Photons and determinism, part 2
February 23, 2015 at 6:44 pm
(This post was last modified: February 23, 2015 at 6:47 pm by bennyboy.)
Okay, so photons "experience" no passing of time. In other words, in the relative framework of a photon, whatever it's leaving and whatever it arrives at are brought together to a zero distance-- i.e. they share the same point.
Now, let's say that a photon leaves a very distance star, perhaps 1000 years away, and travels through gas clouds and (let's say in this case) the atmosphere of at least one planet, before arriving at my eye. The question is this-- could ANYTHING happen in QM, any kind of butterfly effect, which could change the final destination of that photon? Could any QM effect cause a buttefly effect which subtly affects the path of the photon?
The answer must be no. No time has passed for that photon in its long journey, so it was always going to arrive at my eye, and no matter what happens in its journey, this is written in stone. I think from this that we can conclude that IF relativity is correct, then the universe MUST be entirely 2-way deterministic (i.e. QM events must also be deterministic, because no butterfly effect can possibly exist which can interfere with an event that is timeless in any frame of reference). So this means that even though the photon left its distant star 1000 years ago in our time, and passed through that planetary atmosphere say 500 years ago, the state of that atmosphere was already (pre-)determined: it was truly inevitable.
Does this argument seem unsound to anyone?
Now, let's say that a photon leaves a very distance star, perhaps 1000 years away, and travels through gas clouds and (let's say in this case) the atmosphere of at least one planet, before arriving at my eye. The question is this-- could ANYTHING happen in QM, any kind of butterfly effect, which could change the final destination of that photon? Could any QM effect cause a buttefly effect which subtly affects the path of the photon?
The answer must be no. No time has passed for that photon in its long journey, so it was always going to arrive at my eye, and no matter what happens in its journey, this is written in stone. I think from this that we can conclude that IF relativity is correct, then the universe MUST be entirely 2-way deterministic (i.e. QM events must also be deterministic, because no butterfly effect can possibly exist which can interfere with an event that is timeless in any frame of reference). So this means that even though the photon left its distant star 1000 years ago in our time, and passed through that planetary atmosphere say 500 years ago, the state of that atmosphere was already (pre-)determined: it was truly inevitable.
Does this argument seem unsound to anyone?
