The preceding post discussed the ACER (Ambient Cosmic Electromagnetic Radiation) and some of its implications. The ACER is present and detectable, at least in part, at the surface of the Earth. The CMB was discovered by a ground based antenna and in fact all pre-satellite-era cosmological observations were made at the surface of the Earth and involved the detection of various component frequencies of the ACER.

The situation is somewhat different in a closed room. Most of the ACER that does penetrate the atmosphere will not penetrate the walls and ceiling of the room. There will nonetheless be considerable ambient electromagnetic radiation some of it internally generated (artificial lighting, thermal radiation) and some measure of externally sourced penetrating radiation like radio frequencies. So in an enclosed room there will be an Ambient Local Electromagnetic Radiation (ALER) analogous to the ACER but having a somewhat different frequency distribution.

Some measure of ALER is present in every room humans might typically occupy including rooms dedicated to scientific experiments. Consider the room you are in as you read this. Not only is it suffused with visible light, there are also thermal radiation, radio frequencies and possibly some stray high energy UV and X, and gamma rays. We live our lives immersed in a sea of electromagnetic radiation whether sitting in a room or sitting out under a clear or cloudy, day or night, sky.

Of particular interest in this regard are the rooms where quantum experiments such as the double-slit are performed. They also are bathed in electromagnetic radiation. In one version of the double-slit experiment electrons are slowly fired at the double slit screen and are subsequently detected at a second screen. As the electrons accumulate they form an interference pattern which is said to prove or at least demonstrate that electrons are both waves and particles. This would be a reasonable conclusion except this explanation takes no note of the ALER through which the electron is traveling.

An electron affects an electromagnetic field and and is in turn affected by the field. This is not news; it is well established physics. Standard quantum theory pays no attention to the presence of the ALER and its interaction with the free electrons that are the subject of the experiment. The ALER is a chaotic field, streaming from all directions and comprised of many frequencies and yet the theoretical explanation of the double-slit experiment takes no account of the inescapable fact of the ALER’s presence and its unavoidable interaction with the electrons. Instead we get a dubious story about a wave-particle duality state that cannot be verified by observation, only believed in.

Such is the state of Quantum Theory – belief is obligatory because reality is irrelevant. In this it is of a piece with the rest of Modern Theoretical Physics – presenting an absurd, incoherent and at root irrational account of physical reality, one that bears almost no resemblance to the physical reality our lying eyes and instruments actually reveal to us. As with Ptolemaic cosmology, the math can be said to “work” but the physics is simply wrong.