The Cost of Happiness and the Human Development Index (HDI)

People all have the selfish pleasure of discovering people and things in the world necessary for a desirable future. Among the many things for a desirable future are education, income, and healthcare, but living longer is not really the only desirable future. Living well necessarily includes the selfish pleasure of discovery as well as compassion for others and the skills and competence necessary to live a desirable life.

The human development index (HDI) was created by the UN to rank the desirability of countries and social systems. Basically the HDI factors in per capita GDP, per capita education, and life expectancy along with a bunch of other factors to get an HDI. The means to live a desirable life is provided by a per capita GDP and a compliant political system, the selfish pleasure of discovery, the compassion of others, a valuable skill set and political system that per capita education provides, and of course, a life expectancy that means living long enough to then have that desirable life.

As a result, the HDI represents a kind of happiness for each country. While the U.S. has an index of 91.5 and ranks about 8th, Norway leads all with 94.4 even as Sweden lags with 90.7. The HDI shows the overwhelming success of capital free markets in buying HDI points and the indisputable failure of social big government to even acquire a reasonable HDI.

However, HDI happiness is not cheap and the graph below shows the how much 100 HDI points cost in terms of tax as %GDP. The U.S. pays about one third as much as Norway for the same happiness, 11.5 versus 28.9 taxes%GDP per 100 HDI's. The U.S. pays a much lower %GDP for its HDI than many less efficient countries that overpay for their happiness. The U.S. along with Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and Japan pay for happiness with much more efficient economies than Norway, France, or UK.

Happiness and its cost.

Thus the U.S. could choose to buy another 3 HDI points to equal Norway for just one third of the cost that Norway buys its HDI. That is, instead of adopting the very inefficient big government approach of Norway, the U.S. could choose to simply invest more of its own capital free market enterprise and accomplish the same HDI value far more effectively than Norway and certainly also Sweden, France, and the UK.

China and Russia, for example, are at HDI's of 72.7 and 79.8, respectively, and while China pays 14.6% GDP as taxes per 100 HDI points, Russia pays 18.9% GDP as taxes per 100 HDI of happiness. The higher costs of happiness are very apparent as the inefficiencies of socialist tyranny versus the individual freedom of capitalist free market economies.

A desirable life is much more than just living longer and necessarily includes the pleasure of discovery as well as a compassion for others. It is clear that knowledge about the world and the competence to contribute to civilization both allow each of us to truly discover a desirable future.

Google's AlphaGo Wins with Value and Policy

AlphaGo is a deep-learning bilateral neural network, which is a computer program that has two main personalities; Value and Policy. AlphaGo Value and Policy in effect talk with each other but have fundamentally different feelings about how to win the game of Go.

theverge AlphaGo

Value loves to win more than he hates to lose, but Policy hates to lose more than she loves to win. In other words, AlphaGo Value and Policy represent the basic nature of feeling and choice that people recognize as consciousness. The basic definition of consciousness is a recursion of action and sensation; a conscious person acts just like they see (or sense) other conscious people act.

AlphaGo Value corresponds to the human emotion of pleasure while Policy corresponds to the human emotion of anxiety. People make choices based on a singular feeling that involves the processing of many pairs of complementary emotions and not just pleasure and anxiety. Compassion and selfishness, for example, is how people bond or conflict with others, joy and misery, anger and serenity, and pride and shame complete a basic set of complementary emotions that approximate human feeling.

AlphaGo Value gets great pleasure in winning as many stones as possible and Value is willing to take risk while AlphaGo Policy is anxious about losing only one stone...the one stone that wins the game, and plays very cautiously and avoids risk. While Value takes risk and goes for as many stones as possible to win, Policy avoids risk and settles for the one stone that wins the game.

We journey in our lives desiring the same bilateral futures as AlphaGo; a part of us wants the pleasure of winning big and taking risks and a complementary part of us is forever anxious about simply getting by and surviving by avoiding risk. People have more complex emotions than just pleasure and anxiety and so we have more complex and cooperative relationships with other people and the environment.

What AlphaGo's two personalities represent is a fundamental part of the recursion of consciousness and therefore what it is that we mean when we say that someone is conscious. Lee Sedol is the Go world champion who played against Value and Policy, who had been playing each other for four months prior and had therefore both won and lost literally millions of games with each other prior to the match with Sedol.

Sedol has played many hundreds of thousands of games during his life but is simply not able to play the many millions of games that taught Value and Policy how to beat him. While Sedol will improve his skill by playing Value and Policy together, he might do much better playing Value and Policy separately.

Also, to be fair, AlphaGo should also have additional human personalities like anger and shame, for example. That way Sedol could gain advantage in ways that better represent the complexity of human consciousness. The question is...how do you make an AlphaGo angry at a opponent's board position or ashamed of a its own board position. And of course, AlphaGo must show some compassion in not crushing its opponent and allowing some victories while still being selfish enough to win the tournament.

The Pleasure and Anxiety of Discovery

The emotions of pleasure and anxiety are what kick start purpose and without some kind of purpose, consciousness is simply not possible. So it is the pleasure of discovery that allows us to survive as well as allows us to thrive when we discover futures beyond those we need for bare survival. When we discover something about the universe that seems like no one else yet knows, the pleasure of that discovery is especially intense.

And yet anxiety about the unknown tempers that pleasure and makes me wonder if I am right. Aethertime is a discovery that defines a universe with the simple axioms of matter, time, and action. The actions of two complementary electron spins complements the actions of discrete aether with the universe and its decoherence time that is what drives both gravity and charge forces. The axioms of matter, time, and action close aethertime and with the constants of matter, time, and action form an anti+universe pulse and our present epoch is just 82% decay from that pulse center.

Figure 1. Aethertime boson pulse that describes the anti+universe where the current epoch lies.

Just like the universe is a matter pulse in time, the universe is also a spectrum of objects of matter like people and neurons. In fact, just as people interact and bond, so do neural packets of aware matter as the figure shows. The neural impulses from excitation and inhibition of action potentials form EEG spectra that represent consciousness as objects of aware matter particles. Just as aware matter particles bond into objects of thought, people interact and bond as a result of those same objects of thought.

Mainstream science supposes that time is a continuous displacement in a continuous 4D spacetime and that is motion in space. While it is certainly true that atomic clocks have continuous pulses, atomic clocks therefore tick with a stream of discrete atomic events. So the atomic time that we sense is really not a continuous displacement on an infinitely divisible timeline of past, present, and future. Atomic time is instead average discrete frequency periods along with the deoherence for those periods. 

Objects that we sense have just one time delay, which is only one of the two time dimensions of a clock needed to tell time in the present moment. All objects including atomic clocks have both atomic frequency periods along with a decoherence rate for those periods and so there are two dimensions for time. Mainstream science imagines atomic time as a constant that does not run down or decay even though all working clocks including atomic clocks actually do run down as well as tick at regular intervals. 

Normally people view a clock running down as an artifact and for an electronic or any clock, the lost energy of decoherence or entropy is simply replaced with more coherent power from a battery or power plant. Since the tick frequency defines the duration of a moment for that clock and the tick frequency does not seem to change, it seems like clocks simply need energy to operate. But how fast a clock runs down also tells an absolute time for the clock in how often the clock needs to be charged or wound. In aethertime, there is a very small an intrinsic and universal decoherence rate not only for clocks, but also for all objects and that decoherence tells a universe time.

The aethertime universe clock is the decoherence decay of the universe matter pulse as 0.255 ppb/yr in the present epoch.

Decoherence time is provides a quasi-continuous time from the edge of the universe just beyond the CMB. Unlike atomic time, which depends on the frame of reference, decoherence time represents the absolute frame of the boundaries of a closed universe. Just like the thousands of millisecond pulsars that keep time for the cosmos, time has both a dimension of tick frequency as well as a dimension of tick frequency decay as shown in Fig. 2 below. Although millisecond pulsars decay due mostly to light and gravity radiation, there is also an average decay rate that coincides with many other measurements of matter decoherence.

Figure 2. Shows the many measurements that are consistent with the universal decoherence decay of the universe.

Along with atomic time in this epoch, this universal decoherence is very simply a dimensionless ratio of gravity and charge force and that ratio unifies these two forces by a scaling of the time period of the universe over that of the hydrogen atom. While charge acts at the microscopic scale of an atomic clock pulse, gravity emerges along with space from the cosmic scale of the universe pulse, a wrapping of charge force by the time scale of the universe.

Quantum Fine-Structure Constant

One of the more pervasive and mysterious nonmysteries of science has to do with the fine-structure constant, α. The fine structure constant shows up whenever there is moving charge since moving charges have both magnetization as well as charge forces. Of course, quantum particles are in perpetual charge motion of quantum phase and so the only real mystery of the fine-structure constant is that it does not seem to have a role in relativity gravity. Because classical particles do no have the perpetual motion of quantum phase, classical particles do not show the fine-structure constant.

In other words, there is no vector force for gravity like the vector force of magnetization for moving charge. In the collapsing universe, gravity is a result of photon exchange bonds and therefore, collapsing universe gravity does show a vector force.

The fine structure constant first showed up as the Lamb shift of some hydrogen spectral features. The spinning electron has its own magnetism called spin and in certain hydrogen orbits, that electron also generates  orbital magnetism. The Lyman, Balmer, Paschen, etc., spectral series are light emissions that show the main energy levels of the hydrogen atom that converge on the hydrogen ionization energy at 13.6 eV as the Rydberg energy. (see figure)

The coupling between electron spin and orbital spin magnetism, spin-orbit coupling, has no classical analog and results in a splitting proportional to α². However, the collapsing universe does couple star motions in a galaxy and therefore also star motion with star rotation as well.

The quantum mystery of the fine structure constant deepened when increasing measurement precision of the electron magnetism found that the electron spin magnetism affected its charge. The anomalous electron magnetic moment is due to a quantum self energy that does not have a classical meaning and there is no such gravitization self energy for classical gravity force. It was then discovered by Feynman and Schwinger that the fine structure constant nicely predicted that a spinning electron created a counterspinning vacuum electric field with its own magnetism and the fine structure constant defined that coupling.

With higher resolution spectrographs, spectroscopists in the 1800's came to realize that spectral lines showed even further splitting and that spectral splitting came to be known as fine structure. Although not completely understood until Dirac in 1928, electrons can orbit in either spherical or donut-shaped ellipsoid orbits with different orbital angular momentum and phase or orbital magnetism. In fact, electrons exist in superposition states that involve some of all possible states and the interaction  of those states splits their degeneracy into what was termed the fine-structure constant by Sommerfeld in 1916, actually the square of the fine-structure constant α².

An electron in the perfect symmetry of a spherical orbit does not have any average orbital magnetism, but an electron in various donut orbits does have magnetism due to the reduced symmetry of such orbits and the orbital magnetism of donut orbits then couples with the electron spin magnetism. In addition, the intrinsic spins of the electron and proton are also interact and cause the hyperfine splitting observed at even higher resolution as the figure below represents. The quantum underpinnings for the fine-structure constant would have to wait until Dirac in 1928 and by that time, the hyperfine spectral splittings were also discovered.

The key to all of these quantum magnetic interactions turned out to be the fine-structure constant quantum quantum phase, but there is no classical analog to spin orbit coupling and so the fine-structure constant is not part of a classical reality. Indeed, Feynman developed his quantum field theory in 1958 that conveniently used α to represent a perturbation expansion to account for the effect of quantum electron charge on itself.

In fact, there is another common dimensionless constant called the gyromagnetic ratio, g, which is around two and expresses the frequency differences between classical and quantum rotating charges. The gyromagnetic ratio turns out to be completely determined by a series expansion of α, which then reveals the mystery of the quantum spinning charge with g = 2 reality versus the classical spinning charge with a g = 1 reality.

Somehow the gyromagnetic ratio all by itself embodies the difference between quantum and classical charge motion and there is a similar factor of two that shows up with gravity deflection of light. The equivalent mass from light's momentum deflects light passing near a gravity body like the sun. The gravity deflection of quantum light has twice the angle of an equivalent classical body like a comet or asteroid.

Just like the interaction of photon magnetism with quantum spin in a magnetic field is the result of many exchanges among virtual states, the interaction of photon momentum with gravity is also the result of many photon exchanges among virtual states. It is likely that a similar correspondence with α and gravity occurs for quantum gravity, but a quantum gravity is not yet in common use.

The figure above shows the gravity fine structure expected for the hydrogen atom that is many orders of magnitude less, 1e39, than current science can measure for a single atom in the present epoch. However, in the CMB creation is a gravity object that releases light and shows the quantum gravity resonances as fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.

While the CMB emission at 2.7 K represents the hydrogen ionization energy in the early universe, the gravity modes oscillate with a fundamental at around 5e-5 K or 50 ppm of the 2.7 K CMB emission. The CMB gravity modes represent the multipole peaks in the CMB spectrum below.

There are any number of papers that show that α² varies on the order of 3e-15/yr for astrophysical spectra and 6e-17 for terrestrial atomic clocks and not the 0.26 ppb/yr decoherence rate predicted by quantum aether. Actually the standard cosmology of mainstream science does not recognize any variation in α and the measured variations have not yet been widely accepted. With quantum aether, there is a phase factor for α that is consistent with a variation in α² that is as reported. Thus the variations of α² with both astrophysical and high precision atomic time are consistent with the aether decoherence rate of 0.26 ppb/yr.

The key turns out to be a complementary α phase factor that accompanies each oscillating charge dipole that generates a photon of light. Although mainstream science approximates a hydrogen atom with the motion of an electron in orbit around a proton and that motion shows an average velocity of αc, the product of α and the speed of light, c.

This means that the dipole average kinetic energy of the photon from the oscillation is proportional to α²c². However, there is a neglected phase factor associated with charge motion that is why distant galaxies show the same α² as we experience in our epoch even though both α and c actually increase at 0.26 ppb/yr. In quantum aether, it is the ratio of c/α that is constant and h becomes the matter scaled Planck's constant h/c² is the Planck constant in quantum aether.

A basic premise of quantum aether interaction with matter is that the constants h, c, and α all expand over time and actually begin at zero at the aether pulse peak of the CMB that is the transition of our universe from the its precursor antiverse expansion. Thus it is important to understand why the relative splitting of the hydrogen atom spectrum that is α does not seem to vary in early galaxies back in time.

Although it seems a bit incredible that mainstream science has long misinterpreted the meaning of spectral splittings in distant galaxies, there are many measurements that validate the ongoing decay of matter at 0.26 ppb/yr (8.1e-18s^-1) along with the increase in both gravity and charge forces that complements the decay of matter. Moreover, it is the decoherence of quantum aether that determines and unites the two forces of matter that mainstream science calls gravity and charge.

Finally, with the quantum gravity of quantum aether comes the gravitization of moving matter like stars that complements gravity force. Matter gravitization is most obvious in the coupled motions of stars in galaxies due to star radiation and motion. Mainstream science now attributes galaxy star motions to an as yet unmeasured cold dark matter but the simple star to star coupling of gravitization makes galaxy star motion explicable without any need for the unseen mystery of dark matter.

Why Does the World Exist?

Questions about the infinity of nothing that is empty space date to ancient Greece and Zeno. How can we get anywhere in space, the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno asked, when we need to take an infinity of steps just to span the infinity of infinitely divisible space. More contemporary philosophers often simply accept the infinite divisibility of nothing without any objection and do not bother with the infinite discourse about nothing.

The recent book by Jim Holt Why Does the World Exist interviews a number of philosophers, religious scholars, and scientists and provides a wide litany of the standard answers to this infinite philosophical discourse. Somehow Holt felt that he could write a whole book about the dark nothing of empty space and people would actually buy it and read it...and I did...

Holt supposes that nothing would be a much simpler reality than the world that exists but he somehow does not really explore the inherent paradoxes of the infinities of nothing. As a result, infinity does not seem to bother Holt and he seems quite comfortable with the simplicity of infinity.

A statement that nothing could exist seems to contradict itself. Much like the square circles or married bachelors that Holt twice mentions, supposing nothing as something is a similar foil of words. Simply asking a question with words does not mean that the question has any meaning or any answer either.

The finite universe exists and is what existence means. Existence is simply a belief that we acquire as young children around two years of age as we learn consciousness. We simply learn to accept the belief about the universe of existence consisting of sources and observers of sources that undergo action and therefore change with time. The dark lonely nothing of empty space is a convenient object that we use to represent the universe itself and therefore empty space helps us keep track of the objects of matter within an otherwise empty universe.

The shrinking decoherence of aethertime defines both the gravity and charge of our quantum universe. In a universe of matter and time, space and momentum are just convenient representations that are consistent with sensation and neural thought. Each of general relativity and quantum charge exist as overlapping regimes of quantum aethertime.

Asking why the universe exists is then the same as asking why existence exists; the question's answer is a circular identity. Such identities are useful in that they allow us to know the boundaries of what we can know. There is no empty universe devoid of sources because the only universe that we can know and that can exist is one that is full of sources and observers all changing in time. The notion of a mostly empty universe filled with just a few sources is a useful one just like the number zero is useful for describing the absence of having something like an apple, but the notion of empty space is fundamentally limited and flawed and does not describe all changes in the universe.

Instead of a mostly empty universe filled with just a few observers and sources, the universe of discrete aether is made up of variations of matter and action. Aether is the matter that is the universe and the action of discrete aether is what clumps aether into sources and observers. Discrete action is the exchange of discrete aether particles between observers and sources and action describes how aether clumps into discrete matter spectra.

On the Need for Compassionate Free Choice

Humanity uses good and evil as notions of what is right and wrong behavior, but compassion and free choice are much more useful notions for actually predicting how people act. While compassion is what tends to bond people together into cooperative families, clans, villages, cities, and countries, free choice is more often what conflicts people with each other or groups of people with other groups of people. With compassion, people cooperatively share the wealth they have acquired and with free choice, people put their own survival first and acquire wealth more for themselves.

There is a strong association between the notion of evil and the emotion of free choice, but that is a very limited useful association. People must have some free choice in order to survive and likewise, people must also have some compassion in order to bond with other people. If a people only have free choice, they accumulate wealth and may actually take wealth from other people, including the lives of other people. But people must have some free choice, a compassionate free choice, and so the absolute notions of good and evil and the emotions of love and hate are much more limited. Instead, it is the free choice of compassion and compassionate free choice that better predict how people feel about each other.

There is a long history of the emotions of love and hate and many religions tout love as the most important emotion for bonding people together. Hate as the complement to love engenders the conflicts that people have with each other and there is an ultimate evil in hate. Since hate is always undesirable, the emotions of love and hate are more limited compared to compassion and free choice for predicting how people act.

Religions usually promote various transcendent agents for good compassion and other evil agents for  free choice, but really compassion and free choice are both part of the dual representations for how the universe works; relational and Cartesian. A relational person is compassionate and relates better with and cares more about others and is therefore a person who is on a common journey with many others. A Cartesian person has more free choice and cares more about themselves than other people and free choice people are therefore more separate and alone on their own objective Cartesian journeys. Just as a relational person subjectively bonds with many other people in a common journey of compassion, Cartesian people are largely on their own objective free choice journeys and only weakly interact with other people.

The complements of each emotion form five emotion pairs that represent the basic duality of matter and action. While compassion represents the matter and bonding of feeling, free choice represents the action and conflict of the inhibition of compassion. Compassion is then the inhibition of free choice and compassion bonds people together while the excitation of free choice is action where people conflict.

In our brains, excitations and inhibitions of neural action potentials represent how we feel and form the EEG spectra of brain waves as the figure below shows.  In the spectral reality of the universe, free choices are discrete particles of neural action called aware matter that bond into larger aware matter objects called thoughts as neural packets in the brain. Thoughts resonate as the EEG spectra of the brain and are the matter or feelings that bond two people and that bonding likewise results in further matter spectra that show those relationships.

Science does not yet understand how neural action results in the EEG spectra of free choice, but sleep is a very important part of neural action. In fact, there are two primitive neural matter packets during sleep that appear in sleeping EEG called K complexes and sleep spindles. Both K complexes and sleep spindles are made of delta mode packets and the delta mode is the fundamental mode of neural action. The EEG K complex seems to be the simple delta dimer while a sleep spindle seems to be a delta dimer with an alpha mode carrier and both are the basic primitive neural packets that appear during deep sleep. These primitive neural packets appear to be what keep our mind asleep and yet they also represent the basic neural aware matter that binds or conflicts us with others as well with compassion and free choice.

Compassion and free choice are therefore the two most important emotions for bonding and conflict and people actually have both compassion and free choice in all journeys in life. Compassion and free choice are much more useful than love and hate for describing the complexity of relationships. Bonding relationships come about from pleasurable neural excitations and results in delta dimer bonds that inhibit anxiety. Conflicts among people inhibit pleasure and excite anxiety, which is the alpha carrier mode.

People always need free, a compassionate free choice, in order to survive and so there are no journeys with only free choice just as there are no journeys with only compassion. There are no people in life that are only Cartesian or only relational, there is likewise neither complete free choice nor complete compassionate…all people must act both with compassionate free choice as well as free choice compassion in order to survive. This is why love and hate are more limited complements of bonding emotions.

A Cartesian person journeys on a path that is more isolated from other people and so a Cartesian generally represents free choice that cares more about their own needs than the needs of others. In contrast, a relational person journeys as a superposition of many possible outcomes that are more bonded with others by compassion. A relational has more compassion for other people and a relational inhibits free choice. A relational person has more compassion for others that inhibits free choice for their own needs and therefore relationals are more open about the many possible outcomes with other people.

By extension of compassion and free choice to the governments of clans, villages, and states, the notions of compassion and free choice represent the cooperation and conflicts that bond and conflict people into a community with many largely anonymous people living together in large cities and countries. The constitution of a balanced government incorporates the notions of a balance of compassion and free choice to assure survival just as people freely choose assure their own survivals.

Religions have sometimes very strict guidelines for compassion and free choice and such guidelines provide religious people with purpose and meaning. States provide less rigid guidelines for compassion and free choice as compared with religion and governments therefore States often tolerate a much wider range of behavior and therefore purpose and meaning. A government ideology balances compassion and free choice and governments can show compassion as well as free choice just as people do.

Governments balance compassion, sharing, and cooperation with free choice and that balance allows competition to promote commerce and innovation. The markets of commerce permit free choice and trade for goods and services that not only meet the needs of survival, but also provide goods and services for others as well in a form of compassion. The government builds roads, transportation, buildings, parks, and social welfare represent the compassion of public resources shared for all.

What Is Nothing Like?

When we as young children begin our journey of consciousness, we discover by about age two the belief that the lonely dark nothing of empty space is something after all. That belief in the nothing of empty space anchors further discovery and helps us discover the way the world of objects works. The discovery that the nothing of space is really something not only anchors further discovery for survival, but provides purpose and meaning far beyond survival.

But we begin life by sensing objects and light, not space, and objects and light are actually what reality is all about, not really space. When we no longer sense an object, we come to believe that an empty space now exists where that object was. This belief in empty space allows us to know that the object still exists and is simply now hidden by other objects or by some distance away from us and that is why we no longer sense the object. We come to believe that space exists even though we never sense space directly and even though empty space is simply the lack of an object that is now hidden from view or sensation.

We sense objects and learn their objective properties like color, texture, mass, time delay, and so on and can agree with others about those objective properties. Each object in the universe exists with a well-defined and measurable time delay from us and various time delays from other objects. These time delays are all equivalent to spatial distances from us and other objects and that is how we keep track of objects. We use particular objects called landmarks to provide reference frames for locating other objects, but there is really never any lack of objects in our perception or even anywhere in the universe. In other words, the notions that we have about continuous empty space and time are just that...convenient notions that help us to keep track of objects.

There is a long history of discourse in philosophy about the nature of the nothing of empty space. Why is there something rather than nothing? is a question in a recent book by philosopher Jim Holt, "Why Does the World Exist?" The history of nothing ranges from Zeno in ancient Greece up through modern times with Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Since we neither sense nor measure the nothing of empty space, there is actually no way to answer such an inexplicable question and this book simply continues the endless discourse about the nature of nothing. The world is existence and so the question reduces to the identity of existence existing and the nature of this identity is obvious.

Philosophy, after all, is an endless discourse about the nature of the universe. Philosophy asks and attempts to answer many inexplicable questions since it is not always clear which questions we can answer. Why there is something rather than nothing is an existential question that has no answer other than the identity; the universe exists because it exists. There is no sense to a discourse about nothing except that nothing is a convenient way to keep track of a lack of objects. Just like the zero of our number system, the notion of the nothing of empty space provides a way of keeping track of a lack of objects of certain kinds. However, there is simply no sense to the absolute lack of all objects including a universe since the universe is what defines what exists and we are an inextricable part of the existence of that universe.

Reality exists as objects, light, and time and with discrete matter, time delay, and action; from just these three axioms all reality emerges. When we sense a red object, in addition to its red color that many others agree is red, we have feelings about that red object that are unique to us. Our unique lifetime of experience with red objects and unique development mean that the red object results in a feeling about the object that is unique for each person. It could be that the red color is an illusion, for example, or that we may see all objects as red because we happen to lack other pigments in our retina.

So it is very important for consciousness to have some kind of anchor as a belief in nothing, which is simply the belief that objects continue to exist even when we no longer see or sense them. After all, when an object hides other objects or when objects are simply out of our immediate perspective or simply be too far away to sense, we say then that there is empty space between us and some background behind where the object was. However, objects simply do not disappear and reappear according to common classical reality.

In our quantum reality, though, objects as matter waves always exist in superposition states and there is a coherent phase that somehow links their futures together. It is quantum phase coherence that provides a kind of glue that binds the universe of both charge and gravity together. Knowing the state of a matter wave provides information on the complementary coherent states of that matter wave everywhere else in the universe as well.

Although instantaneous information transfer cannot occur, quantum entanglement does make it seem like matter-wave information transfers instantaneously across the universe. However, the information about a matter wave state is simply received or felt by each of two quantum observers across the universe and those quantum observers do not transfer or communicate that information across the universe in a classical and deterministic sense of cause and effect.

If two quantum observers know about each other's complementary matter wave phase coherence, they will feel and come to know the complementary events even across the universe. However, the observers do need to know before hand about the common source that created those two events and have discovered the way the universe really works. In other words, there is a quantum bond between the two observers across the universe as a result of the coherence of a common matter wave. These two observers will then have complementary feelings about those two events that they will simply not be able to understand without a lot of prior knowledge.

Quantum Feeling

Even though we as observers might look at and objectively agree with other observers about the sources in the world, how observers subjectively feel about sources is unique to our each lifetime of experience and development. Observers look at and otherwise sense sources and have learned about the objective properties of color, size, mass, etc. and are confident that other observers will agree with the same objective properties. This objective reality of sources is a very common intuition that observers share with each other and observers typically share that objective reality as part of a classical reality.

Sharing stories about the objective properties of sources helps observers survive because they can then depend on other observers as a source of experience to better predict the action of sources and people. Observers do not need to experience the red color of an apple to know that an apple can be red. They can simply look it up on the internet. In principle, all objective reality is knowable and so observers can discover everything about their objective reality. However, there are limitations to what observers can discover about their own subjective reality.

How observers subjectively feel about a source like a red apple is very different from how the apple objectively appears to other observers . This is because even though observers can agree with other observers that an apple is red, the subjective feeling that observers have about a red apple comes from their own unique lifetime of experience with red sources and their unique development of retinal pigments and sensitivity to the light that they see as red. The subjective feeling that observers have about the red color of a source is a fundamental limitation. An observer of themselves as a source is unique to each observer and those immediate subjective sensations can actually be any number of illusions and perception mistakes and therefore not objective at all.

An observer's objective reality discovers sources with properties that conform to classical and realist notions of space and time with largely separate Cartesian sources that only occasionally interact. This is the world of gravity and of Einstein's relativity and is an observer's outer life. In contrast, the subjective reality of observer unique feelings is a source of inner life that is a quantum reality that incorporates phase coherence. Quantum phase coherence relates sources to each other in ways that sometimes seem to violate the classical and realist notions of discrete Cartesian sources. However, it is the inner reality of quantum phase coherence that augments and completes the limitations of an outer reality of the purely classical realism of gravity and relativity.

Although there has been many discussions about what a neural packet of brain matter might be like [see Tegmark 2014, Tononi 2004, Hopfield 1982], there has also been suggestion that quantum uncertainty and entanglement cannot play any role in the neural packets of our brains. [Tegmark 2000] This latter conclusion is based on the the very short dephasing times that occur for neural spikes of action potentials, whose dephasing times on the order of several milliseconds are many orders of magnitude shorter than the dephasing time of a moment of thought, which is around one second.

Of course, there are others who have ventured into the ring of quantum consciousness [Penrose 1989, Stapp 1984, Hameroff 2004] and who have proposed various quantum schemes for the neural matter of our brains. Unfortunately, no one seems to have yet resolved the matter with any kind of measurement like an EEG spectrum.

Given the spectral nature of EEG brain waves, it would seem reasonable to associate the measured EEG mode line widths with the dephasing time of thought. Quantum aware matter packets will dephase with the EEG dephasing time and therefore are the modes of quantum aware matter packets. Spectral line widths of light and acoustics represent both the presence of chaos as well as the dephasing times for the spectral modes of the science of spectroscopy. Associating EEG spectral widths to neural packets dephasing instead of action potential dephasing now means that the mind, despite some chaos, does indeed function as a quantum computer.

Linewidths for the quantum states of spectroscopy are functions of both homogeneous as well as heterogeneous dephasing and dephasing times reflect the lifetime and linewidth of a quantum resonance. Assuming EEG spectral linewidths are truly representative of the homogeneous dephasing times of neural packets means that brain aware matter does indeed represent quantum superposition states. Aware matter particles are not electrons or ions but are rather fermion aware matter particles of bilateral entangled neurons.

In order to qualify as a quantum computer, the brain must show the superposition logic of qubits, which include quantum phase. In digital logic, a bit of information is either 0 or 1 and all computers are based on just such a digital logic as well as internet data packets. In contrast to digital logic, neural logic involves a qubit as a superposition of two states [||, | ] that are like the polarization of light, parallel and perpendicular. Although single qubits will also only be either || or  | , qubits entangle other qubits and that entanglement transmits twice the information of just two digital bits.

This is because two entangled qubits not only carry the numbers 0 to 3 as [||,||], [||, | ],[ | ,||],[ | , | ], the two qubits also carry a binary phase factor that transmits 4 to 7 as [||,||+ | ], [||,||- | ],[ | ,||+ | ],[ | ,||- | ]. Just like light polarized at 45 degree is a superposition of 0 and 90, a qubit can exist as a coherent superposition of states and that superposition doubles its information content.

Moreover, the superposition of qubits in neural packets means that neural matter exists as high order states of coupled neural pairs as aware matter. That is, we can entangle the coherency of our neural packets with those of other people and sources and that coherency is part of our feeling. When I imagine going for a walk in the park, I form a superposition of many possible futures for that walk and yet I only realize a particular future when I actually am walking. Each of the other possible futures is also a part of my reality as memory but those other futures become decoherent with a rate of the aware matter lifetime of about 1 s.

Aware matter as a Quantum Material

The quantum wave equation for aware matter is particularly simple and so the wavefunction is simple as well. The EEG spectrum will be sinc functions (sin x / x), which is the Fourier transform of the aware matter wavefunction.

m_a = aware matter particle mass, ~3.2e-30 kg (matter equivalent energy of two synaptic impulses)

Ñ_a = aware matter action constant, m_a / 2π / f

n = order of mode for aware matter source, 1 to 64

t = time, s

f_a = aware matter source frequency, ~0.5 Hz

y_a = aware matter wavefunction

y_a with dot = time derivative of y_a

This simplicity comes from the fact that aware matter binding energy is equivalent to its resonance energy and when that happens for a quantum matter, the quantum wave functions, y_a, are mathematically very simple superpositions of electrical impulse frequencies. Therefore the proportionality is related to the mode frequency as shown and there is a reaction time, t_a, which should be around 0.5 s and is the linewidth of the mode. Thus, we do not expect the EEG modes to be transform limited but rather EEG modes will have the linewidth of a single human thought.

There are many obvious ways to test the aware matter hypothesis and indeed, there may already be information out there that shows that aware matter could not exist. However, it is really fun to imagine how such a simple quantum material as aware matter becomes not only a part of our lives, but a part of every neural life. The existence of aware matter would be the unifying force behind all sentient life.

Although observers can in principle know everything about the objective properties of sources, much of knowledge also comes from observer subjective feelings about themselves as a source. Although observers can understand many of their subjective feelings with rational thought, observers do have feelings that are beyond rational thought. Such feelings are a part of observer quantum aware matter and are subject to quantum uncertainty and therefore are quantum feelings.

Quantum Phase and Reality

Quantum phase coherence between an observer and a source is a critical concept that differentiates quantum charge from classical gravity. Quantum phase coherence makes no classical sense in general relativity and so quantum gravity cannot ever exist within the classical confines of GR. There are three different action equations possible for reality, but the choice really just reduces to either quantum charge or classical gravity.

Of the three possible action equations, quantum, classical, and hyperbolic, the  action equation of quantum charge is the Schrödinger equation as

[1]

which says that an observer is always related to its own outcome by some kind of interaction with a itself. Seems pretty simple, but the funny i factor means that the future is never absolutely certain since an observer can act on itself.

The classic gravity Hamilton-Jacobi equation in units of time delay and matter change is

[2]

and says that an source follows a determinate path, S, unless acted on by another source by the action dm/dt that changes the source orbital period, t_p. Even though gravity exists in the same quantum root reality as charge, the gravity of a GR observer does not act on itself. This means that the geodesics of general relativity are not subject to the uncertainty of quantum futures.

In a quantum reality, even gravity matter has phase coherence and shows interference effects and uncertainty since it is light that is the quantum glue that holds both charge and gravity matter together. The symmetry of the gravity biphoton simply means that quantum phase coherence exists for gravity as well as charge. However, the exchange of two gravity biphotons always results in complementary phases and so the resonances between gravity bodies always exchange complementary phase.

A classical photon only transfers intensity from a classical source to a classical observer and does not transfer quantum phase coherence. A quantum photon represents a resonance between an observer and an excited source that transfers both amplitude and phase coherence. A gravity resonance between an observer and a source also represents both amplitude and phase coherence, but a gravity biphoton resonance involves excited states of both observer and source.

The classical Hamilton-Jacobi equation is the beginning of the geodesics of general relativity and it is the quantum Hamilton-Jacobi equation that shows the time derivative of relativity's action geodesic as a matter wave, S_ae, as

[3]

The matter-scaled Schrödinger equation Eq. 1 with m_R as the Rydberg mass equivalent energy of the hydrogen atom bond provides the matter wave psi_ae. The strange  i = e^π/2 Euler phase factor simply represents a phase shift of pi/2 or 90° between a matter wave and its time derivative, which is the observer and a source. It is just this phase coherence that is what makes the quantum matter waves of Eq. 3 much different from classical matter waves of Eq. 2.

It is ironic that time and space both emerge from the Schrödinger equation and the actual primitives are that of discrete aether, psi_ae and discrete action, Sdot_ae. That is, time and space actually emerge as the discrete dimensionless notions of tau/tau_p or q/q_p from the action derivative of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Schrödinger equation [3].

The classical gravity waves of Eq. 2 also have phase coherence, but classical waves have classical coherence with determinate futures and follow the geodesics of relativity. The quantum path derivative is negative, which points both the arrow of quantum time as well as the phase shift between matter and its derivative of action. The norms or products of complementary quantum matter waves of Eq. 3 result in the classical waves of Eq. 2, but lack quantum phase coherence and uncertainty.

Biphoton exchange applies the same quantum glue of coherent photon phase to gravity.  Bonding an electron and proton is due to the exchange of a photon particle of the Rydberg mass, m_R, which is the hydrogen bond. That binding photon today has a complementary and entangled photon emitted at the CMB that together form a biphoton quadrupole. Instead of a single photon, gravity is this irreducible coupling of bond and emitted photons as a biphoton quadrupole. Biphotons are the phase coherent quantum glue that bonds neutral particles to the universe with the quadrupole biphoton force scaled from a photon as t_B / T_u x e.

The Schrödinger equation shows that a differential change in an object is orthogonal to itself for both charge and gravity. A differential change in a gravity wave biphoton will also be proportional to itself, but since the biphoton has dipoles with entangled phase, the resulting product wavefunction now commutes and satisfies both quantum Eq. 1 and classical Eqn. 2.

The classical action integral of general relativity, S, has a matter-scaled time derivative related to the Lagrangian that is simply equal to the kinetic minus the Hamiltonian interaction energy. Typical objects have very large numbers of such quantum gravity states along with many fewer quantum charge states. Quantum gravity states tend to be incoherent sums of matter wave norms that represent classical gravity and relativity. Unlike the relatively high energy of atomic bonds, quantum gravity bonds are very much weaker and so involve very much lower frequency biphotons. Any phase coherence of a quantum gravity is typically dominated by the phase coherence of quantum charge and so gravity mass exists largely as matter wave norms without coherent phase.

The hyperbolic wave equation is simply the dS_ae/dt action wave with a change in sign. The hyperbolic equation describes antimatter with a simple change in sign and antimatter is inherently unstable in the matter universe since antimatter's time arrow is opposit and yet antimatter is stable in the antiverse precursor to the matter universe.

These hyperbolic matter waves still show quantum superposition and interference effects but represent unstable antimatter particles in the matter universe.

Classical Observers See and Quantum Observers Feel Sources

There are both observers and sources in the world in which we live; objective observers who see the world as others see it and subjective sources who feel about the world as it feels only to themselves. While an objective observer can in principle know everything about the way other observers know the world, a subjective source cannot know everything about how other sources feel about the world or how the world feels to other sources as well.

Objective observers get pleasure discovering the world with senses in contact with sources and those sensations are both how observers discover knowledge and feeling about the world as well. There are no limits to what an objective observer can know besides the complexity of that knowledge, but there are limits to what a subjective source can observe about their own feelings about the world. There are even very simple things like observer feelings about the world that a subjective source can never know.

In particular, there is a property of people and matter called quantum phase coherence that entangles an observer with a source and so subjective observers are quantum observers. Although objective or classical observers can know and agree with others about the objective properties of a source, a quantum observer can only ever know the phase coherence of a source relative to their own phase coherence. Therefore quantum observer feelings about source phase is subjective since it is the observer's feeling alone and no other observer will have the same lifetime of experience and development from which their phase derives.

Classical observers suppose that the world as it really is has classical observers and sources pretty much running around on their own in a vast void of empty space and time. Classical observers do not bump into or affect each other very much and when there are couplings, those perturbations are all completely knowable in a classical determinate and causal universe. There is no self energy in a classical universe.

Continuous space and time are the cornerstones for classical observers and they can pretty much agree with other Cartesians about this Cartesian view, which is what makes a classical reality objective and why the world seems so classical. Cartesian action seems rather more like fate or karma than chance and the initial conditions of the CMB creation seem to determine all of what happens; classical action simply happens without any meaning or intent since classical action is determinate.

How a subjective quantum observer actually feels about the world is a subjective relational view that first of all supposes there is a purpose and meaning for everything that happens and there are no completely determinate futures. Quantum observers depend more on what other quantum observers and sources intend to do instead of what the observers and sources happen to be doing at any moment. A subjective quantum observer depends more on their feelings about sources as well as themselves instead of just on source properties at that moment.

A quantum universe cornerstone is with the exchange of energy and matter that are the actions between quantum observers and sources and quantum observers often feel very differently about the world as compared with classical observers. Since quantum feelings result from each of their own unique histories, quantum actions that result from quantum feelings are therefore not fated or determinate and there are instead many possible futures for both quantum observer and source.

There is a long history of discovery about the dual nature of the world of the body and the world of the mind. This is the duality of classical observers and subjective sources; how classical observers see the world really is versus how quantum observers and sources feel together about the world. Quantum observers feel that there is an inner life made up of souls and minds that coexists with an outer life of classical observers in the physical part of the world made up of bodies and brains.

Classical observers believe that since there is no objective evidence for an inner life of sources made up of souls, the actions of the mind are instead simply very complex and yet completely knowable as the brain matter of the same the outer life. Classical observers therefore believe there is really only one material world composed only of completely knowable observers and sources. An objective classical observer can know everything about the world and there is no meaning to any kind of inner life of quantum sources made up of just souls and minds.

However, there are things about a quantum source's inner life that a classical observer can never know. The subjective world that quantum observers discover by feeling and relationships with sources is different from the objective and material world that classical observers discover along with other Cartesians. The classical Cartesian observer can in principle know all objective properties about an object, and yet complex actions of other observers and objects also make up our material world and that complexity therefore limits what classical observers can know. The noise of chaos often confuses and confounds quantum phase noise, but quantum phase noise is different from the noise of chaos.

The quantum observer has feelings about the aether exchanges among people and sources of an inner life as opposed to the classical observer of people and sources of the outer life of things in and of themselves. In the quantum world of feeling based on aether exchange, while most relationships and feelings are objective and therefore knowable, there are many relationships and feelings that are fundamentally unknowable and yet are still a part of our quantum world.

Therefore discourse about the dual natures of objective and subjective reality are often confused by what a classical observer can know about the complexity of  sources as people and relationships of their outer lives and what a quantum observer can never know about their own inner life. Although there are many things about their outer life that classical observers do not yet know, all of these things are still knowable albeit somewhat obscured by complexity and chaos. Yet there are some things about a quantum observer's inner life that are fundamentally unknowable and yet are still a part of the real world.

Although a classical observer can know everything about the path of a person or source in space and time, a quantum observer cannot know everything about the relationships of that person or source with other people or sources over time. Ironically, the things that a quantum observer can never really know are a part of uncertain futures of quantum relationships with other sources.

Meaning and Purpose of Individual Freedom, Social Responsibility, and Malevolence

We discover life's meaning and purpose in the pleasures of individual free choice and social responsibility, yet we also discover our own potential malevolence as well as that of others. We discover people and objects coupled with an anxiety about the dark void of nothing that is empty space without people or objects. All people and all life get pleasure in discovery and yet also have anxiety about the unknown. All life must discover food, drink, shelter, and social responsibility among other needs simply to survive and light the dark void and fill an otherwise empty space with people and objects. The pleasure of discovery of individual freedom and social responsibility drives our meaning and purpose and yet we must temper that pleasure with an anxiety of the unknown dark void of empty space of malevolence. Among the discoveries that are necessary for survival, there is also malevolence lurking.

Therefore we must also have a certain anxiety about the unknown in order to avoid danger and injury. No matter how pleasant a discovery might be, we also need a certain anxiety about our discoveries in order to avoid walking off of cliffs and in front of traffic. We survive and discover meaning and purpose with both the pleasure and anxiety of discovery.

There are many inexplicable questions that have no unique answers. Some of these questions are:

Why is the universe the way that it is? 
Why are we here?
Why are we right here right now?
Why is it us who is right here right now and not someone else?
What is the universe origin?
What is the universe destiny?
What is the meaning and purpose of life?

Where do morals and ethics come from?

We ask these questions as part of the pleasure of discovery but these questions all represent the unknowable parts of the universe about which we can feel but can never really know. Although the pleasure of discovering individual freedom and social responsibility provides an innate meaning and purpose, we can never know why that is. All we can really know is that this is simply the way the universe is.

It helps to have a theory of the mind in order to understand how the pleasure and anxiety of emotion are what drive the primitive mind. It is the feeling of our primitive mind by which we make the choices that we make...

Stonehenge and the Full Moon

In our modern age, we tell time largely by the passage of the sun and the solar day and that means that the sun and not the moon largely determines our modern time. However, people have always used the moon as a way to tell time along with the sun and the legacy of lunar time persists in the calendar month as one cycle of the moon and week as a moon quarter. As a result, lunar time is still deeply embedded into the consciousness of humanity along with solar time. 

Stonehenge is an ancient solar and lunar calendar in Wiltshire, England, that is an arrangement of stones called henges and holes for wooden henges that tell both solar and lunar times. Constructed around 2,600 BCE (over 4,600 years ago) and used for over 1,000 years, the main alignment of Stonehenge shows the directions of the summer and winter solstices as well as spring and autumn equinoxes as shown in the figure below. This alignment with the solstices tells a solar time of year by the sunrise and sunsets of solstices and equinoxes at right angles to the solstices, the four solar celebrations of the ancient Druids.

Stonehenge also tells lunar time with an inner circle of 30 Sarsen stone henges that represent the 29-30 days of the lunar period along with an outer circle of 56 Aubrey pits (wooden henges) that count moon periods and lunar years. Since there are 14 moons for each lunar year, the Aubrey circle counts 4 lunar years with its 56 pits. There are also 7 lunar years for every 8 solar years for the winter/summer solstices of the Stonehenge calendar and that product shows 7 x 8 = 56 lunar solar yrs.

The 56 Aubrey pits allowed Stonehenge to count both the 4 solar celebrations of solstices and equinoxes along with the four interspersed lunar celebrations for 14 solar years and 4 lunar years. The Stonehenge calendar included one lunar celebration as one of the full moons between each pair of solar celebration for a total 8 celebrations that are the same in the modern Druid wheel of 8. Today's modern holidays reflect the 8 celebrations from the ancients.

In principle, there are three full moons on average between each solar celebration, but since the full moon period shifts as much as one moon relative to the solar month, it is important to sometimes choose the first full moon and sometimes the second full moon. That meant that the lunar celebrations would better synchronize with the solar celebrations.

In addition to being a solar calendar of the 4 solar celebrations of solstices and equinoxes, Stonehenge also counted days in a moon period as well as moons in a lunar year in order to intercalate four lunar celebrations. A lunar calendar counts the 14 moons for each lunar year, which means 4 lunar years in the 56 Aubrey holes along with 14 solar years by counting 4 solar celebrations. Solar solstices and equinoxes along with full moons have all traditionally marked Druid ceremonies and that tradition continues today for many modern holidays. From the Chinese New Year’s to Easter and Yom Kippur, the cycles of the moon therefore continue to impact human behavior. Even today, knowledge of the full moon is further helpful for harvesting and hunting and other outdoor activities as well as prediction of the ocean tide.

Many people have proposed that the Stonehenge calendar also predicts solar and lunar eclipses. While it is certainly possible to use a Stonehenge solar-lunar calendar to predict lunar and solar eclipses, eclipse predictions need further knowledge of a third cycle, the Saros 18 yr cycle, and discerning the Saros cycle necessitates centuries of fairly accurate astronomical observations. The day of solar and lunar eclipses repeat every Saros cycle of 18 years and this period predicts both lunar and solar eclipses. During each 18 year Saros cycle, there are about 40 eclipses and so the Saros cycle requires not only a fairly accurate calendar, it requires several centuries of careful observation with reasonably clear skies.

It is not clear that the knowledge of the Saros cycle of eclipses was available to the ancients of Stonehenge and the less than optimum visibility of the sunrise, sunsets, moonrise, and moonsets in that climate would suggest that eclipse predictions would have been very unlikely. Since predicting the time of year and phase of the moon did offer distinct survival advantages, Stonehenge makes perfect sense as both a solar and lunar calendar. However, the precision of the Stonehenge calendar does not seem consistent with the long-term observations needed for eclipse predictions.

Humanity today adjusts our modern calendar month to the rhythm of the solar day and year and we have therefore lost much of the ancient lunar rhythms that tell time with the variable periods of the full moon. A solar calendar month averages 30.4 days each over a non-leap 365 day year, whereas the actual lunar month is 29.53 days for an average full moon period. And yet the periods of the full moon still affect things that happen to humanity. For example, the average female menstrual period is 29.1 days and is closer to the 29.5 days of the average full moon than to the 30.4 days of our average calendar month. In fact, the average gravity period of the lunar orbit is 27.6 days, which is also an important cycle for the changes of full moon periods.

There is a cyclic variation of the period of the full moon due to the coupling of both lunar and solar periods and it is that variation of the full moon period that affects the tides and weather patterns associated with those tidal flows. So the full moon period does have demonstrable affects on human behavior and there is a long history that associates phases of the moon with various behaviors. The word lunacy, after all, comes from the lunar root and the poetry and behavior of people has long association with the lunar phase.

The cycles of lunar full moon period or number of days, though, do not have the same popular following as does following the phases of the moon. The cycles of the lunar period are mainly due to a beating of the period of the full moon, 29.53 days, with the period of the gravity moon orbit, 27.55 days. These two lunar periods result in two beat cycles of 1.13 and 8.85 yrs and that means that there are roughly seven lunar years as cycles of moon periods for every eight solar years. This means that there are 56 moons in 4 lunar years along with 14 solar years with 4 solstices/equinoxes to make the 56 solar celebrations in 14 solar years. There are also 4 lunar celebrations to make up the 8 celebrations of each Druid year.

The Chinese lunar calendar is several thousand years old and places the winter solstice in the eleventh lunar month, which means the New Year is usually the second new moon after the winter solstice. The Christian Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, but as determined by the ancient Nicene and not a modern calendar. There are many other religious holidays that remain anchored to the full moon period and so continue to affect human behavior.

The fractional periods of the moon relative to the solar periods make moon predictions difficult. Lunar calendars are always therefore more complex than solar calendars and this was true for ancient peoples of the Stonehenge. Knowledge of the Saros eclipse period of 18.03 years predicts both lunar and solar eclipses, traditional harbingers of fortune, but the Saros period takes many years of observation. The Saros period comes from the moon period between when it crosses the sun's path, which is 27.2 days. This lunar cycle beats at 18.6 yrs and 18 yrs is the intersection of the three lunar periods.

The variability of the period of the full moon is quite well known and largely due to the beating of the full moon period of 29.53 days with the period of the lunar gravity orbit of 27.55 days. The beating of these two frequencies results in a variation of full moon periods with cycles of both 1.13 and 8.85 years as shown in the figure. The precise measurement of the earth-moon distance with a reflected laser pulse has shown that the earth-moon distance increases by 38 mm per year. Given the 384,400 km average earth-moon distance, 38 mm/yr means that the moon orbit period slows by 0.31 ppb/yr, very close to the expected 0.26 ppb/yr of classical aethertime decay, but far less than the variability due to other factors.

This figure shows the period of full moons as a function of fractional solstice year where each year begins on the winter solstice, Dec. 20th. The coincidence of the winter solstice with a peak in the full moon period occurs every 8 solar years, but only seven lunar years. This fundamental difference between solar and lunar periods is what the stone and wooden henges seems to represent.

Quantum Aether Entanglement and Phase Coherence

Phase coherence is a property of quantum sources that classical sources do not seem to have, but in fact phase coherence affects all observers and sources in the universe, just in different ways. Instead of the single knowable state of a classical source, say a red color, two quantum sources with coherent phase can exist in a coherent superposition of states, say both red and blue. This entanglement can occur even though those the quantum sources might be located across the universe from each other.

The exact object color of one source is unknowable until an observer sees that source as red or blue. The observation of one of two coherent source superposition states as red then immediately determines the other source state as blue even across the universe. Before the measurement, though, the two sources existed as a superposition of both red and blue and so the exact state of both sources in the past is unknowable.

There is a knowable phase coherence that two classical objects also exhibit, but for classical objects in general relativity, all reality is determinate and therefore classical coherent states are knowable. A classical observer might not know which of two a classical sources is red or blue, but that classical knowledge is always knowable. That is, once an observer sees one classical source as red, they also immediately know that the other classical source is blue even if the other classical source lies across the universe. However, the colors for each of the two classical sources were always classically knowable and once an observer sees a classical source as red, they know that it was always red. There are no superposition states for classical sources nor is there any decay of the phase coherence between two classical sources except due to perturbations from other sources.

Classical determinate sources in general relativity do not appear to show quantum phase coherence, but really it is the decoherence of quantum phase that makes quantum sources different from classical sources, not really phase coherence per se. After all, two classical sources with coherent colors also remain perfectly coherent in a determinate classical universe in the absence of perturbations. Those two coherent colors represent determinate geodesic paths for general relativity as well.

On the one hand, correlated colors for two classical sources represent something that an observer can know about each source. Even though the observer might not know the color of either source to begin with, once seeing that a classical object is red, the classical observer also then immediately knows that classical sources was always red. The observer also then immediately knows that the source's coherent twin's color was blue even across the universe and that twin had its classical correlation for the same period of time.

Unlike two classical sources, two coherent quantum sources somehow oscillate between those coherent color states as a superposition of amplitudes and do not exist as either one or the other colors until an observation or some other action dephases them. In the quantum universe, dephasing is an inextricable part of seeing or measuring the color of a quantum source and immediately tells the observer the state of its coherent twin even across the universe. Since decoherence is an inextricable part of all sources in the universe, observers can never be absolutely certain about the natures of objects that they sense. That is because neither quantum twin existed as red nor blue prior to the measurement or action that dephased one of the sources into a red or blue state.

The mystery of quantum entanglement has to do not really with why a quantum source can be either of two colors or how two quantum sources can remain coherent with each other across time and space. The mystery of quantum entanglement has to do with even when an observer sees that an source is red, they still simply cannot know that that same source was always red before they observed it. As soon as the nearby quantum object is red for certain, the distant source decoheres to blue and stops its oscillation between red and blue. The distant quantum source can now only be blue even though before that time, it's state was not knowable.

Although quantum charge is a local force with very fast decoherence, quantum gravity is a long range force that has a much slower decoherence. In aethertime, every quantum charge state like red and blue with very fast decoherence has a complementary quantum gravity state with much slower decoherence. In fact, quantum gravity states exist with the decoherence times of the universe. While quantum charge is a very local force, quantum phase is also part of the glue that holds the universe together.

The color of a red source is due to a large number of photons of light across a wide spectrum of light around that red color. When we see a classical source as red, we sense only a very small fraction of a very large number of photons emanating from that red source. For such large and macroscopic classical sources as red apples, a red color is a property of a very large number of particles at the surface of that source.

In contrast to the color of a classical source, the color of a quantum source may be due to just one photon of light interacting with a single particle. Since observer eyes are not sensitive to just one photon, observers must use spectrometers to know whether a single particle is red or blue. That single photon still represents a whole spectrum of frequencies superimposed as a single time pulse that bonds the observer to the particle for some period of decoherence. During that superposition between the observer and the particle, the observer oscillates along with the particle between the possible futures of red or blue. When the observer becomes decoherent from the particle, that leaves the observer in the red or blue state as well as the quantum gravity state that goes along with the color.

The phase coherence of a quantum source decays as a result of not only measurement, but also due to perturbations with other objects just like perturbations affect the classical spins of objects. The decay of phase coherence is due to the classical noise of chaos as well as quantum phase noise and there is simply no classical meaning for quantum phase noise.

The meandering decay of earth's spin period means that a day has varied from +1.4 to -1.5 ms every year over the last 43 years (see figure below) and there are many different factors that perturb Earth's spin by as much as 4 ms per day. In a determinate classical universe, all of these perturbations are knowable and even in a quantum universe, most of these perturbations are likewise knowable. However the quantum dephasing of the universe at 0.255 ppb/yr has no cause other than being simply a property of the universe. Quantum decoherence is an assumption Earth's spin decay that is an unconditioned axiom of the universe.

According to reports, the Earth day has lost from 1.7 ms [0.20 ppb/yr, McCarthy and Seidelmann, 2009] to 2.4 ms [0.28 ppb/yr, Stephenson and Morrison, 1984] over the last 100 years, both decays are consistent with the classical 0.26 ppb/yr decoherence of aethertime within the uncertainty of the measurements. The dephasing of the universe represents phase information that is lost to observers of that same universe since observers dephase along with all other sources in the universe. However, the local decoherence rate does show up in various decays of matter and force and those measurements do provide an absolute velocity relative to the aethertime universe boundary. The shrinking of the universe in this epoch is what defines the speed of light, c, in aethertime.

Therefore, quantum entanglement and decoherence both represent a loss of information as quantum phase noise and so observers cannot know all quantum phase perturbations. While classical entanglement represents knowable perturbations with a determinate universe of local cause and effect, quantum entanglement also involves decoherence of quantum phase commensurate with the universe decay.