/sci/ - Science & Math

Velocity is a classically continuous evaluation, is it not? p/m

How do you quantize p?

Stating that you cannot observe velocity without an interaction. Stating that all interactions are based on photon exchanges.

You cannot change your motion without a force. A force is going to be computed as a change in energy. A change in energy is equivalent to a change in frequency (or the addition or subtraction of units h) in QM and thus is quantized or, in Classical Mechanics, we say that your velocity is changed.

Velocity is a classically continuous curve, which means that changes in energy have no defined minimum. Now, changes in photon energy are quantized in units h.

If we restrict ourselves to saying that acceleration can be determined locally, what we are saying is that a local measurement detects some change in a local condition. This local condition is a blue shift inside the vessel that is accelerating (and this correlates to the experience of "weight" (think accelerating from a dead stop in an elevator). Once the change has occurred, and a terminal velocity has been achieved, no experiment conducted inside the moving frame can detect motion. Only by comparing events happening outside the moving frame to events happening inside the moving frame can we come to recognize the presence of accelerated motion.

This detection *always* gets transmitted by photons, or is always reduced to an analysis of photon frequencies.

The metric is unnecessary, it can be eliminated without any loss to our ability to make prediction.

But that is a much larger discussion....

Cherenkov radiation is still light radiation. And that is how neutrinos are detected.

Or, that is what the detectors are set to record. And so even a neutrino is reduced to being observed by its impacts on other objects, and the resulting photon production.

Space-time exists independently of photons but motion upon the metric cannot be measured without reference to a photon (or several photons).

Now, we can certainly detect a neutrino or a proton or an electron but we do not see these objects rather we see the momentum (photon energy) that they transfer to another object when undergoing an interaction.

WE would not say that a perturbation was created where no energy was exchanged. Of course, we can create a positron-electron pair in the strong field of an atom with gamma ray annihilation. Now, if the atom is in motion then we do not need a gamma ray - a less energetical photon will do the trick. So long as the *total energy* of the reaction is sufficient.

Space-time may exist independently from photons but you cannot measure its presence without measuring photons - is my statement. So to say it exists is a bit like saying God exists - more a matter of faith than demonstration.

And so it is loggerheads all the way down....

Quantifying the force that acts upon an object is the difficult part.

I mean, classical mechanics is simply the mechanics of infinitesimal change and Quantum Mechanics is the mechanics of quantized change (multiples of the unit h).

So acceleration is the addition of a finite amount of energy and this exactly corresponds to a photon energy (otherwise it could not be observed).

Distance and related concepts follow from observable quantities. So we have to identify what the actual observable quantities are.

And the only observable quantities we have are photons.

So we reduced the discussion to one regarding quantizing velocity in units of photon energy. Then we tried to quantize distance in terms of photon events and created a loggerhead.

Fail.

Yeah.

I am here for strange reasons. Never been on sci thread before.

Just started this:

www.piratenode.net

Unrelated. TV. Science of control. More fun.

Sauce.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/63612/title/Black_hole_silhouettes

Hmm... Distance is normally thought of a span of physical space. More often than not people refer to distance as a length. The length matters because you can fit things into it.

A mathematical idea, length. Physics deals with objects, and it says that objects of finite energy take up a finite space. We measure things by registering absolute changes (0,1) or by measuring changes of degree (1, 1.2, 1.6).

Space is not a physical object. It is however filled with physical objects. So we grab an arbitrary object and say that it has a length. But we are measuring this object. The measurements require photons.

Maybe I am wrong and we don't need photons to measure things. But if I am wrong about that then qM is also entirely wrong. As a matter of fact, almost all physics would have to be revised.

A math concept is not always easily converted into a QM concept. Distance is one of those classical ideas that gets blown to bits by the reality underpinning the "observable" universe.

My two cents.

We also know the "size" of a black hole because we can see the radius compared with the background temperature. So we can see them indirectly, or better yet we can compare temperatures of the background and the object and discern a size.

Distance is normally thought of a span of physical space. More often than not people refer to distance as a length. The length matters because you can fit things into it.

A mathematical idea, length. Physics deals with objects, and it says that objects of finite energy take up a finite space. We measure things by registering absolute changes (0,1) or by measuring changes of degree (1, 1.2, 1.6).

Space is not a physical object. It is however filled with physical objects. So we grab an arbitrary object and say that it has a length. But we are measuring this object. The measurements require photons.

Maybe I am wrong and we don't need photons to measure things. But if I am wrong about that then qM is also entirely wrong. As a matter of fact, almost all physics would have to be revised.

A math concept is not always easily converted into a QM concept. Distance is one of those classical ideas that gets blown to bits by the reality underpinning the "observable" universe.

My two cents.

We know black holes are there because we see the effect they have on photons. We call them black holes because they are in a thermodynamic cycle whereby they absorb energy but they do not seem to re-radiate any of it (a kind of self-referential heat sink).

But if you want to travel a distance you will be measuring events and these events are photon events.

But, ok, let's say that we do not need light to define distance. Then we say that alpha centari is 4 light years away we are really saying that it is (4*365*24*60)*186,000 miles away. So we fix this distance.

Now let's say that no light at all exists over this distance. Does the distance still exist if there are no events separating the earth from alpha centari.

Because each photon is an event. And without those, there is no distance (nor time, but that is another discussion).

The stick pushing against you and another object is registered as photon energy. Or, heat.

The stick has mass. Agreed. It has length. The length changes slightly with temperature. This is true of all materials.

But I see your point. you are saying that you can get a measuring rod and that proves that length exists. But the rod can be observed from different points of view. Here, it is not the rod that is being observed, it is the light that scatters from the rod that is being observed.

Your pushing against the rod is an event, one that cannot exist or have a reality of any kind without photon mediation.

There is no distance event without a photon event.

You are at rest with respect to the stick. Or, are you in motion? your estimation of the length of the stick requires you to use a photon measurement if you want to be precise regarding distance.

But if you want to create an arbitrary length and say that it is the span between you and some other point, that is fine. But you will know that you are somewhere relative to some other somewhere because you are monitoring photon events. And without those events, time itself has no meaning.

You see the stick, do you not?

To be clear, the distance between two points is *entirely determined* by photon observations. There is no distance event aside from observing photons.

You cannot measure an event without a measurable quantity!

Yes, an area of space that has no photons is not observable. And there is no distance between two points that are not separated by photons. What would you be be observing if there is no photon?

Photons have wavelength and this is the dimension of length.

Are you saying that you can become aware of velocity or acceleration without measuring a photon (or a sequence of photons)?

I am not saying that you cannot have multiple photons in the same space. Lasers are a perfect example of stimulated emission. I am saying that in a very specific way of talking we can say that a distance contains photons, that the relativistic experience of length contraction and time dilation require photon measurements, and that objective distance is not a relational structure, photons are relational structures.

The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1⁄299,792,458 of a second

We already use light to fix concepts regarding distance. I am merely stating that distance cannot be experienced absent an event (or a series of events). So to say that two points are separated in space is to say that there exists a sequence of photons between two points.

Distance must be an event. Without the existence of 4 light years worth of photons between earth and alpha centari there is no distance. The apparent separation is a result of the photons, not a result of some other property of space. You do not need to separate the observable quantities from the metric, and say that the metric has a reality that supersedes the observable quantities within the metric. The only thing that can be measured is an event, or a sequence of events, and distance follows from this, it does not precede it.

To be more precise, let me say that space exists, but space is defined as the number of photons of a given wavelength that can "fit" within a finite length.

Then if we say that two objects are separated by 10 red photons of space we are saying that two objects are separated by 550 nanometers * 10.

Closing your eyes is not the same as having no velocity. The absence of velocity spreads the probability of location to Unity (infinity). That makes the zero-v state a very interesting one from the point of view of Schrodinger's eq.

However, if two ships are moving away from each other and sending signals out toward each other then we must assume at some point in time they were closer to each other. And by closer I mean to say that fewer photons separated them.