- #1
shintashi
- 117
- 1
every time i read about photons, I'm always given one of two perspectives.
1: they are energy packets, [containing mass], and when falling below lightspeed, they switch from a 'plasma like' state to a solid state.
I have also heard opposing theories that photons don't contain mass, which allows them to move at light speed without having an apparent infinite mass. Thus when these same energy packets reach less than lightspeed velocity, they cease to exist.
In some aspects, it has been said that photons do not have mass, yet there are many ideas about Solar Sails to capture this minute momentum, and a few thousand essays on the concept of 'radiation pressure'.
Although I've seen mathematical equations constructed with (energy equals 1 + (blah blah x^y), I do not choose to believe these equations, especially since the margin of error with such experiments always renders the (1+ ...) irrelevent.
2: Energy waves. I have heard that photons were assigned a physical form for the sole reason of being able to travel in wave form, through vaccum, since a vacuum can't "wave", since it doesn't exist. This again, to me, seems like someone trying to cover a mistake, much like a grade schooler adding a line to turn a D+ into a B +, and most importantly to me, it feels "wrong".
If there is an aether, and you may feel free to call it spacetime, to avoid feeling confused, then wave propagation, or whatever they call it today, is possible. Ligh, in this aspect, could be a wave, like a wave in jello, or a wave in water or air.
This may seem far fetched, but Popular Science (in the last 2-3 years), began discussing a recent (not brand new) invention, which allows sonic pulses to be compressed into beams, or cone, much like a laser beam, and have practical applications for weapons and grocery store advertising. I do not claim to know or remember exactly how they did this, but I think they could do the same thing with an EM wave in spacetime.
In this regard, it seems ot me that a wave compressed into a stream, could appear to be a particle stream, but would merely be another wave, with no mass, having properties of both particles and waves, and still not having mass, or speed limit.
3. Then it occurred to me yesterday, that a photon may infact be a particle, but the particle is not traveling through nothing, it is traveling through a substance, like a bullet through jello. This could be creating a disruption, or "wake", behind the photon, constituting waves, which would be like a speed boat's wake.
It also occurs to me that a photon may "burn out" after 20 billion lightyears of travel, or something similar, and the aether may be so thin, that our instruments cannot measure the difference accurately as in the michael-morely experiment.
And of course, this whole idea gets confused when they speed of light seems to jump x 1000,000, according to some rather skeptical NASA researchers (do a google search "NASA faster than light" for more information)
...Thinking.
1: they are energy packets, [containing mass], and when falling below lightspeed, they switch from a 'plasma like' state to a solid state.
I have also heard opposing theories that photons don't contain mass, which allows them to move at light speed without having an apparent infinite mass. Thus when these same energy packets reach less than lightspeed velocity, they cease to exist.
In some aspects, it has been said that photons do not have mass, yet there are many ideas about Solar Sails to capture this minute momentum, and a few thousand essays on the concept of 'radiation pressure'.
Although I've seen mathematical equations constructed with (energy equals 1 + (blah blah x^y), I do not choose to believe these equations, especially since the margin of error with such experiments always renders the (1+ ...) irrelevent.
2: Energy waves. I have heard that photons were assigned a physical form for the sole reason of being able to travel in wave form, through vaccum, since a vacuum can't "wave", since it doesn't exist. This again, to me, seems like someone trying to cover a mistake, much like a grade schooler adding a line to turn a D+ into a B +, and most importantly to me, it feels "wrong".
If there is an aether, and you may feel free to call it spacetime, to avoid feeling confused, then wave propagation, or whatever they call it today, is possible. Ligh, in this aspect, could be a wave, like a wave in jello, or a wave in water or air.
This may seem far fetched, but Popular Science (in the last 2-3 years), began discussing a recent (not brand new) invention, which allows sonic pulses to be compressed into beams, or cone, much like a laser beam, and have practical applications for weapons and grocery store advertising. I do not claim to know or remember exactly how they did this, but I think they could do the same thing with an EM wave in spacetime.
In this regard, it seems ot me that a wave compressed into a stream, could appear to be a particle stream, but would merely be another wave, with no mass, having properties of both particles and waves, and still not having mass, or speed limit.
3. Then it occurred to me yesterday, that a photon may infact be a particle, but the particle is not traveling through nothing, it is traveling through a substance, like a bullet through jello. This could be creating a disruption, or "wake", behind the photon, constituting waves, which would be like a speed boat's wake.
It also occurs to me that a photon may "burn out" after 20 billion lightyears of travel, or something similar, and the aether may be so thin, that our instruments cannot measure the difference accurately as in the michael-morely experiment.
And of course, this whole idea gets confused when they speed of light seems to jump x 1000,000, according to some rather skeptical NASA researchers (do a google search "NASA faster than light" for more information)
...Thinking.