Posted on 04/25/2019 9:24:13 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The laws of physics are such that one photon just passes by another with zero interaction.
But in a new experiment inside the world's most powerful atom smasher, researchers got a glimpse of the impossible: photons bumping into each other.
The answer lies in one of the most inscrutable and yet delicious aspects of modern physics, and it goes by the funky name of quantum electrodynamics.
In this picture of the subatomic world, the photon isn't necessarily a photon. Well, at least, it's not always a photon. Particles like electrons and photons and all the other -ons continually flip back and forth, changing identities as they travel. It seems confusing at first: How could, say, a beam of light be anything other than a beam of light?
In order to understand this wacky behavior, we need to expand our consciousness a little...
In the case of photons, as they travel, every once in a while (and keep in mind that this is extremely, extremely rare), one can change its mind. And instead of being just a photon, it can become a pair of particles, a negatively charged electron and a positively charged positron (the antimatter partner of the electron), that travel together.
Blink and you'll miss it, because the positron and electron will find each other, and, as happens when matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate, poof. The odd pair will turn back into a photon.
For various reasons that are way too complicated to get into right now, when this happens, these pairs are called virtual particles. Suffice it to say that in almost all cases you never get to interact with the virtual particles (in this case, the positron and electron), and you only ever get to talk to the photon.
But not in every case.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Must be Global Warming
Was this interaction consensual?
59 times in trillions of interactions. Finally, something more rare than my love life.
You win
Light interacting with light....
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Is that like ex Dem cabinet people or intelligence officials like Clapper creating huge amounts of hot air by interfacing with hot air from Wolf Blitzer and Don Lemon? Sometimes the TV image shimmers like at Death Valley in July.
Didn’t pay a lot of attention in physics classes.
As a side note to this thread, it is becoming clear that the only exact science is global warming. /sarc
The example given is for a very energetic photon , a gamma Ray. There are even stars that blow up because of this effect, this switch between gamma Ray’s of the correct energy and those electron positron pairs.
Pair instability hypernovas.
How do they know? According to the Observer Effect, you cannot observe something without altering it.
Photon torpedo are next - yeah baby.
after your 5th beer or so, ….. it’ll all make sense?
What’s that all about?
Observing something changes it?
ROFL!!
Excuse-moi, hypernovae. Fascinating, all novae and supernovae.
If light IS interacting with light then it’s not impossible.
If it happens, it’s not impossible! Duh! elementary logic!
So then light doesn’t consist solely of photons. Another theory bites the dust! Quick, invent another one!
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