PG24_Physics_and_Theory_Journal

June 28 2005

A topic I started on a physics forum...

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=77829

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tdunc: (me)

Someone please tell me why if the photon has no charge or mass, it is modeled as having an E and B field component?...

An Electric or Magnetic field is created by a moving charge, obviously if the photon has no charge this makes no sense. Look up the definitions of electric field and magnetic field, magnetism ect. Tell me where you see it fit to associate such directly with the photon cause I just dont see it if the photon has no charge or mass.

Electrons on the other hand are clearly the correct particle to attribute ElectroMagnetism to.

The photon as it is can only be indirectly associated with EM, such that perhaps its intricate spin and other such properties or internal structure are information varibles that when the photon is incident on an Electron that information is translated into a physical change in the Electron; so in the context of many photons incident on many Electrons is a change in the Electric or Magnetic field... I mean its Electrons themselves that are ElectroMagnetism, you just cant have it both ways, as Ive said before, Electrons are the only particle with a charge or mass that can directly affect other particles with a charge or mass.

Ok so explain to me why the photon has no mass or charge. Interaction of any kind whatsoever logically requires at minimum a charge or mass... In other words explain to me otherwise how something with no mass or charge excerts physical change in another object. Knowing that the above example I gave requires such also.

Explain to me why the photon having energy GR says it can be affected by gravity... What the hell is "energy"? That word means nothing to me.

Does anyone else believe in the statement "either something (a particle) has mass and exsists or it does not have mass and does not exist"? I associate "energy" with the later. No, energy can only be a property or measurement of quantity, a property of an object which has mass; so its not that gravity can effect it based on it having energy but based on the fact it has mass and exsists.

How can something (a photon or gluon) exsist in absense of a physical componet (mass with geometry)?

Do you really want me to accept the definition of the Electron as a "point like object" which has no concieveable geometry? I hope not...I really do. Instead tell me that our instruments cannot possibly resolve such, thats all you need to say, and that makes perfect sense to me. But dont ever try and tell me it has no geometry.

Spin is one of those interesting topics in QM too because people try to avoid the idea of some particles having physical geometry which would logically be required for it to have intricate angular momentum (a rotating sphere).

Enough for now, I dont even want to get into what are waves.

Does anyone here believe in magic?

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chroot: (guy annoyed by me ;)

Yes, yes, that's right -- go ahead and attack physics before learning any of it.

An oscillating charge produces an oscillating disturbance in both the electric and magnetic fields (the E and M fields are really two sides of the same coin, and you cannot disturb one without disturbing the other).

Such oscillating disturbances in the E and M fields can be called simply "electromagnetic waves," and often are. Particularly when the wavelengths are very long as compared to your measurement instruments, or when they are emitted in a continuous, coherent beam by a laser, they seem wholly wave-like. A radio wave can be meters in wavelength, and, if you could see it, the carrier of a radio station would appear almost like a standing wave that permeates space -- not very much like a particle at all.

On the other hand, consider a very brief "burst" of an electromagnetic disturbance -- one that looks more like the sinc function (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SincFunction.html). Such a burst has a very strong central peak, and its amplitude falls off sharply only a very short distance from the peak. It's certainly still an electromagnetic wave, but now almost all of its energy is in a small volume of space. In fact, it behaves exactly as a "particle" would -- it can penetrate some kinds of barriers without changing its shape much, it doesn't diffract much even when passing small obstacles, and so on.

That's it. That's the difference between a "wave" and a "particle" in the quantum-mechanical sense. Something "wave-like," such as a radio station carrier, has a well-defined wavelength but a poorly defined location. A standing wave exists everywhere inside a cavity. A very strongly peaked wave, however, has a well-defined location, but a poorly-defined wavelength. When such a strongly peaked wave interacts with matter, it behaves exactly as you'd expect a particle to behave. A burst of high-frequency oscillations, like an x-ray produced by nuclear decay, behaves very much more like a particle than the radio station's carrier does, but it's all the same stuff.

- Warren

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tdunc:

in reply to chroot

"An oscillating charge produces an oscillating disturbance in both the electric and magnetic fields (the E and M fields are really two sides of the same coin, and you cannot disturb one without disturbing the other).

And the photon fits in all of this exactly how? And are you stating a difference between E and B fields (yes its actually "B") and electromagnetic waves, because you say that EM waves >>> disturb E and B fields. No that cant be what your saying. EM waves and the E and B field are one in the same thing, and yes you could say it like "oscillating disturbances" I GUESS.

I like the rest of your reply but it doesnt really address my questions. Your explaination of why a wave may look like a particle is excellent. However I take it you dont want to assume a "classical" particle exsists, you only wish to recognize a wave exsists. So physically, what is a wave? Lets reverse your thought and explain why a particle looks like a wave instead. Tell you what, forget it Ive already done that. Re-read my actual questions and specifically try to answer them. Starting with this one...

"Someone please tell me why if the photon has no charge or mass, it is modeled as having an E and B field component?... "

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chroot:

Classical mechanics is just an approximation to quantum mechanics, and, in quantum mechanics, there are no such things as "particles" with hard boundaries and so on.

Because a photon is a peaked oscillation in the electromagnetic field.

- Warren

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tdunc:

Ah but see, the photon in an instance can be a peak in a wave, but what exactly is electromagnetic about it? Nothing if the photon as a whole has no charge. The electric field is described as and being created by a moving charge. Is the photon a moving charge?

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Anomalous:

Is it true that refraction of light is an process of interaction between light and electrons ?

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tdunc:

Is this a trick question? I will answer Yes obviously because I certainly will not answer No, and that would go for my case that the photon would need a charge or mass for such to occur. It's not just that simple however, refraction involves a change in density of material through which light travels, a denser material has more electrons, is this coincidence? Probably not, we can say that light interacts (possibly absorbed and re-emited) with more electrons slowing it down... Quite interestingly a change in overall velocity induces a change in direction according to refractive index of a material. I dont think its %100 clear why when velocity of a light wave slows (increase in wavelength) equates to a change in direction. I would put it more along the lines of spin states (angular momentum and magnetic moments) of particular atoms (light element vrs heavy element) that equates to a change in direction/momentum of light. If we have an object or substance that varies in atomic elements we should see light exhibit a very non straight path through it which we do. It all boils down to amount of electrons and alingment or spin state of those electrons. Different materials Normal mode wave resonance give a prefered direction of light emission, and again this is according to spin states which further relates to magnetic moments. This is more than I need to say.

The photon can also supposedly interact or rather be absorbed directly by the nucleus of an atom in a process called pair production which may surprise some (if that senerio is indeed correct) as most might think that photons only interact with electrons. Again pair production interaction would be no exception to my case, the photon needs a mass to do such.

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One on gyroscopes

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=75134

July 1 2005

I want to recognize the lack of a term to phyics that defines the common general behavior or phenomenon of the motion or path of a stream of particles or molecules that when incident on an obstruction diffracts around it, then converges back to center. Surely there must be a word. This coalenscence back to center is what I would like to focus on. What is the nature of it? Logically one way to say it is that particles "bounce" off the obstruction, further "bounce" off the outter stream particles and are reflected back to center. This explaination seems rather simplified and according to classical mechanics & fluid dynamics and I wonder whether there is more to it, and perhaps a reduced quantum mechanical explanation for quantum particles. Note however that I have not found anything yet within fluid dynamics that covers this simple observation of motion.

To help me better illustrate it, simple varibles are

- The obstruction is a verticle pole
- The stream width is greater than the width of the pole

In the case of molecules of air or water, it is assumed the inner cross section of the stream collides with the pole and depending on which half it is incident on, takes that route around it. In the process of re-routing, those molecules collide with other molecules which define the outter cross section - the outter molecules do not have a path incident on the pole. It is because of this collision of the outter molecules that prevents the stream to split_and_continue_on_indefinatly in two parts, however in the process there is also this not so self explanatory convergence back to center. I could instead assume that the inner particles would simply collide with the outter particles and continue on in a path that defines the outter particles so that the result would be 2 completely separate streams, and the "shadow area" with no particles beyond the pole will be a cylinder, instead of the observed cone shape. Obviously it goes without saying that the outter particles that get "bumped" will move further out.

By constrast if the width of the stream is less than equal that of the width of the pole, then the stream will split in two and those parts continue on in a direction roughly equivilent to deriving the angle of incidence and never will the stream converge back together.

So we should define exactly why the stream converges back to center instead of just knowing that particles "bounce" off one another.

My logic suggests this phenomenon can and does occur on nearly any scale. For an example of it occuring on a very large scale take the moon and the bending of light around it. Nevermind for the moment that the bending of light is actually caused by the motion of atoms/electrons and at the same time contrary to the idea that gravity directly causes it. In a peculiar coincidence it is gravity related. But for the general purpose of understanding why light bends around the moon, it is in part this common phenonmenon I describe above. This is complicated by the fact that we assign no mass or charge to the 'photon' so really we can not say that a collision between photons takes place. And in fact a collision of photons does not take place, electrons are the particles that define the stream and it is the fact that photons exchanges with electrons that by coicidence gives them a curves path also. This is better understood when we account for solar winds; 'solar winds' are actually electrons and other particles in motion as a stream of particles from the Sun. Where gravity relates is the force it has on and between atoms and free electrons, not directly on photons themselves. We will not include EMR or photons in the definition of solar winds simple because as it stands, no mass or charge is given to the photon, such that it has no physical componet capable of physical interaction. See this paradox in a previous excerpt.

This phenonmenon was the missing link I have been searching for because I realized before that the moon has no magnetic field, and I know for sure that gravity does not directly bend light.

However it comes about and however we want to describe it, it is a real phenonmenon, one that commonly occurs in nature and goes without a term to define it as a whole. Notice how I use the words convergence and coalenscence its because I have been looking for the term and came across those yet I think that since it is allowable in the English language to have more than one meaning or complete definition for a word, perhaps one of these will do instead of a new term all together.

For reference using wikipedia look up these words.

convergence
confluence
coalescence
fluid dynamics
wind tunnel
External aerodynamics
turbulence
Reynolds number
Boundary layer
Boundary layer transition

Suggest extension defintion to exsisting words
conflux or concursion

A side note, it is interesting to say that if we gave the pole an universal attractive force (like gravity) that we could explain it (not that even if we use lead it would have a substantial gravity pull). Obviously we cant say this because no matter what material we use as a pole, concursion and the degree of concursion remains near identical for nearly any material.

Additionally if we take a fluid and poor it top down onto a horizontal pole, the more viscous the fluid the more obvious it is that the molecules stick to the surface of the pole and cause the observed concursion. So whether that is independent of gases or particles is a real question, however in this case we probably wouldnt use the word bounce because its simply different mechanics, a different cause of concursion.

You can guess at where Im going with this. I want to know what role if any does concursion play in diffraction experiments. I can tell you right now that laser light will not exhibt such phenomenon, but at the same time other types of light will and it has to do with polarization and frequency and phases. Very complicated to sort it all out. Electrons simply due to having mass will in all cases exhibit some degree of stream concursion according to classical mechanics. We need not even mention the wave quantum aspect of electrons for such observed motion, on the other hand we could solely use quantum wave physics to explain it, because waves naturally expand giving to the effect of a shadow cone. However I disregard the notion of an free electron or free photon as a wave, it is first and formost a particle that by somehow travels in a wave motion.

June 2 2005

I had type this out from a PDF copy and I completely forgot about it, I no longer know what I wanted to discuss about it but I know that if I had typed it all out it must have been important ;) I mine as well paste it here since I would otherwise delete it. Here is an excerpt from Feyman lectures.

Feyman Lectures Volume 1 chapter 31-5 The energy carried by an electric wave

"We have seen that the imaginary part of the index means absorption. We shall now use this knowledge to find out how much energy is carried by a light wave. We have given earlier an argument that the energy carried by light is proprotional to E2, the time average of the square of the electric field in the wave. The decrease in E due to absorption must mean a loss of energy, which would go into some friction of the electrons and, we might guess, would end up as heat in the material."

Feyman Lectures Volume 1 chapter 32-1 Radiation resistance

"Any oscillating charge radiates energy; for instance, a driven antenna radiates energy. If the system radiates energy, then in order to account for the conservation of energy we must find that power is being delivered along the wires which lead into the antenna. That is, to the driving circuit the antenna acts like a resistance, or a place where energy can be "lost" (the energy is not really lost, it is really radiated out, but so far as the circuit is concerned, the energy is lost). In an ordinary resistance, the energy which is "lost" passes into heat; in this case the energy which is "lost" goes out into space. But from the standpoint of circuit theory, without concidering where the energy goes, the net effect on the circuit is the same-energy is "lost" from that circuit. Therefore the antenna appears to the generator as having a resistance, even though it may be made with perfectly good copper. In fact, if it is well built it will appear as almost pure resistance, with very little inductance or capacitance, because we would like to radiate as much energy as possible out of the antenna. This resistance that the antenna shows is called the radiation resistance."

"An interesting question is, what is this radiation resistance due to? Let us take a simple example: let us say that currents are driven up and down in an antenna. We find that we have to put work in, if the antenna is to radiate energy. If we take a charged body and accelerate it up and down it radiates energy; if it were not charged it would not radiate energy. It is one thing to calculate from the conservation of energy that energy is lost, but another thing to answer the question, against what force are we doing the work? That is an interesting and very difficult question which has never been completely and satisfactorily answered for electrons, although it has been for antennas. What happens is this: in an antenna, the fields produced by the moving charges in one part of the antenna react on the moving charges in another part of the antenna. We can calculate these forces and find out how much work they do, and so find the right rule for the radiation resistance...."

"...The problem in the case of a single electron is this: if there is only one charge, what can the force act on? It has been proposed, in the old classical theory, that the charge was a little ball, and that one part of the charge acted on the other part. Because of the delay in the action across the tiny electron, the force is not exactly in phase with the motion. That is, if we have the elecron standing still, we know that "action equals reaction". So the various internal forces are equal, and there is no net force. But if the electron is accelerating, then because of the time delay across it, the force which is acting on the front from the back is not exactly the same as the force on the back from the front, because of the delay in the effect. This delay in the timing makes for a lack of balance, so, as a net effect, the thing holds itself back by its bootstraps! This model of the origin of the resistance to acceleration, the radiation resistance of a moving charge, has run into many difficulties, because our present view of the electron is that it is not a "little ball"; this problem has never been solved. Nevertheless we can calculate exactly, of course, what the net radiation resistance force must be, i.e., how much loss there must be when we accelerate a charge, in spite of not knowing directly the mechanism of how that force works."

July 8 2005

And in fact, the photon's mass is non zero. You have to buy chance come accross this information because no one will ever tell you. To be clear, and quoting several people in a discussion about it..

"Experiments don't determine exact quantities because of small errors inherent in making measurements. We have, however, put an upper limit on the photon rest mass. In 1994, the Charge Composition Explorer spacecraft measured the Earth's magnetic
field and physicists used this data to define an upper limit of 0.0000000000000006 electron volts for the mass of photons, with a high certainty in the results.

This number is close to zero; it is equivalent to 0.00000000000000000000039 times the mass of an electron (the lightest
particle), says Turner. "

And

"it's not that the rest mass of light is zero it is that rest
mass doesn't apply to light"

then

"You may wish for such a definite answer, but the current data are
insufficient to make such a distinction. Please READ WHAT I SAID: the
photon's mass is _CONSISTENT_ with zero -- that does not mean it is
equal to zero, merely that current measurements of its mass agree with
the hypothesis that its mass is zero.

Yes, the photon's mass is indeed enormously smaller than any other
particle's measured mass. And this is true if it actually happens to be
exactly zero, or happens to be nonzero but smaller than the current
upper bound. <shrug>

BTW this is not at all a politician's hedging, this is a reasonable and
realistic representation of the current scientific data on the subject.
We humans will never know that it is exactly zero, the best we can do is
to reduce the upper bound (which is already incredibly tiny)."

One adds

"The number zero is less than the upper limit,
therefore if the photon mass is known to be less than the upper limit
from experimental data, the photon mass is consistent with zero.
Unless of course, you think zero is larger than the upper limit.
Do you think that's the case?

There is no experiment which can
distinguish between zero and the upper limit using current technology.
If you think there's an experiment which can determine a difference
between zero and the current upper limit, do the experiment and
publish the results. Otherwise, you're assertions are vacuous. It's
up to nature to decide what the photon mass is unless and until you
convince nature to redesign the universe in your image."

A rather obvious statement follows

"THE PHOTON IS AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE
that no mass can reach the velocity of light!

'No mass can reach the velocity of light *except the photon*!'"

But

"Finally, an admission that photons have mass!"

One adds

"Zero is consistent with his statement. However, he neglected to
consider the eight gluons, all of which are massless. For whatever
it's worth to those people who seem to think there's some logic in
giving the photon a mass simply because of some bizarre notion about
exceptions to a rule, the photon is obviously not an exception. There
are eight other particles with zero mass."

So I could ask whether we could say that the value of the speed of light is what it is according to its exact mass, such that say if it were heavier or lighter the speed of light would change accordingly?

So thats interesting, but the real point is, the photon has mass and exsists. I said this before, either something has mass and exsists or has no mass and does not exsist. At the same time I reasoned that interaction requires mass. So in conclusion for most all mathmatical purposes it is reasonable and correct to assign a zero mass to the photon, but at the same time we know that in actuallity it has a small mass which solves any philosophical conflicts that arrise with a truely non zero mass.

Does the speed of light slow in a medium? Yes and no.

Yes because the denser the material (the more atoms that are present to absorb the light) the longer light will take to propagate through it. Note that what goes in is not the same that comes out, light is always absorbed then re-emmited, so essentially the more times it is absorbed the longer it will take to go through it. You can deduce from this statement that absorbtion and emmision is not time independent, meaning that it is not instantaneous, it takes a definte measureable time to do such.

No because the speed at which a light particle goes from one atom to the next is the same speed.

Topic on photon and pair production.

"Electrons are confirmed elementary particles, which means that
no amount of scattering has caused electrons to split into smaller
physically observable particles, which would have been accomplished
by now, considering the half century and more of high energy accelerator
data on countless scattering experiments that has been analyzed.

As far as experiments have allowed up to now, the substance making
up photons and electrons has not been understood further and seems
further undifferentiated. No one knows what it is. We simply name
it energy. All bets are open and all manners of hypotheses have been
aired of various aspects of it, like QED and QFT, QCD just to mentions
the main current orthodox theories, none of which completely explains
the mechanics of conversion nor the actual nature of the fundamental
energy."

"All really elementary particles have spin 1/2

One more restriction is that photons have spin 1 which is indicative
that they may be made up of 2 half spin sub particles, which would be
consistent with a de Broglie hypothesis regarding a possible
electromagnetic internal structure of photons."

Ok now thats one thing, using spin 1 to explain E and B componets. Another thing using the given spin 1 to model wave particle duality, in other words how a photon can travel in a wavelike motion, as Ive said, the best way to do this is to consider the photon being 2 particles. But I did not at the time recognize the spin of the photon, a convenient coincidence that it in fact may be made of 2 1/2 spin particles.

July 10 2005

Time

http://www.btinternet.com/~author.ron/general_hypothesis_1.htm

A fairly simple and well presented site on the basics of physics, with sample problems and interactive java

http://id.mind.net/~zona/contents/contents.html

Snell's Law

http://id.mind.net/~zona/mstm/physics/light/rayOptics/refraction/snellsLaw/snellsLaw1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_Law

Does A Uniformly Accelerating Charge Radiate?

http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath528/kmath528.htm

Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics:
Current Status and Future Directions

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/activities/scientific/QT-LECTURES/

So the NASA Deep Impact mission was a success, success as in it hit the target, what useful information they get from it is another thing.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0506721

Math links

http://math.furman.edu/~dcs/book/
http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/
http://faculty.swosu.edu/michael.dougherty/book/book.html
http://www.numbertheory.org/book/
http://www.wtamu.edu/academic/anns/mps/math/mathlab/col_algebra/

July 15 2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_implies_causation_%28logical_fallacy%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presupposition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implication_%28pragmatics%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entailment_%28pragmatics%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_verbosity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_%28philosophy%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rules_of_inference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_conclusion_from_a_negative_premise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_dicto_and_de_re
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_scepticism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question