How come the quantum?
Wheeler asked this question and others in his famous paper with the same title. He also asked:
The necessity of the quantum in the construction of existence: out of what deeper requirement does it arise? Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that when — in a decade, a century, or a millennium — we grasp it, we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid for so long?
The answer was given, step by step, by Dirac, Battey-Pratt & Racey, and Kauffman. In fact, they answered before Wheeler asked! The quantum, more precisely, the quantum of action ℏ discovered by Planck, is due to a crossing switch. A crossing switch is a concept from mathematical knot theory:
This process produces the quantum of action ℏ, as discovered by Dirac in 1929, by Battey-Pratt & Racey in 1980, and by Kauffman in 1987.
Why did you never hear of this? It is because these authors did not dare to continue exploring the idea. The idea implies that all objects in nature are tied with strands to the cosmological horizon. This is hard to swallow. Particles must be tethered. Black holes must be thought anew.
But every known quantum effect follows from crossing switches — if you assume that strands are unobservable and that only crossing switches are observable. “Every known quantum effect” means: superpositions, interference, entanglement, decoherence, wavefunction collapse, decay, particle reactions, Dirac’s equation, gauge groups, elementary particles, black hole entropy, quantum gravity — you name it. All quantum effects are due to crossing switches.
This is shown here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361866270
All systems in nature must be due to strands. And indeed, this is possible to deduce. All properties of systems made of strands agree with the observed ones.
Enjoy the exploration.