For anyone that has ever mulled this over, I want to explain quantum “wave/particle duality.”
Imagine that you have a pool of water with a ball perched on the deck. The ball falls into the pool, causing waves. Ignoring for the moment the effects of the air and the loss of wave motion into heating of the water, the only way to stop the water waves is for the waves to combine to push the ball back up onto the deck.
In the quantum system, the “particle” is the ball. The “wave” is the water motion. Due to conservation of energy, you cannot bring the entire system back to rest unless both the particle (ball) and wave (water) are brought back to rest.
This understanding eludes quantum theorists because they subscribe to Einstein’s axiom that space is empty. This is necessary to his theory of gravity. In fact, however, we now know that space is filled with “dark energy.” Returning to our metaphor, dark energy is the “water.” An electron (for example) is the “particle.”
The mathematics are well known to the quantum theorists that study superconductivity. In that case, the particles are again electrons, and the waves are the vibrations in the metallic crystals (vibrations in the sense of a plucked guitar string).
So what does that do to the theory of gravity?
Einstein recognized that space is locally “flat.” When we think of the organization of dark energy, then, we should imagine that it packs in a cubical lattice.
Now introduce a “particle” that disturbs the cubical lattice. If the particle is uncharged, the only residual force is the attractive force called “gravity.” This arises to minimize (as Einstein tells us) the distortion of the cubical lattice. We observe that this tends to produce massive spheres. While minimizing the extent of the lattice disturbance, this also creates a persistent distortion in the lattice as it tries to wrap itself around the massive sphere.
When you have more than one mass, the lattice is going to try to bring them together to minimize the energy of the distortion.
The precession of the perihelion that is one of the primary proofs of General Relativity follows in this model because the cubical lattice is dragged around by the spheres as they orbit each other. The lattice must “slip” to restore order as a sphere passes, and it is that slipping that causes Mercury’s elliptical orbit to turn slightly on each revolution.
Thank you for that explanation.