Science for the Confused - an occasional series

No. 4: Quantum science meets Ontology

Problem: Split a photon, each half always maintains the opposite spin to the other even when the spin on one is changed and the other half is far away but its spin changes instantaneously too. Any communication between the two halves would have to travel at faster than the speed of light, which is impossible.

Could it be that part of the split photon exists only in one dimension, a dimension which we cannot cut. We can take a two-dimensional drawing, cut it in half and move the two halves around, thus changing the relationship of lines in the two halves. But we cannot cut an unknown dimension, and move two halves of an entity into a different relationship with each other. In other words some property of the photon is not involved with three-dimensional space, does not partake of it, existing only in the one dimension which we cannot cut and thus the two halves are still locked together in that dimension, and the communication between them is along that dimension and so remains instantaneous. The parts we see in our dimensions are tied together by a string in another dimension, which we cannot cut and which is involved with the spin of the parts we can see.

At the quantum level we hit the boundary of our dimensions, the wall between existence and non-existence, the limit of what we can investigate with our three dimensions. Timespace is the dimension of existence, the more something exists the longer it is in timespace. To have no timespace is not to exist at all. To look for something with no timespace is for it to disappear, to see it at the smallest timespace possible is to watch it come into existence, but particle or wave, is there another dimension that allows our dimensions to come into existence? The question of existence is not why, not when, not how, but what. What is it? What does existence consist of?

Must everything be made of something, something else, can nothing be made of itself? When everything we know about is inventoried, listed, exploded into a kit of parts, and there is nothing else however tiny to see through any microscope, and nothing else however huge to see through any telescope, and everything has been written down, we will still have the question "What?" What is it made of? An element may be said to be made of atoms of something and atoms may be made of something else but at the end of the list, what is the last something made of?

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Professor Kronk*

*Note: Our science correspondent changed his name by deed poll to Professor Kronk. He was formerly Helmut Kronk. Ed