interesting - thanks!
Finally
Now I can get some sleep.
It’s all done with mirrors
Just bookmarked. Fascinating stuff!
Thank you!
Wait, they kicked the can UP the road?
Something I've learned recently is that a photon has spin. This seems very strange to me, because a photon has no mass. How can it have spin?
But that is no stranger (I guess) than the fact that a photon carries momentum, even though it has no mass. Perhaps its momentum is what's spinning, even though there's no mass there to spin.
It has energy though, so its mass-energy (E/c2) not zero.
I learned about this from the YouTube lecture series of David Butler, which is the best I've ever seen... and I've watched a lot of them.
If you watch all five of his "How small is it?" videos in order, he will take you from what you see through a magnifying glass right down to the Higgs boson, and explain everything with amazing insight. As I said, the best I've ever seen.
I have thought of it as if the particle exists and is sustained in a linear spatial configiration, while the wave nature of that energy is in a planar configuration. The planar configuration is what goes through two slits but the particle configuration can only go through one slit.
100% of the “difference” is in the equipment (the nature of the equipment) doing the identification and measuring and not in quantum item being identified and measured.
It is a “wave” as known to a “detector” whose natural state is to identify a “wave”, and it is a particle to a “detector” whose natural state is to identify a “particle”.
In its own state, it (light) is neither while to us (because of our means of detection) it is both.
It truth the difference is not in the “property” of light but only in how it appears (to us) to behave, depending on which mode of detection is being used.
At first glance, the experimental setup seems similar to the quantum eraser experiments that are all the rage these days...
Will have to read the actual paper before making any comments...
However, seems pretty neat...
Of course I like almost any experiment that does require the LHC at Cern...
Wow.
Now they will figure out how to make a Transporter. And Photon torpedos.
I just won’t be here to see it.
5.56mm
I have a science background which includes some physics, yet consider things like this behavior of light to be miracles.
Here’s another way of thinking of light that to me makes it even less intuitive:
One particle (photon) can go through two slits at the same time. (That is how one photon (particle) can interfere with itself in order to make a diffraction pattern on the back wall in the classic experiment.
And light was the very first thing we know of that God created. “Let there be light.” Light is a thing that has dual characteristics that seem impossible to exist together. When light is really examined it is not intuitive, we have to resort to deep math and lots of verbage to try to describe it.
So that dual aspect of light helps when people ask (and these tend to be smart people who are bothered the most by this) “If God knows everything, including the future, how am I not a pre-programmed robot who should not be held responsible for what I do, since I must be already destined to do whatever I do?”
(In other words, they are claiming to apparently NOT have free will in a world where God is in control.)
I tell them about light, the first thing made, that has both particle and wave characteristics, two things that do not seem to be able to coexist.
The world and life is like that, like light: God knows all, and yet we DO have free will, that particle can also go through two slits at the same time.
God even refers to himself as light.
I am not claiming it is a pefect analogy.
However light certainly seems to be another way that God reveals his nature in nature.
These things in this universe made by God are true miracles.
The law of causality still applies. The nature of the system as a whole causes the effect,
Why is it so counter intuitive? Anyone who understands the implications of Heaviside’s work knows that there is nothing ‘quantum’ mysterious going on here. Electric and magnetic fields feed each other energy. The fields and the photons are different things. Read Dr. Hanz Schantz’ book on ultrawideband antennas; it’s really more a primer in electromagnetics. Also, he has a paper on the topic that is probably already out. I got to see a preview presentation.