Sorry for not replying sooner.
webolife wrote:Antone said: "Light travels in all sorts of directions, however, and the light traveling in a cross direction interfers with this "string of light" moving it back and forth in a crosswise direction. This "blurs" the image that is carried by each "string of light", because it is no longer striking a single point. More importantly, however, it also transfers the [information being carryed by the "string of light"] to the "cross string". This is important because it isn't just one "sting of light" that is feeding information into the "cross string". All the "strings of light" that make up the image are feeding their imput into the "cross strings". This is why each part of the cross string contains all the information of all the "strings of light" that make up the image. And this information propogates in the same direction as the "string of light" in this holographic format."
This appears to be an explanation of a polarizing filter, not a lens...
Actually, the description I gave was not intended to be related to a lens (or a polarizing filter). As I recall, I was simply trying to expand on my
light as a fabric analogy. The "
strings of light" are equivalent to the rays of light that I believe you've mentioned. The "
cross strings" are the rays that do not run parallel to a particular set of image forming rays.
If you look at a fabric, there will be vertical and horizontal threads. If you turn the fabric, however, the vertical threads will become horizontal threads, and vice versa. In much the same way, the term "string of light" only has meaning with respect to the information contained in a specific images. The "cross strings" are those rays of light that do not contain that "image".
The "fabric" of light has threads that run at infinitely many different angles to the vertical threads, (which are your rays). All of these "other" angles of light are the "cross strings." They have nothing to do with the coherence of a single ray--which is what polarization filters have to do with.
So where do these "cross strings" come from? Well, my room is currently illuminated by an overhead light. This casts a good deal of light that goes directly down to strike the objects in the room. But if this was all that the light did, I would not be able to see anything, because the light that carries the images I see is the light that reflects off of those objects. Now, when I look across the room at the wall, for instance, horizontal light is entering my eyes. But that light is constantly intersecting the nearly vertical light that is coming from the overhead light. From my perspective, these are the "strings of light" and the "cross strings" I was referring to.
I hope this clarifies things a little.
webolife wrote: some imaging devices (slit devices or so-called "diffraction" gratings) do work this way, eliminating those angles of light (you're calling them cross-strings) that do not line up with the slit or grating.
Again, you are misconsruing what I'm saying. Partially my fault, for not being able to express myself more clearly--and partially its the fact that my understanding of light is that it is a very complex phenomenon that is not easy to explain.
In this case, you've got what I was trying to say exactly backwards. The multiple slits do not eliminate the "cross strings" at all, becasue each wave that propogate from a hole serve as the "cross string" that interfers with the wave eminating from the other hole. This occurs because the light that comes from each hole expands in a semi-circular manner, as do all waves. In the image below, the waves should all be half-circles, curving around to the far left margin, even with where the first wave starts.
)))
))
Thus, when you have two expanding, semi-circular waves right next to each other, each wave necessarily expands at a cross-direction with respect to the other. And this interference returns the light to the holographic-like mode. It is a simplified holographic-like mode, because it only involves two wave fronts--instead of infinitely many--but it is still holographic.
webolife wrote: But I'm not seeing how you get this filtered type of imaging from a pinhole or a lens? How do your "cross-strings" get eliminated by these?
That's a very good question--and I feared that I had not adequately explained this aspect of my argument--although in fairness, it is rather difficult to explain. But I will try again:
A lens takes all the light and reduces it to a singularity, which is the same thing as saying that it reduces it to a single "string of light". Because the light is a single "string" at the exactly point of the lens, the whole images is in that single "string". And even if it is being "vibrated" back and forth by a "cross string" there is no "blurring" of the image because it is a "single string" and there are no "other strings" to which the image can be spread. Now, keep in mind that exactly at the point where this singularity (the lens) is located, is the exact point where a light tight barrier is errected. This is not only because the film needs to be protected from incidental exposure, it is also because the light itself needs to be protected from the "cross strings" that would turn the image back into its holographic form. Now, from this singular ray, a single wave front can emanate. And since it does so in a light tight surroundings, there are no other wave fronts to interfere with it.
A pin hole camera works much the same way, but you have to expose the film for a much longer period of time.
That is another advantage to using the lens to focus all the "rays" to a single point... By doing so, you add the intensity of a great many "rays" to the strength of the image.
Remember that one of the characteristics of a holograph is that the whole exists in every part, which is why a pin-hole camera works. But to get a usable image you have to expose the film for a very long period of time, because you are only allowing a very few "rays" to pass through the hole. The many rays that are condensed to a singularity by a lens have a much greater intensity, precisely because more [parts of the whole] are being used to produce the image--it's just that all of those parts are being focused into a singularity. Or if you prefer, all of the rays are overlapping one another in the same infinitely small physical space.
Also, a pin hole camera is mainly useful for taking pictures of things that aren't all that sharp to begin with. This is because the "rays" weren't converged to a singularity. Instead, the number of rays were simply reduced to a very small number so that the amount of interference that they give to each other is dramatically reduced. For instance, they work well for taking pictures of stars, because stars have slightly fuzzy boundaries anyway. I haven't tested (or confirmed) this assertion, but I suspect that if you were using a pin-hole camera to take a picture of something that had a lot of detail, such as a peice of microfilm, the fuzziness of the image would be quite noticable.
From a more analogous perspective, the lens is what I like to call a
limit point, and the nature of all limit points is that they are the transition point between two reciprocal opposites. For instance, [0] is the limit point on the number line that separates the [negative numbers] from the [positive numbers]. Clearly, [negative and positive] numbers are reciprocal opposites. A positive number can become smaller and smaller, but it can never be [0], for [0] is the singularity that bridges the gap between these two incompatible concepts.
In much the same way, the lens is the singularity that spans the gap between [holographic] and [non-holographic] light. And as happens anytime something passes through a [limit point] the light that passes through the lens must be transformed into its reciprocal opposite: in this case, from [holographic light] to [non-holographic light].
Of course, in the case of light, we are dealing with a
singularity that is physical. Whereas, [0] is a
singularity that is only conceptual in nature--and thus has no physical presence.
Think of it this way, the number 1 has no magnitude without a
unit of measure. For instance, [1 atom] is not the same magnitude as [1 apple] which is a different magnitude from [1 universe]. Simlarly, [0] has no physical meaning without a unit of measure, because it is impossible to create a vacuum. This means there isn't any physical thing that we can point to and say, "See that? that's nothing."
Instead, what we have to do is to point to something physical, such as the [fruit on my desk top], which might be defined by the following set:
......{Apple
1, Apple
2}
Once we have conceptually defined the scope of what we're talking about, then we can say what does not exist with respect to that. For instance, I could say that my desk top contains [0 oranges]. This does not imply that my desk contains nothing. Nor does it imply that there aren't any oranges--It simply implies that there aren't any oranges on my desk.
The irony is that what the desk contains [zero of] is always a concept--and so it has no magnitude, because it is never something physical. Thus, [0] is the conceputal entity that exists between two series that (in terms of magnitude) indicate [physical things]. Again, I'm simplifying the numbers as much or more than I've been simplifying light--but the point is that the
limit point is in some sense the opposite of the two things on either side of it. The two things on either side of the limit point are, in one sense, the opposite of each other as well. But in another sense they are the same. Like [positive number], [negative numbers] must have a [unit of measure] in order to have a meaningful magnitude. Thus, while [negative numbers] are different from [positive numbers], they are also the same in that respect. But both are different from [0] because [0] has no [physical magnitude].
In the case of light, the lens is a physical singularity that reduces the "rays" to a single physical entity. Like the [positive and negative numbers that converge on 0] the "rays" of light that converge into this singularity are infinite in number. Unlike [0], however, this is a physical entity, so it doesn't "wink out of physical existence" the way [0] does. But in other ways it functions much the same way as [0] does, for the [light on both sides of the lens] are different from the [light at the lens] because at the lens the light is a singularity, while on either side it is a collection of infinitely many "rays". Yet just as [negative numbers] are different from [positive numbers] the light on one side of the lens is [holographic] and on the other it is transformed to being [non-holographic].
Sorry, I've digressed a bit... but at least I had fun doing it.
