Show me some actual result rather than just some graph, and I'll have a go. Meanwhile might I refer you to Joy Christian and to Travis Norsen: "Many textbooks and commentators report that Bell's theorem refutes the possibility of supplementing ordinary quantum theory with additional ("hidden") variables... On this view, Bell's theorem supports the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation. Bell's own view of his theorem, however, was quite different..."
That sort of 'tension' in which photons may propagate would also be explained by two quantum fields; one moving at c everywhere, in every direction, one at rest everywhere. It would also explain entanglement, the arrow of time, virtual photon pair creation in the vacuum, and the creation of the bound energy that is matter from unbound energy. If something moves, it must move RELATIVE to something. If something is at rest, it is at rest RELATIVE to something. This paradigm must include quantum fields. A "Unified" field theory would make the universe appear the same to a SINGLE observer (and not require two), and this is simply not the way this universe seems to work. If no one has been able to come up with a "unified" field theory in over 100 years, perhaps there is a good reason for that. It's a little like Alchemy looking for combinations of only four elements instead of Chemistry's 92. Reality is what it is, not what we imagine or arbitrarily categorize it to be. Or to put it another way, the amount of energy something contains will always depend on the relative state of motion of the observer, and there is only time and energy in this universe. This idea does not negate the conservation of energy; it simply distributes it pairwise.
It seems to me that since a photon has no mass and therefore no classical inertia, what could possibly slow it down?
Glass. Water. Absorption and re-emission by a bound electron. All of these things have inertia, imparted to them by the Higgs mechanism. While a photon is bound (absorbed by an electron or the event horizon of a black hole), it also has inertia. Einstein's original thought experiment used this to derive E=mc^2 which also used the center of mass (because he was dealing with Newtonian physicists) of a long spacecraft, a photon emitted at one end and re-absorbed at the other. Wheeler's re-hash of the derivation of the Lorentz transformation used a photon bouncing between mirrors in a spacecraft and is similar to Einstein's. But this is a cheat, because a photon bouncing between a pair of mirrors is "bound", just like all of the energy in bound atomic structure aboard that spacecraft, including the electrons in the face of the mirrors that are absorbing and re-emitting the photon. Photons are not the bosons which impart inertia (or at least, not very much) to bound energy and to themselves.. That would be Higgs. You can see stuff (photons at c). Stuff has mass and falls (Higgs at rest). A simpler model; a boson for each quantum field. Photons are real sensitive to angles when they reflect, and this is part and parcel of the illusion we call "space"; like most illusions, it's all about the mirrors. Coordinate system transformations like the one derived by Lorentz and updated by Wheeler are for use in geometrical "solids" (whatever those are), and space itself is not solid nor Euclidean, any more than a photon traveling through relativistic space is. "Solids" aren't. Coordinate systems don't belong in inertialess, originless illusion of space which derives simply of all the rotational permutations of propagating energy, including bound energy, which is also not "solid" in any sense of the word. Frames of reference are what determine inertia and also energy, which is why E=mc^2 works. Curvature of space is irrelevant. What energy processes are taking place, and how much time does it take, or time dilation is happening, and in which inertial frame? This is the principle reason why anything Minkowski did to obfuscate relativity with invariant intervals and simultanaety games is entirely irrelevant. Its utility is limited things like relativity within solids. Critical mass scattering calculations for different mechanical shapes are one example. Even these calculations are imprecise, to say the most.
Hmm, don't you need to distinguish the phase and group velocities when you speak of media "slowing down" light? And if it is absorbed and re-emitted, it is not the same photon.
You were probably looking in a mirror when you thought of this? Correct, it isn't the same photon. Explain why the angle of its rotation was so precise? A mirror is flat, but not that flat. How does an atom in the silver know that the rest of the mirror is flat? Why would it care?
No I was thinking and writing about refraction. But, to my understanding, reflection does not involve absorption and re-emission either. The "atom" actually it isn't an atom: it is a +vely charged "core", as it has lost one or more electrons to the metallic "sea" in the conduction band, hasn't it? Surely the whole point about reflection or refraction is it is what happens when an incident photon is not absorbed. If it were absorbed, successive re-emitted photons would scatter in random directions, would they not?
The very definition of a massless particle means it must always travel at "c" just as relativity and observations dictate.
If that (an electron 'gas' in the conduction band) reflects the photon without absorbing and reemitting it were true, then mirrors would do a 100% job of reflecting ALL of the photons, and not just some of them, would it not? Silver's 89 to 93% reflectivity in films more than about 100 atoms thick is well known. Thinner films of silver are semi-transparent, and since this is the case, the reflection percentage loss may only reflect the fact that many photons may bounce about in cavities of silver atoms many times before re-emerging to become part of the reflected wave. Dielectric materials like glass are just as capable of reflection from plane surfaces, but also cause partial or complete linear polarization of the reflected wave at Brewster's angle, and may also allow some of the incident energy to refract, if the medium is transparent enough. I find it nonetheless miraculous that an atom bound in the atomic structure of a lattice of silver atoms is so meticulous about the angle of its reflection when the surface on which it is deposited is sufficiently flat. Atoms themselves are like tiny precision machines.
While exchemist's #147 gives the proper clues, once again danshawen you exemplify the truth of the eternal equation SF = perpetual Groundhog Day. A refresher for what is an off-topic subject but who cares that is standard for this forum anyway: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/all-photons-move-at-300-000km-s-but-dont.149931/ Start at post #6.
Dunno what that dig about "just some graph" is supposed to mean, but thanks for the links. Travis Norsen's manuscript, as far as I can tell, is a refutation of the misconception that Bell's theorem proves the Copenhagen interpretation. In fact, there are a good variety of non-local hidden variable interpretations that predict quantum mechanics without postulating fundamental uncertainty, and I'm routinely impressed by how far information theorists stretch the boundaries of "nonlocal enough to explain entanglement". But a field state of real space, propagating at the speed of light, definitely does not fall into that category. Joy Christian's work was more surprising, and I enjoyed reading several stages of his arXiv debate with his critics. What finally convinced me that Christian is seriously wrong was this paper, which in so many words claims the following: *Consider an experiment that generates pairs of macroscopic objects, which have equal and opposite angular momenta about a random axis. Both objects' angular momenta are then measured classically, and the results are converted to binary outcomes by taking the signs of their projections onto some "measurement axis". For sufficiently good experimental conditions, the resulting binary distributions can violate Bell's inequality.* That's nuts. It's not so much an objection to quantum uncertainty as it is an objection to the rules of conditional probability. But judging by how long Scott Aaronson spent arguing against Christian without convincing him, I get the feeling this rabbit hole is deeper than I want to delve into.
Thanks for posting this Q-reeus. As a matter of fact I did re-read that very exchange myself and was thinking about posting a link to it. You've saved me the trouble.
The way I understand it, reflection and refraction are phenomena involving the polarisation of the electronic structure of a medium by light but without absorption and re-emission. The mere fact that reflection may not be 100% efficient does not invalidate that. The refraction case is discussed in some depth in the link Q-reeus provides. It is plain, from the way that refractive index changes with frequency as an absorption frequency is approached, that there is a growing degree of polarisation going on as this frequency is approached, until the exact resonant frequency is reached, and then and only then does absorption occur. Regarding reflection, I repeat: if absorption occurs then the re-emitted photons will be emitted - after a lapse of time determined by the transition probabilities for the excited states involved - in random directions, causing scattering. This may occur to some degree but, to whatever degree it does occur, that proportion of the light is manifestly not reflected. Furthermore, absorption only occurs at the light frequency corresponding to the energy gap between the states involved, whereas reflection and refraction take place at all other frequencies. So it seems to me that it makes no sense to rely on absorption and re-emission to explain the reflection process.
In a dispersive medium (basically ALL mediums except a vacuum), yes. In physics, we were taught (and it may be only half true) that collisions were either elastic or inelastic or somewhere in between, and that if there was a loss, it was because the collision was at least partly inelastic, which is to say, energy is absorbed by something in the collision. What you seem to be saying is, an incidence / reflection collision of a photon with a plane surface is a lossless process? We could not even make digital cameras, much less mirrors if that were the case, could we really? The photoelectric effect is some rather well-worn physics, and you haven't even mentioned a work function. Obviously, this is taught somewhat differently in chemistry. No surprise, actually. Very interesting, though.
Well OK you raise some interesting issues. I'd be happy to continue the topic but wonder if we'll get our knuckles rapped for derailing the thread. If you are interested enough I could start a new thread, copying your latest, and we can go from there. Shall I do that? (By the way I make no pretensions to being a solid state physicist. All I know comes from atomic and molecular QM, as taught to those chemists who took that option in my degree course.)
That's because we got sidetracked into a discussion of inertia, which I don't believe has been properly digested by the current physics, particularly the particle physics community. Gravitational mass = inertial mass. That's a fact, and to a high degree of accuracy, but what does having inertia REALLY mean, apart from Galileo's ideas and Newton's first? If the Higgs mechanism is going to impart inertial mass, it isn't going to be able to do that without simultaneously imparting gravitational mass, because of the equivalence principle and various and sundry other names for what is basically the SAME principle of pedestrian physics. Does a beam of photons bouncing between two mirrors aboard a spaceship have "inertia"? YES, evidently, it does, or else you would not be able to bounce a beam between two mirrors RIGHT HERE, on SPACESHIP EARTH, without the beam wandering all over the place instead of staying in one spot, the way it manifestly does, for example in the current LIGO replay of Michaelson-Morley. The bouncing beam of light shares the inertia of the mirrors and beam splitters it is reflected from, as explained in my responses to exchemist. Or else, the derivation of E=mc^2 used by particle physicists EACH AND EVERY DAY at the LHC must be in error, because a emitted and re-absorbed massless photon is at the very foundation of it, no question about that whatsoever. Relativity itself is about time, bound, and unbound energy, the exact measure of which is always relative to an observer's state of motion. This much is simple and reasonable to ANYONE, even someone without the extensive training in physics folks like us have enjoyed. Relative states of motion are easy enough to measure, unless it is your wish to measure a state of motion of something with respect to inertialess space. That is impossible, since 1905. The speed of light is the same in every reference frame, and THAT would be impossible too unless the instant of "now" were the same everywhere (and it IS). There's your entanglement. Absolute space is dead. Absolute time has only an origin; the instant of "now". Everywhere else, time proceeds at different rates. Any given interval of time is of a different duration everywhere, which is to say, only an instant, in terms of events, has even a possibility of simultaneity, and this is limited to something that is either the same event viewed from different perspectives, or is derived from events that are entangled (and which always involves the instant of "now" in terms of simultaneity). This is also why it makes perfect sense for the Higgs to be the only kind of boson that is entangled EVERYWHERE. I did manage to work a bit about Gravity Waves in there. You won't be seeing any of those measured locally either. Since 1905, because Gravity Waves would manifest exactly the same as an "aether wind", and "No problem may be solved by the same kind of thinking as that which created it." -- A.E.
Anything which moves at c, cannot have mass, and probably it cannot be anything other than (photon). I do not think it can be said that any fundamental particle is moving at the speed of light, barring photons and gluons, and they are termed as massless particles, gluon is not observed freely but photon certainly has the momentum, so an argument can be made that it must have kinetic mass as well. The more interesting question is why everything else (the matter) is moving at all at various speeds (other than c) ? Why we do not have anything static, is it solely due to absence of any preferred frame or motion has something else to say beyond the simple dx/dt. The speed of a Galaxy (both spin and translational) certainly has deeper meaning about its contents, origin, life and all these will have certain correlation with 'c'. Can we not infer that slowing down of a photon is either impossible or may lead to formation of matter.
So many issues thrown up to discuss (nice gentle word for it), so limited a lifetime to keep spending on all such. I'm not aware of any particle physicists who think Higgs mechanism explains inertia - just nonzero rest mass. You did mention somewhere to having been an electrical engineer? Well just on the issue of 2nd para #154, you might try thinking about a somewhat analogous scenario familiar to most actual electrical engineers. A plane EM wave incident on - 1: A single-depth rectangular array of closely spaced resonant parasitic (i.e. shorted not match terminated) dipole antennas. 2: As for 1: but multi-depth rectangular arrays of detuned (i.e. weakly scattering) parasitic antennas. Would one of above loosely suggest analogy to a reflecting metallic surface? Would the other likewise loosely suggest a dielectric layer? Would both bring to mind 'coherent scattering'?
Just for your possible interest Fednis48, it's come to my attention Joy Christian has recently had a relevant article published here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10773-014-2412-2 Googling should bring up a non-paywall equivalent on arXiv.
Even a resonant cavity absorbs and stores energy. This interested me as a satellite engineer, of course. It only vaguely relates to the topic of GW, AND FOR YOUR INFORMATION, Joseph Weber, Mr resonant GW himself, was a Navy engineer, NOT. a physicist. Someone should have taught him relativity and tested him on it, but they didn't.
