Posted on 03/22/2005 3:40:06 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Light as we know it may be a direct result of small violations of relativity, according to new research scheduled for publication online Tuesday (March 22) in the journal Physical Review D. [Preprint is here.]
In discussing the work, physics professor Alan Kostelecky of Indiana University described light as "a shimmering of ever-present vectors in empty space" and compared it to waves propagating across a field of grain. This description is markedly different from existing theories of light, in which scientists believe space is without direction and the properties of light are a result of an underlying symmetry of nature.
Instead the report, co-authored by Kostelecky with physics professor Robert Bluhm of Colby College, discusses the possibility that light arises from the breaking of a symmetry of relativity. "Nature's beauty is more subtle than perfect symmetry," Kostelecky said. "The underlying origin of light may be another example of this subtlety."
The new results show that this description of light is a general feature of relativity violations and holds both in empty space and in the presence of gravity. "In this picture, light has a strange beauty, and its origin is tied into minuscule violations of Einstein's relativity in a profound and general way," Kostelecky said.
The report also points out that this new view of light can be tested experimentally by studying the properties of light and its interactions with matter and gravity. All these have behavior that is predicted to deviate from conventional expectations in tiny but important ways.
"This is an alternative, viable way of understanding light with potential experimental implications. That's what makes it exciting," Kostelecky said.
Possible detectable effects include asymmetries between properties of certain particles and antiparticles, and cyclic variations in their behavior as Earth rotates. The effects can be sought using various experimental equipment ranging from giant particle colliders, such as the one at Fermilab in Illinois, to "tabletop" experiments with atomic clocks or resonant cavities. A number of such experiments are now under way.
[The original article, at the end, lists the people involved in this work, and their contact information.]
A better title would seem to be "Light may arise from relativity aberrations" or maybe "Light may arise from relativity exceptions" or perhaps "Light may arise from relativity distortions"..
Whatever the means by which light arises it cannot be a 'violation' of something which doesn't exist, even if it were recently thought to exist. That assumes the experiments bear out this theory.
Hmmm.. I think "relativity fluctuations" would work best of all. Yup!
Although some while ago I was very sternly told there could be no such thing..
Will be quite intriguing to see how the experiments turn out.
"Intergalactic Physics Patrol. Do you know why I pulled you over, sir? You made a relativity violation going past that wormhole over yonder. Boy, yo's in a heap'o trouble."
A little light reading, huh?
Heavy, man!
No,but thought it might sound interesting.
Time to go back and review all four of Michaelson-Moreley's experiments. Differences in effects depending on which direction earth is headed?
Last time I even heard about ether was when I had my tonsils out.
The universe is the way that it is, and not how you would wish it to be.
The idea can be made to sound ridiculous, but think of it this way. You have an electron going from point A to point B. You wish to calculate the measurable quantities associated with that propagation. So you do something very simple: you take every possible path from A to B, including those that go backwards in time, and you add them together with a very simple weighting scheme, and it gives you answers that are experimentally true to more than ten decimal places. You may not like it, but there's got to be something deep to it, for an idea that simple to work that well.
. . . described light as "a shimmering of ever-present vectors in empty space" . . .
Vectors (and matrices) were ever-present in grad school and I never saw 'em shimmer.
Light is Jello?
Then could we use that interaction between backward flowing and forward flowing particles to peer into our future, or at least tease some information about the future out of it?
I don't think I am stupid. But when I try to understand an article like this, I feel stupid.
In my tiny little brain, light has always just been the continuation of the electromagnetic scale that starts with ELF, goes up thru the AM band and FM band and through the microwave band to the infrared band and at some point the same sort of waves become visible to our eyes, then become ultraviolet, then gamma, etc.
That may or may not be accurate in any way, but it is what I have always thought.
Now I feel stupid. Maybe I should be voting Democrat.
No, because information isn't contained in the particles themselves, but in the patterns in which they're arranged, and those patterns only travel forwards in time, from our point of view.
>No, because information isn't contained in the particles themselves, but in the patterns in which they're arranged, and those patterns only travel forwards in time, from our point of view.
As importantly, you all going to come down here on the 7th and explain this to us?
Anything that gets your strings vibrating. ;o)
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