Question Light is the fastest?

[F. M. Mossa]

James Clerk Maxwell’s equation proves that all forms of electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light: why, then, still we say that light is the fastest thing in the cosmos?

 

[efarina96]

The reason we observe light the way we do, is that space and time exist infinitely in perfect symmetry, and observing light at a finite speed creates asymmetry that gives context to finite observation. In other words, without the cosmic speed limit only infiinite beings could exist.

 

[efarina96]

James Clerk Maxwell’s equation proves that all forms of electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light: why, then, still we say that light is the fastest thing in the cosmos?

I believe all electromagnetic energy is light, but typically we use the word light to describe the spectrum visible to humans.

 

[Hayseed]

The speed of em radiation does not come from a math equation. It comes from the rotation speed of the emitters. All em emitters are constantly rotating at c. Emission is an instant change in direction of a field already at c. The keyword is instant.......that's why the linear V of emitter is NOT impressed on it. Therefore the V of propagation is constant. No space-time needed.

 

[HeckSpawn]

Gotta love Terry Pratchett...

 

[glennfortin]

James Clerk Maxwell’s equation proves that all forms of electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light: why, then, still we say that light is the fastest thing in the cosmos? png to ico

You're right about light not being THE fastest thing in the universe, actually light moves at THE fastest speed possible in our universe.

 

[Science Lost]

Isn't that what has caused the uproar about seeing galaxies farther away than 18.8 billion light years away?

 

[efarina96]

Isn't that what has caused the uproar about seeing galaxies farther away than 18.8 billion light years away?

Redshift affect explains why we can see galaxies up to roughly 46.8 billion lightyears away if I am not mistaken. Not sure what uproar you are speaking of the observable Universe is 13.8 billion years old (WHICH I WILL REITERATE FOR THE BILLIONTH TIME DOES NOT MEAN WHAT ANY OF YOU THINK IT DOES).
The expansion of the Universe in combination with the relative speed of light in a vacuum defines our relative sphere of observation.

 

[efarina96]

Isn't that what has caused the uproar about seeing galaxies farther away than 18.8 billion light years away?

Correction: 46.5 billion lightyears. So I was wrong. Sorry about that. My fundamental point still stands, and I still don't understand your question yet I believe I have answered it.
👍

 

[Lariliss]

The speed of light is a fundamental constant of nature. It is significant in describing a property of electromagnetic waves. It serves as the single limiting velocity in the universe, being an upper bound to the propagation speed of signals and to the speeds of all material particles. The speed of light (c) serves as a constant of proportionality, linking the formerly disparate concepts of mass (m) and energy (E).

 

[Hayseed]

The velocity of light, just like anything/everything else or any physical entity, is relative, to the velocity of the absorber/detector. You are just unaware of this. And when you measure the light, you are unaware of the true dynamic, and keep measuring it in the wrong manner. And you keep thinking that the velocity is constant. And come up with bonehead theories on why this is so.

Emission is discreet and intermittent, this is the only aspect of physics, Einstein got correct. EM radiation is a duty cycle strobe, not a wave. The act, the dynamic, the motion....of emission.... happens at a rate of 2 times c. It qualifies as an instant event. The field breaks, it gets thrown, straight out, it super novas with a very quick snap.

Maxwell's equations only described the dynamic of absorption, not the dynamic of emission or the dynamic of propagation.

If you could look at one "wave" ray of light......it blinks. A very quick blink. If you measure the blink.......you can tell how fast the blinker is moving. It can also tell you, how fast you are moving.

A great tool that no one uses. The alternation that we detect, are from the absorber reactance, response or detector reset(all are charge fields resetting).......not the propagation or from the emitter. The absorber only receives 1/2 period of inducement, the other 1/2 period of alternation, is from the absorber resetting.

A non reactive detector, or a detector reset rate of c, is what's needed to see light blink.

But the principle can be demonstrated with low frequency radio blinks. Is there anyone here, who knows how to emit one radio "wave" at a time......from a dipole?

 

[Hartmann352]

I'm not sure how to manufacture one wave of radio waves from one antenna.

However, for example, the number of photons per electron over one cycle would be given by:



where 𝑝 is the power, 𝑧 is the antenna impedance, and 𝑓 is the frequency, 𝑒 is the charge on an electron, and ℎ is Planck’s constant*.

For a 100 W ham radio with a dipole antenna operating at 145 MHz that works out to about photons per cycle for each electron with a quantum uncertainty of aboutphotons
(which is much less than than the uncertainty/rounding in the other estimated quantities).

* Planck's constant , h, appears throughout quantum mechanics and is one of the fundamental constants of physics. It has a value of:

h = 6.6260693(11) x 10-34 J s

where uncertain values in the decimal place are contained in brackets.

Planck’s constant has the units of action ( energy x time, which can be shown to be the same as momentum x length ).

Planck’s constant was first identified as part of Max Planck’s description of blackbody radiation. Later, it was shown by Albert Einstein to be the constant of proportionality between the energy ( E ) and frequency ( f ) of photons:

E = hf
See: https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/P/Planck's+Constant

Hartmann352

 

[Hayseed]

I had thought that I had heard everything when it comes to antenna emission. So, you believe that no matter what frequency I transmit on, the particular emitted radio wave is composed of millions of photons that come from electrons?

One radio "wave"...or emission is ONE disturbance propagated thru space. Just because one disturbance can cause millions of electrons to vibrate, doesn't mean each electron was hit by a specific emitted photon. All of the electrons were hit by the same ONE field disturbance.

A radio "wave" is not a flux, like light is. A radio emission is like an UN-converged, one emitter..............laser. Single phase, single frequency, but radial direction. A laser has one direction, one frequency, but many phases, because of all the emitters. All the emitters are at different distances from the detector......giving different phases. I use the term phase, to indicate the precise time, that the propagation starts to shine on or hits the detector.

All media waves have some form of CONTINUOUS alternation thru the medium. A media wave is a disturbance, that requires a medium to propagate thru.

Like a speaker. A speaker has a 2 pole continuous 360(sine) input. The speaker cone pushes air all during the input. Continuously back and forth. It's an oscillation.

EM radiation does not require a medium. It does not alternate. It strobes. IF there is no relative velocity between the emitter and the detector, that strobe, no matter the frequency, will have a 50% duty cycle.

A dipole has a two pole input. And it also is fed, continuously. BUT the antenna does not emit in a continuous fashion. It charges up, then discharges(emits) very quickly. During the first 179 degrees of input, an EM field is built around the antenna. The radius of that field is 1/2 wavelength. Do you understand why the field is always 1/2 length thick? This is important. Take any frequency on an antenna. Energize it for 1/2 period. An EM field grows at a rate of 11" per nanosecond. So, no matter the frequency, the R of the field around the antenna has a 1/2 wavelength.

Do you see how that is. OK...that happens in 179 degrees. At 180 degrees.....the COLLECTIVE field is cut. That lets the EM field fly out..........in 1/2 wavelength chunks. This happens very fast....so fast.....that at 181 degrees........the antenna is neutral again.....ready for the next 179 degree input.

Can you follow what I'm saying? The detector in induced for 1/2 wavelength....or 1/2 period duration. Nothing is propagated or induced, during the next 1/2 period. This is when the detector resets, so it is ready for the next 1/2 period inducement.

When we accelerate an electron to generate x-ray.........the electron only has 1 electric pole.....and it emits. How can one pole alternate?

A chinks in Maxwell's armor. And there are more chinks in Maxwell and Einstein.

There are many fundamentals that our science does not understand or teach. Like the difference between 2 pole current and 1 pole current. We teach 2 pole current in our schools, And 2 poles are 2 sources of acceleration....one pushes and one pulls.

But an antenna is a 1 pole current.....in which acts in a foreign way to modern science.

It doesn't follow 2 pole circuit laws. This is why it can emit. In the emission mode, an antenna is an ANTI resonance circuit. And breaks an EM field. In reception mode, the antenna is resonant......and forms a resonant field.

They are NOT reciprocal, like they teach it is. Because of 1 pole current.

Upon emission mode, the charge is sequentially fed from the end. Upon reception mode, the charge is fed broadside and all at the same time, THESE are two different current modes.

The motional mechanics will give one much more understanding then the math relationships.

This(classical mechanics) is completely ignored by modern academia.

Giving us loony tune science. Time and length never vary.

Oh, I almost forgot. To emit one "wave".....feed ONE precision half sine into one element and ONE opposite precision half sine into the other element.

One may use diode rectifiers..........but the emission snap timing will be off, efficiency will be poor and the emission will be very dirty. Use a function generator.

Feed a tuned transmission line with these precision half sine signals, to see how it holds up to transmission line theory, for extra credit. You might be surprised.

 

[Lariliss]

The principle of relativity needed something that was extracted from Maxwell's electrodynamics. That is, that Maxwell's theory was right after all in demanding that that light always propagates at c, no matter how fast the emitter may be moving. Einstein laid out the postulates and the theory adopted its now familiar form.


Maxwell had been working with the phenomena of electricity and magnetism when he discovered a single unified picture that could explain all the disparate observations. Waves of electricity create waves of magnetism, which create waves of electricity and back and forth, making them capable of traveling through space.

And when he calculated the speed of these electromagnetic waves, Maxwell got the same number of c.

With the theory of relativity, Einstein realized the true connection between time and space, a unified it known as space-time. The connection that allowed to translate between movement in space and movement in time. In other words, how much one meter of space, for example, is worth in time. Einstein found that there was a single constant, a certain speed, that could tell us how much space was equivalent to how much time, and vice versa.

Einstein's theories didn't say what that number was, but then he applied special relativity to the old equations of Maxwell and found that this conversion rate is exactly the speed of light.

Of course, this conversion rate, this fundamental constant that unifies space and time, doesn't know what an electromagnetic wave is, and it doesn't even really care. It's a number. That's because all massless particles are able to travel at this speed, and since light is massless, it can travel at that speed. And so, the speed of light became an important cornerstone of modern physics.

And the number itself doesn't really matter. It has units: meters per second. And so the definition of the speed of light is tied up with the definitions of length and time.

In physics, we're more concerned with constants that have no units or dimensions — constants that appear in physical theories that are just plain numbers. These appear much more fundamental, because they don't depend on any other definition.

One such number is known as the fine structure constant, which is a combination of the speed of light, Planck's constant, and something known as the permittivity of free space. Its value is approximately 0.007.

On one hand, the speed of light can be whatever it wants to be, because it has units and we need to define the units. But on the other hand, the speed of light can't be anything other than exactly what it is, because if you were to change the speed of light, you would change the fine structure constant. But the universe has the structure constant to be approximately 0.007. Since this is fixed and universal, the speed of light has to be exactly what it is.

RF signal speed in free space is the same speed of light. It is measured and known for all antennae types and dependless of antenna technology (e.g. omni or beamforming).

The different types of radiation are defined by the amount of energy found in the photons. Radio waves have photons with low energies, microwave photons have a little more energy than radio waves, infrared photons have still more, then visible, ultraviolet, X-rays, and, the most energetic of all, gamma-rays.

 

[Hayseed]

For light to be constant from, a moving emitter........there is ONLY one solution.

The duration of emission has to be instant. A fast snap. A fast discharge.

When the current is broken to an ignition coil, the field collapses in.

When the current is broken on an antenna........the field, collapses out.

 

[Lariliss]

For light to be constant from, a moving emitter........there is ONLY one solution.

The duration of emission has to be instant. A fast snap. A fast discharge.

When the current is broken to an ignition coil, the field collapses in.

When the current is broken on an antenna........the field, collapses out.

1. If there is any emitter problem, for sure light velocity would not be the c value every time. Even if we think about coiled many times fiber optic media, the velocity should change.

2. The c = 299,792,458 m/s was never proved by an experiment. It was derived from round-trip time delay.
Speed of light is a convention rather than a fact.
Einstein himself in 1905 put it in his paper ‘On the Electrodynamics of moving bodies’.

There is no way for synchronizing the clocks, measuring light start point time and end point time.
Quote from the paper: ‘‘Stipulation that I can make on my free will to arrive at a definition of simultaneity.’
His ’convention definition’ that time travel is the same toward and backwards (Einstein’s synchronization convention).

If the speed of light is not the same in different directions. It may go c/2 in one way and instantaneous in another. So even we might see stars exactly as they are now.

When light arrives at the detector, you know nothing about light. You just see it, and it’s there.

 

[felixw]

the particular emitted radio wave is composed of millions of photons that come from electrons?

Are you saying that electrons emit photons or electrons are causing photons to be emitted from another source, if so what?

 

[Hayseed]

The lowest frequency that any particle can emit is in the x-ray region. And in order to do that, that particle undergoes an energy change and therefore a mass change.

All radiated frequencies below x-ray, require a structure......or an alignment of multiple charge fields, to produce the necessary wavelengths. These low frequencies do not require an energy change in the particles. Only an energy transfer. Atomic charge fields can act like repeaters. Absorb an input F and emit an output F. Those fields can reflect too. Of course these structures can also change particle energy and emit or absorb.

We can not see particle EM, but we can see atomic EM, molecule EM. This lets us see area.

On an antenna we use aligned charge, in which you call current, to generate a collective field around the antenna. This field needs two, equal and properly aligned wavelengths. A proper E length and a perpendicular proper M length. At that point......we break that aligned formation of charge in an instant.......and that collective field....propagates out. All that the collective formation electrons need to do......to do this.......is flip. That breaks the collective field. And all the charge in the element is neutral again, ready for the next formation. This happens at every 180 degrees of input. That flip is timed for maximum current.....or alignment. Right at 180.

When that propagation hits a particle, it puts a two alignment torque on the particle for 1/2 WL duration. Giving a current. During the intermittence, the absorber returns that current.

Letting all think, the propagation duration was 1 full WL long, and it alternated.

The next time you see an antenna animation.......don't think speaker.......think ignition coil.

The current(alignment) field is what's emitted.

 

[Lariliss]

Are you saying that electrons emit photons or electrons are causing photons to be emitted from another source, if so what

Assume, an electron is on the lowest possible orbit E1 (R1 distance) from the nucleus. If you apply the right amount of energy, you can promote that electron. The electron can jump up to a higher energy level (e. g. E3 energy level, R3 distance). The electron absorbs energy.

The electron will not stay there forever. It eventually will fall down to a ground state. This time the electron emits a photon. So, when electron comes from a higher energy level to a lower energy level, it emits light with a certain wavelength.

 

[Hartmann352]

There is a unique relationship between electrons and photons. During the Big Bang the higher frequency photon radiation created electrons and a plasma of quarks and gluons.

Then after some 380,000 years the universe went dark when all the original photon radiation was used up. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)* shows the remnants of this era.




The universe cooled down so that electrons were able to attach to quarks and create protons and neutrons. After more cooling stable atoms formed.

During the next million years atoms of hydrogen and helium formed into huge clouds by the force of gravity.

When enough matter collected together gravity started a nuclear fusion reaction and a star was born. This was the first new light that the universe saw.

The big bang process involved photons** creating electrons. Interesting that the original photons created electrons and now electrons create photons. Electrons are the only way that light is made.

When a photon is absorbed by an electron, it is completely destroyed. All its energy is imparted to the electron, which instantly jumps to a new energy level. The photon itself ceases to be. In the equations which govern this interaction, one side of the equation (for the initial state) has terms for both the electron and the photon, while the other side (representing the final state) has only one term: for the electron.

The opposite happens when an electron emits a photon. The photon is not selected from a "well" of photons living in the atom; it is created instantaneously out of the vacuum. The electron in the high energy level is instantly converted into a lower energy-level electron and a photon. There is no in-between state where the photon is being constructed. It instantly pops into existance.

So the question is: where does the photon come from?

Strangely, it doesn't seem to come from anywhere. The universe must put the extra energy somewhere, and because electrons in atoms are electromagnetic phenomena, a photon is born with the required energy. In a weak-force interaction, say the decay of a neutron, that energy goes into a neutrino particle which is also instantaneously created. Each force has its own carrier particles, and knows how to make them.

* Cosmic Microwave Background corresponds to a temperature today of 2.7 Kelvin: 2.7º C above absolute zero, or -455º F.

Today, we see this light as the cosmic microwave background. Because recombination happened everywhere in the universe, we see CMB light coming from all directions. The CMB provides the best data we have on the early universe, and the structure of the cosmos on the largest scales.


The cosmic microwave background is a snapshot of the oldest light in our universe, from when the cosmos was just 380,000 years old. The colors of the map represent small temperature fluctuations that ultimately resulted in the galaxies we see today. Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

The CMB looks almost exactly the same, no matter what part of the sky we look at. The term for that in cosmology is “isotropic”, and the small deviations from perfect sameness are called anisotropies. Measuring the larger-sized anisotropies reveals how much dark energy, dark matter, and ordinary matter are contained in the universe.

The smaller anisotropies reveal the tiny fluctuations in density that gave rise to the pattern of galaxies and galaxy clusters we see today, which astronomers call the large-scale structure of the universe. Without those small irregularities, there wouldn’t be any galaxies, and we wouldn’t be here to observe them. Likewise, larger anisotropies wouldn’t produce the universe we see.

The overwhelming sameness of the CMB also tells us something about the early universe. Two points on the CMB on opposite sides of the sky shouldn’t have almost exactly the same temperature, since they weren’t close together at recombination. The most popular explanation for this is “inflation”: a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, quantum fluctuations caused the universe to expand at an extreme rate. Points that were far apart at recombination today were neighbors before inflation, so they have nearly the same temperature.

According to theory, inflation left its mark on the CMB in the form of the twisting of light known as polarization. Astronomers use modern telescopes to look for that polarization, in hopes of seeing the behavior of the universe when it was only a fraction of a second old.

See: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/research/topic/cosmic-microwave-background

** Photon is a particle of light defined as a discrete bundle (or quantum) of electromagnetic (or light) energy. Photons are always in motion and, in a vacuum (a completely empty space), have a constant speed of light to all observers. Photons travel at the vacuum speed of light (more commonly just called the speed of light) of c= 2.998 x 108 m/s.

Basic Properties of Photons
According to the photon theory of light, photons:

• behave like a particle and a wave, simultaneously
• move at a constant velocity, c = 2.9979 x 108 m/s (i.e. "the speed of light"), in empty space
• have zero mass and rest energy
• carry energy and momentum, which are also related to the frequency (nu) and wavelength (lamdba) of the electromagnetic wave, as expressed by the equation E = h nu and p = h / lambda.
• can be destroyed/created when radiation is absorbed/emitted.
• can have particle-like interactions (i.e. collisions) with electrons and other particles, such as in the Compton effect in which particles of light collide with atoms, causing the release of electrons.

History of Photons
The term photon was coined by Gilbert Lewis in 1926, though the concept of light in the form of discrete particles had been around for centuries and had been formalized in Newton's construction of the science of optics.

In the 1800s, however, the wave properties of light (by which is meant electromagnetic radiation in general) became glaringly obvious and scientists had essentially thrown the particle theory of light out the window. It wasn't until Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect and realized that light energy had to be quantized that the particle theory returned.

Wave-Particle Duality in Brief
As mentioned above, light has properties of both a wave and a particle. This was an astounding discovery and is certainly outside the realm of how we normally perceive things. Billiard balls act as particles, while oceans act as waves. Photons act as both a wave and a particle all the time (even though it's common but basically incorrect, to say that it's "sometimes a wave and sometimes a particle" depending upon which features are more obvious at a given time).

Just one of the effects of this wave-particle duality (or particle-wave duality) is that photons, though treated as particles, can be calculated to have frequency, wavelength, amplitude, and other properties inherent in wave mechanics.

Fun Photon Facts
The photon is an elementary particle, despite the fact that it has no mass. It cannot decay on its own, although the energy of the photon can transfer (or be created) upon interaction with other particles. Photons are electrically neutral and are one of the rare particles that are identical to their antiparticle, the antiphoton.

Photons are spin-1 particles (making them bosons), with a spin axis that is parallel to the direction of travel (either forward or backward, depending on whether it's a "left-hand" or "right-hand" photon). This feature is what allows for polarization of light.

See: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-photon-definition-and-properties-2699039

There are many interpretations of what this and other phenomena in quantum mechanics mean on a deeper level. But my personal philosophy approximates that of the famous physicist Richard Feynman, inventor of the Feynman diagrams, who said to have uttered when queried: "Shut up and calculate."
Hartmann352

 

[Hayseed]

I, unlike most, have come to realize that some questions can not be answered, and time and resources should not be spent on them.

The creation of this universe is one of those questions. However, with a little common sense and clarity, I believe we can understand physicality at present.

We need to start over with light. Light is man's greatest error. The false math accredited to light, gives us false computer processed images.

Both in astronomy and sensors more local.

To me, a photon is only a math term. It describes only a partial character of light.

 

[Lariliss]

We need to start over with light. Light is man's greatest error. The false math accredited to light, gives us false computer processed images.

Both in astronomy and sensors more local.

To me, a photon is only a math term. It describes only a partial character of light.

The superposition of a sufficiently large number of photons has the characteristics of a continuous electromagnetic wave.

Coming just to every-day human perception.

Infrared radiation, with its relatively long wavelength and low photon energy, produces effects in tissue similar to those of microwaves.

In contrast, ultraviolet photons have enough energy to interact with molecules in entirely different ways, ionizing molecules and breaking molecular bonds. Interactions of ultraviolet radiation with matter are best understood from the photon perspective, with the absorption of each photon being associated with a particular molecular event.

Visible light is at a transition point in the electromagnetic spectrum. The energy of photons of visible light is large enough to cause molecular transitions—which is how the eye detects light. The bending of light by the lens of the eye requires us to think of light as a wave.

RGB displays. REASON We’ve seen that there are three different types of cones in the eye. By using differing amounts of three pure colors, we can independently stimulate each of the cone types and thus mimic the response of the eye to light of almost any color. ASSESS The fact that there are three primary colors of light—red, green, and blue— is a function of our physiology, not basic physics.

At the highest energies of the electromagnetic spectrum we find x rays and gamma rays.



The speed of light c = 299,792,458 m/s was never proved by an experiment. It was derived from round-trip time delay.
Speed of light is a convention rather than a fact.
Einstein himself in 1905 put it in his paper ‘On the Electrodynamics of moving bodies’.
There is no way for synchronizing the clocks, measuring light start point time and end point time.
Quote from the paper: ‘‘Stipulation that I can make on my free will to arrive at a definition of simultaneity.’

His ’convention definition’ that time travel is the same toward and backwards (Einstein’s synchronization convention).
This convention is accepted as one of the asymmetries in the universe (for instance, uneven matter distribution).

If the speed of light is not the same in different directions. It may go c/2 in one way and instantaneous in another. So even we might see stars exactly as they are now.

When light arrives at the detector, you know nothing about light. You just see it, and it’s there.
As long as c is correct for round trip delay, none of the physics breaks.

Since 1905 we have used Occam's razor for the exploration (same speed of light in both directions).

"Shut up and calculate." - great one!