Re: Relativity and the nature of light. Waves or particles?

Le 25/10/2024 à 05:52, clzb93ynxj@att.net (LaurenceClarkCrossen) a écrit :

Mr. Hertz: Everyone must be compelled to accept that light has a
wave-particle duality, so it is impossible to understand it as one or
the other. The speed of light in a vacuum would have to be added to the
emitter, just as a particle would. It must form compression waves in a
medium because it is constrained to the speed of the medium, such as air
or intergalactic gas. As with sound, the speed of light must be combined
with that of the observer as long as we are rational.

You are right, we must be rational.
And when there is something that we do not understand, we must seek to understand it rationally.
It is not nature and the cosmos that are not rational, nor the laws of physics, but the mind of man.
If man were rational, he would implement the Chinese proverb: "It is better to appear ignorant for five minutes than to remain so all your life".
This means that when you do not understand something, you should not hesitate to ask, even if it means appearing stupid, and to lower your pants a little.
This is what it means to be rational.
Now, let me explain: light is neither really a wave in the sense that we understand it in physics, nor a particle in the sense that we understand it in kinematics.
But it takes the appearance of both states depending on how we look at it.
What is a "photon" really?
It is an instantaneous transaction of a quantum of energy between an atomic source and an atomic receiver IN the receiver's frame of reference.
It is only the spatial anisochrony between the two ends of the path
that gives light an observable speed of c, a speed that it does not really have (since the transfer is instantaneous for the photon and for the receiver, but not for the transmitter whose photon leaves at c/2 "somewhere" in the future without him really knowing where (he will only know when the event is in his hyperplane of simultaneity).
The best way to think of the photon is therefore, in relativistic physics: instantaneous transmission in the receiver's space-time of a quantum of energy.
This way of thinking, which is correct, is however not very intuitive.
The physicist being used to thinking: it is the source that is active, and sends the photon, and it is the receiver that is passive.
However, it is strangely the opposite that is true.
The source is totally passive (it is only excited, heated and made capable of transmitting) and it is the receiver that is active and snatches a quantum from the source, and live-direct FOR HIM.
"They said things backwards".
R.H.