Does light exist between events?

This area is for the discussion of what's new, what's on your mind, and general photographic topics. A place to meet, make comments on this site, and get the latest community news.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

MacroLuv
Posts: 1964
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:36 pm
Location: Croatia

Does light exist between events?

Post by MacroLuv »

Because light is very important for us photographers (and for anyone else I bet) I'm providing you with this thinking bait:

Does light exist between events? :D

I've found this article with some of claims about the properties of light:

Scientists throughout history have called this mysterious energy by various names: rays, waves, light, beams, lumiferious ether, electromagetic radiation, quanta, photons, wavefunction, state vector, and who knows what else. All of the descriptors assume an existence in space-time.

Below lists just some of claims for this elusive force:

1. sometimes appears as corpuscules
2. sometimes appears as waves
3. exibits polarization as a transverse wave
4. the waves can bend around corners, as in diffraction
5. two waves can sometimes join and cause interference
6. the waves can sometimes bounce off of objects (reflection)
7. the waves can sometimes refract inside certain materials
8. an electomagnetic wave consists of an electric and magnetic field at right angles to each other.
9. wave & particle does not apply simultaneously to the same phenomenon (Bohr's complementary)
10. propagates rectilinearly within a uniform medium
11. electrons emit photons when changing energy levels
12. upon emission, light achieves instant light speed (186000 mps).
13. Light cannot travel faster than c but can go slower (in a medium)
14. an electron "absorbs" a photon when changing energy levels
15. can rotate its polarization angle when passing through a substance (Faraday effect)
16. light can exibit a pressure on matter (P. N. Lebedev)
17. gravity "attracts"(changes freqency but does not slow up) photons
18. a photon acts as the carrier of the electromagnetic force (note this statement implys two things: a carrier and force)
19. has no mass
20. has a stable lifetime
21. has zero charge
22. has a quantum spin of 1
23. when traveling between source and detector, the photon describes a wave function. When a detection occurs, the wave function collapses
24. mathematically appears as e=hv. The higher the frequency (v), the higher the energy.
25. some frequencies of radiation go right through some matter (X-rays, for example)
26. some frequencies of radiation get blocked (or absorbed) by matter (visible light)
27. In a double-slit experiment, the photon seems to go through both slits at the same time!

Try to assimilate these features and attempt a simple understanding of light. Mind you, this alleged fundamental particle, which has no mass and has no size, appears to have so many parts and features that a complex carburetor pales by comparison and with the elusive magic of a Houdini!

Hasn't something gone awry here? :shock:

No one, hroughout the history of science has ever seen or detected a photon in space!? To this day, there has never existed a single scientific evidential experiment that has shown the existence of a wave or a particle of light between emission and detection. So on what evidence do the believers rely on to justify their alleged photons?

If you shine a light or a laser through a cloudy atmosphere, you can clearly see what looks like a beam of light. But note that the illusion of the beam requires some material substance for its apparition. The beam consists of millions of particle events that occur at the electron level of the atoms in the clouded atmosphere. Taken individually, we have an event at the light source, an event at an atom in the air, and an event at your eyeball. When taken in total, it gives the appearance of a trajectory. Again, the only things we can detect amount to electron events (the measurement points).

To give another example of a similar illusion in a different media, think of dots moving across a computer screen. Does anything actually move? No, because all that happens involves turning on and off pixels. It just seems as if something moves through a trajectory. You cannot scientifically say that just because it seems to move, that it does.

(Excerpts from Jim Walker's article)
The meaning of beauty is in sharing with others.

P.S.
Noticing of my "a" and "the" and other grammar
errors are welcome. :D

Carl_Constantine
Posts: 304
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:02 am
Location: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Contact:

Post by Carl_Constantine »

Yep, Light has no one single property that qualifies it. Many experiements show that it is wavelets, or make that particles, I mean rays, I mean...AAARRRGGGHHH! :twisted: :twisted:
Carl B. Constantine

Moebius
Posts: 284
Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:53 am
Location: Omaha, Nebraska
Contact:

Post by Moebius »

I found a little video that helps one to understand the various properties of light. It goes over the famous slit experiment in an easy to understand fashion.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 0526284618

Ken Nelson

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic