New Theory Of Light And Aether

[joekgamer]

Don't photons have no shape, due to the fact that they are fields?

[Sci]

Sinosoidal?

[joekgamer]

That is the shape of the graph made by graphing the intensity of one of the fields (either magnetic or electric) over time, not the shape of the photon.

[CraigD]

The time has come, again, I think, to speak of bosons and fermions. :)

 

Don't photons have no shape, due to the fact that they are fields?

“Shape” is a vague concept, but my intuitive interpretation of it is a property that applies to things that can be seen (by which I mean detected by emitted or reflected actual photons) and/or squeezed (by which I mean detected by the effect of force-carrying virtual bosons – virtual photons – on fermions, such as the electrons, protons, and neutrons in, for example, your fingers). You can’t see a photon with other actual photons – they don’t interact with one another that way. You can’t squeeze them, because they don’t interact via force carrying photons, they are force carrying photons.

 

Photons are not electromagnetic fields – they’re the particles that produce electromagnetic fields by carrying interactions between charged particles, such as electrons

 

In other (horribly vague, but I hope illustrative) words, you can’t affect that which affects other things with itself. In precise, but I think less illustrative terms, photons, like all bosons, follow Einstein-Bose statistics.

[matterdoc]

It is amazing that learned scientists, who can accept 'actions at a distance through empty space' without least hesitation rising at instant rebellion at the mention of aether (as a universal medium).

 

It will be much better to try and define aether as a logical and real structure that fills the entire space.

[CraigD]

It is amazing that learned scientists, who can accept 'actions at a distance through empty space' without least hesitation rising at instant rebellion at the mention of aether (as a universal medium).

Mainstream modern science does not accept action at a distance that is not carried by some force carrier (ie: a boson) that’s speed doesn’t exceed the speed of light.

 

Luminiferous aether was well accepted scientifically from about 1878 to 1887, and though decreasingly, somewhat accepted until about 1910.

 

It will be much better to try and define aether as a logical and real structure that fills the entire space.

It has been tried, for decades, by scientists including the best of their time.

 

None were able to adequately explain the disagreement of various aether theories with experimental results, most famously 1887’s Michelson-Morley experiment. This is why most present day scientists reject (I wouldn’t use the word “rebellion”, as it suggest rejection of a still accepted idea) aether theories, in favor of the 1905 and 1916 theory of relativity. Those who still seriously study aether theory usually justify the effort for its philosophical virtues, or as preparation for the possibility of the finding of failures of relativity someday.

 

A basic problem with aether theories is the M-M experiment’s results. For those unfamiliar with this experiment, in short, it showed that the measured speed of light did not change when the a speed-of-light measuring device (the M-M interferometer) moving toward a light source (a star) later moved away from it (after 6 months, as the Earth completed half its orbit around the Sun). If light propagates through a aether, one would expect this measured speed to change.

 

To explain it, one must either theorize that space deforms in a specific way to produce the experiment’s negative result (as Lorentz famously attempted to do), or that the aether is “dragged” in the proximity of the Earth so that its motion relative to the Earth is unchanged when the earth’s motion relative to bodies such as stars changes.

 

No such theory has to date been successful at explaining actual experimental results.

[maddog]

CraigD,

 

You have done a much better job than I going over the origin, history and demise of the term 'aether' such that I concur with it's findings.

 

As Einstein's paper was read since 1905, it was determined that an 'aether' was an unnecessary artifact and was henceforth no longer

discussed in scientific discussion with any merit. So seudr the instant your proposition brought forth, it became as Turtle likes to say

"meaningless twaddle".

 

It was through the anomalous findings of the M-M experiment of no such reference velocity that got Einstein thinking. So after a 107+

years or so that you bring back such a term from where it's been hiding just astounds me.

 

EM waves need no such medium to propagate. Period. Photons are just packetized representations of such EM waves. Depending

upon which methodology you are using waves/particles in discerning light does not matter. No medium required.

 

Were it not for this, I might have troubled to read the rest of what you said in the first post.

 

So please don't come back with some c$#p about how transverse waves do ... whatever. Done.

 

maddog