Photons have no time

[Mike C]

To All

 

What Craig has done with this problem is that he supplied the ENERGY of that photon to do work.

 

I still think you cannot use the work energy as a mass quantity.

 

NS

[InfiniteNow]

This is a thread about the passage of time from the perspective a photon travelling at the speed of light.

 

I'm going to start neg repping if the posters can't remember this fact on their own and act accordingly.

[EStein]

This is a thread about the passage of time from the perspective a photon travelling at the speed of light.

 

I am willing to go so far as to say a block of wood may have a "perspective" but not a photon--no more than an energy field could have a perspective. Would anyone care to persuade me to the contrary? I hope this is not straying from the topic.

[InfiniteNow]

I am willing to go so far as to say a block of wood may have a "perspective" but not a photon--no more than an energy field could have a perspective. Would anyone care to persuade me to the contrary? I hope this is not straying from the topic.

 

I do understand your point, and concur that it IS on topic. I believe it's semantics holding us back. Of course a photon is unable to "experience" anything and "report back." The verbiage is only a linguistic device to assist in a thought experiment. :cocktail:

[arkain101]

Perspective is at first a macroscopic quality originating from a visually capable conscious individual (in this case refering to humans).

 

Visual perception is a phenomina creation unique to life itself.

 

Where I am going with this is that, to take the macro perspective informed by light and thus in a way created by light and attempt to apply it to light itself creates a bit of a canundrum.

 

Like attempting to unscrew a screw out of the handle of the only screw driver you have.

 

Surely there are mental constructs we can apply within the guidlines of relativity and other theoretical views, but, I fear that perpective of a visual kind can not exist to a photon, even so if we attempt to do so with a thought experiment.

 

As I might of already stated in this thread, it would require loss of reasoning to imbed oneself into a singular frame.

 

If light such as a photon is considered a particle of sorts then what is it we would expect to observe if we mentally hitch a ride inside of it like a tiny spaceship bubble? There surely is not method of which to send out mini photons to see other photons. As such like I said visually perception and perspective is not so much applicable, for the very visual concept in itself is intwined and produced with photons or light if you will.

 

There is not such thing as visual reality or compound considerations of 'objects' without the mental contructs to contemplate it so.

 

So without life, is there an earth as like a big blue globe? with the lack of life in the universe, certainly not any kind of compound mental construct.

 

What then allows us the ability to see our big round blue earth today? How could chance offer us the ability to macroscopically create a mental construct of the earth (as an example). When we consider the fact that lacking visual perspective or perception of any kind, no earth can be contemplated, and we find ourselves at the stage of this topics theme, the stage of a photons perspective, a paradox of sorts.

 

I ask this question then. Do we say that evolution created the world we see? or was the world we see already contemplated by color and such, and by means not understood we are capable to produce a perspective @ this specific scale of macroscopicity?

 

Our search for the ultimate reality, such as the most basic fundamental things I have been learning is acutally a search in vain. Since our macro world right here and now is infact the fundamental level and purpose for and of the chaos of stuff that unknowingly forms up this fundamental macroscopic level.

[EWright]

A photon has time, just not relative to our definition ;)

[EStein]

A photon has time, just not relative to our definition :)

 

Not sure what you mean so I'll leave that one alone. :)

[CraigD]

There surely is not method of which to send out mini photons to see other photons.

Put into slightly different language, this says “there is no method to detect a photon, other than direct interaction with the photon. I don’t think this claim is as certain as arkain states.

 

In the formalism of the Standard Model of particle physics, it’s true. Bosons don’t, as a rule, interact with one another, other than the combining of their quantum wave functions that give us the interference effects so well known in visible light, and even in fermions, such as high-speed beams of electrons. As arkain states photons can’t absorb and emit a “mini photon” kind of boson – photons are “unaware” of each others existence (hey, if we can dedicate a couple hundred posts to photons having no sense of time, I should be allowed one to deny them “awareness”, too ;))

 

Outside of the standard model, there’s a whole different thing, a tremendously weak, tremendously important thing called gravity. It’s such a weak force (or pseudo-force, a GR purist would say) particle physics gets along famously and successfully without it, but beyond a shadow of an experimental doubt, it’s an example of a force that effects bosons such as photons – a “boson’s boson”.

 

I’m not sure if the relativistic inertial mass of a photon implied by its momentum has the properties of the mass associated with a particle with non-zero rest inertial and gravitational mass, but if it does, then photons are not only affected by gravitational fields, but generate them – for example, a stream of photons should not only follow a curved geodesic path around a massive body, but should exert an equal and opposite effect on both fermionic matter and other bosons, including other photons. Gravity, therefore, may provide a means to indirectly “see” photons.

 

if SR holds for such interactions – as theory and evidence strongly suggest it does – and the interaction is constrained to propagate at c – as those mediated by ordinary gauge bosons are - while one might in principle build a clock out of an ensemble of photons, and such a clock travel at exactly c relative to all observers, the indeterminate relationship between time measured by that clock and any clock with rest mass remains – the photon-clock would appear to all observers never to move.

 

A consequence of this prediction is the prediction that we should never observe gravitational interactions between photons. For example, ignoring SR, 2 beams of light traveling in precisely the same direction, separated by a very slight gap, should, after traveling a great distance, be detected slightly closer together. Not ignoring SR, this should not occur. Calculating for astronomical distances and practical light sources and separations, the predicted gap-shortening is miniscule – on the order of 10[math]^{-25}[/math] m, however, making it, I think, practically experimentally undetectable, so predictions of these sort seem not of much practical consequence.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Now THAT'S interesting.

 

Now if you'd said [math]10^{-35}[/math] - my mind would have been totally blown.

 

TFS

[arkain101]

:)

 

Interesting indeed. Though, good luck finding a "place" of which you can send out light without interacting with other light (aka, the sun and other cosmic rays).

 

Just my own guess.

[CraigD]

Though, good luck finding a "place" of which you can send out light without interacting with other light (aka, the sun and other cosmic rays).

Just the opposite. Any place will do, and no luck is required.

 

According to present theory, and a huge and AFAIK completely uncontradicted body of experimental data, you can’t under any circumstances get light to interact with other light. Ordinary optics (such as our eyes) routinely focus huge fluxes of photons into nearly perfect zero-volume points of space, with no detectable effect. In principle and in fact, it should be possible to reflect a substantial fraction of a star’s total light output into a narrow beam, shine an ordinary pocket laser pointer through the beam, and notice absolutely no difference in the dot it makes on a nearby screen. If the little laser is modulated to carry a signal, no noise whatever will be caused by the ultra-high power star-beam – and the ultra-high power beam will likewise be utterly unaffected.

 

In other words, photons are not like tiny physical bodies, such as streams of microscopic machine-gun bullets. Photons in intersecting light beams will never collide.

 

In addition to allowing everyday optics like eyes and telescopes to work, this characteristic of photons – their following of Bose–Einstein statistics – is very promising for computer engineering, allowing trillions of discrete signals, which in conventional designs would require trillions of insulator-separated metal conductors – to be colated into beam and passed through an apature only a few hundred of nanometers (~ 3 [math]\times[/math] 10[math]^{-7}[/math] m) in diameter, a tremendous potential improvement over closet-sized bundles of insulated wires or fiber optics.

[arkain101]

Wow, neato!

 

I was refering to:

 

A consequence of this prediction is the prediction that we should never observe gravitational interactions between photons. For example, ignoring SR, 2 beams of light traveling in precisely the same direction, separated by a very slight gap, should, after traveling a great distance, be detected slightly closer together.

 

As you said it would be far to difficult to detect. I meant other light signals interacting with these laser beams.

 

That aside, it sounds like it wouldnt matter.

 

Light, it is one awesome nothing-everything.

[InfiniteNow]

(hey, if we can dedicate a couple hundred posts to photons having no sense of time, I should be allowed one to deny them “awareness”, too )

You dedicate all you want, Craig. These last few posts have been illuminating, and the content within has placed into my path concepts not previously encountered. Mahalo.

 

 

I hadn't had my coffee yet when I submitted that *other* post, so my grizzly cranky doppleganger was the one at the helm. :esmoking:

 

 

According to present theory, and a huge and AFAIK completely uncontradicted body of experimental data, you can’t under any circumstances get light to interact with other light. Ordinary optics (such as our eyes) routinely focus huge fluxes of photons into nearly perfect zero-volume points of space, with no detectable effect. In principle and in fact, it should be possible to reflect a substantial fraction of a star’s total light output into a narrow beam, shine an ordinary pocket laser pointer through the beam, and notice absolutely no difference in the dot it makes on a nearby screen. If the little laser is modulated to carry a signal, no noise whatever will be caused by the ultra-high power star-beam – and the ultra-high power beam will likewise be utterly unaffected.

Considering the above, I seriously think it's time for me to hit the bookstore again. Any suggestions?

[EWright]

Not sure what you mean so I'll leave that one alone. ;)

 

We tend to 'zero out' time at light speed do to the definition of Special Relativity. Thus a photon can have no time according to the basis of current physics. Click my signature below to consider some related aspects of this.

[Little Bang]

Did anyone ever consider the possibility that there is no such thing as a photon, that it might be some other phenomenon that we call a photon?

[freeztar]

Did anyone ever consider the possibility that there is no such thing as a photon, that it might be some other phenomenon that we call a photon?

 

What do you mean?

[Buffy]

Some "other phenomenon" that has all the same physical properties? You mean a "фотон"?

 

A rose by any other name,

Buffy