"Does light move", asked Quantum Quack

[AlphaNumeric]

well back up your claim that a photon that travels across space and the $100 is yours...it is that simple. ”

No, it's not as 'simple as that'. If it were a fair competition QQ would put the money in the hands of a learned impartial third person and get them to evaluate evidence. As it is QQ is unable to understand anything put infront of him which is beyond high school level science as he hasn't advanced past that. Research papers or papers published which involve high level precision experiments are not worded so they can be read by high school students, they are worded to transmit as much information as possible in as convenient a form as possible to researchers. As such it is an unfair test as QQ cannot (and by his own admission will not) understand enough science to understand any evidence.

Your pedancy is showing. QQ said what he said and if i were you I would take him at face value. I think your mother spoiled you rotten. You really think that your degrees, and profession qualifies you as 'scientist', when you only project yourself as a wanna be.

It's great when you and QQ try to attack my learnedness and how I'm just a wanna be. QQ claims to have spent 20 years, 20 years, doing work on this stuff but he hasn't read a single book, hasn't done any calculations, hasn't done anything which anyone in the education system would consider 'active learning'. 20 years ago I was just learning my times tables (I was 5). You and he have, in multiple threads, whined about how science is wrong with this or that, but not once have you shown you can even understand the science you whine about. You've never made any attempt to learn it or grasp it in a working capacity. And yet you both try to tell me I'm the dishonest one, I'm the one who isn't fit to call himself a scientist?! I put a hell of a lot more effort in than you two combined. In the time QQ claims to have been doing relativity but has nothing to show from it I've learnt enough to go from scratch up to doing research. I'd say that proves I can call myself 'scientist' and you two lying hacks.

If you could reign in your bluster you might learn something

Hoho! Hypocrisy overload! At least I'm capable of learning something.

Very specifically, how does particle collider physics demonstrate photon motion?

By particle production they photons cause.

Can your QM explain this unambiguously?

Firstly, that has nothing to do with the thing you quote me saying. Secondly, I'm certain you don't understand quantum mechanics, I've seen your previous attempts at understanding Newton's Shell Theorem, which you failed miserably at. That stuff was 1st year calculus, so 2nd or 3rd year QM is clearly beyond your grasp. Rather than asking me "Can your QM explain this unambiguously?" as if it's my fault you don't know, why don't you try learning? Why not open a book? When I don't know if a phenomenon is already known about or a particular result already addressed I Google. Then I look through related books, then I check ArXiv and then I ask someone and I ask as if I'm at fault for not knowing rather than it's their fault I'm ignorant.

And it's not 'my' QM. It's the result of more than a century of development in our understanding of subatomic particles and it's that theory which is making the PC you're currently sat in front of, reading these words off, possible. CPUs are quantum mechanical systems. You and QQ always try to 'scoff' at mainstream work you don't understand, as if noone bothered to check it. How little you know. And unfortunately it's clear you're comfortable with that pathetic level of knowledge. I pity you.

 

[thinking]

light doesn't move persay as it does transfer the energy , light flows

just as the energy in wave , in a body of water does and as long as the source of the energy that produces the wave continues so does the wave

 

[Quantum Quack]

Kurros:
After all this discussion I'm still not very clear on what you mean by that. But strictly speaking SR is not dependent on any theory of light. It's main postulate is about the *speed* of light, which is a statement about spacetime, not the nature of light. It is our theory of light that then goes and says that light travels at this speed. If the universe had no photons in it SR could still exist just as validly. SR is only a theory of spacetime, not of light. Light is just the most convenient method of probing spacetime in SR. The real nature of light (as best as anyone knows) is described by quantum field theory, of which SR is just one small (but important) part.

but it takes traveling photon to generate the theory of space time you refer to yes?
In fact it is the fact that the Photon travels that generates the need to construct Minkowski/Einstein space time...yes?
Yet evidence of travelling is not available..... and you are happy about that?
[no travelling photon = no M/E space time/nor special relativity]

 

[Quantum Quack]

No, it's not as 'simple as that'. If it were a fair competition QQ would put the money in the hands of a learned impartial third person and get them to evaluate evidence. As it is QQ is unable to understand anything put infront of him which is beyond high school level science as he hasn't advanced past that. Research papers or papers published which involve high level precision experiments are not worded so they can be read by high school students, they are worded to transmit as much information as possible in as convenient a form as possible to researchers. As such it is an unfair test as QQ cannot (and by his own admission will not) understand enough science to understand any evidence.

It's great when you and QQ try to attack my learnedness and how I'm just a wanna be. QQ claims to have spent 20 years, 20 years, doing work on this stuff but he hasn't read a single book, hasn't done any calculations, hasn't done anything which anyone in the education system would consider 'active learning'. 20 years ago I was just learning my times tables (I was 5). You and he have, in multiple threads, whined about how science is wrong with this or that, but not once have you shown you can even understand the science you whine about. You've never made any attempt to learn it or grasp it in a working capacity. And yet you both try to tell me I'm the dishonest one, I'm the one who isn't fit to call himself a scientist?! I put a hell of a lot more effort in than you two combined. In the time QQ claims to have been doing relativity but has nothing to show from it I've learnt enough to go from scratch up to doing research. I'd say that proves I can call myself 'scientist' and you two lying hacks.

Hoho! Hypocrisy overload! At least I'm capable of learning something.

By particle production they photons cause.

Firstly, that has nothing to do with the thing you quote me saying. Secondly, I'm certain you don't understand quantum mechanics, I've seen your previous attempts at understanding Newton's Shell Theorem, which you failed miserably at. That stuff was 1st year calculus, so 2nd or 3rd year QM is clearly beyond your grasp. Rather than asking me "Can your QM explain this unambiguously?" as if it's my fault you don't know, why don't you try learning? Why not open a book? When I don't know if a phenomenon is already known about or a particular result already addressed I Google. Then I look through related books, then I check ArXiv and then I ask someone and I ask as if I'm at fault for not knowing rather than it's their fault I'm ignorant.

And it's not 'my' QM. It's the result of more than a century of development in our understanding of subatomic particles and it's that theory which is making the PC you're currently sat in front of, reading these words off, possible. CPUs are quantum mechanical systems. You and QQ always try to 'scoff' at mainstream work you don't understand, as if noone bothered to check it. How little you know. And unfortunately it's clear you're comfortable with that pathetic level of knowledge. I pity you.

ahh more words and false claims that you know about my education and reading material...and STILL no evidence to support the flying pig called Photon.

As McGyver said "Show me the money!","Show me the money!"

 

[Quantum Quack]

advice: less time denying a problem and more time solving it....

 

[Quantum Quack]

AlphaNumeric:
snip:
By particle production they photons cause.

"ehh what are photons?" The thirteen year old student asks his learned teacher....

 

[kurros]

"but it takes traveling photon to generate the theory of space time you refer to yes?
In fact it is the fact that the Photon travels that generates the need to construct Minkowski/Einstein space time...yes?"

No, I would argue that this is not strictly necessary, and is just the most convenient way of formulating the theory. There is nothing in the math describing space-time that requires photons to exist. It is a geometric construction, and due to the profound effects it has on light propagation there is a bunch of jargon named after light-related phenomena, "light-cones", "speed of light" etc, but the parts of the theory these relate to are not actually dependent on light existing.
Indeed it can be argued that spacetime does not take it's shape because light travels at the same speed in all reference frames, rather light travels at the same speed in all reference frames as a *consequence* of the geometry of spacetime.

Incidentally all other velocities are just as screwed up by SRT as the photon velocity. Imagine there is no light in the universe. We could still derive SRT from observations of how a baseball (or perhaps a proton, since baseballs can't hold themselves together without photons) is observed to move from different reference frames (never mind that we can't see it, I'm sure there's some other clever observation method that could be contrived).

 

[Quantum Quack]

"but it takes traveling photon to generate the theory of space time you refer to yes?
In fact it is the fact that the Photon travels that generates the need to construct Minkowski/Einstein space time...yes?"

No, I would argue that this is not strictly necessary, and is just the most convenient way of formulating the theory. There is nothing in the math describing space-time that requires photons to exist. It is a geometric construction, and due to the profound effects it has on light propagation there is a bunch of jargon named after light-related phenomena, "light-cones", "speed of light" etc, but the parts of the theory these relate to are not actually dependent on light existing.
Indeed it can be argued that spacetime does not take it's shape because light travels at the same speed in all reference frames, rather light travels at the same speed in all reference frames as a *consequence* of the geometry of spacetime.

Incidentally all other velocities are just as screwed up by SRT as the photon velocity. Imagine there is no light in the universe. We could still derive SRT from observations of how a baseball (or perhaps a proton, since baseballs can't hold themselves together without photons) is observed to move from different reference frames (never mind that we can't see it, I'm sure there's some other clever observation method that could be contrived).

I think I understand where you are coming from, however I wonder what puts the "time" in space time if it is not our traveling photons speed across that "space"?

 

[kurros]

Time is just one aspect of the geometry of spacetime, so it is no more created by a moving photon than space is. The photon is just a thing existing IN spacetime. Einstein was a big fan of objective reality, and in this viewpoint we don't need to have anything in spacetime for it to exist. If you don't like that and prefer the subjective reality that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics seems to suggest then maybe things get more complex. But then you have to worry about what constitutes an observer etc.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Time is just one aspect of the geometry of spacetime, so it is no more created by a moving photon than space is. The photon is just a thing existing IN spacetime. Einstein was a big fan of objective reality, and in this viewpoint we don't need to have anything in spacetime for it to exist. If you don't like that and prefer the subjective reality that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics seems to suggest then maybe things get more complex. But then you have to worry about what constitutes an observer etc.

I'll take one of many snips from wiki and post it here for your opinion:
Topic Spacetime.

In classical mechanics, the use of Euclidean space instead of spacetime is appropriate, as time is treated as universal and constant, being independent of the state of motion of an observer.

In relativistic contexts, however, time cannot be separated from the three dimensions of space, because the rate at which time passes depends on an object's velocity relative to the speed of light and also on the strength of intense gravitational fields, which can slow the passage of time.

So just from this one snip it is clear that space time, according to relativistic theory, demands a traveling photon. A traveling photon as the causation not only of the light effect but also time itself.

 

[kurros]

Again, this is just the jargon. The speed of light is just the speed light happens to go. Light goes that speed because is it massless and that is how fast massless things have to go in the spacetime in which we live. Thus the statement does not demand the existence of light.
It's not a very good paragraph actually, someone should come up with a better one, especially since it is right at the top of the article. It's a pretty hard thing to explain in one sentence though.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Again, this is just the jargon. The speed of light is just the speed light happens to go. Light goes that speed because is it massless and that is how fast massless things have to go in the spacetime in which we live. Thus the statement does not demand the existence of light.
It's not a very good paragraph actually, someone should come up with a better one, especially since it is right at the top of the article. It's a pretty hard thing to explain in one sentence though.

Tell me Kussos if you don't mind as I am curious.
In your opinion how does science describe the distinction between Euclidean space and Minkowski/Einstein space time?

 

[Quantum Quack]

Again, this is just the jargon. The speed of light is just the speed light happens to go. Light goes that speed because is it massless and that is how fast massless things have to go in the spacetime in which we live. Thus the statement does not demand the existence of light.
It's not a very good paragraph actually, someone should come up with a better one, especially since it is right at the top of the article. It's a pretty hard thing to explain in one sentence though.

I also wonder whether AlphaNumeric would agree with you?

 

[kurros]

Science distinguishes Euclidean space from Minkowski space by their metric. The job of the metric is to define the meaning of 'distance' and 'angle' in a space.

In Euclidean space the metric tells us that distances are defined by:

where ds is the infinitesimal distance interval in question, and dx dy and dz are infinitesimal steps along each of the coordinate directions. You may recognise this equation as Pythagoras' theorem. Time does not appear here because it has nothing to do with defining distance in Euclidean space.
To move to Minkowski space we do need to include time, and it is actually done very simply:

where ds is now an infinitesimal distance in 'spacetime', and dt is an infinitesimal step in time. c is the speed of light as usual. Now, in this equation it is just a parameter, it has nothing to do with light. We could change it and the same kind of phenomena would occur in the new space, but scaled to the new value. In fact many physicists set c=1 and work in 'natural units', in which all velocities are defined relative to the speed of light.
The real trick comes from the negative sign. It is not simple to explain what it does, but it defines time as something fundamentally different to the spatial dimensions.
If you would have preferred we include time in our thinking by simply writing

so it is still Euclidean, you could, but it wouldn't correspond to our universe. It would say time really was the same as space, which is difficult to imagine. (actually I take it back, you couldn't. You'd still have to multiply dt by some speed factor to make the units work (distance = speed x time, and to add things together they must have the same units)

All of SR follows from using Eq. 2 rather than Eq. 1 to define distance.

(btw is there any easier way to write equations in this forum than pasting in pictures?)

 

[Oli]

(btw is there any easier way to write equations in this forum than pasting in pictures?)

Yes:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=61223

 

[Quantum Quack]

Now, in this equation it is just a parameter, it has nothing to do with light.

and why do you think it is "just" a parameter and has nothing to do with light or it's speed?
If you could scale it to what ever you wanted then it would no longer be 'c' surely?

 

[kurros]

I apologise, I used the word 'scale' in two different ways at once, I should have been clearer. You could change it on its own and yes it would no longer be c, but the geometry of the space would still be very similar (if you made it 10 m/s for instance you'd get massively tripped out by all the readily apparent SR effects going on all around you, except you'd be used to it). The second way I used it was just to redefine our units of measurement. There's nothing special about m/s, so instead of saying c= 2.998x10^8 m/s we could say c=1 'lightspeeds'. Consequently you have also redefined your time and/or distance units, but not uniquely, there are a couple of choice people make.

As for just being a parameter, it is just that because we don't need to talk about light to write down that equation. Of course it has something to do with light and its speed, but that comes later.

I tried to come up with some simple math to demonstrate it but it got a bit out of hand to post here. I'll admit I lied a little, you can't quite derive all of SR from Minkowski space, you need to get energy and mass in there one way or another as well. SR is the only way to do that consistently. You more or less need to come up with E=mc^2 to finish things off. I.e. once you have the famous energy-momentum equation

$$
E^{2}=p^{2}c^{2}+m_{0}^{2}c^{4}
$$

Then you know things about the energy of massless particles:

$$
E=pc
$$

and the rest mass energy of particles:

$$
E=m_{0}c^{2}
$$

Also we need the equation for the momentum of a wave, which if v=c gives us the momentum of a photon of a given frequency:

$$
p=\frac{h}{\lambda }=\frac{hf}{c}
$$

Lets say you have a massless particle travelling at a speed less than c.
Its momentum would no longer be given by the above equation as it is for light

as it is for light. Instead it moves at a new speed, a, so:

$$
p=\frac{hf}{a}
$$

we then have its energy given by the energy-momentum relation as

$$
E=pc \\
=hf\left( \frac{c}{a}\right)
$$

However, since it is moving less than c, it has a rest frame in Minkowski space, and in this frame $$a=0$$ so $$E=\infty$$, which is very bad. If it moves faster than c then it can violate causality in Minkowski space, which is also very bad. So things are only cool if it moves at exactly c. Thus, if massless objects are to exist in Minkowski space, they have to travel at c. If c was some different value this would force massless objects to travel at that speed instead. Thus we don't need light for SR, but if we have it then it has to travel at c.

 

[Quantum Quack]

ok reverse your equations so that you focus on m instead of E and what does that tell you about mass in minkowski space time and it's rate of travel through time?

 

[kurros]

I'm not sure what you're getting at.

 

[Quantum Quack]

However, since it is moving less than c, it has a rest frame in Minkowski space, and in this frame so , which is very bad. If it moves faster than c then it can violate causality in Minkowski space, which is also very bad. So things are only cool if it moves at exactly c. Thus, if massless objects are to exist in Minkowski space, they have to travel at c. If c was some different value this would force massless objects to travel at that speed instead. Thus we don't need light for SR, but if we have it then it has to travel at c.

then it has to travel at 'c' which is? the speed of light. 'c' isn't the speed of anything else, it is in fact specifically the speed of light.
To say that Minkowski space time is constructed independent of the speed of light [ which is why it was construucted in the first place] is not good reasoning in IMO.
To say that the value of 'c' is not dependent on light speed is a bit how can I say it...uhmmm...not good....
A bit like saying the light cones have no relationship or association to the speed of light...which is a bit ...uhmmmm.....not good....