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How Does Light Travel?
universetoday.com ^ | 19 May , 2016 by | Matt Williams

Posted on 05/19/2016 1:06:30 PM PDT by BenLurkin

Ever since Democritus... argued that all of existence was made up of tiny indivisible atoms, scientists have been speculating as to the true nature of light. Whereas scientists ventured back and forth between the notion that light was a particle or a wave until the modern, the 20th century led to breakthroughs that showed that it behaves as both.

These included the discovery of the electron, the development of quantum theory, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. However, there remains many fascinating and unanswered questions when it comes to light, many of which arise from its dual nature. For instance, how is it that light can be apparently without mass, but still behave as a particle? And how can it behave like a wave and pass through a vacuum, when all other waves require a medium to propagate?

...

By the late 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell proposed that light was an electromagnetic wave, and devised several equations (known as Maxwell’s equations) to describe how electric and magnetic fields are generated and altered by each other and by charges and currents. By conducting measurements of different types of radiation (magnetic fields, ultraviolet and infrared radiation), he was able to calculate the speed of light in a vacuum (represented as c).

In 1905, Albert Einstein published “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”, in which he advanced one of his most famous theories and overturned centuries of accepted notions and orthodoxies. In his paper, he postulated that the speed of light was the same in all inertial reference frames, regardless of the motion of the light source or the position of the observer.

(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: light; stringtheory
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1 posted on 05/19/2016 1:06:30 PM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: BenLurkin

It travels swiftly.


2 posted on 05/19/2016 1:07:29 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Apparently, most people are fine with what Obama is doing, while he ignores our problems.)
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To: The_Media_never_lie

How does one travel light? Never figured that one out.


3 posted on 05/19/2016 1:08:03 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Apparently, most people are fine with what Obama is doing, while he ignores our problems.)
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To: The_Media_never_lie

Very, very fast!
And so begin the nonsensical comments.


4 posted on 05/19/2016 1:09:30 PM PDT by stayathomemom (Beware of kittens modifying your posts.)
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To: BenLurkin
How Does Light Travel?

Regular unleaded...

5 posted on 05/19/2016 1:10:18 PM PDT by publius911 (IMPEACH HIM NOW evil, stupid, insane ignorant or just clueless, doesn't matter!)
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To: BenLurkin

By bullet train?


6 posted on 05/19/2016 1:10:31 PM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (I apologize for not apologizing.)
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To: BenLurkin

As fast as possible?


7 posted on 05/19/2016 1:11:26 PM PDT by CollegeRepublican
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To: BenLurkin

It travels lightly.


8 posted on 05/19/2016 1:11:43 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: BenLurkin
How Does Light Travel?

Buys a ticket online, heads for the airport, gets all its orifices probed, sits uncomfortably for hours, eats crappy snacks, then waits for its luggage while hoping the gorilla from the Samsonite commercial didn't load it, just like everyone else?

9 posted on 05/19/2016 1:11:56 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: publius911

How does light travel?

He usually books well in advance.


10 posted on 05/19/2016 1:13:01 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: BenLurkin

when light travels faster than the speed of light, it turns into dark matter.


11 posted on 05/19/2016 1:13:23 PM PDT by Eddie01
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To: BenLurkin

you’re welcome


12 posted on 05/19/2016 1:14:10 PM PDT by Eddie01
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To: BenLurkin

Ether, waves or switchable packets.


13 posted on 05/19/2016 1:15:05 PM PDT by Paladin2 (Live Free or Die.)
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To: BenLurkin

Maybe if we knew more about how to travel light we’d know more about how light travels? Mas no?


14 posted on 05/19/2016 1:15:14 PM PDT by Jim W N
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To: BenLurkin
Light comes in packets (it's not quite right to call them "particles") called "photons." Each photon consists of a little electric field and a little magnetic field that kind of whirl around each other, maintaining perfect dynamic equilibrium; as one decays, the other builds, and vice-versa, until the photon encounters something that absorbs or scatters it.

The equations that describe this marvelous dance of fields were discovered by James Clerk Maxwell, who first published his insight in 1861, in the early months of our Civil War.

Maxwell's equations only generate the intertwined solution combining magnetic and electric fields when the reference frame is moving at the speed of light. For any other velocity, the equilibrium breaks down, the bubble pops, the photon dissipates its little quantum of energy.

Photons can move through materials other than the vacuum. When this happens, the speed of light in those materials differs from that of the speed of light in a vacuum.

In any medium other than vacuum, the speed of light is slower. No one has ever found a material in which the speed of light exceeds measured in a vacuum.

15 posted on 05/19/2016 1:17:38 PM PDT by Steely Tom (Vote GOP: A Slower Handbasket)
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To: BenLurkin
It travels through the graphene sheet as a wave.
A wave I tell you.
Now would be the time to applaud...
Troglodytes
16 posted on 05/19/2016 1:18:52 PM PDT by LivingNet
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To: BenLurkin

It really is not very complicated. Light acts as a particle and a wave because is not either. What we are seeing is its reflection, and “it” is what is not known. It is a manifestation of mass, but we view mass incorrectly.


17 posted on 05/19/2016 1:19:03 PM PDT by lafroste
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To: BenLurkin

Job 38:
“Where is the way to the dwelling of light?
And darkness, where is its place,

20
That you may take it to its territory,
That you may know the paths to its home?

21
Do you know it, because you were born then,
Or because the number of your days is great?

22
“Have you entered the treasury of snow,
Or have you seen the treasury of hail,

23
Which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
For the day of battle and war?

24
By what way is light diffused,
Or the east wind scattered over the earth?


18 posted on 05/19/2016 1:19:24 PM PDT by DungeonMaster (the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.)
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To: BenLurkin
LIGHT

(SHEESH)

19 posted on 05/19/2016 1:19:38 PM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof, but they're true)
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To: DungeonMaster

They don’t believe God hung the globe in the sky, neither


20 posted on 05/19/2016 1:21:20 PM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof, but they're true)
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