C, photons, infinity (and beyond!)

[JimC]

Sometimes, I just feel like going all Copenhagen with this shit...

"If we can measure it, or predict it, good. If not, it can fuck right off..."

But then other times, I get in touch with my inner scientific mystic, and it's like, wow, heavy, man...

[Farsight]

Now lets think about what happens to anything travelling at c. From our frame of reference (always assuming that we could 'observe' those photons without interracting with them - which I know is impossible) they are travelling at 3 x 10^8 msˉ¹ in all directions. However from the 'point of view' of a photon, the universe is infinitely compressed in the direction of its travel and has slowed to a stop. The photon 'experiences' no time at all and no distance travelled between its creation and its destruction - its birth and death are simultaneous.

This is creating a problem from an erroneous initial assumption: the photon doesn't experience no time, the photon doesn't experience anything.

...We have an asymptote - two even.
1. Infinite time (from any other frame of reference) passing in no time at all (from the photon's POV.)
2. Infinite distance (again, from any other reference frame) shrinking to zero length as far as the photon is concerned.

Did I get that wrong? Or is it really that boggling? Is that really what the maths says?

You didn't get it wrong, but it isn't boggling, not at all. The maths is right, but the issue is in the interpretation. It doesn't quite say what people say it says. Here's another way of putting it:

1. A very large duration as measured in any other frame of reference would be a zero duration if it could be measured in the photon's frame of reference.
2. A vary large distance as measured in any other frame of reference would be a zero distance if it could be measured in the photon's frame of reference.

Note the "if". This is the crux of it. In the photon frame, there is no measurement of zero time and zero length, because there is no measurement at all! To appreciate this, imagine that you're in a spaceship travelling very very close to the speed of light. This is as close as you can get to putting yourself in the photon's shoes. You're blatting across the universe at close to c. Unfortunately for you, I and my associates had have advance notice of your route, so we conspire together. We also erect some warning signs The first one reads:

Danger! Asteroid ahead!

...but you flash past it and carry straight on. You flash right on by the next sign too:

Danger! Asteroid ahead!

You carry on blatting through space regardless, and then you pass the third and final sign:

Danger! Asteroid ahead!

But you didn't see it, you didn't notice it, and you didn't experience it. After that, you hit the asteroid we put in your way:

Kerblam!

You didn't experience that either.

You might think that all these things were simultaneous "in your frame", but it's an illusion. You can't experience any events, but events can still occur to you. The simple truth is that you experience the thing called time because of local motion. Clocks clock up motion, not "time passing". And if something travels at the speed of light, there can't be any local motion, because this would result in a total speed that was greater than the speed of light. If our gedanken photon had a gendanken ball of light in its gedanken hand, then if it managed to throw it sideways, that total speed of that ball of light would be... faster than light. And light doesn't travel faster than light. It's really simple when you look at the evidence of what clocks do, and see that there's no evidence for "time passing". The latter is just a figure of speech, and there's no evidence for it, and no rational justification for it at all.

[Farsight]

...For an object which possesses mass, the speed of light is not a finite thing, but the definition of a limit...if you could supply an infinite amount of energy to speed your motion, what is the final speed which you would attain? The speed of light is. There's no "why" for that in physics, it's just what seems to be true. The question is transcendental. The theoretical answer borders on relgious. Counterexplanations simply lack any evidence to support them. Nature is in search of description. Only humans are after an explanation.

This is promoting mysticism and ignorance, and is the scientific equivalent of "surpasseth all human understanding" whilst denying patent evidence because it isn't in some old textbook.

Xamonas: Matter can't travel faster than light because matter is essentially made out of light. The evidence is there in pair production and electron properties. You make an electron and a positron out of a +1022keV photon. The electron has spin and a magnetic dipole moment, and the Einstein-de Haas effect tells you that spin angular momentum is the same as classical angular momentum, so the rotation is real. Then you can annihilate the electron with the positron, and the result is two 511keV gamma photons. Light. So what was rotating in the electron? Simple. Light. The electron literally is made from light, and it's bleeding obvious that it's made of light, and that this light is going round and round in a circular path. When you make the electron move you add energy so that the path is now helical with respect to you. No matter how much energy you add, there's no way you can make the electron travel at the speed of light. To do this you're asking for light to be going round a helical path at the speed of light, and moving linearly at the speed of light. It ain't going to happen.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Now lets think about what happens to anything travelling at c. From our frame of reference (always assuming that we could 'observe' those photons without interracting with them - which I know is impossible) they are travelling at 3 x 10^8 msˉ¹ in all directions. However from the 'point of view' of a photon, the universe is infinitely compressed in the direction of its travel and has slowed to a stop. The photon 'experiences' no time at all and no distance travelled between its creation and its destruction - its birth and death are simultaneous.

This is creating a problem from an erroneous initial assumption: the photon doesn't experience no time, the photon doesn't experience anything.

As I already said in the OP...

(PS. Forgive me repeatedly adopting the intentional stance when referring to the photon - I know it doesn't actually have a point of view - it just helps make things simpler.)

I didn't need that pointing out again, thanks anyway.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

...For an object which possesses mass, the speed of light is not a finite thing, but the definition of a limit...if you could supply an infinite amount of energy to speed your motion, what is the final speed which you would attain? The speed of light is. There's no "why" for that in physics, it's just what seems to be true. The question is transcendental. The theoretical answer borders on relgious. Counterexplanations simply lack any evidence to support them. Nature is in search of description. Only humans are after an explanation.

This is promoting mysticism and ignorance, and is the scientific equivalent of "surpasseth all human understanding" whilst denying patent evidence because it isn't in some old textbook.

Xamonas: Matter can't travel faster than light because matter is essentially made out of light. The evidence is there in pair production and electron properties. You make an electron and a positron out of a +1022keV photon. The electron has spin and a magnetic dipole moment, and the Einstein-de Haas effect tells you that spin angular momentum is the same as classical angular momentum, so the rotation is real. Then you can annihilate the electron with the positron, and the result is two 511keV gamma photons. Light. So what was rotating in the electron? Simple. Light. The electron literally is made from light, and it's bleeding obvious that it's made of light, and that this light is going round and round in a circular path. When you make the electron move you add energy so that the path is now helical with respect to you. No matter how much energy you add, there's no way you can make the electron travel at the speed of light. To do this you're asking for light to be going round a helical path at the speed of light, and moving linearly at the speed of light. It ain't going to happen.

Yes, we all know your pet theory. Funny how I have never seen it in any textbook. Please stop presenting it as fact. It is an hypothesis, nothing more.

[Farsight]

Yes, we all know your pet theory. Funny how I have never seen it in any textbook. Please stop presenting it as fact. It is an hypothesis, nothing more.

You asked a question, you got an answer. I don't present some pet theory. I present evidence. But what's this? You want it in some book, and if it's not there, it doesn't count? Now where I have heard that before?







Wallow in mysticism if you like. It's your choice. And if you want to preach rationalia at the same time, that's your choice too.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Yes, we all know your pet theory. Funny how I have never seen it in any textbook. Please stop presenting it as fact. It is an hypothesis, nothing more.

I don't present some pet theory. I present evidence. What? You want it in some book, and if it's not there, it doesn't count? Now where I have heard that before?

You have half a dozen threads in which to put forward your hypothesis. This one is about something else. Anymore and I will move the derail to one of your threads.

[Farsight]

You have half a dozen threads in which to put forward your hypothesis. This one is about something else. Anymore and I will move the derail to one of your threads.

You asked a question, nobody answered it. Now I've answered it, and you're saying it's a derail? What do you want? Mysticism and mystery? Or science and simplicity? Now go and read what I said, remember that this forum is called rationalia not irrationalia, and go check out the scientific evidence I referred to instead of dismissing it because it's not in your textbook bible. Your response is exactly what we see in YECs. They spout on about heaven and hell and the Earth being made 6000 years ago despite the lack of scientific evidence, and they're so convinced of this that they dismiss scientific evidence to the contrary. And then people laugh at them. But those self-same people believe in time passing despite the lack of scientific evidence, and they're so convinced that they dismiss scientific evidence to the contrary. Whoosh. Next time you see some time passing, do let me know.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

You have half a dozen threads in which to put forward your hypothesis. This one is about something else. Anymore and I will move the derail to one of your threads.

You asked a question, nobody answered it. Now I've answered it, and you're saying it's a derail? What do you want? Mysticism and mystery? Or science and simplicity? Now go and read what I said, remember that this forum is called rationalia not irrationalia, and go check out the scientific evidence I referred to instead of dismissing it because it's not in your textbook bible. Your response is exactly what we see in YECs. They spout on about heaven and hell and the Earth being made 6000 years ago despite the lack of scientific evidence, and they're so convinced of this that they dismiss scientific evidence to the contrary. And then people laugh at them. But those self-same people believe in time passing despite the lack of scientific evidence, and they're so convinced that they dismiss scientific evidence to the contrary. Whoosh. Next time you see some time passing, do let me know.

What scientific evidence have you presented?

You have simply repeated the same thing you always post in any other thread that is remotely about physics.

I didn't ask why matter cannot travel faster than light. I already know your views on that, thank you. I don't need it repeating YET AGAIN! I am not even saying you are wrong, simply that it is nothing but an hypothesis and one that is irrelevant in this case!

I raised a very specific point about an apparent paradox between the instantaneous movement of photons (in their frame of reference) and the infinite distance that they would travel if there was no particle with which to collide in their path. Fuck all to do with the nature of electrons. Hence, your post was a derail.

[Farsight]

I raised a very specific point about an apparent paradox between the instantaneous movement of photons (in their frame of reference) and the infinite distance that they would travel if there was no particle with which to collide in their path. Fuck all to do with the nature of electrons. Hence, your post was a derail.

No, it was an explanation, one that you asked for, but dismissed. Because you're wallowing in mysticism rather than seeing the rationality. Photons don't move instananeously, they move at the speed of light, and they don't experience anything. They don't experience anything because there can be no local motion for something moving at c. Because if there was, you'd need motion that was faster than light. That can't happen because light is the fastest thing there is, and we make matter out of it. Things like electrons:



And those electrons have spin, and you can't make electrons go faster from the light from which they're made. You ever read up on electron spin? Or the Einstein de-Haas effect that proves it's a real rotation? Or any of the scientific evidence? Like magnetic dipole moment? Ever read up on magnetism and angular momentum? No. obviously not. But hey, you carry on. Ignore the scientific evidence. Pretend it's a "derail". Because you have faith in somebody like Twiglet, wittering on about how it's transcendental and how it borders on religious.

Cringe.

[Twiglet]

I raised a very specific point about an apparent paradox between the instantaneous movement of photons (in their frame of reference) and the infinite distance that they would travel if there was no particle with which to collide in their path. Fuck all to do with the nature of electrons. Hence, your post was a derail.

No, it was an explanation, one that you asked for, but dismissed. Because you're wallowing in mysticism rather than seeing the rationality. Photons don't move instananeously, they move at the speed of light, and they don't experience anything. They don't experience anything because there can be no local motion for something moving at c. Because if there was, you'd need motion that was faster than light. That can't happen because light is the fastest thing there is, and we make matter out of it. Things like electrons:



And those electrons have spin, and you can't make electrons go faster from the light from which they're made. You ever read up on electron spin? Or the Einstein de-Haas effect that proves it's a real rotation? Or any of the scientific evidence? Like magnetic dipole moment? Ever read up on magnetism and angular momentum? No. obviously not. But hey, you carry on. Ignore the scientific evidence. Pretend it's a "derail". Because you have faith in somebody like Twiglet, wittering on about how it's transcendental and how it borders on religious.

Cringe.

The philosophical interpretations of physics are pretty transcendental if you're that way inclined, and a good deal has been written on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Physics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm

However. there is a big difference farsight - between creating a philosophy around the interpretation of established theory, which has a good deal of historical precedent (determinism anyone?) - and inventing shit which has nothing to support it experimentally, and pretending it's science.

You might think that all these things were simultaneous "in your frame", but it's an illusion. You can't experience any events, but events can still occur to you. The simple truth is that you experience the thing called time because of local motion. Clocks clock up motion, not "time passing". And if something travels at the speed of light, there can't be any local motion, because this would result in a total speed that was greater than the speed of light. If our gedanken photon had a gendanken ball of light in its gedanken hand, then if it managed to throw it sideways, that total speed of that ball of light would be... faster than light. And light doesn't travel faster than light. It's really simple when you look at the evidence of what clocks do, and see that there's no evidence for "time passing". The latter is just a figure of speech, and there's no evidence for it, and no rational justification for it at all.

Above, you demonstrated comprehensively that you don't understand the Lorentz transforms, even though you did demonstrate elsewhere that you can plug in numbers to the velocity equation. If in the frame of reference of a phton you "threw a globe of light" - the light travelling from the globe would have a relative velocity of c. Of course, you neglected to understand that a globe is a physical entity, so to move it away from the photon in the first place would require infinite energy, and in fact for a globe to be in possession of a photon is a physical impossibility for the same reason... but just imagining that a photon could emit another photon in the opposite direction, and a measurement could be taken to see what speed it left with relative to it's parent, the answer is still c.

Regardless of whether your "ideas" are right farsight, you demonstrably fail to understand relativity - absolutely utterly fail. The evidence for it is above. XC who isn't a physicist understands the asymptotic nature of the Lorentz function. You don't even need to be a mathematician to understand it, you just have to know what it looks like and what it's application means in real terms. But you don't farsight, you proved that above and elsewhere. XC understands it better than you, and he doesn't even claim to.

You don't need to understand relativity to come up with new theories farsight, but it does help to understand what the theory actually means and predicts when you keep alluding to it as a building block for your pet theory. If the foundations of your understanding are rotten, anything you build on them is likely to fall in a heap.

[epepke]

Whoa, that's a really thought-provoking idea!

I'm going to guess that any path for a photon under the sum over histories that doesn't have a beginning and an end has an amplitude of zero.

[Farsight]

The philosophical interpretations of physics are pretty transcendental if you're that way inclined, and a good deal has been written on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Physics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm

Enough mysticism, Twiglet. I'm not interested.

However. there is a big difference farsight - between creating a philosophy around the interpretation of established theory, which has a good deal of historical precedent (determinism anyone?) - and inventing shit which has nothing to support it experimentally, and pretending it's science.

I'm giving you the experimental evidence, all you've ever done is dismissed it because you prefer mystery.

You might think that all these things were simultaneous "in your frame", but it's an illusion. You can't experience any events, but events can still occur to you. The simple truth is that you experience the thing called time because of local motion. Clocks clock up motion, not "time passing". And if something travels at the speed of light, there can't be any local motion, because this would result in a total speed that was greater than the speed of light. If our gedanken photon had a gendanken ball of light in its gedanken hand, then if it managed to throw it sideways, that total speed of that ball of light would be... faster than light. And light doesn't travel faster than light. It's really simple when you look at the evidence of what clocks do, and see that there's no evidence for "time passing". The latter is just a figure of speech, and there's no evidence for it, and no rational justification for it at all.

Above, you demonstrated comprehensively that you don't understand the Lorentz transforms, even though you did demonstrate elsewhere that you can plug in numbers to the velocity equation. If in the frame of reference of a photon you "threw a globe of light" the light travelling from the globe would have a relative velocity of c.

There isn't any reference frame. The photon doesn't experience anything. In that mythical abstract reference frame it takes all of eternity to make any measurement. Thus the velocity addition formula is irrelevant. A photon going this → way at c cannot emit another photon which is also going this way → at c, AND that way ↑ at c. Because the net speed of the second photon would exceed c, and light doesn't go faster than light.

Regardless of whether your "ideas" are right farsight, you demonstrably fail to understand relativity...

They're right. And it isn't me who fails to understand relativity. It's you.

[ChildInAZoo]

I'm giving you the experimental evidence, all you've ever done is dismissed it because you prefer mystery.

We all know that this isn't the truth and that you don't know it's the truth doesn't speak very well to your mental state. When you were asked point blank to provide direct evidence for your theory, you always dodged out of the way. Your latest dodge involves claiming that nobody (here) would understand the detailed mathematics of your theory. So even you have admitted that we must accept your theory as some kind of mystery, something that we cannot really understand and decide how well the measurement evidence works for ourselves.

If you want to address this, do so in one of your five+ threads here. Don't keep wrecking this one.

[Farsight]

I'm the only one here who's actually answered the OP and given the supporting scientific evidence: http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 95#p488316. Others such as Twiglet have professed a liking for mystery, which I've countered with more scientific evidence: http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 95#p488330. Don't kid yourself that your abuse conceals your dismissal of the scientific evidence