Stars and photons

[richjkl]

I was just wondering, are there any estimates as to how many photons an "average" star emits at a single time?

[Steve Smith]

Here's something to ponder: Many EU theorists don't think photons even exist.

[substance]

Here's something to ponder: Many EU theorists don't think photons even exist.

Nice! Than what is light, because experiments clearly shows signs of a wave structure?

[Steve Smith]

Light is electromagnetic waves. No particles carry the force. That's why experiments that try to pin the photon down fail to resolve the issue.

[Osmosis]

Just extremely high frequency microwaves.

[Steve Smith]

Radio, micro, UV -- all light waves.

The way that EM radiation propogates is through a "ratcheting" effect.

An oscillating dipole (a hydrogen atom, for example) creates an electric field in motion. The electric field generates a magnetic field (in motion) which, in turn, re-creates the e-field. This process continues until the EM radiation is absorbed by some intervening material, like your retina. The waveform is self-regenerating away from the original source because of the relationship between electricity and magnetism.

Here's a link to a Java applet that helps to visualize the phenomenon:

http://www.falstad.com/emwave1/

Steve

[BullSchmutz]

So photons only exist on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays?

[richjkl]

Yes, I too believe light is merely a wave, but I was thinking about the images we get from deep space and wondering, if light really were traveling in point-like particles, why aren't the images pixelated or broken up? The only possible reason would be that the objects are emitting so many photons that they haven't become pixelated YET, which is what a friend of mine suggested, but the numbers are pretty staggering...

So let's say there's a galaxy 13 billion light years away. Since we can detect it, it's fair to assume that there must be a sphere of photons being emitted in every direction. Also, what sort of resolution do our telescopes need? How many photons per inch, I mean? (I'll just go with one per inch for now) Please tell me if I've got my numbers wrong...

Surface area of a sphere: 4pi * r^2
(4 * pi) * (13 billion^2) = 2.12371663 × 10^21
2.12371663 light years × (10^21) = 7.91003209 × 10^38 inches (thanks google!)

So that's...791,003,209,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons? But now let's say a galaxy has 200 billion stars in it...
(7.91003209 × (10^38)) / 200 billion = 3.95501604 × 10^27

So every star is throwing off... 3,955,016,040,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons every moment of its existance?

Hmm...

[klypp]

So every star is throwing off... 3,955,016,040,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons every moment of its existance?

Hmm...

Wow! Amazing what results you can get with no idea of what numbers to multiply!
I have only one comment: You should add a constant somewhere - you may call it the richjkl constant. This will secure that your maths will always be right! And it will also send off hundreds of "scientists" searching for the exact value of your constant. And - who knows - maybe there is a nobel prize in it somewhere...

Anyways...
I believe the telescope with the highest resolution these days, is the CHARA array at Mount Wilson. But this is an interferometer, and I don't really think photons go that well with interferometers...

[robinson]

The Grangier Experiment demonstrate that if a single photon is incident on a beamsplitter, it can only be detected at one of the outputs (not both.) This is considered proof of the photon (a quanta of the electromagnetic force).

P. Grangier, G. Roger, and A. Aspect, "Experimental evidence for a photon anticorrelation effect on a beam splitter: A new light on single-photon interferences," Europhys. Lett. 1, 173-179 (1986).

[richjkl]

The Grangier Experiment demonstrate that if a single photon is incident on a beamsplitter, it can only be detected at one of the outputs (not both.) This is considered proof of the photon (a quanta of the electromagnetic force).

P. Grangier, G. Roger, and A. Aspect, "Experimental evidence for a photon anticorrelation effect on a beam splitter: A new light on single-photon interferences," Europhys. Lett. 1, 173-179 (1986).

I just read that, and then I went and read about beam splitters. In their experiment they used a laser to excite a couple atoms, which then released a photon. But now if we're talking about an electromagnetic wave being created from a single atom, couldn't it be possible that, due to variations in the physical composition of the beam splitter, such a small amount of energy might only go one way? Or be absorbed by the beam splitter itself? Also, sometimes (<2%) there would be a "photon" detected at both ends.

Maybe I'm too much of a determinist, but I suspect there's a physical reason for most of the probabilities in quantum mechanics...

[klypp]

As for the Grangier experiment, I think Caroline Thompson said it all when she concluded:

It seems to me that the whole apparatus has been designed so as to simulate the QT idea of the photon in the best way possible. I suspect that modern photomultipliers do this even more convincingly, so that the experimenter is relieved of the tricky decision! For the use of photomultipliers in this "Geiger mode", for counting single photons, is a very artificial one. In most applications, they are not used like this. They just produce continuous currents, and it is assumed that the currents are proportional to the input light energy.

So is the whole of "quantum optics" an artifact, a result of using these "quantum simulators" for detectors, together with the fact that inconsistencies are unimportant when you are dealing with thousands, if not millions of photons and looking at ("normalised") statistical properties only? I rather think it is!

http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson ... /light.htm

[upriver]

Some people have even more unconventional ideas on what light is....

Basic differences between the conventional and aetherometric conceptions of the photon

1. On the nature of photons
1.1. Currently, it is held that solar radiation consists of photons. Implied in this is the notion that photons travel through space, like fibers of light, with analogy to ballistic models for the projection of material particles - as if the photons were hurled across space.

It is the view of aetherometric theory that solar radiation does not consist of photons, but of the massfree electrical charges that compose the solar electrical field [http://aetherometry.com/abs-AS2v2B.html#abstractAS2-17A]. Moreover, it is also the view of aetherometric theory that photons are 'punctual' and local productions, that they do not travel through space but rather occupy a globular space where they are created and extinguished.

1.2. If photons do not travel through space, what is it that travels through space and is the cause of the transmission of the light stimulus, and ultimately of any local production of photons?

Aetherometry contends that what travels through space and transmits the light impulse is electrical radiation composed of massfree charges and their associated longitudinal waves (the true phase waves), not electromagnetic radiation composed of photons and their transverse waves. The wave transmission of all electromagnetic signals depends on the transmission of nonelectromagnetic energy, specifically the transmission of electric massfree charges (the propagation of "the field").

1.3. There are two types of photons: ionizing and nonionizing (blackbody). Aetherometry recognizes this accepted distinction, but suggests that it is a distinction still more profound than accepted physics itself holds, in that the two spectra are different as to the very conditions necessary for the production of one or the other type of photons. Specifically, Aetherometry claims that nonionizing or blackbody photons are locally generated whenever material particles that act as charge-carriers decelerate. Thus photons mark the trail of deceleration of massbound particles. This punctual generation of photons that marks the trails of decelerating massbound charges, combined with the decay in the kinetic energy of these charges, their release and scattered reabsorption by other adjacent massbound charges (thus causing so called conversion of electromagnetic energy into longer wavelength radiation), is what accounts for (1) the dispersion of energy through conversion into electromagnetic radiation (and Tesla's persistent claim that his power transmitters were not transmitters of electromagnetic radiation) and for (2) the approximate suitability of the stochastic model for the dispersion of a ray and the scatter of light.

[klypp]

The only thing you can see is what hits your eye. The only thing you can measure is what hits your instruments.
If a "photon" is a "local production" when it hits your instrument, you will have no way to deduce that it was something else before this happened.

These simple statements alone would be enough to characterize the above post: Pure speculation...

[robinson]

A more obvious example is seen in the human eye.

Hecht, Schlaer and Pirenne in 1942 showed rods can respond to single quanta during scotopic vision.

In 1979 Baylor, Lamb and Yau were able to use rods from toads placed into electrodes to show directly that they respond to single photons.