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Marc Nash
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As a writer, light is as crucial as it is to physicists. But I'm struggling with some conceptual understanding surrounding light. If you could supply any answers to this science layman I would be very grateful.
1) Without light there is no way of observing and measuring. So light is both itself data and the medium for data to be conveyed at the same time?
2) The speed of light is the speed limit of the universe. But light can't escape a black hole, because the speed of tumbling matter once past the event horizon is greater? Or is it that light can't overcome the huge gravity in a black hole, in which case how does this work? Past the inner horizon and the tidal sweep through the black hole's rotation heats up the interior higher than even the core fusion energy produced in stars - is this the energy that counters that of light preventing its escape?
3) Doesn't light itself behave relativistically? That is, in Einstein's gedankenexperiment a man traveling astride a beam of light does not experience light as moving because he is moving at the same speed. Light is effectively stilled, he will always remain astride the same 'block' of light, or is this not a legitimate way to conceive of light? Is there any usefulness in conceiving of blocks or bits or segments of light - we know that it travels at 186,000 miles per second, and we have a concept of only receiving now the light transmitted from stars x light years away, but light is light unless we can somehow differentiate it or have I grossly misunderstood this? Again there seems to me the dual nature of light as data itself and the medium by which other data is transferred to us.
Thanks for your help
1) Without light there is no way of observing and measuring. So light is both itself data and the medium for data to be conveyed at the same time?
2) The speed of light is the speed limit of the universe. But light can't escape a black hole, because the speed of tumbling matter once past the event horizon is greater? Or is it that light can't overcome the huge gravity in a black hole, in which case how does this work? Past the inner horizon and the tidal sweep through the black hole's rotation heats up the interior higher than even the core fusion energy produced in stars - is this the energy that counters that of light preventing its escape?
3) Doesn't light itself behave relativistically? That is, in Einstein's gedankenexperiment a man traveling astride a beam of light does not experience light as moving because he is moving at the same speed. Light is effectively stilled, he will always remain astride the same 'block' of light, or is this not a legitimate way to conceive of light? Is there any usefulness in conceiving of blocks or bits or segments of light - we know that it travels at 186,000 miles per second, and we have a concept of only receiving now the light transmitted from stars x light years away, but light is light unless we can somehow differentiate it or have I grossly misunderstood this? Again there seems to me the dual nature of light as data itself and the medium by which other data is transferred to us.
Thanks for your help