Quote:
Originally Posted by Little Bang
No one that I know of has ever attempted to give a three dimensional picture of an electromagnetic wave. If anyone is aware of one or more please tell me about it. I'm extremely interested in any such attempts.
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I'm fairly out of my depth after page 14, although I sure am intrigued by the 6D idea above (post #181); but this quoted post is close to the original question of this thread, so....
Thanks for a wonderful read, all of you posters....
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"What we don't understand is certain aspects of quantum reality itself." -Qfwfq
...worthy of a bumper sticker, I think!
"The electron is sitting in space, surrounded by a cloud of virtual particles, constantly absorbing and emitting them in accordance with the uncertainty principle (...). When the electron is accelerated away, it will leave behind (one or more) virtual particles, which become real, and travel away as photons. Descriptions for hydrogen atoms work similarly- only is a bit more complicated due to the fact that there are more particles involved." -Erasmus
"However, given that our intellects evolved to deal with a certain scale (not too fast, not too small), I don't think it should be a deal breaker that our intuition fails at the quantum level." -Erasmus
... and posts #16-19 on virtual photons. Thanks
... and posts #24-25 on mass. Thanks maddog & CraigD
"A photon is a travelling warp in space." -Farsight!! (post#27)
Wow, now we're getting somewhere....
Little Bang posits:
"The photon (carrier of the electromagnetic force) interacts ( in some unknown way) with the electron and knocks it into a higher energy level, it then falls back to it’s original energy level and emits a photon with the same energy."
..."in some unknown way".... that's the question, isn't it!
& "I'm no sure what a comparison of the spectrum of hydrogen and deuterium would show but it's possible that it could prove or disprove my idea. The extra mass baggage of the neutron should cause a drastic change."
Yep, I think spectroscopy confirms this... ...or atomic models were contrived to explain the spectroscopic observations....===
...and up thru post #50 (-LB)!! Neat ideas! ...and the follow-ups on page 6.
Pyrotex, in #80, does a good job describing the magical gnat farts....
...but farted photons do
have a color, eh?
...thanks "ask." I'll look at that link from post #83 later.
... and the mystery of charge....
...and even HydrogenBond (post# 97)weighs in with his usual unique and surprisingly insightful perspectives....
...and again, I'm not dissappointed; but I'll have to read that over and over!
...and Chad too (post #111)....
and thanks CraigD for keeping up with this.
*thru page 13.
...what is the deal with charge, eh?
*page 14....
Stern-Gerlack!
Yikes!!!
... page 19.
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.
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I had hoped to offer my description of the magical creation of the photon, but after reading through the thread, it's been fairly well handled. Several posts came up with an image similar(?) to mine:
I see spacetime as an artifact, multiply overlayed on itself, as it is created by matter/energy fluxes [changes in the conformation of those other 8(?) dimensions].
Well, that's a meaningless piece of background, eh?
Ummm.
Spacetime needs to reorganize itself after a fluctuation in matter/energy. If an electron drops to a lower level, spacetime reorganizes to compensate for the change.
That reorganization of spacetime, or really the propagation of that change in spacetime, is what we perceive as a photon.
Thus "c" is the speed at which spacetime (or a change in spacetime) propagates.
That reorganization of spacetime carries (or is) the information about the original change (i.e., the electron dropping to a lower level).
Metaphorically, I think of a photon as a crack propagating thru spacetime (& with colorful fractal horizons radiating out from the 'crack'); but really it's more as if the photon is generating the spacetime [usually overlaying itself over (or intercalating itself within) other spacetime] as it propagates, so the image is kinda backwards.
Thanks Little Bang, for asking the question, ...hope this 'gnat fart' adds to the rainbow.
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p.s.
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...and just what are these little gnats that I occasionally see, as I'm looking at the screen, flying around my head?
I sometimes think they're just "floaters," but I've acutally squashed one; ...so maybe "floaters" are just virtual gnats?
...or are the gnats just virtual ideas? Anyone else have these?
Thanks again....
~ 