OT: Infinite Energy, Atlantis, and other meme's

[TMLutas]

1) Speaking as a physics major, that level of stupidity is just plain offensive.

This is not the first time that you've charecterized your personal credentials.

Right. In any event, I am not a doctor, I am an intern.

Would you care to comment on your inconsistent presentation?

If you would be a physics major, that would imply that you have not gotten a degree in physics. When you get that degree, you generally say I've got a BS (MS, Doctorate) in Physics. But if you're an intern, that would imply that you've gotten your bachelors, you've passed med school, and you're currently in a paid position working somewhere between 60 and 120 hours a week depending on your program. That would be inconsistent with you being a physics major at this point in life unless you're heavily into drugs and haven't slept for several months in which case what are you doing on this forum?

Now maybe I've gotten it completely wrong but I'd like to hear your version of how that's happened before I touch the substance of your argument. I swallowed hard the last time because I know how little time interns actually have to do fun stuff like argue on forums. This latest seems a bit much.

[Shyal_malkes]

despite my feelings at the moment, I shall strive to keep this civil...


I will agree that a photon has a net nutral charge, but...

a photon has a frequency
a frequency is an oscilation between two different states
most partical oscilations between states are between compression and rarefaction
a photon's frequency is not between compression and rarefaction
a photon (or so my physics teacher agreed with me when I specifically brought the matter up with him) oscilates between positive/south and between negative north, retaining it's overall nutral status, if such were not true my physics teacher would have contradicted me when I asked him about it and drew it out on the board for him

I tire of people stating as fact things only theorized about the photon, either link me to the results of the experiments were someone conclusively proved that what I proposed produced nothing or admit that it's never been tried and therefore the results are not known.

given light's dual nature and how little we understand light in general I find it surprizing that anybody can give conclusive answers on the matter.

[Xellas]

Shyal, I don't even understand what the heck you are proposing. From what I gathered, you are proposing that we attempt to produce an anti-photon, similar to an anti-proton or anti-electron.

By every, and i mean EVERY, theory about light, it is universally accepted to be MASSLESS. A massless particle cannot have an antiparticle, just that simple. One of the key behaviors of an antiparticle is that upon contact with it's opposite they undergo mutual destruction and convert to energy. Without mass this becomes impossible, ergo for an antiparticle to exist you MUST have mass. Light does not have mass, so you cannot have an anti-light particle or wave.

And also, for an antiparticle to exist you must have a NET charge. Otherwise, the 'antiparticle' will be fluctuating at exactly the same rate as light, and simply behave exactly like a normal light wave/particle. One of the other defining characteristics of an antiparticle is that it's electrical charge is opposite but equal to its normal counterpart. If there's no net electrical charge, then there can't be an antiparticle. That simple.

[MikeVanPelt]

A massless particle cannot have an antiparticle, just that simple.

Hm... I'm not so sure of this. If it were that simple, then there wouldn't have been questions about whether the neutrino was massless or not, since there are antineutrinos.

The photon, according to what I've recall, is sort of a special case, as it is its own antiparticle.

And also, for an antiparticle to exist you must have a NET charge. ... If there's no net electrical charge, then there can't be an antiparticle. That simple.

Now that I know is wrong. There are antineutrons, which are not charged particles. (Well, its constituent quarks have charges, assuming the quark theory is true, but the net charge of the neutron is zero.)

[Kerry Skydancer]

To elaborate on Mike's comment:

A particle and its antiparticle have opposite quantum states. Charge is merely one of those states. Mass, oddly, does -not- appear to be a quantum state, as particles and antiparticles have identical masses and react identically to gravity within the limits of current measurements.

Neutrons and neutrinos have antiparticles, though their charges are zero; the antineutron has a reversed baryon number, weak 'charge' and magnetic moment compared to its matter component, while the antineutrino has a reversed lepton number, magnetic moment, and weak-field 'charge'.

The photon is unique in that -all- of its base state quantum numbers are zero, so the anti-photon is indistinguishable from the photon.

No one is sure about the graviton, if it even exists. (General relativity says no, quantum theory says yes - one of the major disagreements).

[Deckard Canine]

Einstein ruins all my fun

Yeah, well, Newton ruins mine. How I'd love to break the third law. Not to mention gravity.

[Xellas]

Well apparantly I am mistaken, at least in my reasons for believing there is no antiphoton, but at least the final conjecture they led to is correct. Right, but for all the wrong reasons so to speak. I apologize for giving out wrong information.

[The JAM]

How interesting. I was taught that anti-particles were simply those which had an opposite spin of their corresponding particle. Now there are MORE parameters which have to be opposites? Golly!

[Wanderwolf]

I tire of people stating as fact things only theorized about the photon, either link me to the results of the experiments were someone conclusively proved that what I proposed produced nothing or admit that it's never been tried and therefore the results are not known.

Fair enough; and in a way, you're quite right. All we really know is that a photon's mass, according to the most sensitive balances, under the most rigorous experimental protocols, as seen in the first abstract on this page, a photon's mass can be no more than 1.2*10^-51 grams. That's less than one millionth of a billionth of a billionth of an electron's mass.

Likewise, according to measurements of a laser beam's deflection in a modulated electromagnetic field, a photon's charge can be no more than 8.5*10^-17 e; that's 85 billionths of a billionth of an electron's charge.

Short version: According to the most sensitive instruments, a photon has no mass capable of interacting with a balance; it has no charge measurable by magnetic deflection.

A photon's oscillation is, according to NASA's tutorial on gamma ray burst experiments, that of its two fields, one electric, one magnetic, oriented perpendicular both to each other and to the photon's direction of travel. It's the oscillation of the fields which determines the frequency.

So a photon has no discernible charge, but does have a frequency, due to the fields which make it up.

Yours truly,

The wolfish,

Wanderer

[Aurrin]

a photon always has a pairing, from what I've always seen it's north with negative which then oscilates to a pairing of south with positive. most 2d graphs of light show light's wavelengths only going up and down, a 3d one however show both magnetic and electronic properties, usually with north and south being up and down and positive and negative being left and right, with one wave going up and down and the other going left and right and both waves in perfect sync with each other.

my question is if any kind of light occurs with different parings, say north with positive and south with negative. mostly just the idea of "if we made this kind of light and shined it on something, what would happen?" that's all inverse light really is, just with a different pairing up of electronic and magnetic energy.

I know every element has some frequencies it gives off when heated up or energized and also absorbs when it's cooled, I suspect that if anything were to happen it would be with the inverse light at a frequency that matches the frequency of normal light that is given off from matter that is energized, and where that same matter is the matter that the light hits.

the other problem is that I don't even know where to begin to do the experiment myself nor to find if anyone has done it alraedy.

I've dreamed, guessed, hypothesized, but I've never found out if anybody actually tried the experiment before. it's driving me nuts not knowing if I'm just dreaming something that's already proven to not work or not exist.

did that make any sense?

It did, but it's a bit of a misunderstanding of how the magnetic and electric fields work. Light does not have a 'polarity' of fields. Rather, it has an orientation of oscilating fields.



Now, you *can* reverse the direction of those fields. But, as you can see, all that would accomplish is to set the wave out of phase with respect to the original wave. Hence, there is nothing to invert, from a particle standpoint, by changing field polarity. Light will superposition, so that if you were to put the inverted wave on top of the original one, they would cancel out. But this happens all the time in light anyway, and isn't an 'antiparticle'. (Look up the double-slit experiment as applied to light and read the explanations about the interference patterns.)

[Shyal_malkes]

my first question is: if one magnetic field is always paired up in oscilation with one electric field?

if so, then it isn't a matter of reversing the fields, just the pairing

also, if light can and does cancel itself out, where does the energy go? last I checked energy couldn't just be erased.

and I specifically never used the word 'anti' in my descriptions, as that would imply an opposite to everything. I have seen printouts my dad showed me where anti-particles were assumed to have everything from anti-mass to anti-time where time flowed around such particles in reverse...

aka, fantasy in my opinion. no, I believe that even anti-matter has been mis named, otherwise it would interact with matter and produce just as much anti-energy as it produces energy. instead it just produces energy so both must be made of the same stuff just with different properties. not really anti-anything

maybe I'm just anti-anti or something

[Shyal_malkes]

I hope you don't mind me using your pictureto make this, but this is more what I was trying to describe...

[Aurrin]

Nifty thought, but that isn't possible. Electricity and Magnetism are not seperate forces, but one. And the changing elecrtical field generates a corresponding change in the magnetic field. The relative orientations of those changes are fixed. (I'm not a good one to explain the why of that, but they simply are.) It's not like there's a coupling variable that you can simply negate the sign on. The elecromagnetic force just works that way, integrally and intrinsically.

[MikeVanPelt]

TMass, oddly, does -not- appear to be a quantum state, as particles and antiparticles have identical masses and react identically to gravity within the limits of current measurements.

Yeah... So much for E. E. "Doc" Smith's version of antimatter, where he had lots of fun with the concept of negative mass. (Bad guys see it coming, hit it with a pressor beam to push it away... and inadvertantly yank it right down on top of themselves.)

(Yeah, his science was pretty wonky, but you have to make allowances for when he wrote it.)

[Kerry Skydancer]

I hope you don't mind me using your pictureto make this, but this is more what I was trying to describe...

Only one problem with that, Shyal - it's not possible. The reason that the fields are oriented the way they are is that the two fields oscillate in synch to generate each other, and the field orientations are fixed by the rules known as Maxwell's Equations.

(BTW: That picture is common in physics texts, but it's always bothered me. Unless I'm missing something, the E-field peak should occur at the B-field zero, and vice-versa; the energy content is transferred back and forth between the fields in that case. That's a semi-classical treatment, though, and QM may screw it up. OTOH, once a screwed-up diagram makes it into an elementary text, it tends to self-perpetuate. I need to go check on this - more later.)

[Lazerus]

1) Speaking as a physics major, that level of stupidity is just plain offensive.

This is not the first time that you've charecterized your personal credentials.

Right. In any event, I am not a doctor, I am an intern.

Would you care to comment on your inconsistent presentation?

If you would be a physics major, that would imply that you have not gotten a degree in physics. When you get that degree, you generally say I've got a BS (MS, Doctorate) in Physics. But if you're an intern, that would imply that you've gotten your bachelors, you've passed med school, and you're currently in a paid position working somewhere between 60 and 120 hours a week depending on your program. That would be inconsistent with you being a physics major at this point in life unless you're heavily into drugs and haven't slept for several months in which case what are you doing on this forum?

Now maybe I've gotten it completely wrong but I'd like to hear your version of how that's happened before I touch the substance of your argument. I swallowed hard the last time because I know how little time interns actually have to do fun stuff like argue on forums. This latest seems a bit much.

I am working to be a physics major. I intern in the bioengineering department of the local hospital. Little stuff, technical help (you would thing engineers would know how to use their own computers), gofer jobs, that sort of thing. It just looks good on my reume.

[TMLutas]

1) Speaking as a physics major, that level of stupidity is just plain offensive.

This is not the first time that you've charecterized your personal credentials.

Right. In any event, I am not a doctor, I am an intern.

Would you care to comment on your inconsistent presentation?

If you would be a physics major, that would imply that you have not gotten a degree in physics. When you get that degree, you generally say I've got a BS (MS, Doctorate) in Physics. But if you're an intern, that would imply that you've gotten your bachelors, you've passed med school, and you're currently in a paid position working somewhere between 60 and 120 hours a week depending on your program. That would be inconsistent with you being a physics major at this point in life unless you're heavily into drugs and haven't slept for several months in which case what are you doing on this forum?

Now maybe I've gotten it completely wrong but I'd like to hear your version of how that's happened before I touch the substance of your argument. I swallowed hard the last time because I know how little time interns actually have to do fun stuff like argue on forums. This latest seems a bit much.

I am working to be a physics major. I intern in the bioengineering department of the local hospital. Little stuff, technical help (you would thing engineers would know how to use their own computers), gofer jobs, that sort of thing. It just looks good on my reume.

There's a very big difference between I'm not a doctor, I'm an intern and I intern in the bioengineering department of the local hospital as an undergrad. When you're talking about medical systems and asserting certain reform types. That was somewhat misleading and naughty in a credibility impairing way.

[Aurrin]

(BTW: That picture is common in physics texts, but it's always bothered me. Unless I'm missing something, the E-field peak should occur at the B-field zero, and vice-versa; the energy content is transferred back and forth between the fields in that case. That's a semi-classical treatment, though, and QM may screw it up. OTOH, once a screwed-up diagram makes it into an elementary text, it tends to self-perpetuate. I need to go check on this - more later.)

Actually, I was wondering about that even as I linked the picture. I think you're right, but it was expedient for the purposes of discussion.

[Shyal_malkes]

well, I still want to build a machine with the origional intent to try to generate inverse photons. if it doesn't work, there is nothing yet saying that matter won't interact with whatever energy fields are created and if so, it could lead to discovering something usefull. like peanut butter! nobody's discovered peanut butter yet have they?

[Nick012000]

Out of curiosity, what happens when an anti-proton hits a neutron, or vice-versa? Near as I can tell, you'd wind up with either wandering quarks (which I've read is impossible, due to the force gluons create increasing with distance), or some bizarre new particle composed of both matter and antimatter. Any of you physics folks willing to chime in here?