Particles

[steve_bank]

What are particles? Do they exist as we imagine?

Photon energy E = h*f.

For EM radiation wavelength = C/frequency, period in seconds = 1/ frequency t = 1/f.

As f -> inf E goes to infinity. An impossible condition.

As f ->inf the period goes to zero. At some poi8nt I expect the model would break down.


F = 1.0, 1e-1,1e-3…..

Creating an EM sitgnal electronically as f gets small at some point you run into quantum limitations. In spectral anaysus like the Fourier transform there is a form of the uncertainty prole that limits how accurately you can resolve a frequency.

As f gets large energy becomes impassibly high.

I can write the differential equation for a parallel resonant capacitor inductor circuit with no losses, excite it with a delta function, and it will oscillate forever mathematically. Physically impossible.

So, you can say mathematically there are no limits on the frequency of an EM wave/photon but that does not reflect physical reality

Frequencies from lasers are not continuous, they depend on the atoms. Same with emissio0ns from stars. Discrte frequencies from which we can determine the elements of a star.

 

[bilby]

So, you can say mathematically there are no limits on the frequency of an EM wave/photon but that does not reflect physical reality

Yes, it does. You just don't grasp the fact that "no limits" doesn't imply anything ever reaching the limits, and that the infinities you abhor exist only as unreachable mathematical limits.

There is no upper limit to the size of an integer. But that doesn't imply that you could count to infinity.

For any photon with energy E, there could be a more energetic photon with energy E+n. So any photon which you examine with the hypothesis that this one has the highest possible energy a photon can have, will turn out not to have the highest possible energy.

There is no highest integer; For any n, there exists n+1.

This tells us that the upper limit of the integers is infinity; It DOES NOT tell us that we could count to infinity.

For any energy a particle can have, we can envisage adding another Joule. There is no limit to how often we could do this, but that does not imply that we could end up with a particle with infinite energy. Just that the upper limit is infinity - ie that for any particle with E < infinity, we could add another Joule.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No. There will come a point where the photon falls into it's own event horizon and then promptly evaporates.

I suspect other things would happen before that point, though.

And you can't just add energy to a photon (other than by falling down a gravity well, but you'll end up at the photon sphere before lamda gets too high.) How do you create such a photon?

 

[lpetrich]

I remember a physics teacher calling a photon a "blob of light".

I try to picture elementary particles as waves with some total amount. That's as close as I can come to quantum field theory while avoiding its mathematics as much as possible.

 

[steve_bank]

When I did electric circuits work I imaged electric current as something entering one end of a wire and leaving the other end. Not technically correct but it helps to have a picture. I was never able to deal with math and theory as an an station, I had to have a working picture.

To me the wave particle duality tells me we have no idea of a greater reality we are in.

Smash an atom in a collider and the wreckage goes through a mass spectrometer. Particles pass through a mass spectrometer and properties assigned based on deflection.

Millikian's oil drop experiment where he deduced electric charge was quantized. Hi book The Elecron is online with his original data. A nice bit of deduction done independently before modern instruments and computers.

Who knows what an electron is, but the value deduced fits into an overall theory that works.

Oil drop experiment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The experiment observed tiny electrically charged droplets of oil located between two parallel metal surfaces, forming the plates of a capacitor. The plates were oriented horizontally, with one plate above the other. A mist of atomized oil drops was introduced through a small hole in the top plate and was ionized by x-rays, making them negatively charged. First, with zero applied electric field, the velocity of a falling droplet was measured. At terminal velocity, the drag force equals the gravitational force. As both forces depend on the radius in different ways, the radius of the droplet, and therefore the mass and gravitational force, could be determined (using the known density of the oil). Next, a voltage inducing an electric field was applied between the plates and adjusted until the drops were suspended in mechanical equilibrium, indicating that the electrical force and the gravitational force were in balance. Using the known electric field, Millikan and Fletcher could determine the charge on the oil droplet. By repeating the experiment for many droplets, they confirmed that the charges were all small integer multiples of a certain base value, which was found to be 1.5924(17)×10−19 C, about 0.6% difference from the currently accepted value of 1.602176634×10−19 C.[7] They proposed that this was the magnitude of the negative charge of a single electron.

 

[pood]

To me the wave particle duality tells me we have no idea of a greater reality we are in.

You are wading into philosophy territory there.

 

[steve_bank]

To me the wave particle duality tells me we have no idea of a greater reality we are in.

You are wading into philosophy territory there.

You and Peecgirl are two peas in pod, both desperately trying to promote hopeless outdated philosophy. Dinging me does not make your case.

My drawing a concussion from science does not validate your view on science and philosophy.

 

[pood]

To me the wave particle duality tells me we have no idea of a greater reality we are in.

You are wading into philosophy territory there.

You and Peecgirl are two peas in pod, both desperately trying to promote hopeless outdated philosophy. Dinging me does not make your case.

My drawing a concussion from science does not validate your view on science and philosophy.

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. What hopeless outdated philosophy am I promoting? What part of science do you think I do not understand? In what way am I like peacegirl? And how am I “dinging” you? Did you notice the wink smilie? But the fact is you have repeatedly and ignorantly denigrated philsophy, without the slightest clue that science is positively shot through with philosophy. And now here you are, saying “wave particle duality tells me we have no idea of a greater reality we are in,” which is straight-up philosophy and which I agree with.

So what exaclty is your problem with things that I have written?

Actually, you know what? It’s a rhetorical question. I don’t really care what you think about anything. Most of your posts are distinctly unimpressive.

 

[steve_bank]

Of course you don't.

BTW, you never answered my request to explain what you meant by wave function collapse in the context of other science jargon in one of your posts.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When I did electric circuits work I imaged electric current as something entering one end of a wire and leaving the other end. Not technically correct but it helps to have a picture. I was never able to deal with math and theory as an an station, I had to have a working picture.

I think that was my problem with higher math--I reached a point I could regurgitate the material but never truly picture what was happening. It went from easy to nightmare at that point.

 

[Bomb#20]

No. There will come a point where the photon falls into it's own event horizon and then promptly evaporates.

In which frame of reference?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No. There will come a point where the photon falls into it's own event horizon and then promptly evaporates.

In which frame of reference?

Photons always move at lightspeed by their own perception, reference frames are irrelevant. The energy required to make a photon implode would be stupendous and I can't imagine how it could ever get such energy, but it's not infinite.