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I've been playing around with the concept of entropy and how it can be manipulated when I came onto the complex workings of quantum waves. To my understanding, everything we know as a particle is a wave on a quantum field. Those waves are the result of energy being introduced to, and then propagated through, the field---ei. The waves carry energy. Further, the wave's entire existence is defined by the energy it carries, no energy, no wave. This caused me to ask the question, is there anything in our reality that is fundamentally real? Is there anything that exists that is not just the extrapolation of the process of moving energy from a to b?

To be clear, I think that, to a certain extent, the fabric of space-time counts, but it's not what I'm really looking for. Space-time is what our reality is built upon, but it does not constitute it. It is the physical stuff that is built upon and held within space-time that makes reality, and it is from that that I ask if there is anything that is fundamentally real.

JM Lightning
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  • Space time is also a field for relativists, and as any other field it transits and contain energy. Spacetime is not a stage on which things play as actors, spacetime is both a stage AND an actor himself, not just one – LolloBoldo Jul 04 '23 at 23:46
  • @LolloBoldo, that's fair, and I imagine that it is the field from which gravity is derived, but it seems to act much more as a foundation to the physical than the physical in its own sense. – JM Lightning Jul 04 '23 at 23:52
  • Yes, gravity is what a relativist call the act of curving the spacetime fabric. This is very physical, since in general relativity such a field contains a constant vacuum energy density, the cosmological constant. It also evolves with time, i think is really hard not to consider spacetime as a physical entity – LolloBoldo Jul 04 '23 at 23:58
  • @LolloBoldo, that does make sense. As I look further into this question, I think that my issue is twofold. One, I still don't quite understand how different fundamental fields can interact with each other (I probably just need to search more). Two, I'm not quite able to grasp how we transition from a wave on and quantum field to something that can collide with other objects. Is it a transition defined by the existence of the other fields? Is it that once there is enough energy in the wave, it can excite other fields, allowing greater properties to be assigned to it? – JM Lightning Jul 05 '23 at 00:11
  • The topic of interacting quantum fields is rather insidious, it takes a lot of attention to make statements on what really happens. Different fields interact betwe each other simply because we see such interactions happening. For the second part: waves collide just as ocean waves do, and they share energy and other physical properties doing so, such as momentum, angular momentum, etc – LolloBoldo Jul 05 '23 at 00:23
  • See my answer to How is energy "stored in an electric field"? – mmesser314 Jul 05 '23 at 01:07
  • the field---ei What does that mean? – Ghoster Jul 05 '23 at 03:37
  • "Further, the wave's entire existence is defined by the energy it carries, no energy, no wave." Surely you don't think energy alone is sufficient? Note that there are other quantities that are just as important, like momentum, spin, charge, lepton number, etc. Also, while it is one view that "[s]pace-time is what our reality is built upon, but it does not constitute it," it's not the only view. In particular, loop quantum gravity seeks to build a background independent theory of spacetime, in which there is no background spacetime that exists independently of our reality. – Sandejo Jul 05 '23 at 04:33
  • See "The Fabric of Reality" by David Deutsch, chapters 1 and 4. – alanf Jul 05 '23 at 07:16

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It really depends on your definition for "real". If what you understand as "real" is something tangible which is not the product of "moving energy from a to b", as you say, then it will be hard to find such thing, as according to Quantum Field Theory, a particle is precisely an excitation in its corresponding field. Nonetheless, if you define "real" as "an absolute Truth which cannot be violated and which is necessary for existence to be as we experience it", then concepts like the speed of causality (the speed of light in the vacuum) are real.

AlanFox86
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