Foundational Value of Light: Physics Foundations & Human Logic

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In summary, photons have mass to explain the energy of light, but we don't even know if photons exist because we can't find mass in light. There are only 2 possible explinations for this lack of mass, either it is moveing too fast to record, OR it is at absoult rest and the "frequncy" or our measuring tools interfear with acurate calculaton.
  • #1
JesseBonin
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when we build something we must have a starting point or a foundation, something constant. physics should be no exception.
lets use some basic human logic here. where is the logical foundation for physics? what in out universe is constant?

most physical laws are based in or on some theory of the function of light(even if light was not included)

example: what is an atom? how do we measure it? we assume that it is a nucleus with posative and negative orbitals (and guess that there may be such orbitals within the nucleus also) but how do we know? we measure its effect with things like x-ray, microwave, electron wave so on. then we graph the results. We probably have a close picture of what an atom is, but it would be purly accidental. All of the tools we use to measure such things use Light as the medium. the problem with this is that we do not account for light in the equation.

Light is the only thing in the universe that has no motion, yes has appearant velocity. We could also say that light has motion yet no appearant mass. If we apply the "speed of light" to our physical equations we comeoup with astonomical numbers that leave us feeling insignificant in the grand scheme of things. however, since we know light is constant (light travel at the same speed no matter how fast our appearant frame of referance moves) isent it a little presumptious of us to assume that it is light that is moveing and us that is at rest. Especially since we know without doubt that we are not at rest.

reguardless weather we are moving or it is light that is moveing, light is still the constant in our reality, and therefor the fundamental foundation for all knowledge and all things. So how do we value light?

Here is my particular paradox, light is absolute so let's give it a value so we may calculate all other things.

If light has no motion then is it massless and therefor should be "zero" however, light has affect so at the very least it should be numbered "one"

lets let light = 1 and the absence of light = 0 (rudementary digital)
the problem here is, "what exactly is the absence of light?" we find that our reality is only one side of the equation. SO there must be ANTI-MATTER or a parallel existence? But let's work with what we know. let's build our models based on light as the universal constant and give it a value of 1.
I am not a mathmatician so i will leave that up to you guys, i will however provide you with some possible starting points in later posts.
 
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  • #3
I'm thinking that anything that can be, but also be absent... isn't quite an absolute.
 
  • #4
Photons have mass, which is frequency dependent. The only the don't have mass is when they are at rest, which they never are.
 
  • #5
Prediction: We will never find anything inside the universe that seems to only move and not stand still, to only stand still and not move, that is without is not, that stands alone in any way shape or form.
 
  • #6
isent it? wouldn't it be LESS of an absolute if it were otherwise?

or

since we have no knowledge of the absence of light the absence may not exist.. this is the point where we make that "leap of faith"
 
  • #7
There does seem to be a leap of faith involved... can't quite put my finger on it though.
 
  • #8
Jimbroni said:
Photons have mass, which is frequency dependent. The only the don't have mass is when they are at rest, which they never are.

what brings you to this conclusion?

We have to speculate that photons have mass to explain the energy of light, but in truth we don't even know if photons exist. and the reason we don't know is becouse we cannot find mass in light. there are only 2 possible explinations for this lack of mass, either it is moveing too fast to record, OR it is at absoult rest and the "frequncy" or our measuring tools interfear with acurate calculaton.

We can compensate for the "harmonics" of our instumants but this is fundementally flawed in that the frequncy we assign the insturment is based on other insturments with harmonics of their own.

IE: a gamma ray measurement is calibrated with another gamma ray insturnment. the effect "freqency" is then divided by itself to achive a mean average. which is then deducted from the equation we are working with. However, there is no way of knowing if the reaction of 2 gamma rays are constant. If you drop a perfect ball bearing into a perfectly round pool of water, we can say that the wave pattern is the frequncy of that marble, dropping the same marble into the same pool should repeat the same pattern and it does. but what is the constant in this equation? the marble? the frequency? the size of the pool? or the water?

here is a couple mind benders..
What effect does light have on the pool experiment?
If light is photons traveling in waves, and photons have mass then the light in the room should have some effect on the frequency logically. So by adjusting the level of light shed on the test we should be able to measur the difference. But, no matter how much light we add or subtract the frequency remains the same. (include the WHOLE spectrum of light) the flaw in this test comes at the point where water boils. We cannot remove the atoms from the water at least not for the purposes of this test.

We know that light WILL effect atoms at some level but how do we measure that effect? it stands to reason also, that any effect light has on one medium it would have also on all other mediums present.

mind bender 2: the only constant we can assure with some reliability, is the light in the room. The marble is effected by gravity, the size and shape of the pool is in motion, the water suffers convection, as does the air in the room. The molecules the marble strikes on its second drop are not the same molecules that it struck previously. How ever, the light in the room is not subject to any of these permeations and therefor is the only constant in the test.

3: look in a mirror, is what you see truly a reflection? or is it the result of the light leaveing you reacting with the tinfoil behind the glass causing the tin to produce new light? anyone who has ever accidentially left tinfoil on a plate in a microwave can probably accuratly answer that queston.

4: why does light have spectrum? Well, we know that spectrum of light depends on the properties of the reflective material or medium. or the presence of photons in material a haxe x effect on material a. when photonic energy from material b comes in contact with material a, the effect is y=ab2+x look familer?
 
  • #9
JesseBonin said:
what brings you to this conclusion?

QUOTE]
E=mc^2
 
  • #10
Jim asked this on another thread, i thought is more appropriate here

What you are describing is a mechanical longitudinal wave, sound is a spherical longitudinal pressure wave. Light is not longitudinal it is a transverse EM wave. The term for what you are describing is diffraction.
Where we are getting hung up is not the mechanics of wave theory, but the mechanics of particle theory. You have been saying photons do not move correct? and that light is only a wave moving thru a medium which is nothing but photons. That is a very controversial statement because that's not what I learned in Physics.

My understanding is that photons are emitted and a shadow is an area where photon density is lower than neighboring regions. (ie review the double slit experiment)


Oh and sorry for taking us way off topic.

well, here is my solution you are absolutly correct, how ever, the only real difference between the 3 is dimensional, the water test is 2 dimensional, Sound is 4 dimentional, and light is (who knows how many dimentional) shadow is a result of the effect of passing through photons (or photons passing through something) maybe a closer analogy would be frozen smoke in a vacuum. It would better approximate shadow, however smoke has mass, and therefor motion and therefor a flaw.

remember that neither light nor shadow neccicarily have substance.
 
  • #11
JesseBonin said:
here is a couple mind benders..
What effect does light have on the pool experiment?
If light is photons traveling in waves, and photons have mass then the light in the room should have some effect on the frequency logically. So by adjusting the level of light shed on the test we should be able to measur the difference. But, no matter how much light we add or subtract the frequency remains the same. (include the WHOLE spectrum of light) the flaw in this test comes at the point where water boils. We cannot remove the atoms from the water at least not for the purposes of this test.

We know that light WILL effect atoms at some level but how do we measure that effect? it stands to reason also, that any effect light has on one medium it would have also on all other mediums present.

QUOTE]
Why does the second beam have to affect the frequency of the light in room.
In fact both sources of light already most likely contain many frequencies. Its quite rare to have interference patterns. (i.e. you have do a lot of work to get different frequencies to add or subtract to create new ones trust me I'm a musician there's only so many non dissonant chords)
 
  • #12
Energy = mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. even einstein was leary of predicting "rest energy" He understood his lack of understanding of the one thing he could not measure. LIGHT ENERGY(or some property thereof).

"IMAGINATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN KNOWLEDGE" Albert E.

you have a good grasp of what i call "pop-theory" but use your own interpretaions to devour my "pop-theory" that is how you and i will really learn from one another 8)
 
  • #13
JesseBonin said:
3: look in a mirror, is what you see truly a reflection? or is it the result of the light leaveing you reacting with the tinfoil behind the glass causing the tin to produce new light? anyone who has ever accidentially left tinfoil on a plate in a microwave can probably accuratly answer that queston.

QUOTE]
that is a twister, but really your simply describing energy transfer, which is wave theory in nut shell.
 
  • #14
JesseBonin said:
Energy = mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. even einstein was leary of predicting "rest energy" He understood his lack of understanding of the one thing he could not measure. LIGHT ENERGY(or some property thereof).

"IMAGINATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN KNOWLEDGE" Albert E.

you have a good grasp of what i call "pop-theory" but use your own interpretaions to devour my "pop-theory" that is how you and i will really learn from one another 8)

You're absolutely right. Its pretty tough to prove a photon has zero energy at rest.
 
  • #15
thats karma, i also am a musician (guitarist, pianist)

lets not confine ourselves to "measurable effects"
lets break the problem down and look at the different aspects of it.

e=mc2
 
  • #16
JesseBonin said:
4: why does light have spectrum? Well, we know that spectrum of light depends on the properties of the reflective material or medium. or the presence of photons in material a haxe x effect on material a. when photonic energy from material b comes in contact with material a, the effect is y=ab2+x look familer?

The frequencies would be dependent on the amount of energy released by the electrons. If you a bunch of electrons at different energy states wallah.
I'm not following how the quadractic fits in here?
 
  • #17
JesseBonin said:
thats karma, i also am a musician (guitarist, pianist)

lets not confine ourselves to "measurable effects"
lets break the problem down and look at the different aspects of it.

e=mc2
Yeah sorry, I am engineer so I tend to be grounded in reality.
 
  • #18
lets start with the hardest part to define c^2 (speed of light squared)
lets work metrically since the math is easier
c=300,000 kps (k/s) or kilometers per second
300,000 multiplied by 300,000 is ? 90,000,000,000
hmm, can anything known or imagined travel at 90billion kilometers per second?(35,344,000,000 miles per second)
lets give light a more reasonable speed like 1 (where 1 is equivilant to zero kps)

e=mass multiplied by 1
or e=Mass now we find a real problem or is it. since we model "mass" based on treditional theory of light speed our mass is numerically incorrect. and therfor disturbes the entire equation. it does however answer the question of lights consistency through frame of referance, 1^any whole number is still 1
 
  • #19
012345
123456
this is a replacement system neccesary to define "zero" since there is no such thing as "zero definition" and since it takes light 1 year to travel from point a to point b as we percive it lightspeed is 1. Very hard to explain, well not if light is already there and it simple takes us a year to percieve it... another topic maybe
 
  • #20
http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~phy2048/2048lecnotes/08_energy_cons/supplement.pdf [Broken]
intersting diagram, look at from the perspective of this thread and see what kind of conclusions you come up with 8)
 
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  • #21
One-Atom Theory

I have just been curious if anyone has heard about the theory that the entire universe is just one photon, or one atom is what it was perhaps? :rolleyes: , that is traveling back and forth across the universe and thus creating everything we see around us. It escapes my mind at this moment as to who developed this theory (Dirac maybe? :confused: ) but if anyone has any comments about this please feel free to respond.
 
  • #22
Ever since Feynman noticed that the math for a positron is the same as the math for an electron with negative time, the speculation that there is only one electron in the universe, bouncing back and forth in time, has been popular. I suppose the same idea could be applied to quarks and neutrinos - fermions that differ from their antiparticles. But what are you going to do about particles like the photon and the weak force boson Z0 that are their own antiparticles?
 
  • #23
Jesse,
Sorry to leave you hangin.
I've been extraoridinarily busy lately. Its landscaping season and work was heating for a minute.
I'm not sure what you're asking me here so could you rephrase.
Its 90 billion km^2/s^2, which is not a speed. So nothing would move that fast. Well never say never. :)

Heres a link you maybe interested in.
http://www.vscht.cz/mat/Pavel.Pokorny/physics/photon_mass.html


JesseBonin said:
lets start with the hardest part to define c^2 (speed of light squared)
lets work metrically since the math is easier
c=300,000 kps (k/s) or kilometers per second
300,000 multiplied by 300,000 is ? 90,000,000,000
hmm, can anything known or imagined travel at 90billion kilometers per second?(35,344,000,000 miles per second)
lets give light a more reasonable speed like 1 (where 1 is equivilant to zero kps)

e=mass multiplied by 1
or e=Mass now we find a real problem or is it. since we model "mass" based on treditional theory of light speed our mass is numerically incorrect. and therfor disturbes the entire equation. it does however answer the question of lights consistency through frame of referance, 1^any whole number is still 1
 
  • #24
Jimbroni said:
Jesse,
Sorry to leave you hangin.
I've been extraoridinarily busy lately. Its landscaping season and work was heating for a minute.
I'm not sure what you're asking me here so could you rephrase.
Its 90 billion km^2/s^2, which is not a speed. So nothing would move that fast. Well never say never. :)

Heres a link you maybe interested in.
http://www.vscht.cz/mat/Pavel.Pokorny/physics/photon_mass.html


If you want to calculate the energy values of mc^2, you can simplify things by expressing c in some units like light years per year or light nanoseconds per nanosecond where it comes out 1. But then you have energy coming out in odd units too. If you want energy in Joules, then you have to express c in meters per second, square it, and multiply that value by mass in kilograms.

No c^2 is not a speed, it's part of an energy formula and energy has units ml^2/t^2 or m(v)^2.
 
  • #25
Tachyon26 said:
I have just been curious if anyone has heard about the theory that the entire universe is just one photon, or one atom is what it was perhaps? :rolleyes: , that is traveling back and forth across the universe and thus creating everything we see around us. It escapes my mind at this moment as to who developed this theory (Dirac maybe? :confused: ) but if anyone has any comments about this please feel free to respond.

This is what Jesse is more or less been theorizing on. Its puzzling to say the least. By E=Mc^2 Photons have mass in the same breath anything traveling the speed of light has infinite mass.

I'm starting to think what Jesse has been describing is ether and not really photons. See the link below for Einsteins argument for and against the concept of ether.

http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/Ether.html [Broken]
 
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  • #26
JesseBonin said:
when we build something we must have a starting point or a foundation, something constant. physics should be no exception.
lets use some basic human logic here. where is the logical foundation for physics? what in out universe is constant?...Light is the only thing in the universe that has no motion, yes has appearant velocity. ...If light has no motion then is it massless and therefor should be "zero" however, light has affect so at the very least it should be numbered "one"

lets let light = 1 and the absence of light = 0 (rudementary digital)
the problem here is, "what exactly is the absence of light?" we find that our reality is only one side of the equation. SO there must be ANTI-MATTER or a parallel existence? But let's work with what we know. let's build our models based on light as the universal constant and give it a value of 1.
I am not a mathmatician so i will leave that up to you guys, i will however provide you with some possible starting points in later posts.

Sorry to be late to this. I like your idea on the assignment of 1 and 0. Assigning '1' to some unit of light and not simply zero mass. Quantum mechanics (QM) has us discard the classical calculation of momentum (mv) for the alternate (hv/c) so that the mass concept can be discarded at light speed which gives the zero problem you would like to fix. But this massless realm is precisely the point at which we must use the light speed conjectures of special relativity (SR). The two theories are then inseparable and should not hold isolated arguments. We can not at one time discard mass in QM when in the first place we have defined its existence as having energy based on its equivalency with mass in SR. We need to make the final change of assigning mass to any object having momentum, including the photon, so that mass will only go to zero when their is no energy at all. To argue otherwise is to discount the radiation in the universe as not being convertible to mass which we know is absurd, we do this all the time.

This amounts to the same thing you suggested I think. I'll repeat your idea back, tell me if I am interpreting it correctly: You are suggesting that the zero correspond to the moving light, since theorists are insistent on making its mass zero and therefore its classical momentum zero. (then they turn around and start using a non-zero statement of momentum in a different form. It looks like a shell game), so let's just say it is zero only if it is not there and 1 when it is there. I don't think we need to start with your assumption of zero motion however. How we physically interpret it goes back to their shell game. We can interpret it after we get a result.

I have one suggestion on this. Why assume that what we see in our equation (for '1') is reality (as you suggested) and that the other side is parallel reality? I think that our algebraic equations and analysis (calculus) always show only one side of a story naturally. If we treat the situation as energy balance such as in the energy theorem or thermodynamic laws, we should simply say that our equation for "1" (the light) does not include a second "energy reservoir". That is, where the '1' goes when it leaves our equation, and toggled to zero. This second reservoir absorbs that energy (or entity). So we need an equation for the reservoir of light quanta to toggle to '0', but that quantity didn't just disappear, it went to another reservoir, as I said, and so we want an additional equation which shows it appearing in the second reservoir (where-it-went) as '1' .

This would be a system of two linear equations. It is a lot like the quantum mechanical rules that Heisenberg came up with to show how light leaves and comes back to the orbiting electron of Bohr theory. Ultimately, I think the fixes you propose get very complex.

Also, I think your substitution of [0,1,2,3...] with [1,2,3,4...] is the correct approach. But since the series of integers is simply admitted without proof by mathematicians for most work, then, you will have to make this substitution by considering the sequence of integers as an obscure logarithmic sequence (which it is). Then the transform to offset each integer is also an obscure transform in logrithmic series.
 
  • #27
Do We Need a Radically New Spacetime/Quantum Worldview

http://www.Newton.cam.ac.uk/webseminars/hartle60/2-penrose/032.jpg

If one moves to Planck length and Planck time, how shall new computers reveal the nature of such communications? Explorations into the ideas of cryptology are a interesting take on the ideas being expressed here, but goes well past the current limitations and presents new opportunities?

If one moves to the idea of such energy capabilities, from a geometrical standpoint, how could you include so much data, and move these considerations to say, ideas in numerical relativity using extraordinary amounts of memory. Can we then create visualizations that come pretty close to the nature and "dynamics" (curvature) of such movement, not only in context of the cosmological pallete, but of what we see in this quantum world?

http://www.supercomputingonline.com/images/displaywall.jpg

Yesterday, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, announced that it has teamed with Force10 Networks, SysKonnect, FineTec Computers and Ixia to put together a demonstration system running a real-world scientific application (Cactus -- developed by Professor Ed Seidel and his team at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany) to produce data on one cluster, and then ship over the resulting data across a 10-Gigabit Ethernet connection to another cluster, where it is then rendered for visualization. Specifically, it visualizes the gravity waves resulting from the collision of two black holes.

http://www.supercomputingonline.com/article.php?sid=2252 [Broken]

The call here then I believe, requires a new language and a math that arises out of such supersymmertical states? If we can collect so much data from LIGO how shall we contain this information and help us desribe this world of the graviton?

Whether such a "quantum computer" can realistically be built with a value of L that is large enough to be of practical use is a topic of much debate. However, the mere possibility has led to an explosive renaissance of interest in the host of curious and classically counterintuitive properties associated with entangled states. Other phenomena that rely on nonlocal entanglement, such as quantum teleportation and various forms of quantum cryptography, have also been demonstrated in the laboratory

http://physicsweb.org/article/world/12/12/19/1

From this point, a interesting exploration was taken into the ideas of spintronics states. GHZ entanglement was a natural consequence of such leading perspective here about photon entanglement. This all leads from the idea of Penrose as shown.

http://wc0.worldcrossing.com/WebX?14@168.KwMlbbsGVtD.6@.1dde6f77 [Broken]
 
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1. What is the foundational value of light in physics?

The foundational value of light in physics is its fundamental role in our understanding of the universe. Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, and it is a crucial element in many physical processes, such as energy transfer, atomic and molecular interactions, and the behavior of matter in general.

2. How does light behave as a particle and a wave?

Light has both particle-like and wave-like properties, known as wave-particle duality. This means that light can behave as a stream of particles called photons, which are packets of energy, and also as a wave that has properties such as frequency, wavelength, and amplitude. This duality is a key concept in understanding the behavior of light in different physical scenarios.

3. What is the role of human logic in understanding the foundational value of light?

Human logic plays a crucial role in understanding the foundational value of light in physics. Through the use of logical reasoning and deductions, scientists have been able to develop theories and models that explain the behavior of light and its interactions with matter. Human logic also allows for the interpretation and understanding of experimental data related to light.

4. How does light influence our daily lives?

Light plays a vital role in our daily lives, both in practical and philosophical terms. On a practical level, light enables us to see, provides warmth, and is the basis for technologies such as electricity, communication systems, and medical imaging. On a philosophical level, light has been a source of inspiration for artists, poets, and thinkers throughout history, and has been associated with concepts such as knowledge, enlightenment, and truth.

5. What are the current frontiers of research regarding the foundational value of light?

Current research on the foundational value of light includes areas such as quantum optics, where scientists are studying the properties of light at the quantum level, and optical technologies that have applications in fields such as telecommunications, imaging, and sensing. Other areas of research include the study of light-matter interactions, the development of new materials and devices for controlling light, and the use of light in cutting-edge technologies such as quantum computing and cryptography.

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