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All right now, back to the rope: I see that the wave reflects off the tie-point and comes back to my hand. Sound waves cannot be seen (I think) but the rope waves can. If I slap two boards together, they make a sound wave that echoes off each house all the way down the street. I can understand from the echoes that my sound wave has gotten to the red house and come back; to the yellow house and come back, etc. Going outside at night with one of those expensive trick "tactical" flashlights, it can make a light wave and I can see that it gets to the next house and the next and so on, and back to me -- as far as I can tell, instantly. Not instantly. Sometimes on the telephone, there is an echo and I hear my own voice coming back from space just a fraction of a second later. They tell me the space satellite is 23,000 mile away. So the electromagnetic pulse goes 46,000 miles in that time. People who know about that sort of thing tell me radio goes as fast as light. Now we're getting somewhere. But I am beginning to see why light is not like a rope-wave. It is totally different. It cannot be explained with rope waves. It cannot be explained with water waves nor sound waves. It is like trying to explain an internal-combustion engine with a candle. I cannot even explain it by way of radio waves -- because I don't know what they are nor how they travel. Gentlemen, I thank all of you for carrying me around on a silken cushion.

Studiot, Yes, it helps. It helps when you say yes. It helps when you say yes, but . . . It helps when you say no. The kind words help. The explanations help. Thank you. Lord Anteres, I disagree. Having done the rope-waves thing has given me a starting point to understanding the propagation of waves. It is a kindergarten-level exercise, but I had to start somewhere. "Now do it without the rope," is a step up. Strange, Quantum? The littlest pieces of energy? I will have to follow your thread elsewhere. It sounds interesting. Handy Andy, You are beyond me. I have no idea what you mean. I am at kindergarten level. Maybe in a few years. You talk about creating space, for example. I will have to come back to that later. Sensei, You speak truth, but the "insufferable incompetence" is ignorance about these high-level subjects. Ask those same people about fishing or logging or laying brick, and you will find them quite competent. Mordred, Of course that is right. The transmission of light is NOT like a rope wave -- or like anything else. We are not able to jump from complete ignorance to full knowledge. So, light is "like a wave" and "like a handful of gravel". "Only, without the rope."

AH! There IS humor among scientists! (". . . someone puts world in your way . . .") As to God turning on the lights, I am sure He didn't need light, but He knew that many of His living creatures would need it. And Moses was writing to a world full of goat-herders and pocket-miners. (But that's MY level, anyway.) Never mind for now. I have to go study your many answers until they shake down in my mind to make sense to me.

So, the only thing the rope-wave exercise is good for is to visualize a wave in action -- and to make little boys ask questions. I am trying to visualize a light wave going thru the void. Somehow it forms its OWN aether. It jiggles itself. The rope at point A jiggles the rope at point B. The wave at point A jiggles the wave at point B. No. Let that one rest. Maybe in a month or two it will come more clearly to me. Thank you, gentlemen. I will study your answers more than once because there is wisdom in them.

The Bible tells us that the next step after creating the heaven and the un-formed earth, God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. (Genesis 1:3) [My speculation: That is when God fired up the sun.] But for all of recorded history, we human beings have wanted to know more about light than that. We have known that the lights that appear in the sky are way, W - A - Y far away, and that the light has to travel to get here. Maybe that's all that was known until modern times when some enterprising scientists whose names I have forgotten made a rather successful attempt to discover the order of magnitude of the speed of light. Now that we know to several decimal places "HOW FAST?" we come to the question "HOW?". I speculated that it was somewhat like a rope-wave. The energy is transmitted along the physical rope and one can see the waves. (Only there is no rope. There is no medium. There is no "Aether".) The roof fell in on me. Not because I suggested the rope-wave analogy. But because I speculated it in somebody else's Thread -- "hijacking". MigL suggested I ask the questions on my own Thread. [An ancient folk-tale from India depicts a magician doing astounding tricks -- and for a grand finale, he causes a rope to stand vertically. He climbs the rope until he is clear up out of sight, and then pulls the rope up after himself. A cynic is depicted as saying, "Very good. Now do it without the rope."] The rope analogy is not really much good for the transmission of light -- because light does it without the rope. For those who have not done it, tie one end of a rope to a post, and pull the other end so that the whole rope is clear of the ground. Now move your hand. You can see a wave move along the rope. The energy of your hand is transmitted the whole length of the rope. At each point, the movement of each short length of the rope is transmitted to the next short length. If you move your hand up and down, you produce vertical waves. If you move your hand in a circle, you make circular waves. Light is like that -- only faster -- and without the rope. Hmmmmm? Fifty or sixty years ago our Physics Professor took apart the "Aether" explanation with an account of a careful experiment that involved the speed of star light six months apart. This not only had the observation points on the earth 2 AU apart, but going in the opposite direction. The light from that same star arrived at the same velocity. Some of us opined that some of the Aether was scooting right around with the earth. He very carefully demolished that speculation, too. So (for me) it remains a mystery. Is light little particles called Photons -- that travel at c? Is light some kind of waves called Photons -- that travel at c? Is light something ELSE -- called Photons -- that travel at c? If light has no mass, how can it make the black and white vanes in those trick light-bulb (radiometer?) thingies revolve? If light has no mass how does it force electrons to move when it hits a solar panel?

Is this photoelectric effect what makes the famous solar panels make electricity? Is this read "Electron plus Positron yield Photon plus Photon plus 1.022 Million Electron Volts"" I do not at all understand the other equation. I take it is about the momentum of a Photon powering an electron.

Strange, Please tell me (in words of one syllable) about the experiment involving releasing and detecting a single Photon. Thank you.

Is each Photon of the same strength?

Thank you. Thank you for your straight answers. I really do appreciate that kindness. PLAN A: A light generates a photon (do they DO that?) and it goes at c until it hits the photographic gelatin that absorbs and extinguishes it. PLAN B: A light jiggles a photon, which jiggles the next one in a straight line, which jiggles the next one in a straight line --- until one of the photons smacks into photographic gelatin and is absorbed. Na-a-a-a-a-a-h! It is PLAN A. These little BBs do not exist until they are energized by electromagnetic energy. Then they go at 186,000 miles a second until they splat against the photographic paper and are extinguished. That brings back the old question from the previous century of whether the Photons are waves or particles, or, somehow, both. Swansont gives a wise answer: We have defined the Photon as the entity that goes at c. That is, WHATEVER is going that fast is what we call the Photon. Now, the Wave is either the waving of something, or the waving of nothing, or it is something else or there are no waves at all. HOWEVER, a single photon hits a rock wall down in the depths of Carlsbad Caverns and is reflected in infinite directions. The photon did not break up. It seems to have transferred a pro-rata portion of its energy to each of any number of photons, which transferred the energy to other photons. Or did it bounce? Or did it transfer all of its energy to just ONE other photon?

GLENN: Oh, how lonesome I feel, with nobody answering my speculation! FRED: I'll answer you, but you won't like my answer. MARY: Just to be playing along with you, how were you planning to work Phlogistine into this Thread? GLENN: I was lying about that. MARY: Joking? GLENN: Yeah. FRED: All the possible variations of the Aether speculation have been answered, put down, contradicted and falsified. GLENN: All the variations on Photons have assumed that the cars stand still and the utility poles whizz by. FRED: You're crazy. GLENN: No doubt. However . . . FRED: "However. . . " nothing. You are not only wrong but you are incapable of understanding real physics. GLENN: I never said I could. I asked a simple question. Then the roof blew off. MARY: He already said he was joking. GLENN: . . . about Phlogistine. But I was serious when I asked if the electromagnetic waves moved AMONG the photons, which didn't move much at all. Like other kinds of waves. MARY: Then you ARE crazy. GLENN: I already told you that. FRED: We have whole books of mathematics about the movements of the electromagnetic spectrum. You can't possibly begin to understand what you're into. You can't just say "rope-waves" and contradict all that advanced experimental study and math. GLENN: I didn't. I just asked a civil question. MARY: And we just gave you a civil answer.

Relativity question: When you make rope waves, the rope doesn't go much of anywhere but the waves do. When you make sound waves, the particles of air don't go much of anywhere, but the waves do. Is it possible that even tho light "waves" move right along at c, the photons are not going much of anywhere, or are maybe even [ G A S P ! ] vibrating in place? (Blasphemy! Heresy! I didn't say that.) Worse! Would that make the array of photons in space be [ S H U D D E R ! ] the Aether?! (I didn't say that, either. Um, the devil made me say it.) Tie me up, men! I can feel another fit coming on. Give me a minute and maybe I can work Phlogistine into this . . .

As I understand it, the double-slit exercise proves (over and over) that light is not a particle -- and not a wave, either. But an individual photon causes a visible chemical reaction on photographic film in the double-slit exercise. And light causes the black and white vanes inside the trick light-bub thingies (photometer?) to go around. And just yesterday my mind was farther blown by the news that electrons have no size at all. (Next thing you know we will find out that the earth is NOT flat, and that space is NOT full of Aether, and that fire has nothing to do with Phlogistine.) I am a relic of a past Century, dragged kicking and screaming into these modern times!

I went to Wiki RNA World and read as much as I could stand. I am like the cowboy in the western movie who looked at the cards he was dwelt, declared, "I'm all in!" and quit for that hand. That is WAY over my head. I had better go back to trying to invent a better can-opener.

Are DNA and RNA similar? Could RNA be a precursor to DNA? Do we know how RNA originated? Are there life forms today based on RNA instead of DNA? (And you are right that I have an agenda: I want to be hailed by all the scientific world as the bumbling idiot who stumbled onto this.)

I can make a picture in my mind of a black hole. Stuff falling into it and never falling out. Radiation radiating into it but not coming out because the gravity overcomes all energy. In my mental picture, a black hole is a waste-dump for entropy-contaminated matter. Supposing I were right? I could not show my mental picture to anyone. Supposing I had mathematics that could be verified? But you can't take a picture of an event that does not allow light to exit. The best science can do with a black hole is to take pictures of matter perturbed by the presence of one.

So? If we find ourselves in the same elevator with a person who is of a different intelligence potential, what are we supposed to do? (ANSWER: Say Howdy -- and carry the conversation as far as it will go in the limited time you have together.)

I don't know what he means either. But some of you are acting like sharks in a feeding frenzy. "Being scientific" doesn't have to mean virulently hating every reference to the divine. We already know most things proceed at random. Does it upset the whole arrangement to acknowledge that a Creator also had a hand in Creation?

My questions about the origin of DNA/RNA are continued in a Speculation Thread by that name. (I have no answers there, either.)

About fifty or sixty years ago, an organic chemistry professor (teaching biological chemistry for that day?) told us that it had been shown that under some particular weather conditions many amino acids were spontaneously produced. That seemed important and it stuck with me. I greatly erred in another Thread, thinking that DNA was a protein. It seems amino acids are readily available, but nobody has a clue about how DNA came about. That might be what got serious people thinking maybe DNA came in on a meteor. ("Eliminate the impossible . . . ")

Well, that gets me out of the "Lead Into Gold" business. "I'm all in," as the Hollywood cowboy poker players say when they see what a bad hand they drew.

If I knew what I'm talking about, I would enlighten the world in a declarative Thread. This is just an old man asking what nobody has explained to me in several generations. [The following are all questions, even tho I didn't put question marks after them.] Speculation A: Some DNA or RNA fell in a meteor and was not incinerated. (But that just moves the question back a kazillion years to another world.) Speculation B: The world is large. The oceans are wide. Rainwater dissolves just about everything and flows on down to the sea. Atoms and molecules of just about everything bang into each other there. Eventually, at random, something fairly close to DNA/RNA came to pass. Speculation C: In the beginning, after rock had floated up out of the liquid iron core and cooled off enough so rain could stand on the surface, God hand-made a DNA molecule. Speculation D: (Totally unknown and possibly even unknowable.) Speculation E: From Speculation A, B, C, or D, above, a molecule of DNA with little or no genetic information replicated itself in immense numbers. Occasional mutations added pairs of amino acids in random, meaningless, useless sequences. Over hundreds of millions of years, billions of lifeless random varieties accumulated, doing nothing at all. Much later, a variety happened, among so many, that produced an enzyme that disassembled (digested!) its neighbors. (Or some other evolutionary advantage.) Then that variety multiplied more than the others did. And the circus was on. Survival of the fittest! Charles Darwin! Life! Movement! (dim) Intelligence! Sight! Brain! Self-awareness! Bioluminescence! Poison spines! Camouflage! Pain! Fear! (somewhat superior) Intelligence! Photosynthesis! Teeth! Low, cunning, hatred! ​ Armor-plating! Bone! Nerves! Air-breathing! Hair! All that mammal stuff!

Swansont wisely told me not to hijack someone else's Thread. After I did. Swansont told me to start a new Thread. So here it is. A modern-day Alchemist suggested (speculated!) in these Speculations that we could turn lead into gold by putting a lead atom next to a hydrogen atom (that shouldn't be too hard) and then synchronizing their vibrations until they merge. No. It was even more technical than that. Line up their axes of spin. And their temperature. And . . . No. I'm getting this all wrong. The solar furnaces make heavy atoms out of light ones all day and all night. That might have something to do with their kazillion-degree heat simply overwhelming all resistance to that atomic synchronization. SOMETHING made gold out of hydrogen. Maybe he's got something there. Pb + H > Au This may be hard to accomplish in an electric home hobby-grade ceramics kiln. Could it be done in a University-grade cyclotron or atom-smasher particle-accelerator?

I stand properly admonished. DNA is not a protein.

I think maybe ("I speculate") that the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle makes it impossible to line subatomic particles up by properties like that.

Going back just a bit farther than the famous primate issues, a burning question is how the first DNA molecule was formed. What sort of chemistry is it? (Besides those famous amino acids that carry its information.) Under what sort of conditions might such a complex molecule form up spontaneously? Are there likely precursors to DNA? What would be the simplest possible DNA molecule? (And don't bother to tell me with scathing sarcasm how dumb I am. I ask because I don't know.)