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

I find the simplest way to understand a photon is to look at where photon's come from when a light bulb is turned on.
As I've mentioned in another post, the filament, the glass and other assorted components of a light bulb aren't used as fuel (Although their is a negligible degrading in the materials over time.)

A light bulbs input is an electrical current which is the fuel, this current as it moves through the filament causes the filaments electron orbit to alter through the excess energy, which triggers giving off photons.

This suggests that a photon made by this apparatus has not inherited any mass (otherwise the filament's molecular weight would alter through it's consumption, although there is the potential for a negligible weight loss over time.) It suggests that the photon is just a "packet of spacetime" which isn't attached to the atoms particle orbits which causes it to be exerted when the orbit collapses back to the atoms normal orbital paths.

(The terming of "packet" is something I've coined, however a packet or parcel pretty much is the best way to explain how a rogue piece of spacetime finds itself "bound up")

 

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Hi Billy,
As you said before, photons outrun their own gravity, leaving a sort of gravity "wake" behind them... so photons running in parallel would not be expected to converge due to gravitational attraction.

I don't follow the details, but it is my understanding that GR definitely treats mass and energy pretty much identically when it comes to the effect on space-time curvature.


Something else to consider:
If photons don't produce gravity, then momentum is not conserved.
A photon that is diverted by a gravitational field has its momentum changed. If momentum is conserved (for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction), then something else must have its momentum changed in precisely the opposite way... ie if a mass attracts a photon, then the photon must equally attract the mass.

 

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Billy T sorry for delay in defending myself, however I have never held the view that a photon, if it exists at all would generate gravity.
I was responding to the suggestion that mass generates gravity and was suggesting that it was whatever creates mass that generates gravity and not the mass persee. [ I was not making any reference to the photon.]

It also seems to me that photon theory is simply one of those theories that adapts to the observations of effects. It must be the most adaptable theory there is, which of course does nothing to give it credit.
Show me proof of a photon in what ever form you choose to think of it, other than circumstancial, and I will change my opinion accordingly.

So some will say it generates gravity and others will justify it's non merger with some other attribute that the photon "must" have [ regardless of proof] after all we are so convinced of it's reality that we will bend over backwards to make sure we can find an attribute that will justify the belief.

Again show me a photon and I will change my POV.

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The amount of work that has gone into photon theory is astounding yet no one can actually prove it, the photon, exists....

 

What evidence is there that they "run" at all?
What evidence is there that a photon is "free travelling" particle?

I would suggest that it is only the need to justify our belief that the photon "must" be free running. But hey I ask is this evidence? Or just an assumption premised on our limited understanding of what is actually going on?

 

I did not intend to state the photons leave gravity anywhere as I am quite confident they have none, but if they did, your argument would still not apply because stars are continuously making photons. I.e.the photons need not be traveling only pairs at a time, "side-by-side," with neither in the other's "gravity wake" - all would be in many "gravity wakes" continuously, except for fact "photon gravity" does not exist.

 

I did this some post back but easier to do again, even with more detail, than find:

Sorry but I may need to speak of "time of flight" to clearly present my argument, but it does not really assume anything is "flying" (I can't as that is what I am trying to persuade you, so certainly I do not assume that or that photons exist.)

I asked you to consider two experiments. Both have events A & a which take place here in my laser lab. They are very brief opening of a Kerr cell shutter which otherwise is blocking what every is making that line of light (dust particles in the air make it brighter) between the end of my laser and the Kerr cell.

Next to the Kerr cell and "looking" directly along the line of light (dust particles producing it some way) is a telescope with photo detector tube at the "eye" piece. Some time after events A & a, events C & c occur, which are very accurate timing pulses (from the photomultiplier tube.)

The other events are some strange (from your POV, but not mine) goings on are also on the line of light called B & b. (I removed the Kerr cell to place "corner cube" reflectors "on the line of light", distant from the laser. Laser light does spread (ie illuminate a larger area on a screen if the screen is farther way. In all cases the B and b distance are great enough to allow C and c events to occur (Laser spread is larger than the lateral separation between Kerr cell and telescope separation.)

Both B & b from my POV are reflections events, but I do not assume that. I only observe that I get "time of flight" type data which scales linearly with the distance between the A & a event and between the B & b events. What I mean by "time of flight" data, I ilustrate with the "non-cap" events only: The time, Ta, which is when the high voltage pulse opened the Kerr cell and Tc is the time when the phototube gave its associated output pulse. Dab is the distance between the Kerr cells and the corner cubes, for the "non-cap" events case. (and DAB is that distance for the "cap case" events.)

I like to play with lasers, math, corner cubes etc. so I noticed something interesting:

Dab / (Tc -Ta) is exactly (well after I added a tube from Kerr cell to the corner cube and pumped the air out of the tube) the same as DAB / (TC -TA). This was so surprising (FROM YOUR POV, not mine) that I did it again and with lots of different separation between the Kerr cell and the corner cube. Guess what:

Dab / (Tc -Ta) is always exactly (in evacuated tube still) equal to DAB / (TC -TA) for all of the hundreds of different separations I tried. From my POV is understand this as something, which carries energy, travel at constant velocity in vacuum round trip from Kerr cell to corner cube and back again independent of their separation.

However, I am having hard time understanding it from your POV. The basic problem I am having with your POV, is if nothing is traveling round trip between Kerr cell and corner cube, and these are just three uncoupled events (in cap case: A, B & C) how does one explain the constancy of the ratio {Dab / (Tc -Ta)}? Can you help me? (Understand it your way? If you still do not want to adopt my POV? which is that something travels at constant velocity.)

Another thing hard to understand from your POV: if nothing is traveling, why did the ratio Dab / (Tc -Ta) change slighly When I pumped the air out of the tube. Iam goning to fill the tube with pure water and see if that adds strength to the "something traveling POV) - I will get back to you on this.

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My point was that if photons produce gravity, that doesn't mean that stellar radiation would be clumped into spikes.

What do you think about the momentum issue?
Do you accept that the momentum of a photons is altered when it passes through a gravity field?

 

On (1) why do you think things that mutually attract will not clump? Be they photons or magnets, intitially short out in spherical uniformity. Again I do not this the photons mutually attrac but if they di then I would not expect them to do differently than magnets shot out intially uniformly. Why do you thenk magnetic mutual attaction clumps but gravitation mutual attraction does not?

(2) Yes, I think when falling into a gravitational well, photons gain both energy and momentum ad conversely when "climping out" this is another way to look at "black hole" - the well is too deep - the photons loss 100% of both before escaping.

 

Didn't we just establish that they don't necessarily mutually attract in that way?
Even if they did, the quantification would be interesting. What degree of clumping would you expect?

So if momentum is to be conserved, then photons must produce gravity, right?

 

Billy T,

Firstly thank you so much for taking my concerns seriously enough to investigate with scientific methodology and procedure.
Secondly, I do wish I could offer a thorough alternative pov to what is happening when we record EM effects. To my thinking there are many aspects yet to be resolved prior to putting forward something even remotely comprehendable. [ The last time I tried this thread was shifted to pseudo science...

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.]

I do feel however that the issue is locked into notions of vacant space [ vacuum ] and the physics of inertia [ which we seem to know virtually nothing about]
There appears to be such a huge change needed in approach that it would be futile to get too into it in abstraction here. [ I have tried in the past and hit a wall of ridicule to many times to really care to much about the issue ]

Suffice to say I think that the claim that the photon has yet to be proven as a free running entity is significant enough to open doors and minds to the possibility that an alternative and more comprehensive view can be achieved.
To me it is not good science to claim the existance of something purely on circumstancial grounds with out taking into account our own limited imaginations. By this I mean "just because we don't know the answer does not mean we must assume the closest proximation as being valid." Better is it not to simply say we do not know and leave it open enough to allow research to continue. At present it seems that every one has assumed that the photon pheno has been fully proven and I Unfortunately disagree and have yet to see such proof. Being uneducated in physics does in many ways have an advantage in that I am not conditioned to laws that have not been proven as completely valid. And photon theory is more or less Law.

The demands of rigourous proof based science seems to have been put aside in this case and this is my main complaint. It may prove to be that the photon can be adequately proven to travel and if so I would accept it gladly but this must be of the highest quality of proofs just as most other aspects of physics are.

I am confident that using the method you have described in your post, if I understand it properly, will yeld the same inconclusive results in that the fact that photon and reflector can not be differentiated means that the proposed photons free running nature can not be proven conclusively.

So whilst we may not prove the photon invalid or valid we shall at least open the door to other possibilities.
I have the logic puzzle almost worked out but maybe two or three major issues are sticky but that is another story...

The need to offer an alternative is not at issue but merely acknowledging the limitations of the proofs gained so far and realising that it is inconlusive. This alone would be a significant breakthrough IMO.

 

Sorry Pete, with all due respect, this demonstrates exactly the problem. We Must not assume that something Must be such and such . Purely speculative and circumstancial. premised on possibly flawed other MUSTS and next thing the theory is a hypothetical wrapped up as fact.
If a photon MUST exist then it just only proves our lack of understanding and imagination and not that a photon exists.

[ MUST does not equate to DOES exists]
Must does not equal Does

 

Please, QQ, I'm having a discussion with Billy in which the existence of photons is taken as given.

The "must" in that statement implies a logical conclusion based on a number of premises that I believe that both Billy and I accept.

 

Quantum Quack,

Why do you keep saying 'reflector'? Do you mean detector? Let me ask you a very simple question. Explain how can I set fire to a piece of paper using a magnifying glass and sunlight. Do this without a 'free running nature' of whatever you wish to call the energy transmitted from the sun to the paper.
Don't forget that I can hold my hand over the magnifying glass, or vary the distance between the magnifying glass and paper.

 

[chuckle]
and in a thread that disputes that very question...if I am not mistaken this thread was about the ambiguous nature of the evidence supporting the very existance of a free running photon and you wish to debate whether that photon leaves a gravity wake.....ha....

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oh I dunno ....
maybe the energy is quantum tunnelling with a variation in intensity relative to distance from source....or simply vibrational resonance across zero space [ the space between the particles of mass in the medium ] with the intensity of that resonance determined by the distance from source [ in this case the lens in the magifying glass is the source which is a reflection of the sun which was a source and so on....

Any way this is not the point. Just because I can not give you an alternative theory does not justify the absolute belief that the free running photon has achieved.

There may be many ways to achieve the same results that the assumption of a free running photon suggests with out needing to use a free running photon.
Any speculation could be possibly just as valid as currently held theory due to the lack of hard evidence to support the notion of a free running photon.

 

QQ,

No, I gave you proof that energy is in motion. You could not give ANY other possibility. Doubletalk is not even speculation.

 

What I mean by reflector is that the object of mass that experiences the effect of EM events. That object of mass I call a reflector which includes other factors such as absorbtion which in this case is still reflection [ particles within that mass reflect or show the results of the intensity of the EM event.
Possibly the use of the word reflector is misleading if one is still conditioned to think in terms of free running photons. [ reflection as in like a bouncing ball ] but in this case there is no bouncing ball. Just the ground on which it is bounced on. The ground being the reflector.
The ground has been proven to take on the energy of the source from a distance but there is no evidence put forward to prove that that energy is delivered by way of the free running photon. teh notion of teh free running photon is premised on a statement like "it must be" and that is not evidence as far as I can tell, but only educated speculation.

 

so please explain how you have proved that the energy is in motion?

just because a piece of paper is burning proves nothing about what happens between the lens and paper.
maybe I have misread your post?

of course I can offer a few other possible hypothetical explanations and in fact I did in a post just above this one. tunneling effects, hmmmm zero space over distance, uhmmmm.....any others? I am sure if you think about it there could be all sorts of possibilities. It doesn't mean they are correct or even nearly correct but again this is not the issue.
If you want me to believe as you do that a photon is free running I would like to see something that proves this to be so beyond mere circumstancial evidence and the "must be so" statement.

Given how critical this issue is to the future understanding it should be easy to prove as requested....but it aint and that is the problem.

unless we are running a "beyond reasonable doubt" situation here.... which is not what science should be about IMO

 

QQ,

No, it is not premised on a statement like "it must be". And, yes, I just gave you positive proof of the energy's motion, not speculation. There are myriads of other proofs of the motion of energy. A photon is a model for a 'packet' of energy. Are you denying energy exists? Are you denying it can be transmitted from one location to another, such as fiber optic cable?