PerfectPhase said:

The photon is not the medium like air is to sound, it's the force carrier for the electromatic force.  Every time an electron transitions to a lower energy state, it emits a quanta of enery, a photon.  Therefore you could not remove the medium light travels in, you'd have to remove light it's self at which point the universe falls apart

jason818_253.33 said:

PerfectPhase said:

*snip*

If there was no light in the universe, why would it fall apart?

magicalclick said:

Photon is a bad choice of word. Would you consider light (wave) travle in a spaces that is obsolutly nothing? When we said C light speed in a vacum, how do we really know there is nothing in there? What if light actually needs an medium (whatever that medium is called in the future)? Just like gravity. What if it is just another medium that we can't visualize or detect yet?

That's my thought. What if there is a true vacum space that we just don't know yet? And maybe we can travel faster inside it without all those medium slowing us down. Just thinking of the possibility though.

The 19th century called and wants its Luminiferous Aether back.

If there is some sort of low level format to the universe, something involving quantum foam or higgs fields or whatever, it doesn't work like a fish swimming in water. You can't jump out of the ocean to gain a bit of speed in the air. The ocean is how reality works in our universe at fish scale.

magicalclick said:

Photon is a bad choice of word. Would you consider light (wave) travle in a spaces that is obsolutly nothing? When we said C light speed in a vacum, how do we really know there is nothing in there? What if light actually needs an medium (whatever that medium is called in the future)? Just like gravity. What if it is just another medium that we can't visualize or detect yet?

That's my thought. What if there is a true vacum space that we just don't know yet? And maybe we can travel faster inside it without all those medium slowing us down. Just thinking of the possibility though.

PerfectPhase said:

magicalclick said:

*snip*

Think about it this way, your on earth and you microwave some popcorn.  You then jump in a space ship and head out into deep space at 0.9c and decide you want some popcorn, does the microwave still work?   If there was an ether for EM waves the the microwave would not behave the same, think doppler shift in air.  As it does work the same as on the earth one conclusion is that there is no ether....

The best description I have for how light travels through space is to think of it as two waves at 90deg to each other, one wobbles vertically (electric), the other horizontal (magnetic) and out of phase. An  oscillation in the electric field generates an oscillation in the magnetic field, which generates an oscillating electric field so on and so forth, it doesn't actually travel through anything.
 

Arggg, I think I am getting dumb. I can't reallly understand the whole thing about photon, the electric wave and magnetic wave. LOL.

The problem is, when I view light as particle, when it doesn't need a medium. But to imagine light particle shooting here and there is kind of wierd. If sun is shooting light particles, that means matters can be turned into light? Like we convert electricity and whatever inside the light bulb to light? I kind of thought light is just a vibration, nothing more.

And then, if I view light as wave, which would requires a medium to exist, like sound needs air. But then, we consider it can travel in a total void vacum space. Wouldn't electric wave and magnetic wave requires some kind of medium as well? What if we just haven't find the medium for those waves? Or wave can exist without any medium?

I guess I have to reinvestigate wave. Maybe my interpretation of wave is wrong.

RoyalSchrubber said:

"Is it possible to create such space?"

Interestingly enough most kinds of spaces in Topology do not use findigs from theory of electromagnetism as part of their definition...
 
That said everything we know about physical world we live in is just working hypothesis or a theory - we still do not know everything, or more importantly - how four fundamental forces work. If you remove part of EM can you even construct space with other three forces? I think CS/IT forum isn't the place where one could expect to see a good explanations to such questions.

jason818_253.33 said:

If one gets rid of the friction caused by air it is much easier to go faster than the speed of sound? And your reasoning is, if you get rid of photons/light you will be able to travel faster than light. Well I’m not sure if that is how it works. but i like that your thinking.  you might try your questioning at this other forum. http://www.physicsforums.com/

magicalclick said:

PerfectPhase said:

*snip*

Arggg, I think I am getting dumb. I can't reallly understand the whole thing about photon, the electric wave and magnetic wave. LOL.

The problem is, when I view light as particle, when it doesn't need a medium. But to imagine light particle shooting here and there is kind of wierd. If sun is shooting light particles, that means matters can be turned into light? Like we convert electricity and whatever inside the light bulb to light? I kind of thought light is just a vibration, nothing more.

And then, if I view light as wave, which would requires a medium to exist, like sound needs air. But then, we consider it can travel in a total void vacum space. Wouldn't electric wave and magnetic wave requires some kind of medium as well? What if we just haven't find the medium for those waves? Or wave can exist without any medium?

I guess I have to reinvestigate wave. Maybe my interpretation of wave is wrong.

GoddersUK said:

magicalclick said:

*snip*

<i> If sun is shooting light particles, that means matters can be turned into light?</i>

That's exactly what E=mc2 means. Matter and energy are interchangeable and that is the relationship between them.

To be clear, light is NEITHER particle or wave, but a wave particle duality. It only becomes one or the other when we look at it, and which depends on how we look at it.

PerfectPhase said:

GoddersUK said:

*snip*

"To be clear, light is NEITHER particle or wave, but a wave particle duality. It only becomes one or the other when we look at it, and which depends on how we look at it."

magicalclick said:

PerfectPhase said:

*snip*

Interesting video. It seem like electron is actually behaving like waves. I personally think everything is made out of waves, simular to String theory. Just like radio or TV channels are waves that can be pretty much perfectly preserved and transported to our end. We are probably just like a tiny pixel represented using waves, and we are preserved in that special frequency. Different frequency, different channel/universe.  Although none of us yet to experience a noise in your frequency, or may be we saw it but we didn't realize it.

But then it gets me to another concern, wouldn't waves requires some kind of medium? Waves is only up and down motion in a medium, without the medium, there is nothing to up and down, thus, no waves. What would the the source medium of all waves? Would it be made out of another waves when we have better technology to find it?

Or the concept of waves and particles are incorrect? Maybe they are the same in the end?
You know, I really don't like the idea of, "It depends". Like oh, for larger universe, use Relativity Theory. But, you have to use Quantium Mechnics for subtomic universe. That's just doesn't sound right.

CannotResolveSymbol said:

magicalclick said:

*snip*

But there is a medium for waves--  in the case of electromagnetic waves, the medium is the photon; in the case of "matter waves" (which actually do exist, although it's more of a "statistical" wave than something that's really moving as a wave) it's the components of the atom.  Quantum mechanics says that everything (both matter and energy) has the property of wave-particle duality, where in some situations it behaves as a particle, while in others, it behaves as a wave--  it's trivial to show both the wave and particle nature of light in any high school physics lab, while the wave-particle dualtiy of matter is more difficult to show and requires some pretty specialized equipment.

There is not, however, any kind of common, omnipresent medium in which energy and matter waves travel (according to our current understanding of physics)--  that's the concept of the lumniferous aether, which has been thoroughly debunked for about a century (specifically, relativity doesn't work if you have the aether, and the laws of relativity can be shown to be an accurate description of reality fairly easily--  the doppler effect in light is one example (in that you can measure the relative velocity between the two objects and calculate the doppler shift of the light without having to know the relative velocity of the medium in which the waves are traveling--  this becomes important when measuring the doppler shifts of objects in space).

If you'd like some more information (in a pretty readable form), I'd recommend Six Easy Pieces (for quantum mechanics) and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (for relativity) by Richard Feynman.  I haven't read them myself (yet), but I've heard wonderful things about them, and Feynman is most definitely one of the most talented writers amongst the modern physics community.  They're available from Amazon or should be available from your local library.

CannotResolveSymbol said:

magicalclick said:

*snip*

But there is a medium for waves--  in the case of electromagnetic waves, the medium is the photon; in the case of "matter waves" (which actually do exist, although it's more of a "statistical" wave than something that's really moving as a wave) it's the components of the atom.  Quantum mechanics says that everything (both matter and energy) has the property of wave-particle duality, where in some situations it behaves as a particle, while in others, it behaves as a wave--  it's trivial to show both the wave and particle nature of light in any high school physics lab, while the wave-particle dualtiy of matter is more difficult to show and requires some pretty specialized equipment.

There is not, however, any kind of common, omnipresent medium in which energy and matter waves travel (according to our current understanding of physics)--  that's the concept of the lumniferous aether, which has been thoroughly debunked for about a century (specifically, relativity doesn't work if you have the aether, and the laws of relativity can be shown to be an accurate description of reality fairly easily--  the doppler effect in light is one example (in that you can measure the relative velocity between the two objects and calculate the doppler shift of the light without having to know the relative velocity of the medium in which the waves are traveling--  this becomes important when measuring the doppler shifts of objects in space).

If you'd like some more information (in a pretty readable form), I'd recommend Six Easy Pieces (for quantum mechanics) and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces (for relativity) by Richard Feynman.  I haven't read them myself (yet), but I've heard wonderful things about them, and Feynman is most definitely one of the most talented writers amongst the modern physics community.  They're available from Amazon or should be available from your local library.

PerfectPhase said:

GoddersUK said:

*snip*

"To be clear, light is NEITHER particle or wave, but a wave particle duality. It only becomes one or the other when we look at it, and which depends on how we look at it."

Light is both a particle and a wave? I’m confused.

jason818_253.33 said:

PerfectPhase said:

*snip*

Light is both a particle and a wave? I’m confused.

jason818_253.33 said:

PerfectPhase said:

*snip*

Light is both a particle and a wave? I’m confused.

magicalclick said:

jason818_253.33 said:

*snip*

Yeah, seems light has such property, electron also behave the same. But I personally believe there is some flaws in our current understanding, just like both Relativity Theory and Quantium Mechanics can only describe part of our universe and they are both completly different concept. (And Relative Time? that's just doesn't make sense. Time doesn't exist.)

It doesn't make sense to say "It depends" on facts and math. We currently say "it depends" because we are yet to find a better explaination to our universe.

"It doesn't make sense..."

This is a big problem for people trying to understand Quantum Physics, it just does not make sense unless you have walked all the way through it from where we were with classical physics and it's problems to where we are now.  Most people have issues when you say observing something will cause the probability function to collapse at which point the object becomes defined.

And your right, the theory is not perfect, may people have issue with the standard model for particle physics because of pesky little things like renormalization and the fact it relies on real world numbers that can only be measured through experimentation and cannot be calculated by theory alone.  But this is what science is all about, you fit a theory to the available data and the becomes the current state of the art until someone comes up with a better idea that explains and unifies a bit more of the world, or someone proves you wrong!  This is why the search for the Higgs particle is important, why people are sinking billions into massive pure science experiments, the current theory predicts it exists, if it is found at the expected energy range, it’s one more tick that we are going in the right direction with all this.

BlackTiger said:

Hmmm... Very interesting idea... Never thought about that.
If the is no light then there is no "speed limit" as well...