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Beyond the Quantum

Transcending Relativity

Antony Valentini

Published Sep 16, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract ‘Transcending Relativity’ explains how the possibility of instantaneous signalling requires us to revise our ideas about the relativity of time. We begin with a sketch of relativity theory in its historical context, and we explain why instantaneous signals are usually regarded as paradoxical (potentially leading to signals travelling ‘backwards in time’). We trace the paradox to certain assumptions about how distant clocks are to be synchronised using light signals. If instead clocks are synchronised using instantaneous signals, there is no paradox. We then have a preferred time and a preferred state of rest, as in Lorentz’s original (pre-Einsteinian) view of relativity physics. The chapter ends with a discussion of how this picture makes sense according to the internal logic of pilot-wave theory.

DOI
10.1093/oso/9780198853749.003.0005

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Abstract ‘Transcending Relativity’ explains how the possibility of instantaneous signalling requires us to revise our ideas about the relativity of time. We begin with a sketch of relativity theory in its historical context, and we explain why instantaneous signals are usually regarded as paradoxical (potentially leading to signals travelling ‘backwards in time’). We trace the paradox to certain assumptions about how distant clocks are to be synchronised using light signals. If instead clocks are synchronised using instantaneous signals, there is no paradox. We then have a preferred time and a preferred state of rest, as in Lorentz’s original (pre-Einsteinian) view of relativity physics. The chapter ends with a discussion of how this picture makes sense according to the internal logic of pilot-wave theory.
Quantum paradoxes The next few chapters are devoted to resolving a number of quantum paradoxes in the sense of giving a reasonable explanation of a seemingly paradoxical result in terms of the principles of quantum theory discussed earlier in this book. None of these paradoxes indicates a defect in quantum theory. Instead, when they have been properly understood, they show us that the quantum world is rather different from the world of our everyday experience and of classical physics, in a way somewhat analogous to that in which relativity theory has shown us that the laws appropriate for describing the behavior of objects moving at high speed differ in significant ways from those of pre-relativistic physics. An inadequate theory of quantum measurements is at the root of several quantum paradoxes. In particular, the notion that wave function collapse is a physical effect produced by a measurement, rather than a method of calculation, see Sec. 18.2, has given rise to a certain amount of confusion. Smuggling rules for classical reasoning into the quantum domain where they do not belong and where they give rise to logical inconsistencies is another common source of confusion. In particular, many paradoxes involve mixing the results from incompatible quantum frameworks. Certain quantum paradoxes have given rise to the idea that the quantum world is permeated by mysterious influences that propagate faster than the speed of light, in conflict with the theory of relativity. They are mysterious in that they cannot be used to transmit signals, which means that they are, at least in any direct sense, experimentally unobservable.
In 1905, Einstein’s fundamental article [1] was published, the fundamental laws of the theory of relativity were discovered, including the clock paradox. These discoveries led to revolutionary changes in physics, including astrophysics. We show the close relationship of this discipline with the so-called quantum nonlocality. It manifests itself in the highlighted role of the light cone, in the concepts of precedence and correlation between distant events, in the ideas of long-range and short-range interactions, in the paradoxes of quantum interactions at a distance, in apparent violations of causality during the birth of black holes, in the instantaneous occurrence of inertial forces arising in accordance with Mach’s principle.
The Lorentz transformation (LT) is explained by changes occurring in the wave characteristics of matter as it changes inertial frame. This explanation is akin to that favoured by Lorentz, but informed by later insights, due primarily to de Broglie, regarding the underlying unity of matter and radiation. To show the nature of these changes, a massive particle is modelled as a standing wave in three dimensions. As the particle moves, the standing wave becomes a travelling wave having two factors. One is a carrier wave displaying the dilated frequency and contracted ellipsoidal form described by the LT, while the other (identified as the de Broglie wave) is a modulation defining the dephasing of the carrier wave (and thus the failure of simultaneity) in the direction of travel. The superluminality of the de Broglie wave is thus explained, as are several other mysterious features of the optical behaviour of matter, including the physical meaning of the Schrödinger equation and the relevance to scattering processes of the de Broglie wave vector. Consideration is given to what this Lorentzian approach to relativity might mean for the possible existence of a preferred frame and the origin of the observed Minkowski metric.
The Lorentz transformation (the LT) is explained by changes occurring in the wave characteristics of matter as it changes inertial frame. This explanation is akin to that favoured by Lorentz, but informed by later insights, due primarily to de Broglie, regarding the underlying unity of matter and radiation. To show the nature of these changes, a massive particle is modelled as a standing wave in three dimensions. As the particle moves, the standing wave becomes a travelling wave having two factors. One is a carrier wave displaying the dilated frequency and contracted ellipsoidal form described by the LT, while the other (identified as the de Broglie wave) is a modulation defining the dephasing of the carrier wave (and thus the failure of simultaneity) in the direction of travel. The superluminality of the de Broglie wave is thus explained, as are several other mysterious features of the optical behaviour of matter, including the physical meaning of the Schrödinger Eqn. and the relevance to scattering processes of the de Broglie wave number. Consideration is given to what this Lorentzian approach to relativity might mean for the possible existence of a preferred frame and the origin of the observed Minkowski metric.
In the previous chapters, we have made an imaginary travel in a ship which we might call “time” for analyzing how this concept is present in the physical theories which describe our world and the diverse interactions which make possible its existence as we perceive it under our notion of reality. We have traveled from the submicroscopic scale—requiring a quantum description— up to the cosmological dimensions where gravity acquires a crucial role distorting the space-time of the special relativity theory. In this chapter, we discuss some of the most recent publications related to physical theories about time, starting with the cellular automation interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM) formulated by Gerard’t Hooft, where information loss is considered as the cause of the time-reversal asymmetry. Then we continue with the thermal time hypothesis of Carlo Rovelli, who asserts that it is possible to formulate classical mechanics in a way in which the time variable is treated on equal footing as other physical variables, and not considered as a special and independent variable. Afterward, we analyze theories which propose quantization of time, and then continue with the discussion of proposed time operators for non-relativistic and relativistic QM. At the end of that section, we discuss theories related with time in quantum gravity and then we briefly explore in the physics of time travel.