A general discussion on the relationship between Photons and Time.

[Alias Moniker]

Lorentz transformation is designed for particles that have rest mass..

 

 

This message went through fiber wire on the bottom of ocean, with speed of light...

 

You can take fiber wires with lengths 1 km, 10 km, 100 km, and emit light to them from the same source, and calculate delay on other end of fiber wire.

 

You can send photons to satellite far away in cosmos, and measure delay of reply. And it'll be t=2*distance/c

 

If you apply physics that are based on time to the photon then all of this would appear to be true, but to the photon time does not exist.

"Special Relativity:

The speed of light in a vacuum is always C, regardless of the velocity of the observer.

The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion.

These two statements indicate that C (speed of light) does not follow the same laws of physics as the observer.

1. The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion.

2. The observer never travels at the velocity C.

3. The laws of physics are the same for anything that never travels at the velocity C.

4. The laws of physics are not the same for anything that does travel at the velocity C"

 

 

 

You should just worry about understanding what this means before you get into the rest of it.

[Mordred]

I know what it means I'm not the one with the problem understanding SR. You are, how many people and textbooks articles etc is it going to take to teach you that you cannot apply the same rules to a photon as an observer? You even type that you understand it but at the same time try to apply it. Here I thought you were finally understanding that the photon is not a valid reference frame when you wrote your rules in the opening post, I was actually giving you a compliment,

 

"well at least some of your statements are getting closer to the truth. so some progress is being made"

 

 

then you post this statement

If you apply physics that are based on time to the photon then all of this would appear to be true, but to the photon time does not exist.

you keep trying to treat the photon as an observer, its not

 

your rule two already defines that

 

2)the observer never travels at velocity c

 

so why did you type the above statement????????

 

you can never have an observer with t=0 and no coordinates the Lorentz transformation requires coordinates. So you will never have an observer measure light at a speed other than C. Why is this so difficult for you to understand?

 

the other post is over 5 pages long of us repeatedly telling you that the photon is not an observer frame of reference, the photon has no viewpoint. The photon cannot observe etc etc etc etc.

 

if you won't believe us or the textbook I posted in that thread what will you believe????

 

http://www.lightandmatter.com/sr/

 

here is a free SR book.

 

page 55 Kinemetics

 

"Our universe does, however, contain ingredients such as light rays, gluons, and gravitational waves that travel at c, so we might wonder whether these things could be put together to form observers who do move at c.But this is not possible according to special relativity, because if we let v approach infinity ,extrapolation of figure d on p.54 shows that the Lorentz transformation would compress all of spacetime onto the lightcone,reducing its number of dimensions by 1.Distinct points would be merged, which would make it impossible to use this frame to describe the same phenomena that a subluminal observer could describe.That is,the transformation would not be one-to-one,and this is unacceptable physically."

Edited July 21, 2014 by Mordred

[Strange]

 

Energies, yes. Speeds or velocities, not so much.

 

I'm not sure what the difference is.

 

"At this energy the protons have a Lorentz factor of about 7,500 and move at about 0.999999991 c,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

Science can observe and slow the electromagnetic wave but not the photon.

 

They are just different descriptions of the same thing. If you detect one then you detect the other. (And we can detect individual photons, so this appears to be just another false statement.)

[Strange]

 

we don't understand what "light" truly is, outside of a relatively few, very specific mathematical properties.

 

So what. That is a problem of philosophy (or religion) not physics.

 

 

light is a wave but it "appears" to propagate without a medium (unlike any other form of wave energy that we know of?).

 

Irrelevant. Why should light behave as you think it should. The universe doesn't care about you expectations.

 

 

The problem with these concepts isn't simply that we can do these calculations and they calculate out to be 0, and that would indicate that light can't exist.

 

As light clearly does exist, there is obviously something wrong your conclusion.

 

 

The problem is that the physics we use do not allow us to reach a final result when we account for something traveling at the speed of light. Indicating that it is not possible to use these physics to understand or relate to, the speed of light.

 

No. You don;t understand. The theory does not allow us to to calculate what would be measured by something moving at the speed of light (which is fine, because no material object capable of measuring can do that).

 

It obviously says nothing about what we measure. We can measure properties of light. Including its speed.

 

 

Assume that "space time" is a prison.

 

No, let's not. Why not stick to science instead of fairy tales.

 

 

However, the laws of physics for "light" or "the speed of light", do not recognize the existence of time.

 

As your errors have been explained repeatedly, I wonder why you keep on making the same foolish errors.?

 

Do you have an alternative theory to present, or are you just going to keep making false statements about existing theory?

Edited July 21, 2014 by Strange

[Klaynos]

..., but to the photon time does not exist.

 

Can you prove this yet?

 

Your opening post here just assets it, again. This is getting rather tedious.

[Sensei]

but to the photon time does not exist.

 

That depends on how to interpret passing through transparent medium with refractive index > 1.0..

If you will use beam splitter, one laser beam pass through air/vacuum, other one through container with f.e. water or other transparent fluid. Photons from the second one will arrive later..

Edited July 21, 2014 by Sensei

[imatfaal]

!

Moderator Note

Moved to Speculations. Please take a moment to read the specific rules of that sub-forum

[swansont]

 

I'm not sure what the difference is.

 

"At this energy the protons have a Lorentz factor of about 7,500 and move at about 0.999999991 c,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

 

 

The speed difference is fairly small. It's less than 0.01% faster. But since it's such a highly nonlinear response, that represents a much, much larger change in energy.

[swansont]

 

Special Relativity:

The speed of light in a vacuum is always C, regardless of the velocity of the observer.

The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion.

These two statements that we know as "Special Relativity" indicate that C (speed of light) does not follow the same laws of physics as the observer.

 

 

 

A more general approach is perhaps more useful. Massless particles travel at c, massive particles travel slower. That applies to everything, so we don't have to muck around with ideas like the laws of physics being different for different observers.

[Mordred]

http://einstein.stanford.edu/content/relativity/q212.html

 

 

 

"The best understanding we have is that it [light] is a disturbance in the electromagnetic field of charged bodies."

 

Exactly what I said earlier. First "a particle" "travels" through space, but not through time. This causes the "disturbance in the electromagnetic field of charged bodies" that we call "light". Similar to how lightning causes thunder. And since the "particle" of light exists not in our reality, where there is time, but in another reality, where there is not time, it is not possible for us to currently observe the particle that causes the electromagnetic wave that we are able to observe. Passing through space but not passing through time causes an electromagnetic disturbance in "space time" that we call "light". Like creating friction between space and time.

 

that's not how wave particle duality works they are not separated by time, The Heisenburg uncertainty principle tells us the more we know about a particles position the less we know about its energy and vice versa. This is due to interference when you take the measurement not with time.

Edited July 21, 2014 by Mordred

[Strange]

 

The speed difference is fairly small. It's less than 0.01% faster. But since it's such a highly nonlinear response, that represents a much, much larger change in energy.

 

Right. But it is still faster than the OP's claimed limit of 99.99% c.

[swansont]

 

Right. But it is still faster than the OP's claimed limit of 99.99% c.

 

Absolutely. I was nitpicking on the use of "small", not challenging the limit being c, not some smaller fraction of it.

[Strange]

 

Absolutely. I was nitpicking on the use of "small", not challenging the limit being c, not some smaller fraction of it.

 

I see what you mean. I tend to think of velocities as non-linear so that 0.999c is much faster than 0.99c but ,really, they are almost the same.

[Alias Moniker]

"The best understanding we have is that it [light] is a disturbance in the electromagnetic fields of charged bodies." http://einstein.stanford.edu/content/relativity/q212.html

This is a lecture by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Special Relativity and Light are talked about, starting at around 10 minutes. Really the whole video and series is great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUCBxS0_194&list=PLdgNN42xmuhmr7rrFRb8hWNrcd2gGW6Qc

This is a link to the most recent report I could find for experiments attempting to observe or measure a photon without destroying it.

http://www.livescience.com/41465-photons-seen-without-being-destroyed.html

"The photon didn't interact with the atom directly, but it did alter the atom's phase — the timing of its resonance with the cavity. The scientists could use the difference between the superposition state — when the atom is in two states at once — and the atom's measured phase to calculate whether or not the photon entered the cavity. In that way they "saw" the photon without destroying it, without touching it."

The title is misleading because this 2013 report concludes that the most advanced experiments to observe and measure a photon only observe how the photon interacts with other things, not the photon itself. Measuring and observing and predicting the impact that something has is not the same as measuring and observing and predicting the thing itself, even if your results are consistent and sensible.

If you have proof that a photon has been directly observed or measured please provide the sources.

Special relativity states:

• The speed of light in a vacuum is always c, regardless of the velocity of the observer.
• The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion.

These two statements that we know as "special relativity" indicate that c (speed of light) does not follow the same laws of physics as the observer (anything which is not traveling at c).

• The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion.

• The observer is (anything that never travels at the velocity c).

• The laws of physics are the same for (anything that never travels at the velocity c).

• The laws of physics are not the same for anything that does travel at the velocity c.

Special Relativity also indicates that any experiments regarding the "speed of light" that are not conducted in a vacuum will not allow for a "proper" velocity of c.

The laws of physics are the same for anything not traveling c, and because they are the same for anything not traveling c, we are able to transform the perspective of anything not traveling c, into the perspective of any other thing not traveling c, regardless of the velocities that each thing not traveling cis traveling.

The laws of physics are not the same for any observer as they are for c. That is why we are not able to transform the perspective of c to the perspective of anything not traveling c, or the other way around. If the laws of physics were the same for us as they are for c, we would be able to travel c. It is light's different laws of physics, in its different universe, that allow it to travel at c, while here in our universe, without the laws that make it possible, we can never travel at c.

c and "observers", which can never travel in uniform motion, are prevented from traveling in uniform motion by the different laws of physics that apply to each of them. Namely, c exists without time, so the entire concept of "motion" is different if you can't move from moment to moment, as well as from space to space. This is also why it's not possible for c to have an "inertial frame of reference", or for c to have "inertia". Where c exists, there is no time, so there is no change, so there is no resistance to change. The concept of inertia is inapplicable to c.

Philosophically speaking, the two statements of Special Relativity could be said as:

c is constantly different from everything else. Everything else is relatively the same.

Why is this meaningful?

First, it explains the dual nature of light, being both particle and wave. Distinguishable from one another and yet the same thing. The photon exists outside of time in a parallel universe, while the wave "co-exists" in time, in our universe.

Physics would say that this only prevents us from applying physics to c's perspective. But c doesn't just have a different perspective of the same physics. Other observer's have a different perspective of the same physics, which allows us to transform our perspective into any other observer's perspective; because we're using the same physics. If c had a different perspective of our physics, then we would be able to transform our perspective into c's perspective using our physics, the way we can with anything else that has a different perspective of our physics. Since c has a different set of physics, our definition of "perspective" can't be applied to c, so there can be no transforming between perspectives because only one "perspective" exists. Transforming perspectives between two observers is like two people who speak different languages agreeing on a single word for a color. Applying the perspective (or frame) of an observer to c is like asking two people who speak different languages to agree on a single word for a color when one of them is blind.

Assume for a moment that time truly does not exist to the photon (c). We can't even say that it's "instantaneous" because an instant is a unit of time, and time doesn't exist. A photon (c) isn't created on the surface of the sun, it's created in a parallel universe. In that universe there is no time.

If time does not exist in c's universe, when c is created, it must come into existence already existing at every infinite point in space between, and including, its point of origin and its destination. There is no time, so c can't travel from one location to the other, so it will just have to "be there". Strictly speaking, cisn't a "speed", it only appears that way in our universe where there is time.

The "passing" of this "particle" (c) through space, but not through time, causes a sort of friction between space and time, a disturbance that manifests in our universe as the electromagnetic wave "light" (not "strictly" = c), which we measure and predict according to our laws of physics because it exists in our universe, unlike it's photon/particle/c counterpart. This disturbance, the electromagnetic wave "light", (not c) which unfolds in our reality, does not unfold according to the physics of c, the photon has already existed and is now gone, but according to the physics of our universe. What we observe in our reality is more like time catching up to the passing of the photon (or, catching up to the passing of 'whatever causes the disturbance that we observe as the electromagnetic wave, or, catching up to c). After the photon (the cause) is gone, the electromagnetic wave begins to ripple through space but now, this understanding of "light" (which does not strictly travel at c) is under the influence of time (because it does not strictly travel at c), which means it can't exist at two points simultaneously and instead it has to travel, much unlike it's photon (c) counterpart.

So it's important to distinguish that when our physics predict "light" (not strictly c) it is only predicting "half of the total light phenomena", the half that exists in our universe and which is consistent with our laws of physics, known as the electromagnetic wave "light". Which is not strictly c. Trying to understand c by observing electromagnetic wave "light" is similar to trying to understand the cause "lightning" by observing its "disturbance", thunder; where in both cases, c and lightning, energy creates a wave form disturbance in a medium. Lightning creates the disturbance thunder in the medium of atmosphere, photon (c) creates electromagnetic wave (not strictly c) disturbance in the medium of "space time", or "time", or "our physical universe where time exists".

[Strange]

The title is misleading because this 2013 report concludes that the most advanced experiments to observe and measure a photon only observe how the photon interacts with other things, not the photon itself.

 

 

1. We only observe anything from their interactions other things. So there is nothing special about photons there.

2. You are misrepresenting the conclusion to support your own argument.

 

As for the rest: tl;dr. You haven't said anything worth reading yet so I didn't waste any time on it. Skimming through it, it looks as if you are simply repeating exactly the same errors that have been explained repeatedly.

[Klaynos]

A popsci video will not cut it. Thus has been explained to you with the reasons why. So you still need to provide evidence that photons have no time.

 

Before we go on can you please ensure you've read the speculations forum rules.

Two other things, your two statements are not special relativity but the opening postulates. With the speed of light being constant a result of Maxwell's equations being the same throughout the universe.

[Strange]

The concept of inertia is inapplicable to c.

 

As light has momentum, this is obviously not true.

 

First, it explains the dual nature of light, being both particle and wave. Distinguishable from one another and yet the same thing. The photon exists outside of time in a parallel universe, while the wave "co-exists" in time, in our universe.

 

This is just an assertion. You show no logical connection between the fact there is no inertial frame of reference for light and the wave-particle nature.

 

And in fact this is obviously not true (what a surprise) because both photons and light waves travel at c, so your argument would apply equally to both.

 

So it's important to distinguish that when our physics predict "light" (not strictly c) it is only predicting "half of the total light phenomena", the half that exists in our universe and which is consistent with our laws of physics, known as the electromagnetic wave "light". Which is not strictly c.

 

This statement is obviously not true. The speed we measure is, by definition, "strictly c".

 

You appear to be saying that the speed of light we measure © is not the speed of light ©. Which is not just wrong, but meaningless.

 

Trying to understand c by observing electromagnetic wave "light" is similar to trying to understand the cause "lightning" by observing its "disturbance", thunder; where in both cases, c and lightning, energy creates a wave form disturbance in a medium.

 

There is nothing to "understand" about c; it is the speed at which light propagates.

 

So it's important to distinguish that when our physics predict "light" (not strictly c) it is only predicting "half of the total light phenomena", the half that exists in our universe and which is consistent with our laws of physics, known as the electromagnetic wave "light".

 

What is the "other half"? And what evidence do you have for the existence of the "other half"?

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

Note: similar threads merged."Part 2" has been incorporated into this thread.

[Mordred]

this is well past the point of being tedious, its reached the point of impossible. Your proving quite well that you have no interest in learning the established science.

 

You can never have an observer traveling at c, so you will never need to describe something that observes the rest of the universe when it is traveling at c.

 

a particle traveling at c has inertia, to say that it has inertia but its inertia is zero is just plain nonsense.

 

particle wave duality means that a particle has both particle and wavelight properties, we can measure both as subluminal observers. So stating that we can not observe the particle is wrong.

 

I'll bet you didn't even bother looking at the textbook posted earlier, if you had you would understand how the Lorentz transformations work.

 

We've wasted enough time trying to explain that the photon does travel at c in all observer frames of reference, and that the lorentz transformation only applies to subluminal observers. So the photon does not have an observer view point to worry about, it will never need to observe the rest of the universe. We will never travel at c so we will never need to describe the universe at c

 

The mathematics of SR and GR works for any meaningful measurements that we need to worry about needing. We can describe the photon according to our everyday existence.

 

We don't need to change those metrics to describe a situation we will never experience,

 

you still fail to understand the different's between time within an observers frame of reference, and the time when he observes someone else's watch. Instead you choose to ignore that distinction. Rather you make incorrect statements due to ignoring that distinction

Edited July 22, 2014 by Mordred