Choate Prime Physics

[Tim May]

At 10:45 PM -0500 7/24/01, Jim Choate wrote:
>On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 mmotyka at lsil.com wrote:
>
>>  You stated that every photon interacts, loses energy and is re-emitted.
>
>Sure, it has it's momentum changed. Think about it. The photon comes in
>from one direction and is absorbed/interacts with the atoms. As a result
>they get re-emitted (reflected) in the exact opposite direction. The point
>is the photons that get re-emitted ARE NOT THE SAME PHOTONS THAT WERE
>ABSORBED.
>
>You can't do that without losing something. photons only have one thing,
>energy as represented in their wavelength. The beam that gets re-emitted
>is less energetic than the beam that came in. Even if it does have the
>same phase and time coherence as the incident one. 2nd law of
>thermodynamics.
>
>You're confusing the intermediate vector boson as the carrier of
>information with the information itself.

You're gibbering about things you have no clue about. Babbling about 
"the intermediate vector boson" when you clearly don't even 
understand high school physics is especially bizarre.

Photons are _quanta_, as in quantum theory. Their energy is given by 
the usual E = hv (v is nu, frequency). They aren't "less energetic" 
when they scatter (i.e., are reflected). A photon fired at a surface 
will scatter/reflect with precisely the energy it had when it hit the 
surface, unless it is absorbed (in which case it knocks electrons out 
of atoms...the photoelectric effect in a vacuum, thermalized in 
ordinary solids).

This is the essence of Planck's and Einstein's work in the first 
decade of the 20th century. Photons don't lose a "little" bit of 
their energy. They either get completely absorbed, aka the 
photoelectric effect, or they hold _all_ of their energy. Ironically, 
the key experiment was done with photons of varying energies striking 
(scattering) off of a metal plate. The photoelectric effect 
established that a photon only gives up its energy when it is 
energetic enough to knock an electric out of a orbital. Photons do 
not "give up some energy" except in this all or nothing way.

The only way photons change their (apparent) energy is through 
Doppler shift, which is really a frame of reference situation. Red 
shift, for example. (Ditto the Mossbauer Effect, where gamma photons 
alter energies slightly.)

Whether a photon moving through a medium is the "same" photon or a 
series of absorbed/emitted photons is an interesting topic to 
discuss. But the one thing we _know_ is that such photons do not 
"lose energy" in the way you describe. If they did, then blue light 
would turn into red light. It doesn't. A blue photon is a blue photon 
is a blue photon.

It's not your ignorance of high school physics (or high school math, 
or high school history, etc.) that's annoying, it's your oracular 
pronouncements of flawed theory. This is why people call you a crank.

--Tim May


-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
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