The photon heterodyne model is a proposed alternative to the standard model of physics.
The standard model has two basic elements; particles and fields. Photons are also included, but they are not considered relevant to how particles move. It is the various kinds of fields that make particles move around.
The photon heterodyne model has two basic elements, photons and resonators. Particles are replaced by groups of resonating photons and movement is controlled by the exchange of photons.
Resonators constrain photons to a finite area, much like a resonant chamber can constrain audio waves to a finite area. Photons are quite different from audio waves, but they do have a frequency and wavelength as audio waves do. Details about resonators are unclear at this point, but postulating their existence seems to allow a more consistent view of physical phenomena than the standard model.
| Standard model | Heterodyne model |
| Expanding universe | Constant size universe |
| Red shift due to expansion | Red shift due to photon entropy |
| Conservation of energy | Conservation of photons |
The heterodyne model basically provides another way to explain red shift. Instead of an expanding universe, we can choose a shrinking photon. In this view photons would lose energy at a Planck's constant rate. That would make the change in photon energy over time pretty much undetectable directly with contemporary techniques, though we might be able to see the results of the shift both in the very small and very large frames of reference. At a local level, the difference between conservation of energy and conservation of photons would be difficult to measure, but on very large scales, the difference should be quite noticeable.
Perhaps a laser would help illustrate what I am thinking. The common assumption is that the photons that comprise the laser beam are identical, and indeed we have experimental evidence that they are very similar. But if photons are all loosing energy at a Planck's constant rate, then it would seem unlikely that that they are all identical. If there are differences in the wavelength of the photons in the laser beam they would show up as a loss of coherence as the beam got farther from the laser. Marching soldiers must all take the same length of step. If they don't, they will get out of step. If we could measure the coherence of the laser beam at different distances from the laser, we might be able to get a spectrum of the laser beam. In essence, the laser is a notch filter, and if it is like all the other notch filters we know about, the notch may be extremely narrow, but it does not have zero width.
If we are to adopt a model with no fields, then we need some way to account for the movement of particles that we usually attribute to fields. In the heterodyne view, particles are made up of photons traveling in tiny areas at the speed of light. Though they are captured by the resonator, they do not stop traveling at the speed of light, they just do it in a very confined space.
Movement would then be due to heterodyning of the wavelength of the photon with the physical dimensions of the resonator. If the photon does not exactly match the size of the resonator, that produces a difference and a product signal which is manifested as physical movement. A resonator can capture and hold a range of frequencies. The exact angle of the capture could determine the direction of movement.
In the heterodyne view, the velocity of a resonant particle is determined by the photons it holds. If the photons can only change energy at a Planck constant rate, then the velocity of particles would be nearly constant for very long periods of time. But if two resonant particles exchange photons, that would cause both of their velocities to change. That correlates with our experience in the physical world, where the interaction between objects often causes the velocities of all particles involved to change. With no outside interference things will continue moving in a constant geodesic.
There would appear to be three such resonators discovered so far. From smallest wavelength to largest, that would be the neutron, electron, and neutrino resonators. Certainly there could be more, both smaller and larger.
Resonators seem to be be able to aggregate into larger systems through the interaction of photons. A hydrogen atom would then usually be composed of an electron resonator and a proton resonator. The combination of the two elementary resonators could then capture and hold longer wavelength photons than either could handle alone.
The heterodyne model would explain the two to three ratio of various properties of quarks by postulating that photons with frequency ratios that were approximately small whole numbers could share a resonant structure, much as they do in audio resonance.
Very complex molecules, composed of lots of resonators tend to decay. The prime example of this is uranium with hundreds of resonators. If the photons captured by all these resonators are losing energy, then at some point one of them will outgrow its resonator. As the photon energy diminishes, its wavelength grows. When the photon gets too large, it escapes from its resonator, and starts traveling linearly at the speed of light. That upsets all the balances of the atom, and it can do various things depending on which resonator is disrupted and when. Simpler atoms could last for a longer time, but if this view if correct, then there is no such thing as a stable atom.
The photons escaping from resonators might be what we now refer to as background radiation. The decay of a neutrino would be the lowest energy event The decay of a hydrogen atom would be a much simpler and less energy intensive process than the decay of a uranium atom.
There could be reflectors in the universe that we cannot detect yet because we don't have an alternate viewpoint from which to check our location with reference to distant objects. If you see an object in a mirror, and could check the light you are seeing for redshift, you could get a good approximation of how far the photons have traveled. But you could not pinpoint their exact location unless you knew the exact location of the mirror. There may be other mechanism that could deflect photons from the straight and narrow path that is currently assumed.
Some of the long wavelength photons could be resonating with large structures and that might produce results that would not agree with the inverse-square law.
Physicists have learned a lot about the subatomic realm by cooling atoms to absolute zero. The heterodyne explanation for the phenomenon of tunneling might go like this: When a group of resonant particles is cooled, there eventually comes a point when there are not enough photons to fill all the slots in some resonators. That makes some resonator unstable, and that causes them to give up all their photons. The photons thus freed take off at the speed of light in a more or less linear path, but then they meet up with other photons and resonators and recombine. It seems to an observer that the particle has disappeared from one location and appeared in another.
And then there is the Bose-Einstein condensate. As atoms get really cold there is less variety in ambient photon energies. The atoms become more uniform in size. That allows them to be organized in a coherent beam. The interaction of two or more of these atomic beams, and also the interaction of Bose-Einstein beams with lasers of various frequencies, might produce interesting results.
Now lets tackle entanglement. All of the heterodyne model is currently speculation, of course, but we have to go farther into that realm to explain entanglement.
We might assume that the engine of entanglement is photon-like,but travels at a much greater speed. We could call them tachyons. A photon would perform somewhat the same function for the tachyon as a resonator performs for the photon. The photon would constrain the tachyons path, but because the speed is so much greater, the paths could be a lot larger.
We could use this model to explain the entanglement of photons, but we could also use it to speculate about the nature of black holes and Hawking radiation, and even gravity. Perhaps when a photon crosses the event horizon of a black hole, it dissolves in the tachyon plasma that is in the interior of the black hole. There could be a cloud of tachyons that extend beyond the event horizon of the black hole. Some of these tachyons might recombine to form the photons that comprise Hawking radiation. This might mean that if we knew the exact state of the black hole and the photons that were crossing the event horizon and being dissolved, we might be able to describe the various characteristics of the Hawking radiation. That might be a possible solution to the puzzle of information loss in black holes.
It's possible that the same mechanism accounts for entanglement could also be the carrier for gravity. It's know that gravity can curve the path of light. Perhaps it is also influencing the path of all those photons resonating in what we now think of as particles.
The characteristics of the microwave background radiation are often cited as supporting evidence for the big bang theory, but they might also be explained by the heterodyne model. If the background radiation is the result of the decay of neutrinos and if low velocity neutrinos are major components of dark matter, that would account for the spectrum of the background radiation, and the peak frequency of that radiation would correlate with the rest mass of the neutrino. Neutrinos don't appear to interact with each other in the same way as more energetic particles, so their distribution might be more like that of a gas than a solid.
If neutrinos have mass and there are really a lot of them, there would be a high density of neutrinos in a gravity well. On the other hand, there would not be as many in intergalactic space. The directional distribution of the background radiation might be different if viewed from the space between galaxies.
Added January 2018
It is fairly easy to see how the effects of electricity we see in nature could be caused by resonating photons. I guess we could assume the photons would need to be fairly close to each other for interactions to occur that would look like the effects of an electric field. In effect the electrical force would be transmitted by photon resonator interactions, so the electron resonator would be part of the process, but how do we account for magnetism? Could it be that neutrinos are magnetic? Could neutrino resonators be necessary for the transmission of magnetic force just as electrons and protons appear to be necessary for the transmission of electric force. Could it be that we are actually moving neutrinos around with magnetism?
If gravity is another aspect of entanglement, How would that work. Does the Earth orbit the Sun because earth photons have become entangled with sun photons? Can multiple photons become entangled, or can they only be entangled in pairs? Is there a way to measure the entanglement of photons? Are the photons we receive from distant stars entangled with each other? Assuming photons can only be entangled in pairs and a photon would be drawn toward its entangled partner, would that be consistent with the Newtonian law of gravity?
Could the number of bits a quantum computer can resolve be dependent on the speed of entanglement? Perhaps a quantum computer is much like a regular computer with an exponentially greater clock rate based on the speed of entanglement.
Added June 2020
I deleted the Higgs from my list of resonators. I found out that that so-called Higgs particle has a half-life of around 10 to the -26 seconds. If there were a Higgs resonator, the Higgs particle would be about as stable as the electron and the proton. It is possible that there is a resonator that captures photons of energy levels that out technology has not been able to reach. That resonator might have some sort of resonance effect that helped create the observations that led to the Higgs particle assumption. If this were true, we might expect the wavelength of such a resonator to be the wavelength of the Higgs sighting divided by some small whole number.
I have been thinking about photon to photon gravity. Maybe we could assume that we only need to think in terms of monogamous photon entanglement because n-way entanglement is rare in nature. Or maybe we could just examine that case for the sake of simplicity of analysis, and worry about polygamous entanglement later.
Assuming monogamous, we can still have polygamous particle entanglement because different photons that are part of the same resonant particle could all be entangled free photons or photons resonating in a different particles.
If we assume that entanglement of two photons caused the photons to very slightly curve toward each other, would the math of that arrangement fit with what we know about Newton’s and Einstein's gravity calculations. If Newton/Einstein calculations aren’t consonant with the entanglement gravity theory, then the theory is wrong.
If the theory is not wrong, then we might be able to see a research path to manipulation of gravity by manipulating entanglement. Maybe we could make a spaceship drive the acted simultaneously of every molecule of the spaceship and it’s contents. We might be able to create the “tractor beams” dreamed up by the science fiction community.
If the theory is not wrong, then it might be used to explain some of the current problems encountered in applying Newtonian gravity calculations over very long distances. If gravity is a function of entanglement, then it might be that once the “entanglement” quota of a system has been filled, it ignores objects that are further away because there are no photons left to serve as entangled partners. Just a thought.
I would welcome any communications about these ideas negative or positive. Thanks in advance.