cramer of 2018, Quantifying Absorption in the Transactional Interpretation

This is the latest official word of both the authors on the topic, so please read so that we can discuss sensibly.

I think your Cramer reference is from much older vintage.

[Faradave]

FD: "Interval separation is geometric separation in 4D spacetime."
This is your first false premise. Minkowskian 4D spacetime still has a simple Pythagorean geometrical spacetime separation from the origin d² = (ct)²+x²+y²+z². The coordinates of all points on the spacetime diagram are plain Euclidean.
…lightlike intervals … still have non-zero geometrical 4D spacetime separation.

Agreed, with respect to geometric map separations. There is a language issue here. By "in 4D spacetime" I meant the geometry of the actual continuum, i.e. the actual universe (all space and all time), not a map.

…good old coordinate time (ct) is the simplest valid affine parameter for null geodesics in flat spacetime.

I agree the maps are flat and there are marked distortions associated with that.

Feynman … is just reiterating that the spacetime interval is invariant and when it is zero it implies a lightlike interval for everyone. … The issue comes when you equate it to 4D contact (whatever that may mean), because I do not read that in any of his lectures.

Agreed. Feynman's own book QED makes clear his complete adoption of the photon model. What I gave as, "my interpretation" open for debate, is not Feynman's interpretation. When I refer to what Feynman meant, it's akin to Schwarzschild or Chandrasekhar finding meaning in Einstein's writings that Einstein had not yet realized himself. Because of this, Chandrasekhar got a Nobel prize relating to Relativity instead. (Schwarzschild unfortunately died too soon.)

In your diagram following the quote, the top line "these terms mean the same 4D event" leaves me speechless for its invalidity.

No cause for alarm! My expression is no different than saying different map locations A, B, C & D (along with an infinite number of unlabeled brethren on that line) are in actuality, the same single point.

A, B, C, & D are the same actual point (on earth or in the universe) despite different coordinate designations on maps.

[bangstrom]

[@bangstrom]I think you are confusing the virtual transaction that happens through virtual photons and is therefore instantaneous, with the real transaction involving real photons that transfers the energy by propagating real waves through space and time.

Sorry, I did post a quote from the wrong paper but I am familiar with both papers and they are quite similar so my interpretation of the older paper also applies to the new.

I don’t find either paper or Cramer’s TIQM consistent with your statement above so where do you read that a real photon transfers energy by propagating real waves through space and time?

The transfer of a quantum of energy (Cramer unfortunately calls it a photon) is instant and complete with the collapse of the superposition state. The interaction is nonlocal and simultaneous at both ends with no need for a physical object, as either a particle or a wave, to pass through space transporting energy from one electron to the other.

[BurtJordaan]

…good old coordinate time (ct) is the simplest valid affine parameter for null geodesics in flat spacetime.

I agree the maps are flat and there are marked distortions associated with that.

Why do you bring maps into it? I am talking about real 4-spacetime. It is flat and undistorted if we are taking SR spacetime, but it can be curved in GR. It still does not support your speculations, which are not supposed to be discussed in this (physics) section. From what you have learned lately, start a thread under Personal Theories if you want to continue the saga of FaraPhysics.