SciContest! Why can't matter be made of photons?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Reiku said:
There might be. We could argue that the photon energy is carried on from one state to another, like a quantum DNA. It could be answerable, by saying that neutrino's are created from tritium, and that the trituim itself comes from particles that are directly made from photon energy. I like it, because it does not beg the question you are asking.
Click to expand...
More speculation and maybe it could be so; but I need something I can put into a computer program and it convolutes a photon and spits out a neutrino. So far I can't do that. I can do it with all the other elementary particles.
 
Vern said:
It don't work. There's no logical connection.
Click to expand...
Yes there is: a photon is a wave - light propagates as spherical wavefronts in the EM field.
Drop a pebble in a largish puddle sometime - you should see waves spreading out from where the pebble splashes down, in a circle.

So both are waves, that's the logical connection; it does work.

Mentioning Kant or Popper does zero to provide a logical counterargument; perhaps I should mention Einstein, or Wheeler?
All I'm saying is, your refutation is as solid as a surfboard made out of ocean waves.
 
Last edited:
Listen to what is being said friend.

Quantum waves are not actual water waves. In fact, other than being a handy analogy, it is no more than that i am afraid.
 
Reiku: where have I said ocean waves are quantum waves? Or that quantum waves are actual water waves?

What I actually said, is quantum particles, and travelling momentum on the surface of the ocean, are both examples of waves.
That's w-a-v-e-s - waves.
 
Yes, but these waves are not real, as in the sense of being made of matter. They are statistical waves for us to calculate the probability of finding a particle in any place.
 
Reiku said:
Yes, but these waves are not real, as in the sense of being made of matter.
Click to expand...
A matter-wave is what something (like an electron) is. So these waves are real.
They are statistical waves for us to calculate the probability of finding a particle in any place.
Click to expand...
Where did you get that idea?
 
The waves have real effects in the world. But the wave function is very ethereal. It isn't actually made up of anything physical or tangeable.
 
Reiku said:
The waves have real effects in the world. But the wave function is very ethereal. It isn't actually made up of anything physical or tangeable.
Click to expand...
How do you get from: "real effects", to "ethereal wavefunctions", and "isn't anything physical or tangible"?

Massive particles have (actually they are) a matter-wave; a mass wavefunction. Charged particles need to have mass, and they have a charge wavefunction too; or rather charge is another field that the cosmos is made of, that massive particles with charge move along (as waves with mass, or matter-waves).

These matter-waves can interact, because they have mass, by making other massless waves (photons), that affect, or modulate other matter-waves. [The massless waves get 'made' anytime a charged real physical particle has momentum relative to another charged real physical particle, photons are like water waves in that respect].

This has been known about for some time - like about 70 years.
 
Last edited:
I can't simplify this any more.

The wave function of two particles can interfere, and therefore, alter the statistical averages for finding that [[particle]] at any given point in spacetime. Because of this, we can state that two waves interfere so that the final state has a real effect in the world. The wave function itself is not a physical wave. It's very much ethereal, for it has no initial tangeable properties. That's why in the double slit experiment, a particle can travel through both slits simultaneously, because it is really niether here nor there, until the particle hit's the screen. We can even make the single particle interfere with its own statistical wave function, so that is why when both slits are open, we observe less point particles on the screen upon interaction, where the wave is reduced into a single real quantity. This is the collapse of the wave function.
 
Nope, that isn't the goods, sorry.

The wavefunction of particles is not ethereal - it's real; real particles with real mass have real physical wavefunctions - that's why particles (like electrons) travel through spacetime as real, physical tangible matter-waves.

Like I said, check out the work of a certain deBroglie character - should be in any undergrad text.
 
Then what can i say? The wave is considered virtual, and the collapse yields a real physical event? Any better?
 
Virtual means, you can have 50 percent of one thing, and 50 percent of another thing. Take an electron, and turn it into a quantum coin. It will exhibit both spins simultaneously, because its wave function allows it to have two virtual 50.50 spins at the same time. It is only when a strong electromagnetic field, or by simple observation can the electron be pulled out of its superpositioned state, and a single, real spin direction is the result. We call this value simply 1. Therfore, this value of 1 is considered a real value.
 
So an electron can have a heads and a tails at the same time, but niether are considered a value of 1 each. Instead, they both yield two superpositioned states physicists often call virtual, whilst upon a determination, one of the ''sides'' are the result.
 
No, my understanding is a real electron can only have one spin state, and there are only two available.

What you might mean is: an electron's spin state is indeterminate until you measure the spin states of some electrons, to see what the polarisation is - you can't just measure a quantum state like looking at which way a string pendulum is spinning (such a physical system also has only two ways it can spin, right?).

Until you decide which way is up, you can't see which way electrons (or a single one of them) are spinning - using the right-hand-rule.

Superposition is a measurement phenomenon; a single electron can have an indeterminate (i.e. unmeasured) spin with a 50/50 probability of it being one or the other. In a real atom, electrons have to 'choose' one or the other spin state if two electrons pair up or couple at the same level to a nucleus via the EM field.
 
Last edited:
No, vkothii. I meant what i said. An electron has both spin states simultaneously before any resolution is made.
 
These are known quantum facts. I am very sincere about quantum mechanics, and would not make this sort of stuff up.
 
Reiku said:
An electron has both spin states simultaneously before any resolution is made.
These are known quantum facts.
Click to expand...
Yes, they are.
But superposition of spin states is only available to "unaligned" electrons; as soon as you measure spin, or as soon as two electrons pair up somehow (not necessarily in an atomic orbital), the spins are determined.

And at no time does any electron have a virtual wavefunction - wavefunctions are real and physical, and measurable; spin is a wavefunction.
 
BenTheMan said:
Ok, entry 3, steve100.

An example of what steve100 is talking about is an electron and a positron. Is this correct?
Click to expand...

Yes. Although I doubt my proof is anything of the sort as I just made up this bit hoping it to be true.

f two particles with the same mass are made of photons, they must be made of the same amount of photons.
Click to expand...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top