LIght wave-particle-duality

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The problem with that is mass. Until we can achieve a means of becoming massless, the idea of travel at light speed and seeing what it would be like is moot, as gravity (a side effect of mass **I KNOW, THIS IS A GENERALIZATION OF THE REALITY OF IT, SO SHUSH**) would change the perspective in minute, but drastically observable ways.

If you could travel at the speed of light you would get to where you were going in no time flat.

Think of it this way. You step aboard a faster than light vessel at point A and you immediately step out at point B. No time has passed for you. In reality if you could do this the vessel would have to start from rest relative you your position and accelerate up to light speed. The the vessel would have to decelerate to let you off. So a little time would have passed. The time for the acceleration and decelaration.

ruveyn

ruveyn

Agreed... ONCE we remove mass from the equation... until then, as we approach c, our mass increases in an arc of diminishing returns.

If our calculations are correct, without removing mass, we hit infinite mass at the speed of light. Infinite mass in a finite space = black hole... we end up going NOWHERE FAST.

That being said... I disagree... While my time frame experiences no relative time experience (I am a non-even mass with a quantum probability of zero at relativistic speeds)... Time outside of my framework passes as normal. I don't tick on, but the universe does.

Lol, not quite where I was going. I mean addressing the inside-out aspects of what it means that light is both a) fully time dilated and b) we experiencing it as having both direction and time, which would create a paradox where the sun, a rock (or any object) outside, and my eye are all in the same place at the same time.

I am sorry, but that sounds like the correspondence theory. (Where all things exist as a single point in spacetime and are all tied into our perceptions.

I don't think that is the case.

Moving at the speed of light still leaves you with a definable location and speed, not a scattering of mass and perception...

What's the proper name for the Correspondence Theory as you put it and where can I find a good link to it? I;d love to find some academic papers on it just that the name correspondence theory brings up way to many extraneous results.

We're coming up with increasing numbers of scientists who are accepting the idea that all of 'this' is holographic and where space goes so does time, where time goes so does space. If there is ultimately no solid stuff to the universe its easy to understand how it could have exploded out of a point infinitely small (or the smallest things can get around here - one plank), easier still if time itself is more like a spatial dimension in certain respects than what we perceive it as.

Or is it "pave"?

The really freaky thing? The results of the "two-slit" experiment! The electrons "know" when they're being watched!

More likely it is our influence by establishing the experiment that dictates the results...

Though, what's really freaky is the fact that a SINGLE electron can be made to cast an interference pattern

It isn't a particle when it travels through the slits, it's still in it's wave state.
The wave has to 'collapse' into a particle.

Wave and particle are mathematical constructs and metaphors. The Real Thing is neither. Wave and Particle modalities are -ways of describing- the real thing. Since there are no contradictions in reality, no thing can be both a wave and a particle at the same time under the same circumstance so there is no contradiction in quantum mechanics.

ruveyn

"A photon is neither a particle or a wave, but something that exhibits the properties of both."
What I cant find the answer to, is after a photon has been collapsed into its particle state, can it then be un-collapsed back into its wave state?

It seems like you are not really reading the posts...

First off... I understand the dual slit experiment and it's ramification... but you missed the point... a SINGLE electron can interfere with ITSELF, going through BOTH slits at the same time...

Secondly... A photon does not change forms... it simply behaves AS both based on the experiment being performed... But it is NOT a wave, OR a particle...

as my previous post stated "The answer is that light is a quantum mechanical object that isn't a wave or particle - i.e. something much more mathematically complicated that has some wave-like and some particle-like properties.

In spite of the description of photons "striking" or hitting other objects, photons don't have quantum mechanical wave-functions... oddly enough, they don't even have positions... even in that hazy cloud that quantum mechanics considers positions (RE: protons, neutrons and electrons)...

Feynman and his colleagues developed the quantum electrodynamic description (QED) of light that describes its nature and behavior in much more detail, BUT that is just for now. Some new observation may change this in the future. For now, however, QED remains the most accurately tested theory in physics with no observational disagreements to date.

Light as a wave pretty much explains all of the macro properties of light. Light as a particle pretty much explains all the micro properties of light. Keep in mind, when ever anyone speaks about light as a wave or particle... nature is much more subtle."

At this point I rather remain in silence and be perceived as not knowing, rather than opening my mouth and removing all doubt.

It's all good... sorry for my strident posts... Simply put... Light is not a wave or a particle, it has properties of both. We use the terms in an effort to describe what we see... it transcends and defies description in the laymen's terms... Nothing else in physics suffers more from the observer effect worse than light.

That doesn't bode well for the so-called solidity of everything else though either. AFAIK they were doing this with whole atoms and getting a similar effect.

I disagree. There is nothing about atoms and even some molecules demonstrating wave/particle duality that contradicts the current model. It actually this behavior is predicted by a higgs field universe...