by: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
A philosophical, theological, and science-based exploration of physics and life
To discover God’s principles and Laws underlying the phenomena of:
Particles & Fields, Classical & Quantum Mechanics, Relativity;
the fundamental nature of Mass, Energy, Space, and Time;
and the logic and purpose motivating the drama of Body, Soul, & Spirit
Note: Pre-Publication Edition: Contains Duplication, Errata, Incompletely Developed Concepts, and Discarded Hypotheses
Christian Counseling, Naturopathic Medicine, The Christian Nation
The Heavens Declare His Handiwork
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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.
