The unambiguous proof of light actually traveling - does it exist?

[Billy T]

...I see that I have at least 4 posters who think in similar terms about the question. Yep.....hard up against it.....
To be expected I guess.
....It is impossible to differentiate between EM and reflector mass....

Up that 4 to 5.

I have been patient trying to see where you were going. Almost jumped a while back to ask if you really wanted / expected some one to prove anything existed, if all they could use in their proof was a vast nothingness, completely free of all matter, but did not.

I am posting now as it seems to me to very simple to separate the “EM” and the “reflector.”

I think it safe to assume that the interaction between the reflector and EM is local. Thus fact that it take longer for light reflected by a reflector left on the moon to return to Earth based laser source than if the reflector on the other wall over there, must not be attributed to the reflector alone. I.e. there must be something else.

I.e. there is something traveling. I don't care too much what it is called, but as I do have a conventional streak, I prefer "photon" for name of this carrier of energy.

Also in spite of your not wanting to use interactions with matter, I can not help but be impressed by how well the measured energy it dose carry correlates with the angles and the grading equation's predictions of them when a spectral grading reflection takes place. (Spectrograph). Thus, I think these photons have both “energy” and a "wavelength" with an inversely proportionality between these two properties that all photons demonstrate.

 

[Pete]

So this leaves us with a conundrum that light can only be experienced in reflection and not any other way. Which unfortunately leaves us with the dilemma of whether we are experiencing light as commonly held or we are experiencing something else.

Philosophy.

Everything that exists can only be experienced by interaction with our senses and not any other way.
Which leaves us with the dilemma of whether we are experiencing anything as commonly held, or are we experiencing something else.

You throw a ball to me, and I throw it back.
Can you prove that the ball actually travelled?

 

[2inquisitive]

Pete,

You throw a ball to me, and I throw it back.
Can you prove that the ball actually travelled?

No, he can't even prove he has any balls.

 

[Montec]

Hello Quantum Quack

Don't forget that a photon kicks on both ends of its journey. The emitter receives backward push when the photon is emitted and the receiver gets a forward push when the photon is absorbed. The photon is a force carrier in this regard.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Hi QQ.

Is not everything we know "proven" by it's interaction with something else? The very fact that you "see" is proof that there is some entity stimulating your rod and cone cells. There is an entity with certain properties that we call a "photon". Just like there is an entity with certain properties that we call a "shovel". We detect both of these entities by their interactions with out measuring instruments whether they be eyes or fingers or scales or mass spectrometers or spectrographs.

Right?

Running the risk of being a little silly here SuperL and I think you know me well enough for me to take that risk.....what you are suggesting is like seeing a big hole in the ground and assuming that a shovel was used to dig it when it could be many other tools that could have been used, bulldozer, pick, spoon, lump of timber, laser guided WMD and so on.
IMO the effect on a reflective mass is like the hole in the ground. Is it there because of a photon [shovel] or is it something else that generates the effect.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Look guys guys guys.....hmmmmm

It doesn't matter whether I am being given the rassberry the simple fact is that my oridginal question appears to be answered and that is all I wanted to find out.
The Em radiation cannot be differentiated from an object of mass reflecting it. Therfore I rest my case.

Believers in the almighty photon can rest easy for a little while longer prehaps....hmmmmmmm
ps. I didn't post this thread with any intention of getting into anything else so I am unprepared to fight the fight.....but ......one day......some further fun is to be had

 

[Quantum Quack]

Philosophy.

Everything that exists can only be experienced by interaction with our senses and not any other way.
Which leaves us with the dilemma of whether we are experiencing anything as commonly held, or are we experiencing something else.

You throw a ball to me, and I throw it back.
Can you prove that the ball actually travelled?

well at least the ball is not someones drawing on a piece of paper describing a ball and the photon is just that an abstraction that can;t be sensed in transit by any of our senses. Where as the ball can be touched, smelled, heard and yes, even seen to be in transit.
Show me a photon in the same way, demonstrate it and I will declare my question answered to the affirmative.

no drawings and sketches or abstractions allowed.....

 

[Quantum Quack]

and and and...I might add it is no coincidence that both philosophy and physics are plagued by the same intractable connundrum. a duality nothingness and something ness and Em radiation and reflector or more precicely gravity and mass

 

[Quantum Quack]

a bit like the ole zenism. [ speaking of philosophy ]
Does a photon exist if there is nothing to reflect it?

 

[Read-Only]

a bit like the ole zenism. [ speaking of philosophy ]
Does a photon exist if there is nothing to reflect it?

Not too much like it, though. Because there are photons currently traveling through space that have been doing so for billions of years without having yet been reflected once.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Not too much like it, though. Because there are photons currently traveling through space that have been doing so for billions of years without having yet been reflected once.

ha.....and you honestly expect me to believe that when you can't prove a photon exists except as a convenient model premised on the assumption that "something must be there"....I thought science was more about....nahhh forget it.....

sorry Read only just having some fun..playing the fool......:m:

 

[Pete]

QQ, are you disputing that photons travel, or that light travels?

You accept that you can detect a flash of light or any other electrical signal in transit, right?

 

[Read-Only]

ha.....and you honestly expect me to believe that when you can't prove a photon exists except as a convenient model premised on the assumption that "something must be there"....I thought science was more about....nahhh forget it.....

sorry Read only just having some fun..playing the fool......:m:

Gotcha!

 

[Quantum Quack]

QQ, are you disputing that photons travel, or that light travels?

You accept that you can detect a flash of light or any other electrical signal in transit, right?

I accept that a light or Em event can be detected at a given location in space yes. This does not necessarilly mean that the light or Em event describes something in transit. All it means is that the event is detected. This I would call hard evidence of something occuring. However it is merely circumstancial to say that the cause of the event is or more correctly was in transit.

 

[ecclesiastes]

qq,
when you touch or smell or hear or see the ball you are interacting with it.

 

[BenTheMan]

I accept that a light or Em event can be detected at a given location in space yes. This does not necessarilly mean that the light or Em event describes something in transit. All it means is that the event is detected. This I would call hard evidence of something occuring. However it is merely circumstancial to say that the cause of the event is or more correctly was in transit.

This is what Einstein would have called "spooky action at a distance". You want to events to be correlated across space and time, which have no reason to be correlated. Say an electron in an excited helium atom changes to a lower energy state. Somewhere else in that helium atom, an electron spontaneous jumps to a higher energy state.

There is no explanation for why the second electron should move to a higher energy state. This violates the second law of thermodynamics---i.e. improbable things just don't "happen". In your model, the two events are uncorrelated. In my model, the second electron absorbs the photon, giving it more energy, allowing it to move to a higher energy level.

Your law violates causality, unitarity and the second law of thermodynamics, mine has been tested to thirteen decimal places.

 

[Quantum Quack]

This is what Einstein would have called "spooky action at a distance". You want to events to be correlated across space and time, which have no reason to be correlated. Say an electron in an excited helium atom changes to a lower energy state. Somewhere else in that helium atom, an electron spontaneous jumps to a higher energy state.

There is no explanation for why the second electron should move to a higher energy state. This violates the second law of thermodynamics---i.e. improbable things just don't "happen". In your model, the two events are uncorrelated. In my model, the second electron absorbs the photon, giving it more energy, allowing it to move to a higher energy level.

Your law violates causality, unitarity and the second law of thermodynamics, mine has been tested to thirteen decimal places.

Ben, with all due respect I haven't even stated a law yet or described an appropriate alternative.
All I am pointing out is that there appears to be a gaping hole in what we have interpreted 'c' to be. In that 'c' could be relevant to something other than the photon model we are currently using. ie transit speeds of wave or photon.
for example:
The double slit experiement clearly proves that we have a problem with our current understanding IMO. And I find it amazing how much length we will go to adapt this pet theory to accomodate the problem.

 

[Farsight]

QQ: All our senses work in a similar way. We cannot smell until odours reach our nose. We cannot hear until noises reach our ears. But we do not claim that noise and odour do not exist. Ditto for electromagnetic waves. We cannot see until light reaches our eyes. But they do, and so we know they exist.
Yes, we only obtain tangible evidence of electromagnetic radiation when it interacts with something tangible - something with mass. We turn a shrouded lamp towards an object, and when that object lights up and that light hits our eyes, only then do we really know that our lamp was turned on. But then when we turn another lamp towards that object and notice an interference pattern, we know that the photons from one lamp interacted with the photons from the other. There are some places where the object is now in darkness, and no light from there reaches our eyes, because of the second lamp, because light interacted with light.

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

Light does travel a distance. Whilst no time passes for a photon, and in it's world length contraction is total, we can step into its path, we can reflect it, deflect it, and create events for it in its timeless spaceless world. Because that world is not the real world. Ours is.

 

[Quantum Quack]

QQ: All our senses work in a similar way. We cannot smell until odours reach our nose. We cannot hear until noises reach our ears. But we do not claim that noise and odour do not exist. Ditto for electromagnetic waves. We cannot see until light reaches our eyes. But they do, and so we know they exist.
Yes, we only obtain tangible evidence of electromagnetic radiation when it interacts with something tangible - something with mass. We turn a shrouded lamp towards an object, and when that object lights up and that light hits our eyes, only then do we really know that our lamp was turned on. But then when we turn another lamp towards that object and notice an interference pattern, we know that the photons from one lamp interacted with the photons from the other. There are some places where the object is now in darkness, and no light from there reaches our eyes, because of the second lamp, because light interacted with light.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference

Light does travel a distance. Whilst no time passes for a photon, and in it's world length contraction is total, we can step into its path, we can reflect it, deflect it, and create events for it in its timeless spaceless world. Because that world is not the real world. Ours is.

ahhhh now we are talking

however does the interferance happen at the reflector or in flight too the reflector?
If it happens at the reflector then the question stands as NO but if there is interference ie photon on photon in flight in a vacuum [ no other medium ] then the question may yet be answered to the affirmative.

question:

Say we cross two beams of laser in a vacuum do they interfere with each other where they intersect and is this detectable without a reflector mass at that intersection. Can we see the intersection interferrance in the vacuum with our eyes or otherwise detect it remotely?

 

[Pete]

I accept that a light or Em event can be detected at a given location in space yes. This does not necessarilly mean that the light or Em event describes something in transit. All it means is that the event is detected. This I would call hard evidence of something occuring. However it is merely circumstancial to say that the cause of the event is or more correctly was in transit.

How is that different to detecting a ball at a given location in space?
What is it about a thrown ball that convinces you that it is in transit?