I'm taking a stab at explaining Quantum Mechanics, Time & LightSpeed in laymans terms, as a Layperson.... In one post!
As ambitious as it sounds It's deceptively simple. Although I need some creative license for the broader understanding. It all boils down to things being able to happen rather than not happen. Hang in there with me for one second...
At the root we must actually start with a premise of Quantum Mechanics rather than lead up to it!
Why must information come in preset quanta or packets of data rather than a smooth sliding scale? Because to have causality and therefore time Itself you need to (at some point) break with infinity because when it comes to EXISTING , infinity turns the universe into nothing if it's involved in any SEQUENCE in certain areas of nature. In fact the Zero/Infinity equivalence is the prevailing theme of the universe itself.
Let me use deliberately mischievous phrasing here to sound like I'm talking nonsense, just to see if I can talk my way out of it. I'm not being a dick about, its the coolest way to make the point!
The reason why there is something rather than nothing is because something is not nothing at its core therefore it's not infinite either at its cause even though its infinite in its effect, ie its nothing in its effect.
Stay with me... ⚛️
How can this not be a paradox, without even getting into the fact that the overall energy if the universe IS ACTUALLY ZERO? (I'll cover that later) It's Because it takes forever to cover infinite values no matter how fast you cover them. For Causality (What we perceive as the arrow of time) to exist the universe must be incremented in some basic minimum possible unit or nothing would ever happen and nothing could exist. Basically there is, at the core of nature some basic resolution which would seem super hi res compared to any digital pixilation we understand. Perhaps subatomically we may one day see quantum probabilistic 0's and 1's make up quarks fragments...
At the root we must actually start with a premise of Quantum Mechanics rather than lead up to it!
Why must information come in preset quanta or packets of data rather than a smooth sliding scale? Because to have causality and therefore time Itself you need to (at some point) break with infinity because when it comes to EXISTING , infinity turns the universe into nothing if it's involved in any SEQUENCE in certain areas of nature. In fact the Zero/Infinity equivalence is the prevailing theme of the universe itself.
Let me use deliberately mischievous phrasing here to sound like I'm talking nonsense, just to see if I can talk my way out of it. I'm not being a dick about, its the coolest way to make the point!
The reason why there is something rather than nothing is because something is not nothing at its core therefore it's not infinite either at its cause even though its infinite in its effect, ie its nothing in its effect.
Stay with me... ⚛️
How can this not be a paradox, without even getting into the fact that the overall energy if the universe IS ACTUALLY ZERO? (I'll cover that later) It's Because it takes forever to cover infinite values no matter how fast you cover them. For Causality (What we perceive as the arrow of time) to exist the universe must be incremented in some basic minimum possible unit or nothing would ever happen and nothing could exist. Basically there is, at the core of nature some basic resolution which would seem super hi res compared to any digital pixilation we understand. Perhaps subatomically we may one day see quantum probabilistic 0's and 1's make up quarks fragments...
Let me clarify, once more with creative license, by trying to make one event happen, using an example.
Let's use the example of simply lowering the pitch of a note on your guitar for sound, but it could apply elsewhere such as the frequency of light (ie lowering the frequency of violet to red)
Let's use the example of simply lowering the pitch of a note on your guitar for sound, but it could apply elsewhere such as the frequency of light (ie lowering the frequency of violet to red)
Now how would you detune a guitar string from G sharp to B flat if you had to cover every single possible frequency between the acoustically pleasing notes we name as well as form in an octave, on a fret or keyboard IF you had to cover the infinite number of theoretical frequencies between them? You can't, it's impossible, it would take forever because there are infinite possible frequency single points between each frequency (See my infinity post by clicking this text)
Therefore on this chosen imagined example to illustrate the principle, our exercise of lowering the frequency of a wave is only possible if the values ultimately come in a certain minimum quanta (it's really a tiny value, Google PLANCK to find out how unimaginably tiny (or see the below videos) which is why we never encounter it outside of the sub-atomic scale, but for causality to exist then at some point it must be encountered or nothing would ever happen)
Ie at some point you can't get any more in-between shades of colour and there would be no further in-between notes.
Furthermore, not just the wavelength, frequency but also the amplitude. Here is a pretend Quantum wave as imagined at the Planck Scale at the with only X values (or lets simplify it to number of possible steps) in quanta on each curve rather than infinite values on a smooth sine curve.
 |
| Imagine a wave with limited, finite values instead of an infinite curve. |
That way you can graduate between notes, colors etc with moving only up and down finite predefined set values (an imagined equivalency to quanta or packets of information to illustrate the point)
Therefore the implications are vast yest fundamentally profound. A MINIMUM Value, meaning a smallest and (it follows logically) fastest can be defined based on it, since everything is relative it makes no difference what the ACTUAL figure is. I must add that the smallest, fastest etc can only be defined based on this minimum unit relatively speaking. The eventual size of Planck's number is a finite size which means things can happen at a finite rate rather than at an infinite rate, and something can happen rather than nothing ever happening .
In principle, Time (causality rather) passes because massless particles travel the fastest (photons or light) also at an irrelevant speed but because they lack mass its the fastest speed, which means the speed of light (electromagnetic waves that is) determines the upper limit, having no mass, and therefore basis of causality, because of Planck's number being finite) and all things that happen must happen from there, and why nothing with mass can ever travel faster than light (because of causality and Planck, not because of the light speed we assigned a number too) without an INFINITE amount of energy required for acceleration.
Further interesting material:
In principle, Time (causality rather) passes because massless particles travel the fastest (photons or light) also at an irrelevant speed but because they lack mass its the fastest speed, which means the speed of light (electromagnetic waves that is) determines the upper limit, having no mass, and therefore basis of causality, because of Planck's number being finite) and all things that happen must happen from there, and why nothing with mass can ever travel faster than light (because of causality and Planck, not because of the light speed we assigned a number too) without an INFINITE amount of energy required for acceleration.
Further interesting material: