RE: Photons and determinism, part 2
February 25, 2015 at 12:44 am
(This post was last modified: February 25, 2015 at 12:47 am by bennyboy.)
(February 24, 2015 at 11:28 pm)Surgenator Wrote:It can't, so it didn't. From the photon's frame, your hand couldn't have moved, and therefore it didn't. Despite the photon seeming to "move" from our perspective it actually represents a curve through spacetime, immalleable and unchangeable. And therefore. . . determinism.(February 24, 2015 at 8:29 pm)bennyboy Wrote: The photon was always going to hit your paper, right at the point it left the emitter, and before (in our reference frame) you moved the paper to block its path. This is because for the photon, no time has passed and no distance had to be covered-- the photon represents a direct link between the emitter on the moon and the receiving body, i.e. your eye. Whatever the photon hits, it could not have hit anything else, because there is no time in which the photon could be influenced by anything.
I'm pretty sure this is one of the apparent paradoxes in physics, and is connected to the observer effect, to wave/particule "duality," etc.
How do you know it was always going to hit the paper? The fact that it hit the paper doesn't prove that it was always going to hit the paper. How fast did I move the paper according to the photon reference frame? Infinitely fast. How can my hand move faster than the speed of light?
Quote:IATIA reminded me of something else. What is the speed of light in the photons reference frame? What is the speed of light in any other reference frame? Do you realize the contradiction yet? The fundamental assumption for relativity, the speed of light is the same in all proper inertial reference frame, is a contradiction in the photons reference frame. The photon suppose to be going at 3e8 m/s in its reference frame, but its suppose to be at rest in its reference frame. Contradiction! That is the conceptual reason why the photon reference frame is invalid.That's right. In its own frame of reference, the photon is not moving. . . for 0.0000000000000000000 seconds, after which it is absorbed into a receiving medium. In other words, the photon draws the projecting medium and the receiving medium into a single point in spacetime. That zero distance represents a collapse of the universe into a singularity-- tricky, naughty little photon!