Femtography
Femtography and relay races.
Imagine looking at racers who go as fast as the speed of light.
The first racer starts running and reaches the position of the second racer who immediately takes off at his maximum speed. Both reach the third racer who reacts exactly the same way, until all racers cross the finish line at the same time.
The only way an observer could see the light beam moving towards him would be if he could see the different phases of the race as they happened. He has to see the first racer while he is running towards the second, both towards the third, and so forth.
But then, this observer would have to see something happening before the light coming from that location could ever reach him.
The observer could be our admiral, or one of the observers on the Earth-Mars hand signals game.
I asked Ramesh Raskar, the femotography specialist at M.I.T, if he were willing to do such an experiment, but that was a couple of weeks ago, and I am not holding my breath anymore.
Too bad, because such an experiment would shut me up once and for all. That is, if we are unable to see the light beam growing towards us.
Imagine looking at racers who go as fast as the speed of light.
The first racer starts running and reaches the position of the second racer who immediately takes off at his maximum speed. Both reach the third racer who reacts exactly the same way, until all racers cross the finish line at the same time.
The only way an observer could see the light beam moving towards him would be if he could see the different phases of the race as they happened. He has to see the first racer while he is running towards the second, both towards the third, and so forth.
But then, this observer would have to see something happening before the light coming from that location could ever reach him.
The observer could be our admiral, or one of the observers on the Earth-Mars hand signals game.
I asked Ramesh Raskar, the femotography specialist at M.I.T, if he were willing to do such an experiment, but that was a couple of weeks ago, and I am not holding my breath anymore.
Too bad, because such an experiment would shut me up once and for all. That is, if we are unable to see the light beam growing towards us.
Comments (77)
Scientists take some ideas as being beyond any doubt, and they use these ideas to build their cosmological theories. Some of these ideas are:
1) Light goes on indefinitely
2) The universe is expanding
3) When we look through a telescope, we are seeing the past.
These ideas, and more, support each other and give each other meaning. They are all inextricably linked with each other and an attack on one is an attack on all,
Femtography could give an empirical basis to all those beliefs, and silence any dissenting voice.
Or it could usher a revolutionary era in physical science.
I would propose the following experiment:
Have a laser emit a pulse of a few nano or picoseconds in a vacuum.
The pulse will remain of course invisible, except maybe for the reflections on the walls of the container. So maybe it should take place in empty space.
Following the same methods advocated by femtography, one or more sensors should be placed in the path of the pulse some distance away.
Those sensors should only be turned on after the laser has stopped emitting.
As I see it, there are only two possibilities:
1) The pulse is registered, and I would consider that as a confirmation of the contemporary physical theories where light is concerned.
2) The pulse does not register, and then all bets are open.
Quoting Hachem
This does not obviously follow, and is not argued for. It is a conclusion that is unsupported by the description provided. The light beam receives no mention before this sentence, and so is ambiguous. What could it mean to see a light beam, as opposed to seeing the runners? Yet Hachem apparently does not see these issues. Showing what is wrong with such an ambiguous thought experiment is impossible.
Then there are the multiple references to other thought experiments. Suppose one showed that the runners was a misguided thought experiment; Hachem would simple move to the next, and the next; so that the effort involved in analysing each would wear down even the most strident critic.
And the three scientific ideas that are beyond any doubt; these are not assumptions, but conclusions reached.
IS the way of thinking employed here so different to that employed by idealists or Post modernists or anti-abortionists or second amendment advocates or even Trump supporters? This is why psychoceramics is of philosophical interest.
I assume it's femto as in femtosecond, one quadrillionth second. In the US that's 10^(-15) seconds and in Great Britain it's 10^(-24) so your mileage may vary.
[Edit. In GB a quadrillion is 10^(-24) seconds. But a femtosecond is 10^(-15) regardless].
Quoting Hachem
This right here is a problem (sticky wicket, in British). Contemporary physics does not allow any such thing. A photon can go at the speed of light, but not a racer. You have to say what your assumptions are.
* Is a "racer" a photon? Ok, we can work with that I think.
* Or are you positing some future or alternative physics?
Quoting Hachem
Immediately? So information (about the arrival of the first racer) is transmitted instantaneously to the second racer? Well ok, but that's only in some future or alternate physics. I'm not saying it couldn't happen. Only that it violates contemporary established physics. Information can not be transmitted faster than the speed of light. [Modulo this entanglement business, which is fascinating but mostly over my head].
Quoting Hachem
In whose frame of reference? Simultaneity is not absolute. Another feature of modern physics.
I don't doubt you have an interesting idea in there, but it would be helpful if you can put your ideas into context. Some of your suggestions violate known physical law. So you just have to tell us what your assumptions are.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/
What do we say of those who can't see the flaw in lumping all who they disagree with into a single catagory of crackpottery and then identifying them with a poster child who they reject as wholeheartedly as you?
This is why psychoceramics is of philosophical interest.
What is it about crackpots that makes them crackpots?
Yes I know. If you even ask questions about certain things, you get accused of agreeing with every crackpot theory on Youtube. I wonder if those kinds of people are secretly terrified of what they'll find if they allow themselves to ask questions. Asking questions is dangerous. Better to call the questioner a crackpot. That way they don't have to engage with the argument.
Very interesting site. Beautiful photos. I'm just starting to read their abstract. It does look very interesting.
I do have one quibble. They write:
The effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionths of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second.
Now it's funny, because my little anal-retentive streak that made me go look up the definition of a femtosecond earlier, turns out to be useful after all.
Remember a femtosecond is 10^(-15) second. That's a decimal point with 14 zeros and a 1 to the right. [.1 = 10^(-1) has no zeros, .01 = 10^(-2) has one zero, etc. It's off by one].
What's a trillionth of a second? Well a thousandth is 10^(-3), a millionth is 10^(-6), a billionth is 10^(-9), and a trillionth is 10^(-12). [This is American usage. Brits call billions trillions or vice versa. Apologize for being an uncouth yank. Didn't I get in trouble around here a while back on that very thing?]
So they are about three orders of magnitude off. The title of the paper, "femto", is not backed up by the details. They are working at the scale of 10^(-12) but not 10^(15).
That's not a knock on anything they're doing, which is impressive work. Just noting that the title may be a little bit hyped. I didn't read far enough to see if it's justified.
I have heard about this work somewhere. They use statistical techniques I think, in other words they're not tracking a single photon. Rather they're looking at a lot of photons and looking at statistical models of where things are supposed to be. Kind of a computer strobe if my understanding is correct. That's a bit handwavy, I'll say more after I read the article, especially if I flagrantly mischaracterized their technology.
Anyway yes this is a great experiment. But the stuff you are talking about is way beyond this. Your stuff is speculative physics not based on current physics. Do you agree or disagree with the specific points I made earlier?
First, I was correct that they are not tracking individual photons, but rather putting together snapshots from many different experiments. They say:
Direct recording of reflected or scattered light at such a frame rate with sufficient brightness is nearly impossible. We use an indirect 'stroboscopic' method that records millions of repeated measurements by careful scanning in time and viewpoints. Then we rearrange the data to create a 'movie' of a nanosecond long event.
So this is impressive, but there's less here than meets the eye. There's a lot of software munging of a lot of data to put together a "track" of a photon.
Secondly, about the name Femto. It turns out that they do femtosecond resolution in their measurements, but by the time they put together the software-adjusted pseudo track, they are viewing or modeling events across nanoseconds. So it's not really hype to call it Femto, but you have to read into the details to find out what's femto and what's nano.
Finally, here is how they describe the significance of their experiment:
Beyond the potential in artistic and educational visualization, applications include industrial imaging to analyze faults and material properties, scientific imaging for understanding ultrafast processes and medical imaging to reconstruct sub-surface elements, i.e., 'ultrasound with light'. In addition, the photon path analysis will allow new forms of computational photography, e.g., to render and re-light photos using computer graphics techniques.
In other words there are no fundamental new understandings here. Rather this is a really impressive engineering feat that will lead to interesting applications. The authors do not claim this is any kind of theoretical breakthrough nor do they think this has any kind of metaphysical importance at all.
It's the OP who has read about this interesting experiment, and extrapolated some unjustified conclusions about being able to control individual photons and line them up like race horses. Nothing in the experiment supports any such inferences. This is not a fundamental experiment. It's a terrific technological accomplishment but I think the OP is reading too much into it. In my opinion, at any rate.
Well that's my two cents on this. I do recommend that people give this article a click, the pictures alone are worth it.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/
This is a very narrow reading of my posts. Maybe you should take the videos where one or more objects are gradually illuminated, and imagine that the camera is not on the side as it is on all the videos but at the end of the path of the beam. Nothing needs to be changed further to the experiments, and instead of my racers arriving all at once or not, the question becomes:
Will we see the whole scene enlightened at once, or will we see each object getting lit by the beam as the beam (or rather pulse) progresses?
Agreed. Narrow. But not IMO unfair.
You still haven't responded to my specific concerns regarding the violations of known physical law in your thought experiment.
You understand we are not seeing a "beam" but rather a statistical interpretation of a beam. Perhaps you should just explain your idea in terms of photons and not reference this experiment at all, which seem to be about something else entirely.
Also I believe you are referencing other posts you've made, but I haven't read them. In this post you talked about "racers" that can communicate at faster than light speed. I'm perfectly justified in asking you to put that in context.
What would the sensors register if the camera or cameras were placed at the end of the trajectory, instead of on the side?
That is the only relevant question, the rest is presentation details that may or may not be important.
I have no idea. Maybe you can explain this to me. How am I supposed to know what are "presentation details" that "may or may not" be important? I responded to the post you wrote. How am I supposed to know what you consider important? Your post has at least three specific violations of contemporary physics. You might consider writing a post that's more clear.
Like I said, you may well have something interesting to say. But I don't think you've said it.
Then you shouldn't bother any further.
Your examples were not necessarily all examples of crackpots, but were instead a listing of those conclusions you simply disagreed with. It therefore appeared simply as an arrogant display of personal rightness, and not as a true analysis of crackpottery. I tell you this because you noted you wished to self-evaluate.
I'd place conspiracy theorists, anti-scientists, and half-brains under the crackpot umbrella. A half-brain is a Hanoverian term that describes someone who has mastered academic lingo but only halfway understands what they mean. This person lures a full brain into a conversation that quickly ends in disappointment when the half brain says something revealing.
A crackpot example: I recall a long conversation I had once with a poster who insisted that American jurisprudence was doomed from its inception due to its adherence to the philosophy of J.S. Mill. Not only did he misinterpret Mill, he didn't view the fact that Mill was born after the Constitution was long since written and signed as problematic to his position.
If you get drawn in and pissed off, you are dealing with a crakpot extraordinaire as they say in France. The PoMo movement is healthy in France by the way.
You are a really poor excuse of a moderator and editor. Instead of name calling why don't you try presenting arguments for your convictions? Or is all you can do is hide behind insults and your status?
I'll take the bait. Question. If I say the following: "The 9/11 commission spent $15M. They spent $40M on Bill Clinton's blowjob. There are many inconsistencies and outright impossibilities presented as fact in the commission report. I would like to see a proper investigation done. I would like to see at least a blowjob's worth of investigation on what was the crime of the millennium."
If I said that, would you regard me as a crackpot?
Do you think that anyone who even questions the government narrative of a public event is automatically to be labelled a crackpot and dismissed? "Remember the Maine?" The Gulf of Tonkin? Saddam's WMDs? When the government lies us into war is one a conspiracy theorist for asking for a thorough and comprehensive investigation?
I really want to hear this.
Saying, I want a more comprehensive report about 9/11 is different than the crackpot conclusion that GW orchestrated it.
Wanting reasonable allocations of money for investigations is reasonable . Wanting the same allocation of money for what you think was unreasonable for something that you think reasonable isn't reasonable. Unreasonable decisions ought not be used as binding precedent. If you insist that it should, you're unreasonable.
you are full of it, so excuse me if I do not take you seriously. You are unfit to be a moderator, your prejudices are blinding you.
You say that here. But anyone who questions anything is generally labelled a crackpot. If you say "I want a better investigation" you get labeled as someone who believes Cheney personally picked up the phone and said "Go!" And tell me something. What is your evidence he didn't? You think he's too nice a person? LOL. Maybe you never heard of the report of PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, in which Cheney and others specifically called for a "new Pearl Harbor" to make Americans willing to go to war in the Middle East and destabilize seven specific countries. If I'm a conspiracy theorist it's because I've read the published plans of the conspirators.
When you ask questions, you get labelled a crackpot. Are you following this Las Vegas shooting story? Even people who aren't usually conspiracy nuts are saying this story stinks to high heaven. But "reputable" news outlets label anyone who questions this a conspiracy nut or a lunatic.
That is a technique to keep people from asking questions or using their own judgment and common sense. I choose to push back. It's more vital than ever to question the government's account of virtually everything that happens. The US has been at war in half a dozen countries since 9/11. The exact countries named in the PNAC document. We're not supposed to ask questions?
Ok I've said my piece. I wish you'd rethink who you regard as beyond the pale for doubting and questioning what the government says. They lied us into the Vietnam war, they lied us into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now nobody even knows all the wars we're involved in. Those four guys who got killed in Niger, did you even know the US was at war in Niger?
The American people have gotten numb to the government's war machine. We dare not ask questions. If we do, our friends and neighbors label us "conspiracy theorists."
Try to think for yourself.
I think Cheney not only ordered it. I think he personally flew the planes. That's my Lone Hijacker theory. Now you can call me a nut if you like. By the way I quite agree with you that theories should be supported by evidence. But are you aware that the government's own 9/11 story is an unsupported and outlandish theory? The commission's co-chairs said publicly that the commission was set up to fail. But we should believe it anyway? Why? What is the epistemological principle according to which we should believe the account of the 9/11 commission, which is riddled full of bad logic, unsupported claims, shoddy investigative work, and outright impossibilities? That has no credibility even with the people who authored it?
Why should we believe it? If we are rational people who demand evidence and logic, we must in fact reject the report of the 9/11 commission. That makes us conspiracy theorists. Crackpots. Crazies.
So where do you draw the line? What questions may be asked and what theories are too outlandish? 19 Arabs with boxcutters because they hate our freedoms. Now that's outlandish.
By what epistemological principle should I accept the findings of the government's 9/11 commission? What filter or principle of reasoning should I apply?
Say it's 1964 and Lyndon Johnson tells me that a US ship was attacked by North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin, therefore we must dramatically escalate the war in Vietnam?
What principle should I use to believe or disbelieve it?
Why do you think I'm a crackpot?
Not believing the official US 9/11 report and declaring that Cheney ordered the attacks are two different things and that I have to point that out indicates an irrational element in your reasoning.
I am an original thinker; you are eccentric; he is a crackpot.
Set up a series of lights in a row, timing the second so that it illuminates just as the light from the first reaches it, the third so that it illuminates just as the light from the first and second reach it; and fourth at the time the other three reach it.
Viewed from perpendicular to the row, the lights come on in order: first, second, third, fourth.
From a point further along in the direction of the row, they come on at the same time.
Now, what is it that you think is the problem here?
Rude.
Of course, liberalism in the US is leftist, so maybe there's a communication break down down under.
That would not be a good thing.
Watkins pointed out the logic of conspiracy theories - the all-and-some proposition.
"All cats are black" can be proved wrong by presenting a non-black cat. But it cannot be proved true because one can never be sure one has checked every cat to see if it is black.
"Some dogs are asleep" can be proved true by presenting a sleeping dog. But it cannot be proved false, because for all the non-sleeping dogs you might find, there may be a sleeping dog you have missed.
Combine the two, and you can neither prove it true nor false. So consider "for every black cat there is at least one sleeping dog"... You can never be sure you have found every black cat, nor that you have not just missed that cat's associated dog.
It's an open question as to whether Hachem is indeed a crackpot. What I am asking is, what would be suitable criteria?
I don't see a conspiracy theory underpinning his discussion yet, but that may well emerge. And of course, some conspiracy theories may well be true.
But Hachem's lack of clarity combined with the wide number of posts and posited experiments does leave one puzzled.
Quoting Hanover
I suspect I am well to the left of your liberals.
I agree with you 100%. The official investigation was extremely shoddy. That crime deserves a serious investigation. I don't know what's true. I wasn't on the planes or in Cheney's bunker. I don't believe any particular theory. And I haven't "made up something else" except as a joke. I don't actually think Cheney personally flew all the planes. I don't believe he picked up the phone and said "Ok do it!" But as a philosophical question, how do you know he didn't? There is a lot of incredibly interesting circumstantial evidence. No proof of anything of course.
So what is your basis for believing Cheney didn't do it? I don't mean for that to sound crazy, like I think Cheney did it. [Note: Cheney and of course not W, who was totally out of the loop]. I'm asking as if we're in epistemology class. What is the belief system that says Cheney didn't do it? That the government is benevolent? That the government never lies to us? Kills its own citizens? That Cheney and company are such nice people that they could never do such a thing?
We could list each element of belief, and argue them and look at evidence. That's not crazy. It's part of rational inquiry. The cops in Law and Order see a dead body, they want to know who held the insurance policy. A rational investigation would make a list of everyone who profited and they'd check their alibi.
My point would be that you literally can't be curious and open-minded and conduct a rational inquiry into the events of 9/11 WITHOUT coming across as a total loon. Here's me, intimating that the executive branch of the US government ran the attacks on 9/11.
Do I believe it's true? No.
Do I believe it's possible? Most definitely. Just look at the crew that was involved. The day after 9/11 they were putting their war plans into place. Sure they could have been just "lucky" they got their Pearl Harbor and got to invade their 6 out of 7 countries. (Iran is next). But if you're the cops on Law and Order, you take a look at all the suspects, not just the ones you happen to want to go to war with.
So rational inquiry itself in a case like this looks just like crazy.
Just sayin'.
It is not the problem, but the question.
You are assuming that this will happen: all lights will appear on at once.
The experiment is to prove that this is the case... Or not.
Why don't you try speculating (since it is all speculation) on this result? Use your, science-bridled, imagination.
Strange question for a philosophy forum.
I will reply anyway.
You seem to accept the rationality of the experiment, and therefore the possibility that it could lead to either of the results.
In my other threads I try to show that there are alternative explanations to many light phenomena.
In this thread my whole aim was to show that it is possible to devise an empirical experiment to answer the question: is the theory (of the dual nature) of light valid, or is it just an erroneous belief?
You are expressing your belief in the theory as it is understood now. Nothing wrong with that. But you have no proof either.
The experiment's aim is to provide this proof, either to support your point of view, or mine. And my prediction is that we will see each light turned on, one after the other.
Suppose we put a bunch of satellites up in the sky, each sending out very accurate time signals, as radio waves.
If the speed of light is finite, we could compare the time signals from each satellite - being ad different distances we could tel how far each was from us, and using a bit of triangulation, we could fix the point on the surface of the earth from which we are doing our measuring.
Now we have such a bunch of satellites, and I can see the result, accurate to a few meters on my iPhone.
But if the radio signals arrived instantly, the system would not work.
So, a question for you: how does an iPhone know where it is?
I do not deny the existence of e.m waves, I just do not agree that light should be considered as such.
It is obvious, even to me, that e.m waves can and do create light phenomena. But I am convinced that these phenomena are local phenomena.
In other words, I do not believe that light travels indefinitely through space, even if e.m waves do.
I know how crazy my ideas sound. Still, even though there are many reasons to take the dual nature of light as a given, there is not a single proof of its validity.
This experiment could end this uncertainty.
In other words, if all lights appear on at the same time, then I will be the first to trash all my threads.
I do not understand. Are you suggesting that cell phones and satellites are light-powered?
Heinrich Hertz
"Electric waves: Being Researches on the Propagation of Electric Action..." (1893/1963)
In this translation Hertz describes his discovery of e.m waves. I will not go into details, suffice to say that two coils were used, each with a small gap.
When one coil was put under current, a spark appeared in the gap, and then a second spark appeared in the gap of the second coil that was located at a distance, with nothing linking both coils.
The question now is: did the spark jump from one coil to the other?
That is of course not very likely. Even though something must have jumped to the second coil that had the second spark as an effect.
We can now speculate about whether light itself is an e.m wave, or just an effect, or maybe epiphenomenon.
You are trying to explain the behavior of cell phones by a spark jumping through space and replicating itself some distance away.
That is of course no less mysterious than the idea that an e.m wave did just that.
The point being that motive and opportunity allows us to form a theory. The proof comes next. You can't conclude anything just because you have identified motive and opportunity.
So, you think Cheney had motive and opportunity to blow up the twin towers. If from there you argue he must have done it without supporting evidence, a crackpot you are.
Please stay on topic. You are spamming my thread.
In other words, clarify the OP and then you'll be in a more solid position to argue why the sidebar is unrelated to the OP.
I am filing a complaint for violation of the rules. You are abusing your position.
The motive is in his own words, in a document authored and signed by many people who were in official posts in the government on 9/11.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
Regarding opportunity, there is quite a bit of admittedly circumstantial evidence, including his role in the infamous NORAD standown. This is not the place to read you chapter and verse, all the info is out there.
Quoting Hanover
I've done no such thing.
But you will find that the 9/11 commission itself draws many conclusions with insufficient supporting evidence. The official 9/11 commission's account is the most preposterous conspiracy theory of them all. If you reject theories that lack supporting evidence (as I do) you must reject the official account.
Which brings us back to the main point. I'd like to see a real investigation. Wouldn't you?
I am disappointed in you fishfry. Are you spamming this thread also?
As you've asked me not to reply to you anymore, I will do what I like here subject only to moderator preferences.
And since you asked, I'll note that I am the only person here who CAREFULLY read your post, CAREFULLY read your supporting link, THOUGHTFULLY replied, and NEVER insulted you. Yet you have totally failed to engage with any of the substantive points I made, and only said that you didn't really mean what you wrote.
I can't remember ever insulting you. Still, respecting threads is fundamental to any forum, wouldn't you say?
I never went back on what I have said, I only indicated that your interpretation of what I said was not right. The following discussion with @Banno was more productive for both sides. I am not sure I have convinced him, but at least he gave the impression that what I was saying was not total nonsense.
You kept hammering on irrelevant details that had nothing to do with the issue. Why should I feel compelled to go into them?
There is a breakdown in communication here. What I am pointing out is that the GPS is a version of your experiment, and it refutes your argument. If the speed of light is not taken into account, the GPS could not work; the GPS works, therefore radio waves travel a the speed of light.
You answer this by apparently suggesting that light is not a form of electromagnetic radiation.
It was I who took this thread off topic, in my first post.
Consider what would have to be the case for your view to be correct. It's not just GPS that would no longer have a reasonable explanation.
I consider you to be a crackpot; that is, someone who understands a little physics and has decided that the rest of it is wrong. I made this conclusion during our discussion of the eclipses of Io. Firstly it became apparent that you did not understand the way that astronomers and other physicists calculate the error in their measurements in order to ensure their validity. It was also apparent that you did not actually understand how the experiment was conducted. eventually you accepted the tables of eclipses set before you, but maintained that they did not support the conclusions reached by Romer.
One of the things i find philosophically interesting is the way in which crackpots are able to weave around falsifications of their ideas. Generally speaking I have been able to poke at certain writer's opinions, showing them where they do not hold together; and in turn I have had others poke at my own writing, and convince me that my ideas do not quite work. but there are those in the forum who appear to have certain ideas set in concrete, refusing to re-think them despite obvious problems. For me, you provide an extreme version of this phenomena; and this is what I decided to discuss in this thread.
My apologies for upsetting you; however there is a presumption that if you bring your ideas to a forum such as this, you are happy to have them criticised. It has been shown repeatedly that your physics does not hold up, yet you insist on presenting us with additional faulty threads. That has caused some frustration amongst the more scientifically literate, as you are aware. But despite this, you have been allowed to continue posting. The moderators hereabouts have been quite generous to you. Were I a mod, I would have tossed out your first OP. That's why I am not a moderator; I do not have their fairness of mind.
I never write posts this long.
I have obviously not convinced you. I regret the change in tone, but so be it.
Let me just point out that what is taken as the speed of light is considered as the speed of e.m waves in general (I am excepting sound here).
It is therefore absolutely not proven that light is an em wave. It is the general belief that it is.
I do not share this belief, but you already knew that. What you refuse to understand is that it is a belief that has never been proven, only assumed.
However accurate the calculations for the "speed of light" will become, it will never prove that it is indeed light that is traveling, and not the em substrate.
I gave the example of Hertz's experiment, where one spark appears at one coil, and a moment later a second spark appears at the second coil.
That is the paradigm of all calculations of the speed of light. An em wave or beam is sent to the moon, and a little more than a second later, a light effect is registered on earth. Just like with the Hertz experiment.
Scientists choose to believe that they are dealing directly with light. Maybe they are right. Maybe not.
That's just wrong. And a little bit crazy.
Maybe you could ask an expert about it.
The idea that not light is traveling, but the em substrate, might be difficult to countenance. Still, this model is what is used to explain sound.
Nobody claims that sound somehow travels through space. Everybody finds it normal to think that the original sound creates vibrations in the air, and that it is these vibrations that finally reach our ears and create sound sensations.
In other words, different listeners hear different copies of the same original sound, even if the sound itself never went anywhere.
That was one of the reasons why the idea of light as a wave was difficult to accept. Where was the medium that transported light?
Huygens thought that it was the ether, but then the ether lost its reputation, and light had to find a new substrate.
That became Faraday's lines of force, and later, Maxwell's field.
But in fact, the idea is the same. Instead of air, a substrate, whatever it is, travels through space, and recreates for us the sensation of light.
What do you make of Michelson-Morley? Isn't this one of the most famous physical experiments in history, showing that there is no luminiferous ether?
They dug a grave for the ether?
Am I taking you too literally again? Why can't I get a straight answer to a simple question? People used to say, "Water waves travel through water, sound waves travel through air, what do light waves travel through?" A famous experiment was done to show that there is no underlying medium. What is your response to this perfectly sensible question?
You better watch it or I'll start ranting about Dick Cheney again.
The whole point of this thread, and all the others, is that there are no light waves, just like there are no sound waves.
In the case of sound, air vibrations create sound sensations.
In the case of light, I will stick with the idea of em waves. Light is, I think, a local phenomenon created by the passage of em waves.
Please tell me that it is enough and that you won't bring in Cheney again!
Well this is the point where I'm not understanding your posts. I'm no expert on physics, but I know there are sound waves and there are light waves. Sound waves travel in a medium like air or water, and light waves don't require a medium, as shockingly shown by Michelson and Morley.
So I am not understanding your frame of reference or perspective or givens or axioms or assumptions or worldview when you say "there are no light waves just like there are no sound waves." I can parse the syntax but I can't map it to any meaning.
Quoting Hachem
Well Trump just announced he's not going to block the release of the remaining JFK papers on Thursday. That should keep us whacko conspiracy theorists busy for a while.
Or as Gore Vidal said: I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm a conspiracy analyst.
Sound waves are just a manner of speaking. Nobody believes that the air waves carry sound from one place to the other. It is just air waves that get into our ears, move the hammer.... and we hear sounds.
It is different for light waves, and I am aware of the fact that my conception is very unorthodox and controversial.
Everybody believes that. The source vibrates the medium which vibrates the little hairs in your eardrum, generating a chemical signal interpreted by your brain as sound. Of course the "sound" is in your head, it's subjective. But that's a fine point of philosophy. It's the vibrations that count.
Quoting Hachem
Yes this is very mysterious. What exactly is vibrating? I don't know enough physics to really understand what it means to have a wave without a medium.
Quoting Hachem
Right. There is no problem with that. But in order to have a conversation I'd have to better understand where you're coming from. I have not read your other posts, only your first post in this thread. So I can't really hold up my end of the conversation. I don't know what your rules of physics are.
That is all I can do.
Further, I did not finish my Phd in Philosophy that I had begun at [s]the start of the 80's[/s] the end of the 70's.