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Article  At light speed, Einstein’s equations break down and "nothing makes sense"

#11
confused2 Offline
K. Wrote:To anyone properly versed in SR,
I am at best a dabbler in SR so always happy to be corrected.
I like to think of SR as a description of the properties of spacetime with 'the speed of light' © as a pervasive constant. Massless particles probably ought to zip around 'at the speed of light' with no rational interpretation of time or distance - I've dabbled in SR for long enough that this no longer seems surprising or an indication of anything being broken. BUT. In the real world we have photons - massless particles zipping around at 'c' with definite frequency (time) and wavelength (distance) properties. IMHO more a triumph of quantum mechanics than a failure of SR.
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#12
Kornee Offline
QED/QFT buffs will quickly point out or anyway claim it's impossible to come up with a physical picture of what a photon 'really looks like'. All down to math that works.
I recall one thread at PF where a member asked if there was proof photons can only be emitted if an absorber exists somewhere else in the universe.
So I did a very easy experiment. Laser pointer shone through a slightly frosted clear plastic plate. Most of the beam transmits but it's easy to note the intensity of the scattered part. Aimed first at the ground where essentially full absorption of the transmitted beam occurs. Then up at the clear night sky. No discernible difference in scattered intensity. Lack of a mysterious dimming indicating that photons don't need to 'know in advance' that a distant absorber is there before being emitted.

Given that light from very distant galaxies arrives with minimal scattering absorption, and has traveled from a time when everything was much more crowded, light currently shone into the great yonder will have an indefinitely easier journey as the ever expanding universe continually thins out. Further, cosmic stretching of wavelength will mean photons emitted by a given atomic orbital transition will sooner or later no longer be able to be absorbed in reverse fashion.

I can't recall the exact reaction from the forum member, but it was probably silence.
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