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EM scale and photons

This is probably the most bat-shit crazy thing you'll read of mine so, in the interest of not looking totally wack-a-doo, go back and hit the next link and bypass this page altogether.  That page is about the size and age of the universe and what's proposed there will make total sense to you where what follows here is...kinda nuts? 

What's different about what I'm sayin' on this page, compared to other pages, is that;  1.) I'm just expressing an idea here, abet a crazy one, and  2.) I have nothing argumentatively sound to offer in support of said idea.  This idea has to ride on it's own merit.  So, here goes...

How can an object, such as a photon, be both a particle AND a wave?

If you listen to physicists nowadays you'd think they reintroduced aether back into the mix because some of them say that photons exhibit wave attributes in step with each other.  Riddle me this, if we can measure the "wave" of a single photon, without the benefit of fellow photons to wave with, then wouldn't that idea fall flat on its face?

We now have the technology to see atoms and they look like itty bitty spheres.  They look like that because of the electron cloud created by the spinning electron(s).  Electrons by themselves are interesting and useful, and we've built a number of technologies based upon our ability to manipulate them.  We can now see and measure the wobble and spin of an electron, and we can even precess the axis of that spin.  Oh ya, we can also hold it at angle and move it around—and it's gonna be wild what we do with that!

Unfortunately, we can't look inside the electron cloud for shit, and it's mostly made up of empty space, but way deep inside the cloud is the nucleus and we have a pretty good idea how all that stuff works. 

Here's a thought experiment... The big rivalry in the North American auto market is between Ford and Chevy.  Purists who drive one will NOT drive the other under any circumstance.  It's like a car/anti-car rivalry.  Now, let's take a Chevy Camaro and get it up to top speed, and from the other direction we have a Ford Mustang coming in with its tachometer pegged; however, for this experiment, they are both coming in at Mach speed!  You know what's gonna happen.  From this you are going to see parts flying every which way.  Engine blocks don't travel far at all, but debris like doors, seats, starters and drivers go spinning off pretty consistently.  Wheels, on the other hand, can go rolling along for quite a spell. 

You got that visual, right?

This is what we do to protons in particle colliders, and from a snapshot of that, mid-wreckage, we try to discern what those components are and how they go together and how they work.  Remember, we are smashing a proton and an anti-proton, and are working with two sets of stuff, and I think our scientific community does a pretty good job figuring out how [INSERT LIST OF SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLES HERE] go together and work together but, sad to say, it's still speculation.  The point being...

When we think of particles we tend to think of them as little billiard balls but the fact of the matter is they are anything but.  We know this but it's still hard to get past it.  We're not quite sure what mechanism(s) makes a particle energetic or to act as a component of energy or as an agent of force.  We are also aware that the constituent parts of the sub-atomic particles are even smaller particles, and if you didn't know this...there is a body of scientists that theorize the basic building block of sub-atomic particles are photons themselves. 

And that's why we are here—to take a look at the photon.

The photon is like the Swiss Army Knife of sub-atomic particles and, surprisingly enough, it's the one particle we already have an obscene array of useful technologies for and counting.  To list them all is like the Mickey Mouse Roll Call from hell because it just never ends!

To this day we're still trying to wrap our brains around the little buggers because photons run the entire gamut of the spectrum, from gamma to electro-magnetism, and it's the same particle every step along the way!  They have a measurable relativistic mass but believed to have a zero-rest mass (like you could actually stop one) and when you take a step back and look at all this you wonder how this is even possible?

All particles are energetic but what does that mean exactly?  Photons spin and fly around in a very predictable manor, and no matter where they are along the EM scale they zip along at a constant rate.  Their wave signature will also remain constant until they've been taffy-pulled out of or torqued back up into a different wavelength.  So, the question stands, how can a photon pull off this crazy ass trick—acting like both  a particle and a wave all in the same breath?  Just maybe it's because the photon is a particle that just so happens to be wavy...

Hu?

Look, we have no idea how particles are structured and it could very well be that the architecture of a photon determines how it relates to the EM scale.  Imagine if a photon is not a little billiard ball but a...corkscrew?

Now, before you go off saying I'm a freak or something consider the possibility that a photon is, not a string, but a cable of string particles who's energy wavelength is twisted into it and that determines where it lies on the EM scale.  If the torque of this twist is super tight then it's in the gamma range, and as the particle goes down the scale the twist will become less and less until it bottoms out at the actual electro-magnetic end of the spectrum where, because of the wide arc, it lies energetically flat and so damned weak it's unable to go anywhere without a physical mechanism for conduction.  (i.e. electricity)

Where this becomes evident (to me at least) is with red and blue shift because when I ponder the popular explanations for this phenomena I realize they don't exactly jive. 

Red-shift is determined by absorption gaps dropping in the visible light spectrum when compared to a perceived stationary object like our sun.  The faster an object is traveling away from the point of observation the lower on the scale the gaps are—and these measurements are accurate as hell.  To put this in some perspective, if the EM scale was staked out between Boston and Los Angeles the visible light spectrum would be a razor thin smudge somewhere on Church Street in Poughkeepsie New York.  That is the width of a single silk thread as compared to the entire East to West coast span of the continental United States.

What we do know (actually know) is that there is light and it comes to us in little packets called photons, and these photon objects have wave characteristics that can be altered by various means like...oh, I dunno, like a galaxy speeding along in one direction or another maybe?  If the point of release is coming towards us, like the Andromeda galaxy, then the absorption gaps we measure will have shifted towards the blue end
of the spectrum.  If the point of release is moving away from us, like with the Sombrero galaxy, then those gaps will shift towards the red.  If that release point is from a galaxy somewhere out near the CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) then it will be pegged deep in the red!  Those far off galaxies are moving away really-really fast (near C) relative to our point of observation, but that's a discussion for the following article re the size and age of the universe.

So, where's that nUkeN fuTs (bat-shit crazy) idea I was suggesting at the beginning of this article?  Until some science-dweeb can think up a catchier name we'll call it torque energy for now. 

Ready?  Let's do it...

When a galaxy like the Sombrero is moving away from us, like the vast majority of them do, they release photons in every direction imaginable.  The light packets that come in our general direction are measured and the redshift indicates that the Sombrero galaxy has a recession velocity of 1,000 kilometers a second.  That translates to 3.6 million kilometers an hour which sounds like a lot but, to put it in perspective, that's the distance between the Earth and the Sun every 41.6 hours.  A distance that light traverses in 8.35 minutes.  The Sombrero galaxy is 28 million lights years away from our point of view which means that the light we are measuring is already 28 million years old.  The Sombrero redshift was a startling revelation when it was discovered but, when you think about it, what else should they have expected? 

Anyway, the photons shooting out from the Sombrero had to find the energy to achieve yet another 1,000 kilometers per second so it begs
to be asked...where did that energy come from?  It's got to come from somewhere and I'm suggesting that the drop in the spectrum for all the photons racing from the Sombrero (to our point of view) came from the energy stored up in the coiled structure of the photon particle itself.  The inverse would be true with photons on the other side of the Sombrero, or from Andromeda for that matter, where the energy needed for the photon to achieve C going forward is either using less coiled energy—or pushing that energy back up into the photon thereby increasing the torque of the particle structure. 

I kinda think the previous to be true but I'm open to the latter since we demonstrate our ability to ratchet photons to higher spectra with light bulbs, and radios, and UV lamps, and X-Rays, and microwave ovens, and the list goes on.  We human beings convert electricity, the lowest end of the spectrum, to much higher spectra with an almost effortless flair—which tells me that the argument is settled between electrons and photons.  Electricity appears to be photons flowing through conductors and electrons are like river rock and are being dragged along for the ride.  I wish we could noddle over this one here but, like magnetism, that's a discussion for another day.

Now, another idea to consider, as an alternative, is that maybe photons are not corkscrews per se but a coil (or bundle) of spaghetti like strings.  They would untorque geometrically, but unevenly, and that the precess of the spin of the particle, in conjunction with the uneven structure of the coil, may determine its placement along the EM Scale. I would venture to guess that the wobble and torque may have somethin' to do with the Fibonacci Sequence but who am I to talk?  For what it's worth this is what I see.

I couldn't have come up with that last idea without coming up with the corkscrew idea but, then again, there are those out there who think I'm full of seminal ideas like I'm so full of shit.  At least I give it a go instead of gormlessly accepting every mutherfucking thing at face value like an academic chameleon!  If what I have proposed in any of these articles have not once made you stop and think—then you know who you are.  Status quo is your cerebral starch so instead of wasting time here go watch some Star Trek.  Want fries with that?

It's gonna take some serious mathematical muscle to figure these ideas out.  I can bench 410 (lbs) with incredible ease but, admittedly, I can not seem to wrap my brain around π on a good day.  The long and short of it is that the gauntlet has been thrown down for some super-synapse über dork to run with, so...

Run, dork-tron!  RUN!

Admittedly, pondering the question about photons and light has been like some bizarre vision-quest, but one without the benefit of burning bushes, golden tablets or peyote button.  It all sounds far fetched, yes, but it just may be that the structure of a photon is responsible for its energetic qualities on the EM scale. 

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Okay, as mentioned on the previous article, if the connection between the electro-magnetic "force" and mass cannot be validated then, in the alternative, I'll go as far as to suggest that it just may be the relativistic mass of photons themselves, en masse, that is responsible for what we perceive as mass.  You know, mass, that stuff that tugs on space and promotes gravity and blah blah blah... 

If photons just so happen to be the basic building blocks of matter then this idea, conceptually, is not a reach.  I kinda think that they function like a protein and neutrinos act like a binding agent (e.g. glutamine) but that's a bit of a reach even for me.

If you haven't guessed it by now I have no problem going out on a limb, but I'm not prepared to jump into that fire from this skillet just yet.

 
nicholas ralph baum
December 4, 2010

 
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