Superposition is not Mystical

 
Heisenberg               Bohr

In this paper Miles Mathis offers a simple mechanical explanation of superposition and provides an easy visualization as well, one that simultaneously solves the mystery of superposition and the wave motion of particles.

Heisenberg and Bohr assured everyone that this was not possible. The Copenhagen interpretation, which is still the preferred interpretation of quantum mechanics by contemporary physicists, states in no uncertain terms that the mysteries of quantum physics are categorically unsolvable. That is, they are not only unsolved, they are impossible to solve. All other interpretations of quantum mechanics have agreed with this interpretation, regarding the impossibility of a straightforward visualization or of a simple mechanical solution. Some variations have denied other aspects of the Copenhagen interpretation, especially regarding its opinion of the collapse of the wave function. Bohm, for instance, has attempted a deterministic explanation of certain parts of QED, including a reinterpretation of the wave function and of the Uncertainty Principle. But not even Bohm or Bell believed that anyone could offer a simple visualization that would explain superposition or the so-called wave-particle duality.

Einstein came closest to this belief. He remained convinced that quantum mechanics would eventually be explained in a more consistent manner. But, again, it was mainly the probabilistic nature of quantum dynamics that bothered him, not the fact that it could not yield to simple visualizations. He did not like God playing dice, but he did not expect God to draw us a picture with every new theory.

MM did not approach the problem intending to find a visualization or an easy mechanical solution. MM only wanted to make better sense of it in my own mind. But in analyzing the problem MM found that the mechanical difficulties were not nearly as formidable as has been claimed. MM found that he could quite easily visualize the physical motions, and that he could put these visualizations into pretty simple words and pictures. One basic discovery allowed me to do this, and that is what this paper is about.

MM believes that the most efficient way to lead the reader through the problem is to analyze the current explanation of superposition, as it is presented in a contemporary text. David Albert’s Quantum Mechanics and Experience will be used as a sample text since this book for the same reason that it presents the status quo theory in as clear a form as possible, for laymen and physicists alike. (The author Albert is a philosophy professor at Columbia, but he has been embraced and tutored by many mainstream physicists. This book may therefore be taken as a representative, if not perfect, expression of current theory. If it were not it surely would not have been published by Harvard University Press.)

Albert begins by taking two measurable qualities of an electron. He tells us that the qualities don’t matter, and that we could call them color and hardness if we wanted to. In a footnote on page 1 he informs the reader that experimentally he is talking about x-spin and y-spin, but he does not elaborate beyond that. Conveniently, this footnote allows me to make my first major substantive point. From a logical point of view, an electron cannot have angular momentum on the x and y axis at the same time—not if both spins are about an axis through the center (Albert claims that they are). Imagine the Earth spinning about its axis. Call that axis the x-axis. Now go to the y-axis, which also goes through the center but is at a 90^° angle from the x-axis. Try to imagine spinning the Earth around that axis at the same time that it is spinning around the x-axis. If you can imagine it, then you have a very vivid imagination, to say the least. (See Addendum.)

To visualize this, remember the gyroscope and the phenomenon called precession. A torque applied to the axis of rotation is deflected, so that circular motion is not allowed about the y-axis. You can have circular motion in only one of the two planes at a time. To see why this is so, think of a point on the surface of the sphere or on the edge of a wheel. Give it spin in the xy-plane. Now follow its course and see the curve it describes. Once you have done that, think of giving it a spin in the zy-plane at the same time. You have a second curve applied to the first curve. But these two curves cannot be added to create a new curve that the body can follow as a whole. If the body were free to follow both curves from the first dt, then the first thing it would do is warp very badly. Very soon it would be twisted beyond recognition. But real bodies are not free to warp into any shape possible. They already have structure at many levels, and this structure is rigid to one degree or another. So if you try to apply a second circular motion to a real body, you are applying a force that does not just lead to motion—you are applying a force that is trying to break the body itself. It is the molecular bonds themselves that are resisting you. The body does not want to warp. This is why you can apply a second spin to a liquid in circular motion. The liquid does not resist the second orthogonal force. But your second force ends up destroying the “body” of the circular motion, which in a liquid was just a pattern anyway.

That said, it is possible to have simultaneous x and y spins, but you must apply the second spin to a center outside the object. What is meant is that the electron must spin end over end, rather than spin about the axis through its center.

To go back to the Earth example, you can see that we can easily imagine the Earth hurtling end over end throughout space, since this end over end motion would not affect its axis spin at all. A gyroscope resists a 90^° force, but only because we have fixed the center of the gyroscope relative to the force. A gyroscope will not spin in two ways about its center. But if we put the gyroscope in a spherical container, then we can rotate the gyroscope around a point on the surface of the sphere. We can do this even if the gyroscope is firmly attached to the container. Take a spinning bicycle tire and extend the axle out so that the diameter of the axle is equal to the diameter of the wheel. Attach the ends of this axle firmly to a great sphere with the same diameter, so that the wheel is inside the sphere. You can now rotate that sphere about any point on the surface of the sphere, without the internal motion causing precession. This is because you are no longer attempting to cause two different rotations about the same center. You have created a center just beyond the influence of the first axis.

What is even more interesting is that the circle of this new revolution now has a center that is not stationary—it travels. And it travels in a very interesting way. Let us say you have the Earth spinning about the x-axis, and you give the center of the Earth a constant velocity in the y-direction. Next, we add an end-over-end spin in this same y-direction. Now, what sort of total curve would this end over end spin create, for the center of the Earth? It would create a wave.

[To see an animation of this wave motion, you may take these links. The first is a windows media file, the second requires Quicktime (and is much faster to download). wave.wmv 4.5Mb. wave.mov 780kb. Expect to wait 30 seconds for the wmv file. Thanks to Chris Wheeler for use of these files.]

Let that sink in for a few seconds. Albert assumes that both angular momentums are measured about the same center. Beyond that, he assumes that the measured qualities or quantities don’t matter. He assumes that angular momentum is conceptually equivalent to velocity or position or any other parameter. He assumes that because that is what all physicists have so far assumed. What matters for QED is how these unanalyzed variables plug into equations. MM has just shown that the actual variables matter very much. The whole explanation for QED lies in the real motions of these real bodies, and the explanation is capable of being stated in simple, direct terms, as was done above. The two angular momentums not only influence each other in specific and distinct ways; the ways they influence each other provide the conceptual and physical groundwork for QED—a groundwork that has so far been ignored.

But let us return to Albert’s argument. He gives the electron color and hardness, to simplify the analysis. The electron then has four states: black, white, hard, soft. The physicist has equally simple tools. He has a color box and a hardness box. If he feeds in an unknown electron, the color box tells the physicist black or white. The hardness box tells him hard or soft.

Now, if the physicist feeds white or black electrons into a hardness box, half trip the hard detector and half the soft. Likewise for hard or soft electrons fed into a color box. This means, according to Albert, that “the color of an electron apparently entails nothing whatever about its hardness” or the reverse.

The problem encountered by Albert’s physicist is that these two simple detectors seem to work in strange ways, if you set them up in combination. If the physicist sets up three boxes like this: color box, hardness box, color box, the percentages at the end are mystifying. The hardness box in the middle is set up so that it captures only one emerging color, which Albert lets be white. The white electrons travel to the middle hardness box, where half of them make it through and go to the last box. The surprise is that of those, only half are white when they come out. Our final color box finds half of them are black. Wow! Albert and QED tell us this is a big problem. It cannot be explained logically.

Albert says that his physicist tries everything. He builds his boxes in a variety of ways, to make them more (or even less) precise. It doesn’t matter. The same 50/50 split comes out at the end.

This has been one of the central problems of quantum physics from the very beginning. It has been a mystery for at least 80 years. But the outcome is easily explainable once you have MM's analysis above in hand, regarding the various spins.

Let’s say you have a sample of electrons and are going to measure angular momentum in both zx and zy planes. If we have four possible outcomes, then we assume that each momentum is either clockwise or counterclockwise, relative to some observer. Now, put yourself in the position of this observer and see what happens. At the first moment, you look and you see that the electron is rotating clockwise about its x-axis, with that axis pointing straight at you. This means that the rotation is in the zy-plane. In other words, you are looking at a little clock, since it is moving relative to you just like the second hand on the face of a clock. That clock face exists in the zy-plane.

A moment later the electron has rotated a half-turn, end over end along the x-axis. This rotation is in the zx-plane, about a traveling y-axis. After this half-turn, you look again at the clock face. Its motion is the same, but it now appears counterclockwise to you.

If that was confusing, you can easily perform the above visualization with a desk clock, provided of course that it is not digital. Hold the clock in front of you. Its hands are turning clockwise, and they represent the spin in the x-plane. Now give the entire clock a spin in the y-plane, simply by turning it one half turn end over end. If you do this you will now be looking at the back of the clock. The second hand is now moving counterclockwise, relative to you. It is that simple. The second hand of the clock is spinning around an x-axis that is pointed right at you.

Then you spin the whole clock around a y-axis. Very elementary, but it shows us that the x-spin of the electron must be variable, if you measure it relative to an observer external to the electron. If the electron has both x-spin and y-spin, then the x-spin will be variable, measured by a stationary device. Only an observer traveling with the electron would measure its spin as consistently CW or CCW. The same thing applies in reverse, of course. If you are measuring the other angular momentum, then you get a periodic variance in the first one.

You could say that the spin changes due to relativity, but that would actually be over-complicating the situation. We don’t need any transforms here, and the kind of simple relativity MM has just described was known long before Einstein. It is true that my analysis used relativity to find a solution, but it is the simplest, pre-Einstein sort of relativity.

It is just to say that an observer must pay attention to how the object he is measuring is changing over time. A measuring device, whether it is an eyeball or an electron detector, is a constant frame of reference, and a spinning electron will show variance with regard to that device at different times, as just shown. There is nothing esoteric about it, although it is a subtle thing to have to notice.

Once we apply this to our measuring devices, whatever they are, we see that this must affect our outcomes quite positively. Let us go inside the first box. It was measuring color, so let us assign color to the clock-face rotation. White is CW, black is CCW. The box finds that some electrons are white and some black. To differentiate, it must apply some field or force to them over some dt. Let us imagine, to simplify, that the box feeds the electrons into a chute, like cattle, and then puts them all through the same door. This door is like the metal detector at the airport, except that it takes a picture of the electron as it rushes through. It has a very fast f-stop, an f-stop of dt. If the electron was CW at that dt, then the box ejects it from the white door. If the electron was CCW at that dt, then the box ejects it from the black door.

This is, in fact, very much like the way detectors work. They do not take pictures, of course, but some sort of force or field separates the white and black electrons. The field may not be limited to a dt, but the first impression of the field is crucial. The electrons are moving quite fast, and the time periods are therefore quite small. The field doesn’t have time to snap a bunch of pictures and start changing its mind.

What this all means is that whiteness and blackness and softness and hardness are not constants. Every electron is both black and white and hard and soft, at different times. But it is all those things only if you sum over some extended period of time. At each dt, it is either hard or soft, black or white. It is not both at the same time. At one measurement, it will be one or the other. Over a series of measurements, it will be both.

This is the subtlety that QED has never penetrated. It explains the above problem like this: If you put electrons like those MM has described through a color box, the color box sees some of them as black and some as white over the dt measured. But they are actually not white or black as they come out—they remain potentially both, depending on the point in the wave you measure.

If you measured the white ones coming out at a different point in the wave motion, you would find them black, and vice versa. Now, the color determination is repeatable, since a similar box will catch the electrons in similar ways. All color boxes tend to shute and channel electrons in the same way, so that the exiting group is made coherent. A second color box must then read them the same way as the first.

What happens in the second box (the hardness box) solves the mystery. The second box creates coherence in the second angular momentum. This assures that other hardness boxes will find the same hardness. But in creating this coherence, the second box re-randomizes the first variable. Why does it do this? It does this because the wavelength of the two angular momentums is different. If the first wavelength was taken as R, for the radius of the electron, then we have to take the second wavelength as 2R, for the diameter.

This is simply because the second wavelength is caused by end over end rotation. If we cohere the end over end rotation, this must split the measurement of the axial rotation. If we cohere the axial rotation, this must split the measurement of the end over end rotation. One is half the other, so you cannot create coherence in both at the same time.

This can be shown with simple waves in two dimensions. Study the diagram below. We have two opposite combinations of ½ and 1 waves. If you synchronize the ½ waves, the 1 waves are off. If you synchronize the 1 waves, then the ½ waves are off. You cannot synchronize both. This, in essence, is what is happening in box two. The hardness waves are being made coherent, so that the color waves are being thrown out of synch. The third box then reads them as ½ one and ½ the other.

You can see that MM has simultaneously solved the problem of superposition and the problem of the wave motion of quantum particles. He did this simply by noticing that the second angular momentum must be about a center that is just external to the object. That is to say, the y-spin is end over end.

With the hindsight this gives me, it seems shocking that this was not seen earlier. The reason it was not seen is that Heisenberg and Bohr convinced everyone early on that Quantum Mechanics could not be explained with straightforward logic and simple visualizations. No one has ever bothered to apply a little commonsense to the physical situation. They were so sure that it couldn’t be done, that they didn’t even try to tackle the problem on a visual or mechanical basis.

This predicament soon snowballed, since as more and more great physicists looked at the problem and failed to explain it, later physicists became more and more sure that it couldn’t be solved. They did not want to waste their time combing something that every genius from Bohr to Feynman had already combed. That seemed not just foolish, but sacrilegious.

But the fact is that there has probably been no one since Bohr that tried very hard to make classical sense of the problem. Physicists who came right after Bohr took his word for it, and contemporary physicists have reached the point where most don’t even want a mechanical explanation of QED. The spooky paradoxes are more fun. They make better copy.

Addendum

Feb 2012: A close reader just asked MM for clarification on the spins here. He pointed out that the Earth has a wobble in its spin. Isn't that part of a second spin, since it isn't along the original axis? If we continued the wobble, we could create a whole spin in either direction.

MM answered: Excellent question, and I will even add it to my super.html paper, to clear up confusion. Let's look at your Earth wobble, to get to the bottom of this. The Earth's wobble isn't caused by two spins about two different axes, as in my example. It is caused by a motion of the first axis. We let the Earth spin on z, say, then we move z. Yes, we can actually spin z, moving the north pole to the south, and I think that is what you are getting at. We then have spins in two planes, which seems to prove your point. We could then call the spin of z either x or y, and it looks like I have been refuted.

However, I have not been refuted, since we are talking about different things. If you now rename the spin of z as x-spin, your x-spin is not the same as the x-spin I am outlawing. I have outlawed some x and y spin, right? Well, I am outlawing the original x-spin, the one that is the same sort of motion as the original z-spin. Which is a spin about an axis. You have found a spin of the axis, not a spin about the axis. So my point holds.

That x-spin about an x-axis is still outlawed. In fact, your new x-spin is the same as my end-over-end x-spin, since if we give the Earth any linear motion, your x-spin will appear end-over-end. North and south poles switching ends is end-over-end, is it not?

He then replied, Yes that clears that up, but there is still the matter of the point of spin. You say that the end-over-end spin needs to spin about a point on the end of z. I have reminded you that we can spin z about its center. What gives?

And MM answered: I admit that it could be one or the other. Either way creates what I would call an end-over-end spin. But my way allows me to create my quantum spin equation, which answers a lot of questions that have been in the shadows. So the argument for my way is straight from data. The quanta could spin your way, but in fact I don't think they do. The spin equation wouldn't fit data. To be specific, if we let the z-axis spin about its center rather than about one end, we don't get a doubling of the spin radius with each added spin. We need that. (See the spin equation from the paper The Unification of the Proton and Electron .)

Update, 2013To understand why the photon's second spin spins around a point on the original spin surface, we just have to look at the cause of that second spin. MM had shown previously it must be caused by collision with another photon. The first photon stacks a second spin on top of the first because it cannot spin any faster on the first axis. It has reached a spin velocity of c, and if it encounters a positive spin collision that would increase its spin energy, it can stack that extra energy on only by creating another spin. Well, since the point of collision is on the outer surface, the photon naturally spins about that point. The second spin must take as its new center that point of collision.

Posted April 15, 2009 - MM received the following question from a reader concerning the the famous superposition experiment of one of two beam splitters and two mirrors:
"I've studied your paper (on superposition) and it made sense to me. However, there are other cases of superposition that are available that do not require measurement of x,y spins of electrons. For example this Entanglement video at youtube shows a well-known experiment of superposition using beam-splitters and mirrors. Although I'm personally skeptical of 'same particle in multiple places at the same time' argument, I'm struggling to come up with a better explanation. So here is my question: how would you explain this particular superposition experiment? Is it really the same photon in multiple places?"

What this reader is talking about is an experiment where a light beam is split, mirrored symmetrically, then split again (see diagram above). Detectors are set up at the second split, and we have another big and spooky “mystery”. The magicians at youtube claim this is because the same photon goes both paths and interferes with itself.

This is a similar question to the one MM solved earlier in this paper, but here the magicians vary the setup to fool the audience. When MM says “magicians” he is not just being sardonic. This really is a case of prestidigitation, like a shell game. The fake physicists misdirect your eye, and by the end of it you can't say where the photon is or why it is there. Just as almost no one, no matter how smart they are, can tell what the trick is in a good magic trick, almost no one can sort through all the misdirection and fast talk of the current superposition patter.

First of all, to solve this, we don't have to “measure” spins of electrons or photons. We just have to give the particles wavelengths, and the standard model already does this. The magicians at youtube do this, and they even try to prove double existence by manipulating wavelengths (in a very sloppy manner). But they don't define the wavelengths carefully enough. This forces them to solve the problem by proposing the impossible. It does not bother them to propose the impossible: in fact, they enjoy being magicians. They enjoy performing miracles and dumbfounding the audience.

But let's solve it with mechanics instead. We know that the first beam splitter S1 splits 50/50, since if we move the detectors up to S1, the detectors tell us this directly. The second splitter S2 is exactly like the first, so we should expect the detectors at the end to give us the same 50/50 split (we are told). Instead we find all the photons at D2. Big mystery.

At youtube they explain it in this way. If we fire the photons one at a time, the photon takes both paths and interferes with itself, keeping it from reaching D1. The problem with this answer is not just that the same photon travels both paths, although you would think that would be enough to disqualify the answer. The other problem is that if the single photon has interfered with itself, how does it reach D2? We have a detection at D2, remember? The standard answer is that the interference only happens with the half of the photons that pass straight through the splitter on path B. The half that are split are turned directly into D2.

So, if a photon on path B passes straight through S2, it interferes with itself, and doesn't go to D1. If a photon on path B is turned, it doesn't need to interfere with itself, and it goes to D2. If a photon on path A is going to be turned at S2, it interferes with itself and does not go to D1. If it goes straight through S2, it does not interfere with itself, and goes into D2. That is the magic answer.

Not only is that answer much more complex than it needs to be, it is contradictory. Along path A, the interference takes place on the near side of the splitter. The photon on the A path does not go straight through the splitter: it waits for its twin to go through the splitter on path B, and only then is the interference completed. But if the photon is moving on path B, it goes through the splitter and then interferes with itself. The interference takes place on the A side of the splitter both times. Not only are the paths not symmetrical, there is no way to explain how the photons know whether they are the primary photons or the twins. In other words, the youtube magicians haven't explained why the interference always takes place on the A side of S2. Why doesn't the interference ever take place on the B side of S2, after the photon on path A has passed straight through S2?

Also, you can see that they need the single photon to take both paths every time, just in case it is needed. This is what the sum-over proposition of Feynman means. Every photon takes every possible path, then we do the math at the end, to cancel wavelengths and decide where particles will be detected. But if that is the case, why aren't the twin particles detected when the detectors are at S1? In other words, once they explain the action of the splitter and photons at S2, they have to go back and see if it works at S1. We have the proposal that all photons take both paths. If they are on both paths, why did the detectors at S1 find a 50/50 split? Why do detectors detect primary particles but not twins?

This explanation wants the photon to take both paths in the second case, where the detectors are at S2, but it doesn't want the photon to take both paths when the detectors are at S1. If the photon is on both paths, then both detectors at S1 should detect all the photons. Yes, logically, we should detect 100% more photons than are emitted, since we would be detecting both the particles and their twins.

So the current magical explanation not only wants us to believe that the photon takes both paths, it wants us to believe it is on the path and not on the path. It is on the path when we want it there to interfere with itself, but it is not on the path when we don't need it to interfere. The current explanation is not one miracle, it is two miracles stacked.

The funny part is that the youtube magicians tell you the right answer, but then deflect you from noticing it is sufficient, without interference. They admit that each turning will shift the wave ¼ wavelength. If the wave passes straight through a splitter, it is not shifted. So, in order to reach D1, the wave is either shifted three times on path A, or one time on path B. To reach D2, the wave is shifted 2 times on either path. This tells us immediately that the experiment prefers even shifts. We should then seek to explain this without interference or doubled particles.

The splitter, that we expected to work the same way in both positions, is not working the same way in both positions. At S1, it is letting half the particles pass straight through. At S2, it is letting all the particles on path A pass and none of the particles on path B. Why?

The answer is even simpler than my answer to the detectors-in-sequence problem of my first paper. As in that paper, the first splitter is acting as a polarizer. It is sorting the photons coming from the emitter. All the photons going on path A have the same orientation, and the same for B. They are on the path they are on because they reacted the same to the material in S1. The photons on path A are all equivalent in orientation to each other, but they are opposite in orientation to the photons on path B.

This means the splitter at S1 is dealing with a different incoming group than the splitter at S2, and we should not expect the splitter to act the same in the two places. The first problem, therefore, is our expectation that they should act the same. The magicians tell us that the logical expectation is that the splitter should act the same in both places, but that is false. It is either a lie or a very big and obvious mistake.

The splitter at S1 is receiving one group of mixed photons, from one direction. The splitter at S2 is receiving two groups of polarized photons, from two directions, and each group is opposite the other group.

Let us show this in more detail, but still very simply. Let us say photons can either be spinning around a vertical axis or a horizontal axis, relative to the first splitter. In other words, if we simplify the photon into a circle, it is either spinning along a 1-3 axis or a 2-4 axis. All our emitted photons are either 1-3 or 2-4. If they are 2-4, the splitter lets them pass straight through along path B, without deflection. If they are 1-3, the splitter deflects them along path A. But in deflecting them, the splitter turns them ¼ turn, as the magicians on youtube tell us as they read from the internet. This means that the number 2 is leading on both paths. When the particles are turned by the mirrors, they each shift ¼ turn, so that the number 4 is then leading on both paths. The mirrors are opposite in orientation themselves, so we turn the B particle clockwise but the A particle counter-clockwise. But on path A, the particle is still spinning on the 1 axis, and on path B, the particle is still spinning on the 2 axis. So the particles approach the splitter at S2 as shown in the diagram.

The particles on both paths are now reversed from their original orientations, as you can see. So the splitter reacts to them in the opposite way, turning the B particle and letting the A particle pass.

All the particles on A are the same, so the splitter reads them the same way, letting all of them pass. All the particles on B are the same, so the splitter reads them the same way, turning all of them. Very simple. Not mysterious at all.

Not only is there a mechanical explanation, the explanation is quite quick and transparent, yielding to very simple diagrams. We don't need any interference or doubled particles or multiple paths. The youtube video tells us that the only way to explain loss of detection at D1 is by interference, but MM has just shown that is false. The expert on the video also tells you to trust him, but that is very bad advice. Never trust anyone, least of all a scientist. Science is not about trust, it is about a logical and physical explanation.

Of course, this once again destroys the Copenhagen Interpretation and 90 years of physics. Quantum physicists have been assuring us that this couldn't be done. They have assured us that no logical answer could be given, and that no diagrams could be drawn. MM has given them and drawn them, as you can see with your own eyes.

Some will complain that MM's explanation requires spin, whereas the current theory gives the photon a wave, not a spin. MM's answer is that it does not matter one way or the other. MM believes the photon is spinning, and have shown theoretical and physical proof of in the paper "Unifying the Photon with other Quanta, How they Travel and why they go c", but that is not important here. The spin in this explanation simply allows me to show the wave more easily. The standard explanation of superposition comes from Feynman, and it is likely these youtube people are reading something by Feynman off the internet as they make their film. Well, Feynman also invented a thing called the shrink-and-turn method, "Shrink and Turn" on MM's site To illustrate the wave, Feynman uses little clocks, much like MM has here. That is, he draws a circle with numbers on it and lets that stand for the wave as the photon travels. He doesn't call it a wave, true, but it works just like my wave here. His method works precisely because it mirrors my mechanics here. Well, take the little circles above as waves if you like, rather than spins. Spins create waves in a direct manner, so they are great for illustrating waves even if you don't like spins. If you do not want to assign the waves to spins, that is fine. Assign them to wobbles or leaps or hiccups or to nothing. It is not important. The point is the solution to the problem has been shown with diagrams, mechanically, without interference, without ghost particles, without multiple paths, without spooky forces, and without mystification or magic.

And finally, as a bonus, MM gave you the fact that the current explanation of superposition, using light interfering with itself, contradicts the current explanation of the Sagnac Effect. Wikipedia admits that the Sagnac interference math is the same both before and after Relativity. Classical physics made the same predictions as post-classical physics, regarding this effect. And, since the Sagnac Effect already had a satisfactory explanation and math before quantum physics, it didn't require the sort of explanations that have been devised for superposition. This despite the fact that the two experiments have much in common, as you see, using mirrors and beam splitters (a half-silvered mirror is a sort of splitter) and square circuits. The reason this contradicts the Sagnac Effect is that, to be consistent, we have to take the quantum explanation into that experiment as well. We can't have light interfering with itself in some cases and not interfering with itself in other similar cases, just to suit sloppy theorists. If light takes all possible paths, why doesn't it do so in the Sagnac experiment? If we let light take both paths in the Sagnac experiment, we immediately ruin our math and our explanation. Instead of getting light where we need it, we get light where we don't need it. We have too much light on both paths, and the result is either a total cancellation or a big mess. This is the problem with so many of the current jerry-rigged theories: they are very problem specific, and the magicians just hope you don't try to universalize them, and apply them to similar problems. Because if you do, you find out that they are completely ad hoc, and therefore physically false.

Addendum, July 2011: MM was asked by a reader why he did not set up some experiments to prove his theory here, and his answer was that it is unnecessary. The experiments have all been done already, they just haven't been interpreted correctly. As a further example, we have what is called a quantum eraser, by which interference patterns can be "added back" into an experiment that has "lost" them. This is done by a further polarization or turning of the photons by 45^°. But of course anyone who has understood MM's argument here will realize that the quantum eraser is more obvious proof of his mechanics. Once we give the photons real spins, we can explain all these experiments without that much effort. To see what MM means, you may want to watch the Quantum Conspiracy video at youtube, where the speaker Ron Garret talks of polarizing individual photons, of up and down photons, and so on. Of course this begs a very big question he never answers or even addresses: How can photons that are point particles in the gauge math, with no extension and no mass, be differentiated? What is up about them, or down about them? How is the polarizer sorting them, especially when they are traveling one by one? In this way, we are reminded that polarization itself is a proof of my mechanics. A point particle cannot be polarized.

One will be told that it is the wave that is polarized, not the particle, but that is just dodging the begged question one more time. Neither the old quantum mechanics nor any of the updates ever bother to tell us how point particles with no radius can create waves, or move in a wave motion. MM's mechanics explains it, but my mechanics requires a photon with a radius, and with several stacked spins. Without them, mainstream physicists can only rush by this basic question. MM has already told you why they do this in about a hundred papers: they are hiding behind the math. If they bring the mechanics back to the front, and let you see all these existing questions in a full light, their famous math begins to melt. Ron Garret calls the squared amplitude in the wave equation a hack, but all the math is hacked from top to bottom

Again, the thing to take from this addendum is that polarization and superposition are both proof of real photon spin. To create quantum erasers and things like that, each individual photon must have a wavelength. To repeat, not just the wave front, or the wave packet, but each individual photon. This must mean that the polarizers are working upon individual photons, not on wave fronts or fields of photons. And for that to be possible, each photon must have a radius. A photon with no mass and no radius is undifferentiable. In other words, there is no way for a polarizer or other detector or filter to know one photon from another. You cannot tell one point from another. And this means that photons must have mass and radius. And this means that the math of QED, as we know it, comes tumbling down. Ron Garret thinks he deserves a Nobel Prize for noticing that entanglement is a measurement, but he fails to notice that QED needs more than a tweek. It needs a complete overhaul, from the baseboards up. We have to throw out all the math and all the theory and start over from the beginning.

To read more on this, you may go to Entanglement: "Spooky action at a distance" is not real, where MM analyzes and solves the problem, using a hint from Feynman and my quantum spin equations and there disproves the CHSH Bell tests, unveiling the terrible mathematical cheat at the heart of these experiments. This leaves entanglement in tatters.

To see how MM's solution destroys quantum nonlocality, you may go to on non-locality on MM's site, which even gives you the new wavefunction equations—including the new degrees of freedom MM discovered above.

The follwowing links are on MM's site:

It is clear that the end over end spin in the y-direction can be applied to other problems, including "Unifying the Photon with other Quanta, How they Travel and why they go c",
the two-slit experiment, and so on. These principles are used in the following papers:
The Unification of the Proton and Electron & Finding the Electron Radius & The Fallacy of the Electron Orbit
Mesons without Quarks showing that the same four stacked spins can explain all quantum make-up and motion.
Also A Reworking of Quantum Chromodynamics and dismissal of the Quark will also have a lot more to say about other specific problems within QED and its solution with straightforward logical analysis.