An important question came to me and it has to do with the proximity of neighboring atoms. In the bohr atomic model you have electrons that orbit in a circular (global) path around the nucleus. My question is, does the density of matter, an increase in air pressure, shorten the orbital radius to that of the nucleus? One could assume that should be the case. At what point are two atoms so close together that the electrons of each respective atom collide with each other and cause chaos and unstability? Can it be said that the electrons- given thier rapid motion- create the equivilent of a soild shell like structure around the atom? When the proximity of 2 atoms are so close, do their respective electrons shells come into contact and given enough Coulomb repulsion, reduce thier distance to that of the nucleus? If not how do you model pure geometrical "pressure" as it relates to this? It cannot be said that the nucleus's of any 2 atoms ever come into contact and still maintain electrons in orbit. Additionally what are the correlations between 'temperature' and proximity?
Update: The Coulomb repulsion of electrons in different atoms is insufficient to keep them from passing through each other(colliding), but the electron fields can do so by the "magic" of not being allowed in the same place at the same time in the same state. What I speak of is the Pauli Exclusion Principle. What I want to know is who says the PEP applies to such a case of separate atoms electron's? That realistically does not make sense. So I am in search of the real answer as to how distance bewteen atoms is governed. And in fact it could be that the coulomb repulsion is sufficient enough to maintain this.
Yet another question I have, in the context of the bohr model, is with regards to electron orbit energy levels. They say that when an electron jumps to a higher state due to absorption of a photon(s) it gains energy, yet when at the same time the wavelength increases. This contradicts itself. We could say that the electron has more Potential energy instead. I briefly thought that the model was backwards, that an electron which absorbed a photon would decreases its radius and increases its wavelength, until I realized that the electron after absorption would gain mass and explain classically why radius would increase, however Im still in debate on why wavelength increases as energy increases. Ideally I refer to the EM spectrum chart where gamma rays have significantly shorter wavelengths then radio waves.
Keeping with the topic, I'm confused, it seems that the electron is not the only thing that can absorb and emit photons.
Electron-positron annihilation is the process that occurs when an electron (which is matter) and a positron (which is antimatter) collide and produce 2 gamma photons.
Pair production is roughly the opposite of EPA and occurs when an high energy photon interacting with the nucleus produces an electron and positron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron-positron_annihilation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron
So? For starters, If the electron is destroyed then it no longer can jump to another state because it no longer exsists! Clearly EPA and pair production are two process independent and aside from normal electron-photon interactions as they relate to bohr's model of electron states. I was under the distinct impression that the electron was the sole creator and absorber of photons. But now it is possible for us to say the exact opposite, the electron does neither!
This constant creation and annihilation of electrons would convienently comply with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which relies on virtual particles to appear and disappear, and thus give rise to the fuzzy structure or probability of location for the electron.
Positrons
http://www.nucmed.buffalo.edu/positron.htm
And the more I think about it the more I am confused.
Feb 24 2005
How many people recognize what they are looking at when viewing a typical spiral galaxy image? To be more specific I'm talking about individual points of light that one can clearly resolve. In a typical large galaxy there is anywhere from 100 to 400 billion stars, know now that those individual points of light are clearly Not individual stars ;) That would be rediculous to say according to the numbers. What they are logically is actually background galaxies, and perhaps occasionally they are supernova or even gamma rays from rare rotating nuetron stars in the galaxy, or in a lot of cases they are star clusters. A star like our own Sun would be impossible to resolve in such images - our Sun just adds to the glow.
Speaking of galaxies, scientist recently discovered a "starless galaxy"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_east/4288633.stm
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0502/0502312.pdf
A dark hydrogen cloud in the virgo cluster. What is so interesting about the "galaxy" is that its virtually transparent, so the only way you know its there is through radio waves. At first I'm thinking that's gotta be a blackhole but after having re-read the paper I realize what they are talking about is the discovery of a Dark Matter Halo which is completely different. So what is a Dark Matter Halo?
Basically the rotation of stars are not what they think they should be according to gravitational tides from a central blackhole and visible stars alone, so they introduce a halo a very large distance from the edge of the galaxy itself to explain why the stars near the outter edges are rotating so fast - effectivly giving a flat rotation curve.
First of all what is a rotation curve? Here is a diagram Fig.2 with a short
description.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOND
Fig.3 is shows where the Dark matter halo would be.
MOND attempts to do away with the need for a Dark matter halo and explain the flat rotation curve by a modification to Newtons 2nd law of motion which gives a change to acceleration in situations where very large distances between bodies are present therefore the effects of gravitational pull are lower overall than say here on Earth or around our Solar system.
Additional reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_halo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_II
Mar 12 2005
Recent study claims upper limit on size of solar masses at 150 times that of our Sun.
"Once turned on, though, bigger stars burn brighter. A star 100 times more massive than the Sun will be a million times brighter, said Stan Woosley from University of California, Santa Cruz."
"But these big stars burn their nuclear fuel more quickly. Stars greater than 100 solar masses will only live about 3 million years – compared to our Sun which is expected to live for more than 10 billion years."
More on 2-slit experiment
Someone brought to my attention that the 2-slit experiment does not produce interference patterns in a gas. Very interesting and I'll have to think about it somemore but what is the reason for this? Decoherence?
Mar 19 2005
I question if it is even possible to collapse the wave-function of a photon. It is unclear to me which particle has been used in all 2-slit experiments. In Feyman lectures volume 1 chapter 37 that particle used is an electron, which interestingly enough has a physical wave-function exactly similar to that of a photon. So it got me thinking, what if the wave-function of the electron is actually a photonic subsystem, in other words what if the electron is an electron-photon-entangled particle system. And when you collapse the wave-function of the electron what you are doing is separating the system and firing that photon leaving the single electron particle, thus the reason why after doing so the electron has no wave-function and cannot therefore produce interference patterns.
On the other hand, if what we are using is a photon and a photon only, how is it possible to collapse the wave-function of that? The photon has no means by which to eject a photon, you can only bounce another photon off of it, so it would have to be this act of bouncing a photon off a photon causes the wave-function to collapse, so I question whether that could be possible and given my understanding of the physical nature of the wave-function; to explain that, imagine an particle that travels in a wave-like motion, some would identify this to nonlocality of position or superposition of paths, but I see it differently more simply as osccilation of particle or perhaps even frequency.
Now the only thing I want to know is,is it possible to reintroduce the wave-function to an electron after you have collapsed/separated it? If it were to somehow absorb a photon after, then the wave-function should be restored is my current theory.
I didnt mention is did I? Almost all subatomic particle have a charateristic wave-function they tell me, if so then that means a proton or neutron's wave-function has to be similar to an electrons wave-function which is similar to a photons wave-function, so to make a physical interpretation of that you know right away that the wave-function would have to be something more akin to a charge or spin rather that a large osccilation because the neutron lies within the core of an atom attached to the necleus which in theory is rather contained and motionless compared. But common sense tells me that is wrong and the wave-function of a photon is very different by interpretation to any other particle and according to how I describe it previously.
We think that the electron is the sole creator and exchanger of photons. I and everyone else needs to know more about this function before we can solve this. One of my questions has to be how many photons is an electron capable of being entangled with per say at any given time. If it were to be the case that an electron has many photons associated with it then firing one photon should not in theory collapse the wave-function because there would remain several more to maintain it, this of course assuming what I have said before that the wave-function of the electron is really a photon(s).
Lets assume for a second that and electron really is just a single system particle and that the wave-function of it is the same thing as a photon - a particle traveling in a wave-like motion. Now how do we collapse the wave-function? Why would bouncing a photon off of it, or it emiting a photon kill the wave-like motion of it? It shouldn't. It should disturb and alter the pattern temporarily yes but there is no imaginable situation where it would kill the wave-function completely EXCEPT in the rare case where the momentum and energy of the photon matches the momentum and energy of the electron and they collide at zero frequency (the point in space exactly between the peak and trough) - that is, the instance where the electron is on the rebound from its peak coming towards the photon. Then and only then would the wave-function be zero and for our interpretation "collapsed"; And all of THAT assuming the photon could even in a classical sense of particle collision alter the path of an electron, because for all we know it would simply be absorbed rather than be deflected, however we do know that a photon does come back because we detect it, so we can assume that A. It was deflected outright or B. That is was absorbed, and re-emitted. The latter case would certainly not help to explain the wave-function collapse.
Mar 25 2005
A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser (modified 2-slit experiment)
http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/kim-scully/kim-scully-web.htm
Another Beam spliter experiment
http://marcus.whitman.edu/~beckmk/QM/grangier/Thorn_ajp.pdf
And yet another 2-slit experiment modification. quoting someone
"I once read about a modified double slit experiment where the distance between one slit and the source was different to distance between the other slit and the source. It gave the usual interference result, and showed the common feature of other double slit experiments, equal distances to both slits from the source, was an artifact."
my reply
"You make a good point, and it just goes to show how closely a 'water two-slit experiment' actually resembles a particle based one in interference pattern results. It gave the usual interference effect but yet the actual pattern is different because the point at which the waves intersect will be further out and the waves from say A will be more spread out than the waves from B when they intersect at a point C therefore different than the normal setup where the waves are almost identical in spread when they intersect at a common point C."
Turns out that quantum eraser was exactly what I was looking for in regards
to re-establishing the wave-function after collapse.
http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/qphil.html (New Scientist)
So it is explained that like Polarization of an entangled photon pair is at least 1 of the primary conditions necessary for the wave-function and subsequent interference. If one photon is opposite polarization (maybe spin) then the wave-function is considerd collapsed. This explaination gives me more information but it sure doesnt help to similify things.
A question I asked with regards to the split that occurs in the documented eraser experiment.
"In the context of a single photon being fired, does the split happen? The way I see it, It all comes down to interpretation or definition of what a photon consists of, is it a single particle is it capable of being split, or is it a packet of smaller quanta whereby theoretically it could split into smaller parts? If the split of a single photon happens we can assume that it consists of + quanta, and what you get is the sum of 2 parts, what do we want to call these and do they really have a link to each other in the form of entanglement whereby a change in polarization of 1 equals a change in the system? Experiments show that yes, a change in 1 part changes the system, so for all practical purposes I think the word entanglement is appropiate for at least what it tries to imply - a link between the 2 parts."
Mar 27
It's all coming together now, I thought of and stated some stupid things but it was all a means to an end.
As I currently understand things its not that we have to say the de Broglie wavelength or the Schrodinger wave-function ever collapses, its just that on detection you polarize the light so that the vector plane no longer displaces accross the horizontal axis orthogonal to the obstruction contaning the 2-slits whereby interference patterns are not observed. Coinsidently placing a verticle polarizing filter accross the 2 slits should reveal that the interference pattern does not show.
First of all what is light polarization?
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/polarization/
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/light/U12L1e.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/polarcon.html
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Polarization.html
Additional info
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/debrog.html
Here we go
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s9-04/9-04.htm
And I will assume for the time being that the reason interference does not show
through a gas is because of natural light polarization in addition to whatever
elements are present.
The Dual Nature of Light as Reflected in the Nobel Archive
http://nobelprize.org/physics/articles/ekspong/index.html
Also note yet another "2-slit" experiment done by Sin-Itiro Tomonaga in the bottom diagram. Here we see that you only need to provide a second path for light to interfere with itself. Does this clearly demonstrate the argument for quantized corpuscles structure of light? Thats one way to look at it or we could say it only shows us that the wavelength displacement of a packet of light or photon is greater than the width of the obstruction whereby somehow it inferferes with itself on the rebound. And again we see the need to explain light in the sense of a wave because if light were only particles they would hit the obstruction and bounce off of it, or at least you would have to explain why the particles come back to center... Now imagine this as a water based experiment and you get the typical wave interference, water will occupy all available space or available paths as a function of propagation according to momentum and 'fluid dynamics', such is the coincidental case with light.
Lets look at this experiment in a different way. First of all let's shoot a stream of water (from a hose) at the obstruction. The first time we set the width of the water stream less than equal to the width of the obstruction, we note that the water simply is blocked and bounces off in 2 directions never coming back to center. Second time we set the width of the water stream slightly greater than the width of the obstruction and now we observe that the cross section radius of the water that would have bounced off is now channeled back to center by the outter edge of the stream of water that clears the obstruction all together so that the end result is that all or most of the stream of water remains focused to center as if there were no obstruction to begin with. It is my belief that we can relate this exactly to a stream of light. Now the real question is how does a single photon manage to travel around the obstruction if its width is less than equal to the width of the obstruction? It should simply be absorbed or reflected but thats not the case. While the actual physical dimensions of a non moving photon is far less than equal the width of the obstruction, in motion the photons wave-function displacement is greater than the width of the obstruction. However that same photons wave-function displacement is less than that if in a stream of light because of quantum cancelation effects by neighboring photons. In other words when the photon is isolated its wave-function propagates outwards freely yet while in a group of photons that wave-function is canceled out or combined with the wave-functions of neighboring photons.
Heres a question, Does the energy level or amplitude displacement of a photon fired make a difference whether the photon passes through the obstruction? The answer is Yes. Another question is, Given a defined starting amplitude, what is the rate of increase in displacement over time? - or does the value remain constant for 'short' distances?
Unfortunatly that amplitude information is not available to me so I cannot attempt to fully solve wave-particle duality however I will make a conclusion anyway.
Not to skip around and confuse you but I'm going to explain our options again with regard to what a photon consists of. We can consider a photon as either a single particle or a single particle made up of smaller quanta. Both cases the wave-function exsists and is identical, but only the later is reduceable and therefore "splitable". Visualize both particles traveling towards a central obstruction and the path they take. Our varibles our these, both have horizontal amplitude, both displace a space greater than the width of the obstruction. Now moving forward to the oronthagonal plane that the obstruction is located at. The point of collision for any photon is dependent on the location of the photon along it's amplitude path so that effectively we can say that it only has a probability of hitting, or missing, any given surface area of the obstruction. You have to imagine the speed at which a photon will oscillate so the odds of it hitting the obstruction is high assuming rate of oscillation is high even if it has a very large displacement. By defintion of a non reduceable photon we know that it will either be absorbed or deflected. However by definition of a splitable photon we can say that collision would be similar to that of water and in addition to that we know that the split is not 50/50 except in the rarer case of central head on collision. So we have a fraction of light deflected to the left, a fraction deflected to the right and a fraction deflected head on or bounced backwards; if that is not the case then absorbed or like water, get caught in the stream and be forced left or right.
Let me clear up a previous statement, I said that only a quantized photon is splitable, while that is true in itself, you can imagine a possibility that a single non reduceable photon could be absorbed all together then re-emmited as 2 parts -example with regards to a beam splitter crystal. Whether that happens is a real question.
Continuing this, Let's instead assume a verticle amplitude displacement of the photon. Now collision happens head on and the split is 50/50.
However We know that most light is not polarized and therefore has both a horizontal And verticle displacement. So our path trajectory is a beeline. If you were to look at a beeline path from a different angle it would look like a circle - which I think is appropiate to explain a wave radiating outward.
Abrupt Conclusion: Interference can only result from a corpuscles quantized structure of the photon that effectively splits and interferes with itself given a disturbance or collision.
Mar 29 2005
More on the bending of light - repeat
What we know. The force of gravity is much greater here on the face of the Earth opposed to the far upper atmosphere of our planet. Yet it is around a planet that we typically observe and associate with the bending of light. Here on the face of the Earth it Appears for the most part that light travels great distances in a straight line Contradictory to the greater force of gravity. It could be that light does in fact bend on the face of the Earth substantially (substantially more correct?) but IS IT ENOUGH to credit the bending of light to gravity? I Really question this. I could more quite easily explain the bending of light is due to not gravity but the magnetic field, which would give a reason why light travels straight here on the face of the Earth opposed to the upper atmosphere where the magnetic field has a greater influence.
Of course in any such debate on the matter the word blackhole would no doubt come up trying to convince me that I am wrong. Then I guess I would ask why can't a super strong magnetic field be associate with a blackhole?
Bah I just realized that the moon doesnt have a magnetic field and light bends around it as well. In that case I can only relate it to the above Sin-Itiro Tomonaga 2-slit example and reason that, the light that collides with the moon will bounce off and get caught "downstream" with the light that does not collide so that in effect it bounces off that outter edge light and comes to center on our side of the eclipse. And thats not to say that magnetic fields do not bend light either, there is always more than 1 explaination for more than 1 senerio.
You know what is really interesting, is how light reflects in every direction
off a surface. And by that I mean quite literally Every surface area -every
square inch, millimeter nanometer and every direction from that surface area.
It's almost impossible to say that a photon will not at some time come into
the path of another photon, so its somewhat of a mystery why they do not interfere
with each others path to the point where you have a collision every < nanometer
or so throwing everything off course. That is according to classical mechanics.
If light were according to classical mechanics what we see would be a big blur,
think about it. For instance, everything we see around us, the reason why we
see it is because light reflects off of it toward our eye. If light photons
collide with and bounce off other photons nothing would ever have order and
light would surely not travel in a straight path (actually beeline) toward our
eyes - Note that because all photons travel in a beeline manner, collectively
effectively it is straight in the sense of sight.
Take a grain silo for example 2-3 miles away, clearly visible. Light from the Sun reflects off of every surface area in every direction. That may not be what you would think is it? You reason that if light came from the Sun at an angle it should only be reflected down at an angle. One of the greatest mysteries is why and how does light reflect in every direction off a surface area that according to classical mechanics tells us otherwise? In other words, how do you reflect an object not according to surface geometry but almost entirely independent of it? Think of a rain drop hitting the silo, at any or most angles it fragments into many parts and is reflected outwards in all directions. This is the best possible explaination I can give as I myself am quite puzzled and astonished that information is transmited let alone maintain perfect order. Were talking trillions of photons per square inch > per square inch and yet order is still maintained accross short and vast distances even though photons would have to seemingly collide, theres just no way they wouldn't cross paths. "Well maybe then photon particles dont really exsist and light is truely waves", whatever that means, and I'll tell you right now that Waves would collide and interfere even more so than particles and would be an even bigger blur. All that and I havent even gotten to the deeper questions that goes on to say light isnt just reflected, its reflected with a whole bunch of new information about what it reflected off of; color, temperature, geometry, alot having to do with material but the list goes on and on and on.
So my conclusion is that there is no way that photons can in a classical sense collide off each other and alter the path of each other according to how we see the world around us. This goes to say also that I just disproved every everything I wrote about the 2-slit experiment in one sweet paragraph.
Mar 31
Nonlocality of single fermions - branches that borrow
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0503/0503232.pdf
Aha so it is true, to quote Dirac's famous dictum
"...each photon interacts with only itself. Interference between different photons never occurs."
---------------------
Been thinking..
Wave function collapse may have something to do with a phase shift rather than polarization...
If we fire 2 photons from 2 sources in the same parallel direction close to each other, we know that if we detect 1 photon that the other photon will effectively disappear - so called wave-function collapse. The reason this is, is because the 2 photons or 2 waves have combined thier wavefunction so that we get the sum of the 2 - or a superposition/entanglement. Consider the diagrams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_shift - yet they will still maintain thier respective distances, that's what nonlocality is.
So to answer why the wave-function may collapse and the other photon "destroyed" is perhaps because the act of detection involves a phase shift of the detected photon which in turn realizes a cancelation effect so that the sum of the 2 photon waves amplitude equals zero - destructive interference. Let me say it again, a detection of 1 photon changes its phase relationship to that of the other while the other photon remains unchanged, yet the sum of the 2 over a very brief time now yields zero - as seen in a destructive interference diagram.
My question is What is the maximum distance between 2 photon waves that we can no longer consider them superimposed or entangled? Or in other words, what is the distance necessary that a detection of 1 photon will not have an effect on the other?
Because it is clear to me the only reason those 2 photons would ever be considered superimposed or entangled -ever share a link- is because of their similarity but moreso proximity to each other, the more distance you add between them at some point they will no longer be entangled. Swear I've said this before. I don't believe Like particles -including phase and energy- is a condition necessary for entanglment or superposition; when by a function of thier proximity they combine thier values to form a new state - however I may be wrong on that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlocality
"Nonlocality in quantum mechanics, refers to the property of entangled quantum states in which both the entangled states "collapse" simultaneously upon measurement of one of their entangled components, regardless of the spatial separation of the two states. This "spooky action at a distance" is the content of Bell's theorem and the EPR paradox."
It says here Regardless of the spatial separation. I find that hard to believe. There HAS to be a maximum distance.
And another real question is, what Really happens to the 2nd photon; if it is a real physical particle spatially separated from the other, it either goes undetected eg. becomes invisible or it jumps to -accross space- or combined/absorbed by the first photon particle (related to above paper?). As it is concieveably a loophole in the detection method. It would not say rapidly "decay" would it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_decay No, I don't think so, decay involves mass to energy > to photons not the other way around. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay
