Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
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The Photon
By: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
- The conventional physics model of the photon is an ambiguous wave or particle that
transits through space without a medium. The physics community has resigned itself
to live with the contradictory evidence about the nature of the photon and now call
it a wave-particle.
o The interference patterns created by the photon going through a slit, or a double
slit, point toward its nature as being a wave.
o The photoelectric effect, with its threshold value for release of an electron from
its bonding in a metal point toward its nature as being a particle.
- Until the late 1800’s, the conventional scientific wisdom held that light was conducted
through a “luminiferous ether”, a hypothetical light-conducting medium that behaved
in a manner similar to a gaseous medium such as air and sound. But, the photon’s
mystery deepened in 1887 when the Michelson-Morley Experiment failed to give the
expected evidence of an ether that added its speed to the speed of light.
- Albert Einstein used the Michelson-Morley data as a cornerstone to his highly successful
Theory of Relativity. Thus, for over a century science has bowed to the dogma that
the photon travels without a medium.
- Maintaining the belief in a medium-less transmission of light has resulted in a great
chasm between theory and evidence.
o For example: the photon’s speed of transit is obviously affected by the medium.
§ Light travels at its maximum rate of speed in a vacuum.
§ In all other mediums such as air, glass, and water, light travels at a slower speed.
- The photon was first recognized as a quantum phenomenon by Max Planck, who explained
the intensity vs. frequency distribution in the Black Body Radiation by hypothesizing
that only discrete frequencies were radiated, each separated by his famous Planck’s
constant.
o h = 6.62606876 x 10-34 joule-sec
o Note: Planck’s constant is in units of angular momentum
- Later, the photoelectric effect was described by Einstein as due to photons, tiny
packets of energy in his famous equation relating the energy of the photon to the
photon’s frequency and Plank’s Constant.
o Energy = Planck’s constant x frequency
o E = hí
o This equation indicates that light of any given frequency contains a certain quantum
of energy per cycle.
o Note: This equation implies no limit to the infinitesimal variation in the frequency
of the wave. But, in fact, inherent to the thesis of a quantum universe comes the
restriction of a frequency of the smallest fraction. It is this frequency which
corresponds to the unit dimension of the universe. Of course, the units of seconds,
meters, and kg are artifacts of arbitrary choice of human-sized units. And, since
the real unit is the Plank distance (the unit distance between two Matrix Grid Points),
and the Moment (the unit of processing between two successive action-cycles in the
sequence of perception, process, and action that proceeds to define the smallest
unit of time). The units of Force (electrical and magnetic) are derivative units,
begin dependent on rates of change of position with time, and qualified with regard
to other secondary distinctions such as charge and magnetic polarity which are dimensional
variables that cause particulate position to vary with time.
- The photon travels only at the speed of light in the local medium.
o Commonly the speed of light is defined as the speed at which light travels in a
vacuum.
o But, the speed of light changes depending on the electrical (å) and magnetic (ì)
properties of the space.
o The Speed of Light is defined in terms of these two parameters as c = 1/√ìå.
- When a particle transits from a space with a lower or higher ì and å, the direction
of the photon will change if the photon’s incidence is non-normal (i.e. not perpendicular
to the interface surface).
o In the case of light going from air to water, the photon is going from a lower
to a higher ì and å. The photon will bend toward the higher ì and å medium.
o This phenomenon of bending light as the medium changes is known as refraction.
o The bending of a wave as it transits from a rapidly conducting to a slowly conducting
medium is seen in water, sound, and electromagnetic waves.
o Particle models cannot explain this phenomenon, but the wave model explains it
well. This fact strongly supports the wave model of the photon, and wavelike properties
exhibited by the subatomic particles such as electrons and positrons.
- As a result of the paradoxical experimental data about light, and the lack of a model
that can embrace the full body of data without contradiction, science has accepted
that the photon is a wave or particle depending on the context of the phenomenon
in question.
- To the physicist, light has become a mathematical entity having a phenomenological
description without an underlying structure.
