Re: An Alternative Interpretation of the Light Postulate
- From: "Sue..." <suzysewnshow@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:08:35 -0700
On Oct 18, 10:03 am, Alen <al...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
AN ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE LIGHT
POSTULATE
I previously indicated three questions that Einstein did not
deal with, or distinguish, in his introduction of the concept
of nonsimultaneity in his 1905 paper, as follows:
1) Is the conclusion of nonsimultaneity an appearance caused
solely by the working of the light itself, in accordance with the
light postulate, and not by any other cause that exists
independently of the light?
2) Is the conclusion of nonsimultaneity an appearance caused
by some underlying property of space and time themselves,
in the context of the relative velocity of inertial frames, that the
working of the light only reveals, but doesn't actually cause?
3) Is the conclusion of nonsimultaneity an appearance caused
by a combination of both of the above suggested possibilities?
It has always been assumed that the answer to the second
question is yes, which, in effect, was an assumption of the
existence of Minkowski spacetime as the correct model to
explain the existence of nonsimultaneity effects.
Here, however, I shall attempt to examine what might be the
result of a supposition that the correct model involves an
affirmative answer to the first question.
We do not need to examine, here, the derivation, or the
mathematics, of the SR equations themselves, since we have
to consider only the interpretation of the physical results. Since
we are to consider an alternative to the spacetime rotations
concept, we must return to the original context in which the
dynamical derivation of the equations, in terms of the two
postulates of SR, took place, and not make any assumption
that any spatial or time coordinate axis is rotated in spacetime
relative to any other.
Let us, therefore, return to Einstein on his railway
embankment, and consider how light appears to travel
within a moving train from the perspective of both the
observer on the embankment and the observer on the train.
Let rays of light be emitted, at the same time, from the
centre of a train carriage to both ends. For both observers,
the rays of light are emitted simultaneously, since they form
only a single event for either observer. As we know already,
according to the light postulate, and the conclusion of
nonsimultaneity, the light rays will simultaneously reach the
ends of the carriage in the view of the observer on the train,
whereas they will not simultaneously reach the ends of the
carriage in the view of the observer on the embankment.
Such results were interpreted to indicate that time cannot
be the same for both observers, which then led to the
conclusion that there is no such thing as a universal, common
time for all observers and, thereafter, to the concept of
Minkowski spacetime. This was thus an assumption that
the answer to the secondquestion must be yes. It is a pity,
I would say, that no one was there at the time to say "wait a
minute - is that really the only possible explanation for the
above nonsimultaneity effect?" It is time, therefore, to attempt
to examine a possible answer to this question, in terms of
an affirmative answer to the first of the three questions.
It might appear obvious that time cannot be the same for
both observers, since both see the same light, and yet see
it describing the same events nonsimultaneously. Is it not
an assumption, however, that both observers 'see the same
light'? What does this assumption actually mean? We might
suppose it to be obvious that a photon is a single entity, a
single focus of propagation, that can be picked up by either
observer. But, granted that a photon can be regarded as a
single entity in itself, is it not, nevertheless, merely an
assumption that it is, as it were, identical with its focus of
propagation? Suppose, therefore, we postulate a distinction
between a photon, as an entity, and its focus of propagation,
and ask the question: could a single photon, perhaps, have
more than one focus of propagation at the same time? Might
the observer on the train and the observer on the embankment
really not be seeing the 'same' light after all?
If, indeed, a photon can have more than one focus of
propagation, it is quite possible that it could have a focus
of propagation in the carriage reference frame distinct from
its focus of propagation in the frame of the embankment. It is
then easy to consider the possibility that not only may the
foci of propagation be distinct, but their individual trajectories
in space and time might be distinct also. The criterion for
identifying the nature of the difference between the trajectories
of the two foci of propagation will then be simply the light
postulate. That is, a photon will have a focus of propagation
travelling at velocity c in the carriage reference frame, and a
different focus of propagation travelling at velocity c in the
embankment reference frame.
Such a condition can fully account for the nonsimultaneity
effect in the observation of the same event by the two
different observers. That is, the observer on the train
encounters a photon by means of a different focus of
propagation, at a different time, than that by which the
observer on the embankment would encounter the same
photon. Thus, the implication that time, itself, is not the
same for both observers no longer exists. The explanation,
instead, is that it is light, and not time, that is not the
same for both observers and, in general, for different inertial
observers in relative motion.
The appearance of a time dilation might then be explained
by a relationship, or information transfer, between the different
foci of propagation in the different inertial frames, thus furthering
the suggesting that the nature of light, or the nature of a photon,
is more peculiar than it is at present understood to be. Length
contraction, likewise, might also be an appearance created by
the photon, via a property of the trajectory of its focus of
propagation in the frame in which the length contraction appears.
More needs to be said in relation to this suggested possible
peculiar nature of light, and I will say more about this on a
separate post, which I will call part II, in order not to make this
post too long. It will, in fact, turn out that the peculiar nature of
light, suggested as applicable to the interpretation of SR, will
be such as might easily also provide an explanation for the
mechanism underlying the results associated with nonlocality
and entanglement of photons, as seen in recent experiments.
The conundrum doesn't even exist if the light
paths are correctly modeled.
Propagation in a dielectric medium
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/em/lectures/node98.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_impedance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_space
http://www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/ism/what.html
<<Now, does not the prize to Einstein imply
that the Academy recognised the particle
nature of light? The Nobel Committee says
that Einstein had found that the energy exchange
between matter and ether occurs by atoms emitting
or absorbing a quantum of energy,hv .
As a consequence of the new concept of light quanta
(in modern terminology photons) Einstein proposed the
law that an electron emitted from a substance by
monochromatic light with the frequency has to have
a maximum energy of E=hv-p, where p is the energy needed to
remove the electron from the substance. Robert Andrews
Millikan carried out a series of measurements over a
period of 10 years, finally confirming the validity of this
law in 1916 with great accuracy. Millikan had, however,
found the idea of light quanta to be unfamiliar and strange.
The Nobel Committee avoids committing itself to the
particle concept. Light-quanta or with modern terminology,
photons, were explicitly mentioned in the reports on
which the prize decision rested only in connection with
emission and absorption processes. The Committee says
that the most important application of Einstein's photoelectric
law and also its most convincing confirmation has come from
the use Bohr made of it in his theory of atoms, which explains
a vast amount of spectroscopic data. >>
http://nobelprize.org/physics/articles/ekspong/index.html
Sue...
[...]
Alen
.
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