On Defining a Living Element as an Increment of Wave Energy to an Existing Particle-wave

Abstract

Abstract

This paper overall treats the timeless mind-body problem. Descartes said: "I think, therefore I am." This suggests the existence of life in a non-material world, specifically, a spacetime that is devoid of particles, which then evokes the equally celebrated theme of the wave-particle duality, which is the foundation of quantum mechanics. Correspondingly in mathematics, there is a dichotomy of the real number 1, and the imaginary number i - - which has however presented itself as a mystery for centuries. Here, we maintain that a 1-dimensional manifold is either a line or otherwise with curvatures and any curvature can be locally fitted by a circle, i.e., either a line with unit 1 or a unit circle expressed by exp(it), such as in the contrast between a linear calendar time t and a circular clock time it, or a linear expansion versus a rotational motion as indicated by the eigenvalues of a linear operator in a dynamical system. As such, the imaginary number i is just a periodic motion, or a wave. While Maxwell’s electromagnetic wave has energy, the quantum wave is yet a probability; we unify these two treatments of the wave by equating the quantum wave with Maxwell’s electromagnetic wave. The wave-particle duality logically leads to a diagonal spacetime manifold containing {(particle, its associated electromagnetic wave)}. In literature, a particle wave has its energy E distributed into (3E/4, E/4) respectively. Experimentally, a 50/50 beam splitter has been found to split half of the E/4 into a particle-less wave, evidencing the existence of a separate but coincidental wave universe; it is here that we define a living element as a set of particle-less electromagnetic waves that adds life to a set of molecules in the particle universe. We will present the mathematical formulation of the above and examine its implications and applications.