Photon in an acceleration field
- Thread starter Mazulu
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I don't think you understand that paper you cited. It has nothing what so ever with your space alien's ideas. It is easy to see that the paper is talking about gravity waves. If one black hole was in a non-decaying orbit around a larger one, then the waves would be constant in frequency. But since they are talking about the one black hole rapidly spiraling in and merging, even I can see where the chirp comes from. As the orbit spirals in the orbit times get smaller and the frequency of the gravity wave increases. I repeat, this has nothing to do with your space alien's ideas.
oke:Mazulu. I have an alternate experiment that is approximately the same as your experiment but it should show you why your idea is nuts. Let us say that I have 10 shirts of different colors from red to blue. They are very brightly dyed and are of a cloth that reflects a lot of light. I stand in a room that has walls covered in white spotlights all pointed at me. I have the ability to change my shirt every 1/10 millisecond (is that the right timing?). And I do this over and over, sequentially and repeatedly. By your theory, the light coming off of my shirts should cause a spherical acceleration field around me, similar to a gravity field. Also this acceleration field would stop at the walls of the room. And if I reverse the sequence of shirt changes then it would be an anti-gravity field around me. Sounds kind of stupid doesn't it.
I think that your problem is that you get confused by language. You say that photons shift frequencies. But that statement implies a point of view of the photon. You see the photon does not shift frequency. If a photon was a little man that you could ask questions of, and you asked it what its frequency was, then it would ask you what you were talking about. "What is this thing you call frequency?" You see a photon can't experience time or distance. Its clock (if it had one) would never tick. And its yardstick (if it had one) could not measure the size anything we know of. Frequency is something that only observers experience. And observers in different reference frames experience different frequencies of the same photon at the same time (if there were anything like synchronicity). And most certainly, photons do not chirp.
Your theory is flawed on so many levels that it is mind blowing. Trying to simulate a photon changing frequency is a fools errand. And evidently it is a errand you are determined to accomplish.oke:
I think that your problem is that you get confused by language. You say that photons shift frequencies. But that statement implies a point of view of the photon. You see the photon does not shift frequency. If a photon was a little man that you could ask questions of, and you asked it what its frequency was, then it would ask you what you were talking about. "What is this thing you call frequency?" You see a photon can't experience time or distance. Its clock (if it had one) would never tick. And its yardstick (if it had one) could not measure the size anything we know of. Frequency is something that only observers experience. And observers in different reference frames experience different frequencies of the same photon at the same time (if there were anything like synchronicity). And most certainly, photons do not chirp.
Your theory is flawed on so many levels that it is mind blowing. Trying to simulate a photon changing frequency is a fools errand. And evidently it is a errand you are determined to accomplish.
oke:So it's my fault you don't know something?
No, I didn't say that. Read what I said. Your claims that the frequency behaves like a chirplet is false. Pay attention.
I'm wondering if you're just so bad at grasping reality you can't understand what people say to you or whether you're just trolling.
And gravity is invisible fairies pushing people around. See, making up vacuous crap is easy. It's demonstrating it amounts to something which is important and which you seem unable to do.
Cheezle,Mazulu. I have an alternate experiment that is approximately the same as your experiment but it should show you why your idea is nuts. Let us say that I have 10 shirts of different colors from red to blue. They are very brightly dyed and are of a cloth that reflects a lot of light. I stand in a room that has walls covered in white spotlights all pointed at me. I have the ability to change my shirt every 1/10 millisecond (is that the right timing?). And I do this over and over, sequentially and repeatedly. By your theory, the light coming off of my shirts should cause a spherical acceleration field around me, similar to a gravity field. Also this acceleration field would stop at the walls of the room. And if I reverse the sequence of shirt changes then it would be an anti-gravity field around me. Sounds kind of stupid doesn't it.
I think that your problem is that you get confused by language. You say that photons shift frequencies. But that statement implies a point of view of the photon. You see the photon does not shift frequency. If a photon was a little man that you could ask questions of, and you asked it what its frequency was, then it would ask you what you were talking about. "What is this thing you call frequency?" You see a photon can't experience time or distance. Its clock (if it had one) would never tick. And its yardstick (if it had one) could not measure the size anything we know of. Frequency is something that only observers experience. And observers in different reference frames experience different frequencies of the same photon at the same time (if there were anything like synchronicity). And most certainly, photons do not chirp.
Your theory is flawed on so many levels that it is mind blowing. Trying to simulate a photon changing frequency is a fools errand. And evidently it is a errand you are determined to accomplish.
I'm not sure we understand each other. So let me back up to something more measureable. The 1g gravity field of earth is significantly less than a blackhole acceleration field. Nevertheless, I can take a laser up to the Empire State building and point it downwards towards the ground. If the laser emits photons with frequency $$f_{top}$$, do you agree that the photons will reach the bottom of the Empire State building, the ground, with a frequency $$f_{bottom}>f_{top}$$? In other words, the photons will gain a little bit of energy as they fall in a gravity field. Certainly, if I drop the laser, it will experience an increase in kinetic energy; it will go faster. But the photons can't go faster. Photons only travel at c (vacuum). So, do we agree that the photons will gain a very small amount of energy (E=hf) and a slight increase in frequency when they reach the bottom?
In your word experiment, top and bottom refer to two accelerating frames of reference. A photon is emitted in the top one and is absorbed in the bottom one. Both emission and absorption are types of observations. And these observations can tell us that the wavelength at the top is different than the wavelength at the bottom. You can calculate what the observed wavelengths will be before the experiment is performed if you know how it is emitted. This is obvious.
Where the you get confused is that this is an imaginary problem. We are both just holding the thought of it in our minds. We are tagging it with a little mental note saying that top and bottom are proxies for reality. This is a valid way to discuss the problem. But your imagination has run wild and you confuse the problem by adding another level of imagination to the problem. And this extra level is wrong. You see, you imagine a continuous series of accelerating reference frames along a straight line between top and bottom that conform to a model for gravity. So you are imagining that the photon starts out at top with an initial wavelength and that wavelength continually changes along the path until it gets to bottom where the wavelength is the one measured at the bottom. But that is incorrect. You see there are infinitely more reference frames along the straight line path in which the wavelength could be measured. For every reference frame in your gravity model, I can imagine infinitely more reference frames in which to make a measurement of the wavelength. I can imagine a measurement of the photon to give any wavelength I want by choosing the appropriate reference frame. The fact of the matter is, the photon can only be measured at the ends of it's journey from top to bottom. (Edit: and those measurements are relative ones)
This is why I brought up the fact that photons do not have their own reference frame. If they did, then your wildly imagined experiment would be as you imagine. But they don't. Photons do not frequency shift. Instead observers can have different frames of reference. Every measurement that reveals a wavelength of a photon has a particular frame of reference where it is performed. But between emission and absorption, aka top and bottom, it is impossible to say much about the photon. (though we can say that spacetime coords for emission and absorption will conform to the speed of light).
The photon has no intrinsic wavelength outside of consideration of the reference frames where it is emitted and absorbed. That is my understanding or relativity at least.
True, a photon, without a reference frame, is just a bunch of cycles of EM going by at c.
Certainly you can move the detector if you want to. The photon will follow multiple chirplet paths until it reaches the detector.
It's a bit complicated to explain the structure of space-time. If you want to hear it, let me know.
Yes, please tell me. I understand that it will take time to transcribe the answers from the space aliens. Take your time.
A claim not justified. You're pushing chirplets because someone told you they are an example of how frequency can change. If you knew how to do any photon modelling you'd know that isn't how photons behave.
A chirplet has a frequency of the form $$f(t) = at+bt^{2}$$. A photon falling radially into a spherically symmetric region (towards a black hole, planet or star) will at speed c but it's frequency, as a function of height is obtained from the Schwarzchild metric's $$g_{00}$$ and $$g_{rr}$$ components. Can you tell me the frequency change, a frequency change which is supported by experiments. Here's a hint, it isn't of the form you gave for the chirplet. As Cheezle said, take your time, I'm sure you need to listen really hard to make out the voices in your head.
I could just as easily transmit a sinusoid with frequency 1GHz, through an amplifier, through a radar dish pointed downwards from a tower. If the tower is 100 meters high, I could have frequency detectors spaced every ten meters. As the 1GHz signal "falls" in a 1g gravity field, each of the detectors will measure a slight increase in frequency. The effect would be much more dramatic if I used a 1000g or 1million g-field.
In principle, I could get a large acceleration by constructing the experiment in a rocket; the frame of the rocket is accelerating when the engines are firing. I could even build a centrifuge and get a large acceleration from $$a = \frac{v^2}{r}.$$ I don't necessarily have to use a gravity field to create an accelerated frame.
The point is this: if I have a large acceleration field (measured by an accelerometer), proper acceleration, I will get some time dilation. I will also get the emitted frequency to increase as the photons acquire energy by falling.
None of that addresses what I said. You seem to have an understanding problem, as this is the second time you've failed to grasp something I've said. At least this time you didn't misrepresent me.
Yes, gravitational fields cause photon frequencies to change if they move up or down the potential. That doesn't mean their frequencies are chirplet in structure. If you fire a laser up a tower or down from the top of the tower it's frequency will change as it moves. It's frequency will not be of the form $$f(t) = at+bt^{2}$$ for any a,b pair.
Your use of chirplet expressions isn't justified by any physics. You actually asked on this forum and someone gave a suggestion for time varying frequency things. Chirplets aren't the only ones with that property. And even if they were that doesn't mean a photon is described by a chirplet. This is a manifest demonstration you aren't reaching your 'conclusions' or 'explanations' by doing science, using logic, considering experiments, you're just giving us your uninformed opinions about things you obviously don't have any working understanding of.
If you claim to understand this part of physics why don't you construct, clearly and methodically, the quantitative description of how a photon's frequency depends on it's location in a gravitational field and the direction it is moving in. I'll throw you a MASSIVE simplifications, you may considering just spherically symmetric uncharged, non-spinning masses. This is literally a homework problem for people learning GR and it's put into practical use in the design of the GPS network. Prove you can do something other than delude yourself.
I accept your challenge. I'll get back to you.
Since you have accepted AlphaNumeric's challenge I assume I will never get your explanation of spacetime. So I have a new explanation as to why photons do not shift frequency and why your theory is bogus.
Let us change the thought experiment. We will use a much bigger gravity well such as a black hole and alien technology to do the experiments. You, Mazulu, use your technical skills to put together an electric circuit for the experiment. It is a battery (1 volt) and a resistor (1 ohm) in a circuit. You attach a voltmeter across the resistor and a ammeter in series. The experiment will take place at two different locations, one far from the black hole (FAR) and one near (NEAR).
At the FAR location you look at the experiment. The meters read 1 volt and 1 amp. E=IR so everything is working correctly. So you put the experiment in the saucer and fly it to NEAR. You look at the meters and see 1 volt and 1 amp. Everything is looking good.
So now you teleport back to FAR and use a remote scanning beam to look at the circuit in the saucer at NEAR. You detect that the current is significantly less and 1 amp and the same with the voltage. But viewing the images of the meters show they read as expected, 1 volt and 1 amp. What is happening is that the circuit is time dilated and so the electrons are moving slower and so the current reads low for the scan. But the laws of physics must be obeyed so E=IR. The voltage must be lower too.
Locally the experiment is always the same, but remotely it is different. The energy of the NEAR system is lower when viewed from FAR. This is very important.
Now lets do the photon experiment. You emit the photon at FAR and detect it at NEAR. At FAR the wavelength is different than at NEAR. This is different than the electric circuit experiment where you made identical measurements locally. The reason is that the photon is never in either reference frame. Photons have no reference frame. The process of emission is where some energy is sent off in a photon. Detection is where the energy is gathered. Energy has to be conserved. And the wavelength of a photon is determined by energy.
Here is what is going on. All value measurements involve a comparison with some reference. In the FAR emitter the reference is local to FAR. And the NEAR detector has a NEAR reference. The NEAR locality is at a lower potential than the FAR locality due to time dilation, and so the NEAR reference is lower than then FAR reference. Remember, the energy of the photon does not change and so it's wavelength can not change. The reason for the difference of energy measured (and wavelength) is than the references are different for emission and detection. It is relativity that causes the wavelength and energy to seem different.
So that is why photons do not shift frequency. They also do not lose energy. They do not fall. They do pass though and can be emitted and detected in localities with difference potential.
Long quote, short break. first, I just submitted a 9 page paper to the FQXI essay contest. That really explains my theory in more detail. When it posts, I'll link it.
I'll briefly summarize it. Mathematics explains physics, but can't implement it. Physics is implemented by the right kind of luminiferous aether; not the wrong kind: not particles or gasses, not charges, cogs or wheels. Wave amplitudes are mathematical solutions to QM problems. Now physics isn't implemented by math, but it could be implemented by something that looks like math. So I picked waves, aether medium waves. Do they always look like like waves? No. sometimes they look like the hydrogen wave function. Out of time. I'll answer more, later.
Special relativity was supposed to have booted the luminiferous aether to the curb. Let's take a look at SR's postulates. http://ephysics.physics.ucla.edu/ntnujava/relativity/epostulates_clocks.htm
1. The laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames.
Extention from the Newtonian principle of relativity:
the laws of mechanics are the same for all observers in uniform motion.
2. The speed of light in empty space is the same for all inertial frames.
The speed of an object depends on the reference frame,
however the speed of light in space is the same.
Look at #2. The speed of light is the same for all inertial frames. What? That just blows Gallilean transformation all to hell. Of course we knew that. But how does nature do that? Mathematical physics calls it Lorentz invariance. But the laws of physics are not implemented by math. Therefore, if I want to resurrect the aether, it has to be compatible with SR and QM. So this is what I did. I robbed QM of its wave-function. I said, it ain't just math, it's a real ontological object. There is a lot of confusion when I try to say that wave-functions are ontological objects. So instead, I have to say that wave-functions are a mathematical description of aether medium waves. Aether medium waves are ontological. The fact that we can't measure them directly is not my fault; I can't do anything about that. I only call it the way I see it.
Second, how does nature acheive postulate#2, which is a really good trick. This is the answer I came up with. Let the speed of light be the measuring stick and the clock. So I came up with wavelength and frequency pairs $$\lambda,f$$, from the largest wavelength to the smallest. Now I say: the luminiferous aether is made of the full range of frequency-wavelength pairs whose product is c. Now, I use these waves as the platform for everything else, and I can guarantee postulate #2.
Gotta go.
So let me guess, this platform is supported at each corner by an elephant and the elephants are standing on the back of a giant tortoise. So much for ontology.
Your aether wave theory has even less going for it than your gravity beam idea. You just made it all up. Pure fantasy. Not a crumb of substance. It is a waste of my time to even consider it. It is boring. Extremely boring.
Huh? Boring? Elephants? Did the word "platform" not agree with you? It's hard to choose the right word sometimes.
As for "lack of substance", there is a lot to explain in a short amount of time. But postulate #2 can be explained, and makes perfect sense, if the inertial reference frames, matter, time and space are all just compositions of the set of waves I described. I said that an aether medium has to be QM and SR compliant. The best way to do that is to create the medium out of the speed of light itself, specifically as the set of waves that satisfy $$c=\lambda f$$.
Extremely boring? Very interesting. The cool stuff comes later when you realize that light and aether waves are dual causal.
Alphanumeric,
The heavy lifting has already been done. It's called gravitational redshift. This is what I'm calling a frequency chirp. I understand that those who have invested so much time/effort into the mathematics of GR would not be moved by an argument from someone who was not well versed in GR. I understand that. At this point, my argument is very simple. Gravity and light seem to be related by redshift/blueshift/frequency shift. It is my belief that we should perform an experiment to see if it works in reverse. The best I can do is to ask my boss if I can borrow one of these, hook it up to an amplifier and a radar dish. I'm going to program it to emit a frequency chirp from 1 to 2GHz as fast as possible. They cost $90K; I would be surprised if they had one laying around. Maybe I'll get lucky.
By the way, the redshift equation is $$z=\frac{\lambda_o-\lambda_e}{\lambda_e}$$. Gravitational redshift of a photon can be calculated from general relativity/Schwarzschild metric as, $$Lim_{r -->\inf} z(r)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\frac{r_s}{R}}}-1$$.
If by some amazing luck I actually get my hands on a signal generator, then the plan is to start with frequency chips. I don't know how helpful is would be to use the gravitational redshift equation because I don't have any value for the mass or the radius. I'm only after proof of concept. I know it works if I aim it at a scale with a 100g weight on it, and it changes the apparent weight: 100grams*g to 100grams*g', where g'=g+a; a is the acceleration produced by the experiment.
If it works, then the plan would be to figure out how to make the acceleration "a" as strong as possible.
That generator is not going to do what you want it to do. You have not studied the spec sheet for that product. You have not looked into how you would use such a device. You do not just press the "sweep 1GHz to 2GHz" button. The signal that generator would create would look really crappy. And IF you ever figured that out, then you would just blame it for your gravity beam not working.
Not only are you not a physicist, your electronics skills are at the hobbyist level, and that is probably extremely generous. I do have a few very meager skills in this area. I just hopped on ebay and found exactly what you need instead of the generator. It will do what you want IF you are willing to build a small <$20 circuit (a few op-amps and transistors) to control it and a power supply. That is probably way beyond your skills. The device on ebay costs less than $100 dollars used from a reputable dealer. But guess what? I am not going to tell you what it is. LOL. I am not here to help you with your stupid experiment. I am only here to rub your nose in your lack of skills.
oke:I knew you'd just say "Oh look at the mainstream".
Sorry, that doesn't cut it. You need to demonstrate those results follow from your claims, not just assert it. If I said that my idea that gravity is invisible fairies pushing people around explained frequency changes and output gravitational redshift would you think I was doing viable science? Of course not. Your claims are just as vapid.
Jesus H Christ, how many times do you need to be told, the photon behaviour in the picture doesn't behave like a chirplet. Frequency changing doesn't mean it changes like a chirplet. Chirplets have a specific form for their frequency and it is NOT the same as the photon's frequency change in that picture you posted. That is what I previously told you. That is why I asked you to provide the details, so you'd realise it for yourself.
For someone claiming to get his information from aliens and god you sure do have terrible reading and understanding abilities.
No, no one is moved by your 'argument' because your argument is "I assert I am right. I assert my ideas lead to the results the mainstream already has. I assert I'm in contact with ****ing aliens". If Stephen Hawking presented your claims I'd dismiss them just as quickly. If Einstein came back to life, turned up on my front door and asserted what you had I'd dismiss them just as fast. Your arguments are ridiculous not because you know bugger all but because they are utterly baseless.
No, you don't. You have delusions of competency when it comes to your ability to understand and reason. You have neither.
Yes, your argument is "I'm right, trust me". It's a simple argument and it's simply bull****.
It's also your belief god and aliens inform you about science and those are just as unfounded.
I wouldn't lend you an electric toothbrush, never mind an expensive piece of equipment a trained person has to use.
I know what general relativity says. The problem is you haven't given me or anyone else any reason to think your assertions lead to the same results as general relativity.
Seriously, I wouldn't trust you with any piece of equipment. Heck, someone who believes god and aliens speak to him and give him physics knowledge I don't think should be left on their own, never mind with $90k worth of equipment.