Light is confusing for me. Sometimes it acts as particles (photons). Other times it acts as waves. Can't it make up it's mind? Why doesn't light slow down when it bounces of an object? Wouldn't a collision with something take away some of it's energy thusly affecting it's speed? If light is acting as a wave, what is the medium that this wave is travelling through? Usually a wave form needs a medium to travel thru. But then radio waves can travel thru anything, even space, without a medium such as water or air.

What is gravity? Some say it is particles (gravitrons). Others say it is caused by the mass of an object curving the fabric of space around it. So if a black hole is creating a really really deep "pothole" in the fabric of space wouldn't matter that happens to fall into it just follow around the "walls" of this pot hole and go back out into space again? (you know how they draw space as a grid that curves around a planet because of it's gravity on all those science shows on tv)

Magnetism. Does the magnetic field around a magnet (permanent or electromagnet) move? Or is it stationary. But if it doesn't move then when a piece of metal becomes a magnet through electricity (becoming an electromagnet) then how does the magnetic field form around the piece of metal? Does it start from within the metal and somehow "grow" out to it's maximum area? If so then what pushes it out? When an electromagnet shuts off what happens to the magnetic field? Does it just dissappear? Collapse?

The big bang theory. If there was an explosion that sent all that scrunched up matter flying out like schrapnel from a grenade, or like spokes radiating from a hub...then how could galaxies collide with eachother? Aren't they on their own separate line of flight away from the initial explosion?

Space. They say space was created when the big bang occurred and is continuously expanding, like a balloon inflating. What then is space expanding into?


"all will be known, grasshopper...but first grab the pebble from my hand"

For starters I suggest you learn enough physics, such as given in a good high school or first year college course. There is no royal road to education!

Oh c'mon. Give them a try. I took highschool physics. Can't remember ever discussing these questions.

Mario, I think your question show intellect, you are thinking, and your analysis is very good.

Do not let the bastards wear you down..

Look up Compton scattering, it seem when light intereferres with different wave forms of electromagnetic waves, energy is lost, and wavelength is slightly degraded.

The types of wave structure are the concentric spherical wave form, the spiral longitudinal vortex and others if you can conceive a different wave form in 3D space.

Magnetic fields are stationary unless the pole is moving, think of them as elastic rubber bands,,, these are the lines of force.

Electric fields can drag (accelerate ) magnetic lines of force, so the lines of magnetic force in the Solar System are dragged into a spiral away from the Sun,,,, bit like a garden sprinkler pattern... At earth distance the lines of force are at 45 degrees to the Earth-Sun line.

A lot of electrodynamics has been elucidated but not many people are up to speed.


I must go, I will talk later

:)

bastards

Yes, and you told once that you are a scientist

Light is confusing for me. Sometimes it acts as particles (photons). Other times it acts as waves.
As far as my understanding goes, light is at the same time waves and particles.

Can't it make up it's mind? Why doesn't light slow down when it bounces of an object? Wouldn't a collision with something take away some of it's energy thusly affecting it's speed?
It does. That's why there are different wavelenghts of photons coming from stars. The light that is reaching your eye right now, from the sun, was created some hundreds of thousands of years ago, in the core of the sun. That light had a very short wavelenght and a very high-frequuency, with a much more higher energy. But since the light has to go from the center to out of the sun, the light keeps colliding with other particles such as electrons and He nuclei, and the light keeps bouncing back and forth inside the sun. It takes thousands and thousands of years for the light to come out, and by the time it comes out, it has lost its energy, it has a longer wavelenght and a smaller frequency. You can measure those photons, taking the spectra of the sun. Then, you will get a Plack-curve and blah, blah, blah....

You can learn that in Astronomy 102 or something like that (number varies from college to college, university to university)...
Or through Astrophysics books... ;)

If light is acting as a wave, what is the medium that this wave is travelling through? Usually a wave form needs a medium to travel thru. But then radio waves can travel thru anything, even space, without a medium such as water or air.
Light doesn't need a medium to travel through. It travels faster in open space, of course.

What is gravity? Some say it is particles (gravitrons). Others say it is caused by the mass of an object curving the fabric of space around it.
There is only speculation about the graviton. Nobody has seen it. But both cases are probably right...

So if a black hole is creating a really really deep "pothole" in the fabric of space wouldn't matter that happens to fall into it just follow around the "walls" of this pot hole and go back out into space again? (you know how they draw space as a grid that curves around a planet because of it's gravity on all those science shows on tv)
It would go back to space. And it doesn't follow around the "walls". There are no walls in the first place...


Many of your questions don't really have an answer yet. Others, you just need some more information and study... ;)

Thanks everyone. That sort of clears some stuff up. So if light slows down from collisions with other things does it still travel at the typical speed or slightly lower. How about if it hits a mirror head on? If it was strictly in particle form (photons) wouldn't it come to a complete stop hitting the mirror and then accelerate again as it reflects off of it? I know it probably doesn't act like a rubber ball. But still.....

>> So if light slows down from collisions with other things does it still travel at the typical speed or slightly lower.

Light slows down in different medium, some medium eg caesium atoms at almost absolute zero can slow it down to a very slow speed.

However as with water waves, when they hit something the waves lose energy, their amplitude is lessened and the wavelength gets longer, the same happens with light, but the speed in the medium remains the same.
:)

It is only the apparent overall speed of light that is slowed down. Between miolecules and atoms, light still moves at c (so unlike classical bodies, it doesn't lose classical momentum when it 'hits' an atom). So an individual photon never slows down. What happens is that the photon is absorbed by an atom or molecule and then may be re-emitted again. Depending on the type of molecule/atom, this process takes some time.

>> What happens is that the photon is absorbed by an atom or molecule and then may be re-emitted again. Depending on the type of molecule/atom, this process takes some time.

This theory is full of holes... what keeps the coherence of the light photon's image in such a process?

This theory is full of holes...

What holes, precisely?

what keeps the coherence of the light photon's image in such a process?

What is "the light photon's image", and why must it be coherent in the first place?

This theory is full of holes... what keeps the coherence of the light photon's image in such a process?
Nooo... I think he is right. His answer was actually more precise than mine...

It is quite obvious for me, that an electrodynamic wave (such as light) can pass through transparent material with its directional relationships mainly coherent. however there is some dispersion. Matter does not have the strong electric fields that can be atrificially generated, if fact it many have a 'base' level of electric spin, at any given temperature of the matter.

If you liken this situation to a water wave, travelling in deeper and shallow water depths.....

The water surface wave speeds up in shallow water or slows down in deeper water. It seems to be a compensating momentum situation, as is seen in so many examples... symmetrical energy relationships, this is equivalent to the concept of refractive index and the speed of light.

as for

>> why must it be coherent in the first place?

Because it has a wavelength, polarisation shows that certain orientations of a light transmission are coherent, and each section contains information, and that information is coherent for the total image that may be formed by reflection of that mixed polarised light off an object.

Coherent laser light is a contrived example that obviously passes through transparent material relatively unaltered.

Now if you consider matter to be unpolarised in regards to electron spin.... (polarised electron spin is supposed to account for magnetism)..... then this 'electron spin' concept creates its own enigmas in transparent materials. Theory is clearly lacking..... and should be totally discarded except for historical or discussion puposes... but the current theories are clearly incorrect, and should be clearly considerd thus.

I suggest you track down what little there is available on the eleven-dimensional model of the universe. It does not answer all of your questions, but it restates them in a context that is more elegant and has fewer loose ends.

If you think of particles oscillating in regular patterns in several more dimensions, then once in each cycle, for an instant of time with almost zero duration, they intersect our three-dimensional living space so that we can be aware of them and wonder about them but not really observe them well enough to figure them out.

I don't know whether this model has proven useful. I haven't seen much about it for several years. But I suspect that the model that finally works will be something similar: many more dimensions to the universe than four. It will explain how something can be both a wave and a particle, it will deliver the universal constants that express the ratios of the mass of the elementary particles, and it will finally incorporate gravity into the GUTE.

it many have a 'base' level of electric spin, at any given temperature of the matter.

What is electric spin?


Because it has a wavelength, polarisation shows that certain orientations of a light transmission are coherent, and each section contains information, and that information is coherent for the total image that may be formed by reflection of that mixed polarised light off an object.

??????? :confused: :confused: ???????


Coherent laser light is a contrived example that obviously passes through transparent material relatively unaltered.

Transparency is relative, it depends on the wavelength. If a material is transparent at some wavelength, that means that frm the absorption pov the light is almost unaltered.


Now if you consider matter to be unpolarised in regards to electron spin.... (polarised electron spin is supposed to account for magnetism)..... then this 'electron spin' concept creates its own enigmas in transparent materials. Theory is clearly lacking..... and should be totally discarded except for historical or discussion puposes... but the current theories are clearly incorrect, and should be clearly considerd thus.

As I once told you, you do not have a clue of what is the electron spin. You do not have a clue of Solid State physics. How can you say that a theory that you don't understand almost nothing should be considered as wrong?

Yes, "the "elegant" universe" has 11 dimensions. :bugeye:

Gimme a break! Nature keeps proving itself to be quite simple. Eleven dimensions is way too much complex for a simple universe. If you want to understand the universe, keep it simple. Nature never gets too complicated.

Btw, as far as I know, this whole superstring theory is just another arrogant theory to impress people... :rolleyes:

Gimme a break! Nature keeps proving itself to be quite simple. Eleven dimensions is way too much complex for a simple universe. If you want to understand the universe, keep it simple. Nature never gets too complicated.Ever study quantum physics? I would hardly call it 'simple,' but it has fantastic predictive value.

Ever study quantum physics? I would hardly call it 'simple,' but it has fantastic predictive value.
Yes, I've studied Quantum Physics. And in fact, even differentiation and integration are simple once you understand what you are doing. However, 11 dimensions seems way too much. I mean... you can derive the superstring theory from the Quantum Physics, but I believe it is just an exageration. I believe there should be a simpler way. I mean... a theory of everything would include a single particle, which would allow all that we see in the universe. I wouldn't be surprised if this particle would actually be a single quanta, a tiny space-time quantity.

Remember when we discovered the atom? We thought it was the ultimate particle we called "atom", right? Than we started observing all those other particles and we suddenly had more subatomic particles than atoms!!! And they were extremely complicated with all their different properties! What happened next? Quarks. Are quarks complicated? Not at all. They are actually a very simple explanation for the different properties of the subatomic particles. Did we ever observed one? No. Why? Because we would need a whole lot of energy to split a subatomic particle into quarks. But quarks probably exist.

I don't know what is the ultimate particle. But I could bet a lot ofmoney that the most simple particle is actually an infinitessimal amount of space-time that we call "quanta". And all those discrete amounts of space-time tied together would created the illusion of the continuous space-time.

So if light slows down travelling thru a certain kind of medium does it speed back up when it leaves that medium?

There really isn't any slowing down of the light mario. It is absorbed and reemitted by the material it strikes. There is a delay (be it small) between the time a photon was absorbed and a photon is emitted by an atom. It's what causes the effect of refraction. But what I'm getting to is that light always travels at c. It can never slow down, or for that matter speed back up. It can't accelerate and decelerate.

technically no. light travels at a constant speed. it just tends to have a harder time traveling through some materials than it does others. remember the photon hitting the electron, the electron then bouncing into a higher orbital, and remitting a photon? well, in denser materials this tends to happen more often, so essentially light takes longer getting through the material, but it doesn't slow down.

as for black holes, i know relatively little about them [or physics in general for that matter, so if i am mistaken please let me know], but from what i can tell, they are singularities comprised of massive amounts of, uh, mass. now, mass exhibits gravitational attraction. now, think of a satellite orbiting the earth. it has to maintain a certain speed. if it goes too fast, it flies off into the cosmos, if it goes too slow, it plummets to earth. now, light is supposed to be the speed limit of the universe. yet a black hole "sucks in" everything, including light [i think this is the reason for the event horizon], which is to say that nothing can travel fast enough to escape a black hole. now, i know at this point you are asking yourself "why?" this is where it gets tricky, and where my knowledge of the subject turns into mere conjecture. i have heard that the gravitational field of a black hole is smaller in diameter than that of a sun, even while it is much more powerful. i think this can be attributed to the curving of space time [that grid thing] around the black hole. so that, in effect, there is a greater "amount" of space time in a smaller area. damn, i am explaining this very poorly. wish i had a dry erase board. if anyone would like to clarify or blast my ideas to hell, i would appreciate that.

Truthseeker. Appearently you're talking out your butt given your response. I don't think you know what you're talking about let alone your understanding of quantum physics (string theory and quantum mechanics are too different theories...one compliments the other). You talk of a single particle. But what string theory tries to do is provide a single building block to the universe by using a one-dimensional string of energy that "vibrates". Different vibration states make it act like a different particle like an up quark or an electron. For the theory to work it requires 11 dimensions. This may seem complicated to you...hell it's complicated to me. But who said the universe was simple? Just look at how hard it is to accurately model the weather.

BTW...who said quarks haven't been "seen"? CERN's and Fermilab's detectors pick up the decay of quarks from collisions. Brookhaven's RHC possibly created a quark-gluon plasma. Experimentally, quarks DO exist.

Truthseeker how about this integral.

(sin^4 x) (cos^2 x) dx

The concept of integration is easy to understand when its the power rule or even integration by parts. But that integral right there will most likely be too complicated for most the people here. yet to approximaite an integral such as this one is easy.

The approximation can be much simpler then the actual integral.

My point is that the world we see works so well in newton equations yet breaks on the extremes. Newtons equations seemed so simple but did not fit all the facts. The world only seems simple when you look at the approximate view.

BTW...who said quarks haven't been "seen"? CERN's and Fermilab's detectors pick up the decay of quarks from collisions. Brookhaven's RHC possibly created a quark-gluon plasma. Experimentally, quarks DO exist.

In fact quarks have allready seen long ago (although not free) in deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons. Look for the parton model.

Truthseeker. Appearently you're talking out your butt given your response. I don't think you know what you're talking about let alone your understanding of quantum physics (string theory and quantum mechanics are too different theories...one compliments the other).
I didn't say they are the same. I said they go together, that's all. I don't think you really know how well I know about those things.


You talk of a single particle. But what string theory tries to do is provide a single building block to the universe by using a one-dimensional string of energy that "vibrates".
I know that.


Different vibration states make it act like a different particle like an up quark or an electron. For the theory to work it requires 11 dimensions. This may seem complicated to you...hell it's complicated to me. But who said the universe was simple? Just look at how hard it is to accurately model the weather.
Even the weather is essentially simple. There is a difference between looking at things in a whole way and lookign them in parts. When you look at just the part of something, that something looks complicated because you don't have enough information. The lack of information is what makes it hard to understand. But once you look at the whole, that "something" makes more sense.


BTW...who said quarks haven't been "seen"? CERN's and Fermilab's detectors pick up the decay of quarks from collisions. Brookhaven's RHC possibly created a quark-gluon plasma. Experimentally, quarks DO exist.
As far as I know they haven't been seen all by themselves. And I NEVER said that they don't exist. :bugeye:

Truthseeker how about this integral.

(sin^4 x) (cos^2 x) dx
Looks interesting and yucky... :D


The concept of integration is easy to understand when its the power rule or even integration by parts. But that integral right there will most likely be too complicated for most the people here. yet to approximaite an integral such as this one is easy.

The approximation can be much simpler then the actual integral.
Well... at least approximation gives us an idea... :D
If the approximation is good enough, why wouldn't you use the approximation? I mean... we can approximate the square root of 999 by using derivatives. I don't remember how much it is, but an example of the difference between an approximation and an actual value would be like 0.5557678956 as the actual value and 0.555 as the approximation. The margin of error is extrememly slow. With some skills of statistics, you can calculate the chances of an error and you may find out that they are pretty low...


My point is that the world we see works so well in newton equations yet breaks on the extremes. Newtons equations seemed so simple but did not fit all the facts. The world only seems simple when you look at the approximate view.
Our newest equations are complicated because we don't know the whole universe all that well. Finding a few constants and playing with the numbers and equations a little bit more might make it a little bit simpler. Only when we know the universe as a whole that we will see the whole simplicity of the universe. I mean... what's the integral of x⁴e^x dx? I can tell you, it is horrible. But if you differentiate it, you have something very simple. Our perspective make all the difference. ;)

Read up on loop quantum gravity... There was a fantastic article in Scientific American about it. It would interest all involved here.

(sin^4 x) (cos^2 x) dx

The concept of integration is easy to understand when its the power rule or even integration by parts. But that integral right there will most likely be too complicated for most the people here. yet to approximaite an integral such as this one is easy.

Integration itself is only an approximation (albeit a highly accurate one!) of the world am I not mistaken?

Integration itself is only an approximation (albeit a highly accurate one!) of the world am I not mistaken?
In a way, yes. I mean... who cares that the area under the curve is actually 59.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 9 instead of 60...? :D

Differentiation and integration just use the limits to give us a break on so many "useless" numbers... ;)

In a way, yes. I mean... who cares that the area under the curve is actually 59.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 9 instead of 60...? :D

Differentiation and integration just use the limits to give us a break on so many "useless" numbers... ;)
BTW, 59.99999999999999999.... = 60 (if you have an infinite number of nines).

Ok so a photon gets momentarily absorbed by another particle and then gets booted out. What does that photon do when it is briefly trapped inside that other particle? How does it maintain it's energy or speed while inside that other particle?

At the moment those types of q's are philosophical ones like what does a photon 'do' when inside an atom! To my knowledge it disappears anyway as it gets absorbed and the re-appears as the electron emits the energy. It actually gets produced again as a new photon.

BTW, 59.99999999999999999.... = 60 (if you have an infinite number of nines).

Does integration claim that it can find the area under a curve by finding the answer to an infinite sum of infinitely thin rectangles? If not then it is just an approximation despite how accurate it is.

If it is indeed the actual area then why is it that we can find the exact area under a sin² curve but not for the similarly shaped circle :eek: :confused:

Does integration claim that it can find the area under a curve by finding the answer to an infinite sum of infinitely thin rectangles?
Yes, it does. Because it calculates the area as it goes to infinity. So we actually get a whole number.


If it is indeed the actual area then why is it that we can find the exact area under a sin² curve but not for the similarly shaped circle
I guess it is because a circle is not a function... :D ;)
But you can always find the area of a circle with a radius of pi if you calculate ∫sinx dx in the interval 0 to 2pi... ;)

Edit: I'm trying to use symbols... :/

Actually, it is better to calculate it from 0 to pi and then double the area, otherwise you will have to deal with the negative area...:/

Unfortunately there is still no defined area because pi is undefined!!!

Unfortunately there is still no defined area because pi is undefined!!!
Who said pi is undefined? Pi is 3.14 blah blah blah... ;) :D
Oh wait... in this case you could see pi as 180^o?
I don't know... I've never worked that question out... :D

Fascinating. The photon gets absorbed by an atom...it disintegrates and the energy is taken up by an electron...then the electron releases this photonic energy as a "condensed unit" or photon again. Photon reincarnation. Just one last silly question. Why doesn't the electron just disperse the energy out into the space around it? Why is it packed back into a bundle of light?

I think we can define pi quite easily...apple, cherry, blueberry etc etc. :)