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By B0ycey
#14890707
Light (or more specifically photons) have an unusual property. It has no mass so is only identifiable once it interacts with matter or forces. Its speed remains fixed until such interactions as well.

If we consider spacetime a fabric that expands, matter would not attach to its surface. Instead it would glide on it and imprint it's presence as it did (creating gravity). Light is different. Light instead would remain attached to that fabric. It would bend around matter like spacetime. Light also expands. Light visibility expands in all directions at the speed of light within its original point of origin. The size of the visible light of 'say a sun' (perception) would shrink in size the further you are away from the source of the light, but the transfer energy under Newtons laws cannot diminish. So light photon waves might weaken as it expands but the waves energy it has must remain fixed due to this law.

So now we have got that out of the way, could it be possible that light is indeed spacetime? Light seems to have all the properties of spacetime. It expands. It has no mass. Without vision it has no identifiable properties. Gravity distorts it and If you travelled at its speed, time would stop. The only difference is how it interacts with matter. And that is because it is energy. So could it be possible that light is nothing more than spacetime that is carrying energy? Could it be no different to the emptyness of space but that it carrys electromagnetic radiation? Radiation that until it interacts with matter it cannot pass on so remains traceable until it does. If that was the case, once light does pass on that energy wouldn't it just return to its spacetime appearence and become emptiness again? And if that was the case, wouldn't that just make light just energy time? And that would mean that light is indeed spacetime.
By B0ycey
#14890718
Saeko wrote:No. If light were a gravitic wave, it would affect all matter the same way as it passed through it. But it doesn't do that.


Who has claimed that light is a gravitational wave?

Light interacts with matter. How it interacts with it is determines on the properties of that specific matter. If the properties/conditions are identical, then the results are identical.
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By Saeko
#14890726
B0ycey wrote:Who has claimed that light is a gravitational wave?


If light has all the properties of spacetime, then electromagnetic radiation is just a kind of gravitic radiation.

Light interacts with matter. How it interacts with it is determines on the properties of that specific matter. If the properties/conditions are identical, then the results are identical.


Which is exactly why it can't possibly be the same as spacetime.
By B0ycey
#14890729
Sorry, perhaps I didn't make myself clear. Could it be possible that essence of light is spacetime except the energy properties of it. The energy will interact (or pass on) to matter when light reaches it but the rest of its essence will pass through matter. This would make spacetime have the ability to carry energy. And if spacetime has that ability then light has to be spacetime.
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By Saeko
#14890748
B0ycey wrote:Sorry, perhaps I didn't make myself clear. Could it be possible that essence of light is spacetime except the energy properties of it.


I don't know what you mean by "essence".

This would make spacetime have the ability to carry energy. And if spacetime has that ability then light has to be spacetime.


Spacetime already has the ability to carry energy in the form of gravitational waves, but this does not imply that light has to be spacetime.
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By Rancid
#14890751
B0ycey wrote:Light (or more specifically photons) have an unusual property. It has no mass so is only identifiable once it interacts with matter or forces. Its speed remains fixed until such interactions as well.



One correction, the speed of light is always the same. Light does not slow down when it enters a material. What happens is, that the light photons bounce around the material, looping around the various atoms before they make their way out. From the outside, it looks like the light slowed down when passing through the object, but technically, the light never slowed down, it just hung out and bounced around he material for a while before getting out.
By B0ycey
#14890754
Saeko wrote:I don't know what you mean by "essence".


Light has the same qualities as spacetime as in regards to its behaviour.

Spacetime already has the ability to carry energy in the form of gravitational waves, but this does not imply that light has to be spacetime.


Gravitational waves are the result of matter interacting with spacetime. Gravity effects light in similar ways.
By B0ycey
#14890755
Rancid wrote:One correction, the speed of light is always the same. Light does not slow down when it enters a material. What happens is, that the light photons bounce around the material, looping around the various atoms before they make their way out. From the outside, it looks like the light slowed down when passing through the object, but technically, the light never slowed down, it just hung out and bounced around he material for a while before getting out.


This is true if light passes through a material.
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By Potemkin
#14891292
SolarCross wrote:So like light is just energetic ripples in spacetime just as sound is just energetic ripples in matter? It could be, I guess.

Light is a self-sustaining interaction of electric and magnetic fields at right angles to each other which propagates through the vacuum at the speed of, well, light. It is not 'ripples' in spacetime, as there is no medium in the vacuum.
#14891297
Potemkin wrote:Light is a self-sustaining interaction of electric and magnetic fields at right angles to each other which propagates through the vacuum at the speed of, well, light. It is not 'ripples' in spacetime, as there is no medium in the vacuum.

Mayhaps the vacuum is a medium of a sort, even the vacuum is supposed to fizz with quantum foam, it isn't nothingness. Wasn't it Hawking that proposed that black holes have "hair"? It is well established that light has wave properties as well as particle properties, including interference patterns. I wonder how it could be a wave without a medium?

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By Potemkin
#14891299
Mayhaps the vacuum is a medium of a sort, even the vacuum is supposed to fizz with quantum foam, it isn't nothingness. Wasn't it Hawking that proposed that black holes have "hair"? It is well established that light has wave properties as well as particle properties, including interference patterns. I wonder how it could be a wave without a medium?

I just told you, it is a self-sustaining interaction of electric and magnetic fields at right angles to each other. A changing magnetic field generates an electric field and a changing electric field generates a magnetic field. An oscillating electric field (produced by, for example, an accelerating electrically charged particle) will therefore generate an oscillating magnetic field at right angles to itself, which will in turn sustain the oscillating electric field without the need for any further input of energy. Light therefore does not need a medium of propagation. It will propagate quite happily through a vacuum.
By Decky
#14891504
Could you possibly use a real life example to make that less sciencey? What if light was a man trying to move through a crowded pub or something? How would he do it compared to moving through an empty vacuum pub?
By B0ycey
#14891508
Decky wrote:Could you possibly use a real life example to make that less sciencey? What if light was a man trying to move through a crowded pub or something? How would he do it compared to moving through an empty vacuum pub?


This thread is a question rather than a solution Decky. And when I write on PoFo, I do try to write as layman as possible so all types of people, regardless of background, can understand what I am trying to say. But to make it even more simple for you, how about this.

"If light acts like spacetime, behaves like spacetime and bends like spacetime, is it spacetime?

And in the context for our pub residents to understand-

"If it tastes like Bitter, smells like Bitter and looks like Bitter, is it Bitter?
#14891518
Potemkin wrote:I just told you, it is a self-sustaining interaction of electric and magnetic fields at right angles to each other. A changing magnetic field generates an electric field and a changing electric field generates a magnetic field. An oscillating electric field (produced by, for example, an accelerating electrically charged particle) will therefore generate an oscillating magnetic field at right angles to itself, which will in turn sustain the oscillating electric field without the need for any further input of energy. Light therefore does not need a medium of propagation. It will propagate quite happily through a vacuum.

You don't seem to understand what you are telling me or what I am saying.

1. "field" as of electric and magnetic fame was named thus by scientists as a metaphor for a medium because EM phenomena exhibit "action at a distance" properties which is suggestive of a medium. When light was shown to behave like a wave rather than a particle as Newtown assumed, light was also thought to have a medium. It was called the luminiferous aether. Then the michelson-morley experiment which set out to detect the aether by means of detecting it's hypothetical drag failed to do so, light seemed unaffected by the movement of the earth through the aether so the existence of the luminiferious aether was cast in doubt. However if the luminiferious aether is the spacetime continuum then there is no problem especially in the light of general relativity.

2. Also you seem to be assuming a medium is there to provide energy to light, which is bizarre, no the medium is the rest state, the thing which is activated by energy. Water doesn't supply energy to the water wave it is the thing responding to the energy transmitted to it. @B0ycey is saying, I think, that the spacetime continuum is the water and light is the water waves.

3. The vacuum, or better to say the spacetime continuum, is the proposed medium.
By B0ycey
#14891524
SolarCross wrote:@B0ycey is saying, I think, that the spacetime continuum is the water and light is the water waves.


I'm not really saying anything. I just enjoy free thinking. But what would you think if I said that light is in suspended animation until it reacts to something and it can only react to matter? So when we see light we are seeing it as it was created. Just as it was created. And our minds interpret that information into something we can understand. And that is in a form of waves. And those waves are time. Only energy time. And the difference between light and spacetime is that one is carrying a form of energy that our minds can understand and interpet as time and spacetime doesn't and we assume its something completely different. But say they are the same thing. The implications of this of course is that spacetime to us stretches at a different rates (Hubbles Law) and light is absolute so the scientific answer to my question has to be "no"; so it would be enormous if was true. But the behaviours of spacetime and light are the same. So if the answer to the question is yes then that means light is not absolute and it also means we could equate quite easily the problems of 'missing matter' within our universe. But that is another thread at another time.
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By Potemkin
#14891578
You don't seem to understand what you are telling me or what I am saying.

I suspect that I do.

1. "field" as of electric and magnetic fame was named thus by scientists as a metaphor for a medium because EM phenomena exhibit "action at a distance" properties which is suggestive of a medium.

A force field is an abstraction - an "electric force field" merely means that if a charged particle is placed in that field, it will experience an electric force and will accelerate. And that's all it means. A force field is not a medium and does not require a medium.

When light was shown to behave like a wave rather than a particle as Newtown [sic] assumed, light was also thought to have a medium. It was called the luminiferous aether.

The nature of light as an electromagnetic wave was not yet understood in Newton's time. Scientists at that time naturally assumed that light, like any wave, required a medium. They were wrong.

Then the michelson-morley experiment which set out to detect the aether by means of detecting it's hypothetical drag failed to do so, light seemed unaffected by the movement of the earth through the aether so the existence of the luminiferious aether was cast in doubt.

It wasn't just cast in doubt; it was refuted. Besides, after Maxwell had demonstrated that light is a self-sustaining electromagnetic wave, there was no theoretical need for a medium for light to propagate through, and the Michelson-Morley experiment demonstrated that there is no such medium in practice either.

However if the luminiferious aether is the spacetime continuum then there is no problem especially in the light of general relativity.

Waves which propagate using spacetime as their medium do exist - they are called 'gravitons', not photons. General relativity predicted their existence.

2. Also you seem to be assuming a medium is there to provide energy to light, which is bizarre

It is indeed bizarre. Fortunately, I assumed no such thing. The energy comes from the accelerating charged particle which emitted the photon, which loses energy in emitting the photon.

no the medium is the rest state, the thing which is activated by energy.

There is no medium. Spacetime is not 'activated' by the photon.

Water doesn't supply energy to the water wave it is the thing responding to the energy transmitted to it. @B0ycey is saying, I think, that the spacetime continuum is the water and light is the water waves.

If that is what @B0ycey is saying, then he is incorrect.

3. The vacuum, or better to say the spacetime continuum, is the proposed medium.

No, it isn't. We are discussing photons here, not gravitons.
#14891608
Potemkin wrote:I suspect that I do.


A force field is an abstraction - an "electric force field" merely means that if a charged particle is placed in that field, it will experience an electric force and will accelerate. And that's all it means. A force field is not a medium and does not require a medium.


The nature of light as an electromagnetic wave was not yet understood in Newton's time. Scientists at that time naturally assumed that light, like any wave, required a medium. They were wrong.


It wasn't just cast in doubt; it was refuted. Besides, after Maxwell had demonstrated that light is a self-sustaining electromagnetic wave, there was no theoretical need for a medium for light to propagate through, and the Michelson-Morley experiment demonstrated that there is no such medium in practice either.


Waves which propagate using spacetime as their medium do exist - they are called 'gravitons', not photons. General relativity predicted their existence.


It is indeed bizarre. Fortunately, I assumed no such thing. The energy comes from the accelerating charged particle which emitted the photon, which loses energy in emitting the photon.


There is no medium. Spacetime is not 'activated' by the photon.


If that is what @B0ycey is saying, then he is incorrect.


No, it isn't. We are discussing photons here, not gravitons.


Gravitons, photons, how do you spell these in Spanish? You need to consider this Potemkin bellisimo.

Think about this.

I think most of what the naked human eyes perceives in this world is not what is really happening is it? Sort of like politics. All the important shit happens behind what people can see with their naked eyes. ;)
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By Potemkin
#14891613
Gravitons, photons, how do you spell these in Spanish? You need to consider this Potemkin bellisimo.

Think about this.

Good point, Tainari. I shall devote much thought to this point. :)

I think most of what the naked human eyes perceives in this world is not what is really happening is it? Sort of like politics. All the important shit happens behind what people can see with their naked eyes. ;)

Indeed. In a very real sense, everything which we perceive, and our mental model of the world around us which we construct from our perceptions, is unreal. Behind it, there is no substance and no essence. There is only what the Buddhists called 'sunyata' - the formless emptiness of the void, which is constantly bubbling with potential existence and infinite creativity. Forms emerge from this void and are absorbed back into it in an unending dance we call 'existence'....

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