Whenever we consider particle interactions, we often find asymmetry with regard to the number of independent trajectories that enter the interaction and those that leave it. Perhaps, like the neutrino, there is a boson that we will call “infoton”. An infoton need not have appreciable mass, energy or momentum, but it might have spin. We imagine the infoton as a carrier of information. For fermions, the neutrino might do, but it’s possible that something else might be necessary. Again, we are looking for a particle that need not have appreciable mass, energy or momentum but might have spin. Finally, given that trajectory information is conserved and given that there is a one to one correspondence between particles and trajectory information, there is the possibility that the number of particles is conserved. This does not mean that the trajectories themselves are conserved. Whenever there is an interaction, what DP requires is that, in theory, 2 informational equations must be satisfied. First, the amount of before information must equal the amount of after information, and second, there must be a way to compute the outgoing trajectories from the incoming trajectories, and visa versa. An amount of information requires a number of bits for its representation. (All this assumes that the DP equivalent of heat; the vacuum information bath, doesn’t absorb or emit trajectories except as particles.) One possibility is that independent trajectories require particles, one per trajectory. This simple minded informational argument may need adjustment when partial trajectory information has the possibility of being encoded in other forms such as into a magnetic dipole field. Another possibility is the case where a particle with n bits of trajectory information decays into 3 particles, each carrying about n/3 bits of trajectory information. This is possible but carries certain difficulties.
In case we need a new particle, we have named it “infoton”. It would be just like an ordinary photon except that might not carry an appreciable amount of energy. On the other hand, it would carry trajectory information, charge information and spin or spin information. The trajectory information controls the motion of the infoton exactly the same way that the momentum of an energetic photon guides its motion. A particle absorbing or emitting an infoton does not gain or lose energy on that account. However, when a charged particle absorbs an infoton, it must simultaneously emit a real photon. When the charge information of the infoton is the conjugate of the charge information of the absorbing particle, the momentum of an emitted energetic photon must be in the same momentum state as the absorbed informational photon. This models the informational machinery of simple situations with opposite charges attracting each other. When the charge information of the infoton is the same as the charge information of the absorbing particle, the emitted energetic photon must have the conjugate momentum (opposite direction) of the informational photon. This models the machinery of like charges repelling each other.
There are situations where the creation and annihilation of infotons might make informational sense. This involves situations where there is QM interference. It is possible for a photon to generate new infotons where that process is informationally balanced. These would be infotons in the same informational state as the original photon. Such ghost photons might be part of a process that models QM interference. It would be logical for this to happen under the circumstances where the wave structure associated with the photon is in some way divided by something that offers more than one alternative for the path of the photon.
In describing what an infoton doesn’t have, we did not mention spin. The reason is that it makes may make sense for an infoton to have spin as opposed to spin information. We know that electrons can be deflected without affecting their spin. If the deflection is a consequence of the absorption and emission of photons, then each step in that process must involve 2 photons, one absorbed and one emitted.
If we look at the muon decay process, we see that something needs to determine the point in time when the Muon decays. It can’t be a simple process within the Muon, since the expected lifetime of a muon is known to be independent of its age. A better informational model would involve something in space that has a constant probability, in each unit of time, of precipitating the decay of a Muon at rest by interacting with some internal process of the muon. This could the informational effect of adding trajectory information to the muon before the decay; possibly allowing for informational balance during the decy. We know that every particle decays upon meeting its antiparticle; this makes it seem likely that the particle that precipitates the decay of a muon has something in common with an anti muon. Obviously, any successful DM model must deal with relativistic effects properly. There are several general concepts that enable this but they are not discussed in this paper.
Digital Philosophy would suggest that a space-time interaction diagram, superficially similar to a Feynman Diagram might be useful. Each line entering or leaving the diagram would represent a particle and both its trajectory information and internal state information. The amount of information (the total number of bits) on the lines entering the diagram ought to be equal to the amount of information on the lines leaving the diagram. Further, there must be an algorithm that can transform the information on the lines entering the diagram into the information on the lines leaving the diagram, and visa versa. Like a Feynman diagram, these DP diagrams wouldn’t be a picture of what is happening, rather they would be a mnemonic device to aid in understanding the informational process necessarily involved in a DM interaction.
Again, the point is not that we are trying to invent new physics, rather it is to show the consequences of taking reversibility seriously (and consequently taking conservation of information seriously).
You might ask, “Given an event where a photon is absorbed by an electron, what are all the bits of information that the photon communicated?” The answer is “4 digital messages”. Two of the messages are each just a single bit of information while the 3rd and 4th messages are normally more than 100 bits of information. An example might be:
The first message that is being communicated is the charge state of the proton (or other charged particle) that emitted the photon, represented by one bit.
The second message has to do with the spin; effectively one bit.
The third message is very different, it defines the momentum information or perhaps the velocity information that traveled by photon from the proton to be delivered to the electron. It appears that this message is not a fixed amount of information but it is clear that a photon has the capacity to carry a lot of momentum information.
The 4th message is the energy information. In the case of a massive particle this is obvious. Momentum information would suffice for both the 3rd and 4th message in the case of a photon, but there are good reasons to believe that, somehow, a photon carries velocity information (a directional vector) and energy information separately. When a photon is diffracted, refracted or reflected, its directional information may change while its energy information may not change in the reference frame of the medium that causes the change in direction.
Obviously, the receiving electron can carry away the vector sum of its prior momentum plus the photon’s momentum, but can it carry away both its prior momentum information and the photon’s momentum information? Not very likely!
Thus, the infoton – photon pair (one absorbed and the other emitted) allow for the balancing of the 2 informational equations; which cannot be done with one electron interacting with one photon.
The concept we are trying to explain is: things don’t just “happen.” Reversibility needs to be taken seriously at the particle level and not just at the level of the wave function.
Assume that the above informational model has some serious deficiencies. Perhaps it gives the wrong answers if both particles are traveling at relativistic speeds. What then? The answer is that both the definition of the infoton terms of what information it carries, and the definition of the computational process that happens when an informational photon is involved in an interaction with a particle, are all up for grabs (may or may not make sense). The emitted energetic photon doesn’t have to use the same momentum information (or its conjugate) as the informational photon communicated. There doesn’t even to be such a thing as an infoton.
What Digital Philosophy demands is that there absolutely must be some informational process that models particle interactions exactly and under all circumstances! We are not trying to convince the reader that we know what the correct informational processes are; we are trying to explain why one needs to look for models consistent with the laws of Digital Philosophy.
As an alternative to the half-life decay of a particle being caused by interactions with new particles, DP also suggests another, inconsistent model, going back to the DM model where we imagined that empty space is actually filled with apparently random activity. This second plausible half-life mechanism for an unstable particle would be as follows: the particle is immersed in the seemingly random sea of bits where some subset of the various combined states of the particle and of the orthogonal vacuum states initiate the particle decay. This would result in a relatively constant probability of decay in each equal interval of time, giving a half-life law. Further, sub-categories of the random sea can determine the mode of decay. Stable particles like electrons are interesting, in that they are impervious to decay from any ordinary background state, but they decay quickly on encountering their anti-particle. On the other hand, an isolated neutron decays in 15 minutes, but a neutron in a He4 nucleus is stable. In DM, every particle can decay, although so called “stable” particles, such as an electron, only “decay” in the presence of their anti-particle. We have already indicated some of the problems with these kinds of models.
