[Southack]

"When an electron and a positron annihilate, their fields annihilate, too. We go from some field--with a vanishing monopole moment in the far field, but with a substantial dipole moment, right up to the end--to no field at all. (I hope you will agree that once the particles are annihilated, their field suddenly disappears.) The collapse of the field demonstrably travels outwards at the speed of light, because the collapse of the field physically manifests itself in the form of photons, as is demanded by quantum mechanics (no relativity involved, here)."

Man, don't tell Boris!

OK, so the field collapses, and we see a non-field entity called a proton emit outwards from this collapse at the speed of Light.

Now, can we demonstrably show that the Field itself is collapsing at the speed of Light, rather than that the *effects* of the Field collapsing emit themselves at the speed of Light?

[Physicist]

Now, can we demonstrably show that the Field itself is collapsing at the speed of Light, rather than that the *effects* of the Field collapsing emit themselves at the speed of Light?

Yes. Because if the field out here collapsed at some earlier time, the field energy out here would have been released at that earlier time, and manifested itself in the form of photons emitted nearby. (That energy cannot be manifest in any other way, per QM.) That doesn't happen, because if it did we'd see persistent "ghost sources" on the sky that don't line up with standard (i.e. blackbody) optical sources.

[Southack]

"The collapse of the field demonstrably travels outwards at the speed of light, because the collapse of the field physically manifests itself in the form of photons..."

One more point, you make it sound as though a Field is collapsing OUTWARD, rather than inward.

Is that really what is happening? Do Fields really collapse OUTWARD? When I turn an electromagnetic OFF, the magnetic Field goes from covering some area to covering no area, yet if it collapsed outward, one might think that it went from covering some finite area to covering an infinite area.

Surely what we are seeing is that the Field collapses inward, and this action causes a photon to be emitted outward, correct?