Why are the 'Fixed Stars' so FIXED?

"Henri Wilson" HW@.... wrote in message
news
On 4 May 2007 04:03:17 -0700, George Dishman
wrote:

On 4 May, 10:33, HW@....(Henri Wilson) wrote:
On 4 May 2007 00:26:21 -0700, George Dishman
wrote:
On 4 May, 03:36, HW@....(Henri Wilson) wrote:
On Fri, 4 May 2007 00:21:07 +0100, "George Dishman"
wrote:
"Henri Wilson" HW@.... wrote in message
My question was, "what intrinsic property of an individual photon
produces
a
sensation of a 'frequency'?

No it wasn't, the question was what is the definition
of frequency and that is what I explained above. I have
restored what you cut trying to cover it up.

In other words, what aspect of photon structure 'oscillates'?

A photon has no structure so nothing oscillates in it.

Hahahaha!

What makes a photon different from anything else then George?

It has different intrinsic properties.

How can anything have 'intrinsic properties' (which can be measured in
3space1time) if it doesn't have a 'structure'?

Consider some entity A. It is made of entities B and C.
A has properties which come from the properties of B
and C plus some influence from the relationship between
B and C. For example the mass of A might be the sum
of the masses of B and C plus the binding energy of the
pair. As you go down the scale, eventually you come to
something fundamental which is not composed of other
things, and yet it must have some properties of its own.

I think you just enjoy arguing, George.

Probably, but what I said is still valid. I expected
you to reply that an electron is a fundamental particle
yet string theory says it has structure - a ring of
energy. My reply would be that "ring-like" is a property
rather than indicative of construction from lesser items.
Quite often I feel words can be ambiguous and exploring
alternative meanings for, in this case, "structure" can
be useful in clarifying what we mean.

Location is a continuous variable. It is not possible to
calculate exactly where a photon will land given an
experimental setup, you can only calculate the probability
as a function of location. That is an intrinsic property of
all particles.

George, if a thousand bullets are fired at a target, the way they are
distributed around the bull follows an established statistical law.

Yes, and that is true even if the gun is locked into position.

However, if single ONE bullet is fired at the target, it has zero
probability
of landing anywhere other than at the point where the gun was aimed.
(please
don't mention wind shear)

No, it has exactly the same probability of landing at any location
as each of the thousand.

No it doesn't!!!!!!

Yes it does, that is basic probability theory.

Probability is not a cause of anything. It's a result.

Nobody said anything about probability being causal.

All those bullets that were normally distributed around the bull landed
exactly
where they did for purely physical reasons.
Where the bullet will strike is precisely determined BEFORE it is fired.
Even
factors like the nerve movements of the shooter and the wind movements are
precisely predetermined. There is no way anyone could produce a
mathematical
model to predict the outcome but it is still theoretically possible.

Statistics is the most misinterpreted science of all....

Indeed, though your mistake above is less common than
others. The key here is that the pprobability for each bullet
is unaffected by the existence of any preceding shot.

That is not related to my statement.

You said that a thosand bullets would be spread but a
single bullet would not, hence the implication is that
the first bullet always goes where it is aimed and
subsequent bullets go elsewhere because of the previous
one(s). That is not the case, the first bullet has as
much chance of landing at some off-centre point as any
other.

It is
similar to tossing an unbiassed coin, the probability is
50:50 regardless of the outcome of preceding tosses, only
the variable is 2D real (location on the target) rather than
binary (heads or tails).

Yes I know that George.

Then why did you say "No it doesn't!!!!!!" ?

If you drop a thousand ball bearings on the floor they will end up
normally
distributed around the centre....BUT that does not alter the fact thta
there
was a precise physical reason why every one came to rest right where it
did.

Mostly, the scatter is dominated by slight variations at
the macroscopic level, but a small amount of uncertainty
is also an intrinsic property of any individual particle
so if you repeat that with electrons there is a lower
limit of spread beyond that from the lack of perfect
knowledge. Einstein didn't like that but it has been
proven experimentally beyond any doubt. Newton's clockwork
and fully deterministic universe isn't ours.

No, the 'traveling oscillation' model is the macroscopic
equivalent for a group of photons.

That's also true....but it is a different package.

Just the aggregate,

The way I see it is that a monochromatic beam is just a large number of
identical photons with that particular 'wavelength'.

Yes. A grating deflects an individual photon depending on
the colour of that beam, not the rate at which photons
arrive. I'm thinking of say a dim red laser with a flux
of a few photons per minute. Like the coin tosses, each
one is deflected purely on its intrinsic properties.

White light is a mixture.

Yes. When it hits a grating each photon deflects depending
only on its own properties and not the properties of other
photons that arrive some seconds earlier or later.

A radio signal is a mixture in which groups of individual photons form
sine
shaped 'bunches' which move along. ..somewhat like a water wave except the
photons move back and forth rather than up and down.

No, radio is no different to light, it just has much lower
energy per photon. Consider microwaves hitting a wire grid.
Each photon in the wave is deflected by an angle that depends
only on its own properties independent of any others.

This has given me an idea. Do the individual photons move or remain at
basically the same location?
I'll have to make an animation of this.



It is not a theory, it is logically obvious, the energy cannot
be dumped in two different places at the same time.

George, there are two alternatives.
The energy/unit volume of an RF signal can be the sum of all the h.nu
energy
of individual photons in that volume. ...or it could be something like
2pi^2.h.A^2.f^3/c...

Sure, I expect the formula to be different in BaTh, but
the argument still holds, that energy is deposited where
the photon lands, not somehwere else.

That's probably OK for monochromatic light but you can't deduce that the
same
will apply to, say, RF.

They are both just EM, all the rules must apply to everything
from ELF at a few Hz up to gamma rays.

You don't know if the photon that enters the PM is the same one that
was
incident on the grating. One is absorbed and another emitted.

It makes no difference.

Anyway, we know the classical theory of gratings..

I don't think you do, you can't even work out whether speed
appears in the BaTh equations for a grating.

This argument is not about how gratings behave according to BaTh.

Of course it is.

The BaTh doesn't need gratings to verify it.

BaTh needs a version of the grating equation. Working
that out will tell you about the rules for dealing with
reflection in BaTh which is something you currently don't
know. Once you do that you could apply it to Sagnac's
experiment without having to assume all the mirrors are
at the same radius as you do at present.

I don't know what the lowest frequency of individual
detected photons is. However, grating methods are
applied at RF regularly and work fine. The photons
carry the energy and the energy goes where the wave
equations say it will therefore so do the photons.

Water waves carry longitudinal energy...but the individual molecules go
up and
down. Their vertical KE is NOT what is carried with the wave.

The wave energy is deposited where the waves lap the shore,
not somewhere else.

But the energy of the vertically oscillating water molecules is
continuously
being dampened out and absorbed as heat in the ocean.

Yes, and the heat is deposited at the location of the
wave, not elsewhere.

Nobody knows that actual role of individual photons in this process.

Yes we do, from the optical behaviour. EM is the same
whether high frequency or low and gratings work as well
at microwave as they do in the infra-red.

So they should. They are wavelength dependent.

Wavelength and/or frequency.

Since nobody has a clue what photon 'wavelength' or 'frequency' actually
signify, that is a pretty meaningless statement.

Speak for yourself.

So why don't you know what they do? A grating reflects
an incident wave to a particular point on a screen along

Huygens.

Exactly, the place where the energy lands on the screen is
controlled by the intrinsic property of the individual photons,
but it is also where Huygens' method says it will land, hence
the wavelength and/or frequency of each photon must be the
same as the macroscopic wave, hence K=1.

Here's another analogy.
The cars on the highway are made of rubber and all carry a heavy
positive
surface charge. What do you think happens to their lengths as they slow
down
and speed up in different speed zones?

I think when the charge is taken to some destination, the car
also arrives at the same place. You can't send the car to
Boston and have the charge arrive in Cairo which is what you
are suggesting. Beyond that discussions of their length are
irrelevant, the length has no analog in the photon.

How do you know.

Because your suggestion is equivalent to saying the heat
produced by friction in an ocean wave can be deposited
inland.

Henry, I think we have maybe got a handle on this, in
your grating equation of you have red laser light
arriving at a level of one photon per second, would you
use the frequency of the red light or the 1Hz rate of
one photon per second to work out the deflection angle.
I say it is that of the light regardless of the arrival
rate, you are telling me the wave energy goes to one
place at an angle determined by the 1Hz figure while
the photons themselves go to the location given by the
red light frequency.

The concept matches the data very well.

It makes no sense though, how can the energy go anywhere
other than where the photons go?

George