Photons, Wave or was it a particle or?

Hi yor_on, StevenA, regallow et al,

I must admit that StevenA is a very knowledgeable chap. It is his style to explain using statistical argument using the particle paradigm. In a converse sense we "elves" are "wave" orientated and find the particle paradigm "off". I will give an example that has some reference to the Rochester Experiments and also to the field of Holography.

The statistical nature of particle phenomena sort of suggests that photons have a randomness that cannot be averted. I will state (without proof here) that insisting on a particle interpretation of events leads to a loss of informational data that cannot be usually restored. For instance take Young's Double Slit Experiment where we have no "which way" information you may think that the photons on the screen are deposited with a certain "randomness" that is intrinsically related to the quantum nature of our Universe. Examination of the numbers in these problems does indicate a quantum "noise" that seems totally unavoidable. Naturally if you use a detector that forces the "wave" phenomena to be localized and discrete we will certainly see this noise.

On the other hand the information gathered by "impacts of individual ballistic photons" on a two dimensional sensor array like a CMOS light sensor used in cameras cannot be used to record phase... the act of measurement using this kind of sensor destroys this phase information apparently irretrievably. What is recorded is a single bit of data as StevenA has stated. Almost all Lab experiments use some kind of sensor based on a principle related to these electronic class of devices. It is no coincidence that we build sensors that duplicate in some way our own optical sensors... eyes.

What is not said is replace this sensor with a "deep" sensitive photo-emulsion on a rigid stand that can register individual photons and what we see is an "in-depth" record of this photon absorption that actually records some information about phase... not all information but some!! The emulsion does not need to be placed at the "screen" but the emulsion can be placed "anywhere" and still record the entire "field" through the phase record encoded in the emulsion. It just so happens that the screen information can be recorded anywhere and not just at the screen since the Hologram is a kind of "remote sensor". If the plates are developed and then re-illuminated with a laser of the same wavelength as the source a reconstruction of the entire scene in full three dimensions, not just information about photons that actually strike the emulsion (which is all the information recorded by an optical sensor at the screen) but the location of all visible elements in the surrounding "dark Universe" and their respective dimensions and positions as well as the "brightness" of all objects as they were seen from the position of the emulsion.

What I mean is you truly need to restrict the information recorded by the emulsion to just the laser wavelength and even then the existence of other photons must be "perfectly screened out or kept to an absolute minimum (in the dark)". Extra light and extra frequencies would be "noise" in this system. What we see is a billion times the information recorded by the brightness "flashes" on the screen showing a simple repeated banding on the sensor in 2D... what we have is a snapshot of this "dark Universe" which has one diverged coherent source and the inter-relationships as standing wavelets in space recorded as that set of fringes inside the emulsion. These fringes are "in-depth" and demonstrate that the single grains of the photographic emulsion being exposed, which are from photons that have traveled directly to the photographic plate through the principle of least action finds a suitable "site" to darken a single grain of Silver Halide in the depth of the emulsion. In front of that position in the emulsion .... there is no partial absorption of that photon and behind that grain there is no "overshoot" of the photon... the absorption of one photon occurs at one place (all or nothing)... not necessarily on the surface of the emulsion but on an optimum place within the emulsion (because the emulsion is otherwise transparent before being developed). Very careful examination of this emulsion after development will show an almost "perfect" arrangement of light and dark bands of exposure inside the emulsion.... not randomly as you may expect but with great precision. These represent "standing waves"... exposure is a maximum at "antinodes" and a minimum at the nodes.

The next amazing fact that we can demonstrate is that this picture is not an interference between interfering photons such as a mixing may suggest... No... this effect does occur with single photons ... one at a time. These photons are interfering with themselves.

So "whats missing from this picture?".... Why such a richness and redundancy in the information from Holograms and why such poor statistical and randomized data from the "digitized" optical sensor array? The answer is the digital optical array is a "particle detector" and the photographic emulsion is a "wave detector" that simply uses particles. The obvious problem with these sensors is they mimic our simple and limited eyes in the way they gather data. We have systems that can do better but we can ignore this information if we become "one eyed" and see things in anthropomorphic terms only... intensity and two dimensional flat images like those produced by the retina of our eyes. I am reminded of Abbott's book on Flatland. We are "flatlanders" using restricted optical sensors and we have developed our understanding of our Universe around "flatland" and we have placed ourselves at the center of that Universe. Surprise surprise!... we are not alone in this wide Universe and perhaps there are most likely creatures with eyes developed along more complex optical systems than a "Box Brownie and a blob of transparent plastic".

I have used an analogy of a "Dark Universe" to show the richness and fineness of detail and the vast redundancy of this information carried by single self interfering photons. Consider that every photon carries "vast" information that we never seem to want to record. We have used KISS (Keep it simple stupid) but what we have forgotten is particles are single disconnected "events" while photons when we think of them in this way are tiny parts of a much larger whole. Snap a corner off a hologram and the entire hologram remains when seen through that "window", it is simply restricted to that smaller view. Mankind is restricted to a very small view... our evolution and our minds and its ability to retain information. Greater minds have greater grasps of the Universe than we may be ever capable of... this is just accepting our position in the order of things ... A little above the animals with our brain or below most of them with some other aspects of our physiology such as our optical system.

What I will add to this picture is what I have said before earlier about Quantum Theory...

Holograms show us a bigger Universe even though we cannot see three dimensions (we only see "parallax"). Photons obviously have a global connection to "everything" and photons have a history and a "quality" that "feels" the surrounding Universe very accurately before they are "damaged" through absorption. The photons in holograms also have a very definite "path" that reflect its origins (the source) and the arrangement of the surrounding universe... through "seeking all paths".

Cheers

StevenA. As always a pleasure :)

" information content is subjective and needs something to measure it (so you can see this equivalent to physical systems in that you need some physical method to measure something and something different to contrast the measurement with " Yep.

"So even if the universe was entirely randomly constructed, it would seem we'd still use those randomly selected components to construct rules of how things interact and these would seem to be able to naturally give rise to observations such as statistically accurate wave function in space. The question, to me, is how does that stable source of memory/storage/correlation (that constructs a perceive of space and time) operate " Another extremely good question :)

" space is constructed from discrete interactions, as existing in a space without discrete interactions means not being able to make discrete decisions and take discrete actions, we're limited to discrete forms of communication in science in any event so science, as a social institution based upon communication between people can only express things in terms compatible with those forms of communication . And this is about time, right? That are the discrete divider of information.Or are you thinking of discrete events as in the 'black body' experiments? Or maybe both? Then you'll have two 'dividers'

" Useful knowledge could also be seen as discrete in a sense because ultimately it needs to have some specific and discrete application and not forever remain a nebulous range of possible actions. " The word's you know my man, sometimes when you guys 'speak up' i get this feeling that physics real 'soul' are poetry in motion :). And it's so cool to read

" .That knowledge appears to be fundamentally described using logical pathways, similar to an electronic circuit that would compute that equivalent function " Now Sir, that is a bold statement, the soul reduced to the bit :)

" These computations could be seen to move through a lattice that's an array of identical nodes with the only significant feature being how the signals are routed through this network and that gives rise to the idea that all scientific/physical knowledge should be representable in terms of geometry with information flowing through a light speed space, though not necessarily 3 dimensional but it's not difficult to demonstrate why the majority of interactions in space appear as 3 dimensional - it's the least restrictive form of communication. " here i wonder what steers the computation through the lattice?And if you introduce the idea of 'higher' dimensions, what will that do to your lattice? To me it seems as you have two choices either you keep the information in three dimensions and then you have a 'simple' lattice with a bit information that are easily understood. Or you use more dimensions and this signal now may appear to us threedimensional beings as unrecognizable as it may f ex shove itself at different locations at the same 'time'. Or am i bicycling in the blue yonder again?

" A more accurate representation of a freeway might be seen as a blur of headlights (as you may have seen in some movies) merged over all times of day and with various types of asphalt and curvatures " Nice definition.So, if i understand, the detectors did see a photon each and as that is not acceptable as we sent only one the result was disregarded which is a direct result of the? I still don't get it. If we were talking of waves it would make sense to me, but here we are treating them as particles? And if you are treating them as vawefunctions even then the 'superimposing' breaks down as you observe them/it.. Hey don't expect to much here. Its well known that Swedes have very limited brain capacity although we are blessed in other regions :)

" I meant that they each detected different photons but over a range of time, not the same photon. So we threw away the information about the chronology of events when we represented it as A=1 B=1 , instead of saying A first, B second or visa versa " Woops, oh, well as i said above, i'm very blessed :)

" The reference to 1001 possible detected beam positions is a result of use being able to measure from 0 to 1000 counts at a detector (which is actually 1001 possible values, just like 0 to 1 gives us two possible locations). So we could create a graph with 1001 locations to place the sampled results for a block of 1000 photons." Ok i accept that as a logical view, why? because it is :) It comes back to possible variations of that 5.5 photon chart right?

" no thing in itself has any meaning without some relationship to something else" .Absolutely true.and so you became to investigate discrete relationships i guess? and our timesense is what makes us able to differentiate . Absolutely right :)

" So anyway, by knowing the delay (which requires a clock) between an emitter and one of the detectors, we can estimate the distance between them which gives us some reference for relative spacial locations to be determined." I'm still not sure on that one, to know the distance would only be possible after you sampled the results? and you could probably pinpoint their exact locations if you had two emitters sending to both, and then by knowing the distance between those and looking at the results from A an B contra the timing create a mapping but from one to two unknown location's in space? The only thing you could be sure of is the distance.. Or? yes yes, i know, i will get my bicycle :)

This post has been edited by yor_on on Jul 13 2007, 03:59 AM

You know Steven, i never realized how much i was going to miss math until i started talking with you guys (and gal's :). When you say " then the sequence of photon detections between these 4 detectors provides 2 bits of information per photon ". And i would be sitting in a school bench, i guess i would just nod knowledgeable with a wise smile plastered to my face. Probably i would use it to impress Chic's :) too. Explain please...

This post has been edited by yor_on on Jul 13 2007, 03:42 AM

First of all Regallow, if that now is your real name (I can't help myself on that one, it's so adequate to Cyberspace:) Don't you chicken out here :) When i said i had lot's of questions i didn't joke. You may work from different angels and with different views, but as far as i'm concerned life is a learning experience and how the F* will i ever learn anything if people just disappear? I have friends, oh yes, there is no way you will be able to hide, capisce`? ( someday i'll grow up too, but i hope it takes a long long time :)

" 'Instant acceleration' oversimplifies the situation. Consider a photon's birth. It either comes into being complete in no time or it grows into completeness during the transition time of an electron shifting orbits in an atom (for example). Growing to completeness, with its leading edge moving away before the transition is complete, makes most physical sense to me (but others may look at it differently). " Here you already left me with two new Q. first ' into being complete in no time ' which i find mystical as you already know :) and then " Growing to completeness ' which sounds a Little like group and phase? velocity to me. the information content moving after the first transition?

" The electron, if a wave function in orbit, might simply shift its leading edge to a new orbit path, especially if two paths (higher and lower energy) cross each other. If the electron is not a wave function but exists as a particle, such as in a plasma (my opinion here), it has rest mass that should need time to accelerate to a new vector momentum trajectory. In either case the time a photon takes to grow to completion should be represented as well in the electron's transition. The photon isn't 'accelerated' to light speed; light speed is inherent to its existence, since it requires speed to contain its energy."

First you say something like this and then you say 'Goodbye and have a interesting journey, no way my man :) You are sounding almost poetic here,' light speed is inherent to its existence, since it requires speed to contain its energy ' :) This you also have to explain. Look at me as your friendly inquisition. When you guys expand on your thinking i too expand mine. and that's the best kick known to Wo/man (if the Chic's get the capital letter i believe them easier to handle :). I don't see think that any of you see this as a race, I see it as a chance for me to get a good understanding on what physics contain nowadays. So for me, all of you views have a equal value and i hereby refuse anyone else using this thread as a judge. friendly questioning is different, so to speak. After all it's my room, even if i keep falling over my *** now and then (damn, Zephir didn't you promise that they was harmless :)

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'One reason why the term relativistic mass is sometimes avoided is because there is actually a directional dependence to a particle's resistance to being accelerated; it's much easier to push a fast-moving particle sideways than it is to alter its speed in its direction of motion. '
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This statement should apply to particles with rest mass, not photons. It has to do with relativistic momentum, which is a vector value, rather than relativistic mass, which is a scalar value. I haven't confirmed the statement myself but it seems appropriate. "

Relativistic momentum contra relativistic mass? This is what i'm talking about StevenA GoodElf Alphanumeric Euler probably would nod at this and understand exactly what you are meaning, but for me both are new concepts (well, one at least and the combination makes me confused) ...so....No Way you can walk Regallow :) how should i think here?

I'm sorry i haven't answered directly but i'm congesting? (is that the right word) and as i said i'm blessed :) I'm slowww, satisfied? But i read and i ponder, and i think others than me get a kick out of this too. And now i will read some more of your thinking and forget to go to sleep again. But as they say in the comercials, its worth it! Well, they say something to that order, i think? ...He walks away muttering under his breath 'nitpicks' :)

This post has been edited by yor_on on Jul 13 2007, 04:11 AM

GoodElf That is a very cool experiment.

Are you speaking of a holographic emulsion? when you say " .What is not said is replace this sensor with a "deep" sensitive photo-emulsion on a rigid stand that can register individual photons and what we see is an "in-depth" record of this photon absorption that actually records some information about phase... not all information but some!! "

I presume that you do as you write " It just so happens that the screen information can be recorded anywhere and not just at the screen since the Hologram is a kind of "remote sensor". " .How do you create this kind of emulsion? And it's sensitive enough to catch one photon? And how do you separate the photon information from possible interference by the emulsion as the photon are recorded? Or it doesn't interfere? And yes i totally agree with your statement that " It is no coincidence that we build sensors that duplicate in some way our own optical sensors... eyes. " .I mean, why shouldn't we. Everything we create, we create around our needs, right? Ok you explained the emulsion, i think :) but the interference, can you be assured of that?

" there is no partial absorption of that photon and behind that grain there is no "overshoot" of the photon... the absorption of one photon occurs at one place (all or nothing)... not necessarily on the surface of the emulsion but on an optimum place within the emulsion (because the emulsion is otherwise transparent before being developed). Very careful examination of this emulsion after development will show an almost "perfect" arrangement of light and dark bands of exposure inside the emulsion.... not randomly as you may expect but with great precision. These represent "standing waves"... exposure is a maximum at "antinodes" and a minimum at the nodes. "

So the light goes out immediately? What are those 'standing waves'? do you mean that you have two views of the same 'thing'?? Now what are this " These photons are interfering with themselves " Extremely cool my man. how can that be possible, i thought of photons as either a particle or a wave ( or both :) but i didn't expect it to interfere with itself. This is very strange, you will have to expand on that. How did you reach that conclusion.

For me it falls down to the question above and the questions on how sure you are on it not getting any 'strange' interference by entering the emulsion, and what you see those standing waves as?

Any way one of the coolest experiment's Ive heard of.

Regallow i believe i understand what you mean by ' light speed is inherent to its existence, since it requires speed to contain its energy ' if slowed down it would loose its information? And there is that 'no time' thing you speak of, it fits so well with GoodElfs experiment where the photon transits into the emulsion immediately. I like how you think man, But what about the 'Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms' experiment? Or should i get that damned bicycle again? Yep i definitly need a bicycle, you didn't mean that at all. Awwh :)

I'm happy to count you as friends on this forum people, you're cool.
And i should definitley go to sleep now, i know it's overdue when i get all emotional :)

This post has been edited by yor_on on Jul 13 2007, 05:27 AM

OK, yor_on, you're on. I'll stick around. Guess I have to since you keep finding so many questions to ask. But tonight it's late and I have a long day tomorrow. I'll be back.

Ah, thanks for catching this. I was trying to be careful and slipped :)

Yes, there's something beyond the discrete and physical. The realm of conscious experience doesn't appear to be something that can be broken down into bits, but I don't consider that to be knowledge though.

For example, we could possibly construct some massive formula or algorithm that could predict with close to 100% accuracy how some individual would describe a particular scent and this algorith or formula could be fundamenally broken down in to a large array of identical computing elements, but with the information contained in how these elements were "wired" together, or how the pathways were constructed that "routed" the data through it.

So in this sense, the knowledge of a scent and how it would be described in language could be mimicked using something akin to pure binary/boolean/digital logic, but there is what appears to be the originating source of all of this - conscious experience (or it might be visa versa or somehow both at once) - and you can't break down the particular qualities of those experiences (as far as I can tell) into even a million binary yes/no values, and similarly not even a potentially infinite number of A-Z multiple choice values. Language can't convey the qualities of conscious experience, and I see this similar to something like an irrational number being unrepresentable as a fraction or being unable to represent pi precisely as a decimal - I think physically there's something like a dimension shared in one that's not present in the other and so there's no physical way to communicate information in one realm in to the other.

Something interesting along these lines to consider as well, is that by changing the dimensionality of an interaction you're either placing greater or fewer restrictions on the forms of interactions that can occur. Basically by requiring an interaction to occur with properties shared in 4 dimension, you're restricting the number of possible interactions by confining them in an additional dimension, but you're giving them new properties as well. On the other hand, by lower interactions to two dimensions, you're now allowing a potentially infinite number of attribute to be present for the third dimension but you're only left with two dimensions specified and this restrains it to being something like an instantaineous moment (if you remove the extended time dimension) or you're making it a one dimension experience over time (not certain how that would physically appear but you wouldn't see it using two dimensional senses like sight or touch etc., even smell, taste and hearing have two dimensional aspects ... ok, ignore me, I'm just rambling about random stuff :D).

No, I think you're thinking along similar lines as me.

To give you an idea of how all discrete/predictable/logical form of knowledge could be computed by a single computation element, in electronics, you could theoretically build any type of computer using just 3 types of elements - 1) storage/memory, of which the simplest is something to store a single binary 0 or 1 state 2) something to route the data, in order to deliver it to the necessary or "correct" computational component and 3) a "non-linear" computational element.

There are many ways of doing this. A classical one is a Turing Machine but I prefer to break it down in to the smallest number of electronic components that are capable of emulating any of other circuit (given enough time and resources).

You can use either a 2 input "NAND" or "NOR" gate as the computation element (the NAND gate can be seen mathematically to compute f(a,b)=1-a*b, where a and b are the probabilities of each of the 2 inputs being a 1). For routing, we just use wires and for storage we can just use a digital latch (that generally uses an external clock but we could include both routing and storage by using delay lines instead ... and that happens to be much like space itself) In mathematics we could approximate a function using chains of addition and multiplication (though we can swap in scaling an squaring for multiplcation).

The physical equivalents of these are 1) Space - both storage and routing and 2) mass, which creates non-linear interactions between photons and so allows photons to interact with each other at a point.

Anyway, if we imagined a giant array of elements that could be either a storage element that just propogated some value to neighboring areas or computing elements that combined those values and output new results, then we could interprete this as a space with masses strewn about that performed computations and we could attempt to interprete the information flowing past some point and attempt to "see" the processess occuring elsewhere. An interesting point here is that none of the distant processess would be necessarily experienced directly, in terms of the actual data flowing past some distant point, but instead via. indirect communication ... a "node" would only "experience" things in terms of its own local sources of data without a direct way of knowing the "experiences" of other "nodes" (I put things in quotes because there are a ton of analogies that could be made here including things like "souls" in a "matrix" or "observers" in a "universe" etc.) I think that's rather interesting because it leaves open a question of whether or not the qualities of conscious experiences varies from person to person (it seems it must because of things like dyslexia or being color blind etc. - at a minimum, not everyone experiences conscious sensations in the same manner and most likely there's very little in common between people or people and ants etc.)

Now back on track a bit more. You asked how routing can occur and actually you can trade off routing for computation. If a computation had multiple inputs, then a computation could select which of those inputs to process. In this case the routing could be made rather uniform and routing occur as a byproduct within computations (that still leaves open the question of how a computational element would select which inputs to process, though that could be part of the data itself). For example, an atomic orbital that's already in a more energetic state can't absorb another photon in the same manner as the previous one (this could end up acting as memory and space because it has a manner to effectively count photons ... hmmmm ... interesting thought).

Routing and data can be unified if we use the idea of a constant velocity space because space itself stores information during the transition between two (computational) elements.

Now we could represent any cyclic pathway in such a computational space as a regular polygon - like a square or triangle etc. In the case of a NAND gate, there's an inversion in polarity at each stage (a necessary component in making this gate capable of performing universal computation without needed additional inverters), and for a pathway that cycled 4 units (a square), a signal would be inverted 180 degs at each node and come back reinforcing itself (appear to remain stationary in this space), so you could see the corners as alternating phase +-+- (and then the last corner of the square would return to a + back at the originating node of the square). For a triangle, each pass would invert the signal 3 times and so a net odd number of inversions would occur and such a signal would appear to have 2 phases alternating in space. If you had two of these cycles, let's say one with 6 (a pentagon) and another with 4 nodes (a square) and you could only observe each from a single point within each loop, then you'd see them both as stationary (they share a common denominator of 2 and are both, even and reinforcing lengths), but if we had 2 loops of say lengths 3 and 5, a "beat" frequency would occur between them and if we used one as a reference marker for spacial location it would make the other appear to rotate or orbit relative to it (and in discrete steps - quantum measurements of angles gives such discrete results for angles - a tiny particle of dust doesn't spin uniformly but makes jumps between angles and only rotates smoothly on average), for very large lengths you could interprete the two as having a constant linear motion relative to the other and see "inertia" result (though the motion would ultimately be periodic and cyclic). Depending upon the relative ratios of lengths, an observer could subjectively interprete various pieces of information cycling through this as being spacial connected or in linear motion with other pieces of information (the question still remains as to exactly how this pattern matching occurs ... it's easy to see that for a sequence like ABABABAB, we can find simple rules that could predict A as being the next most likely symbol but it's difficult to find an easily analyzable general purpose function though I believe something like the "dictionary compression" scheme used for data compression (which also happens to be associated with intelligence, IMO) could be a very simple and fundamental way that nature associates points in space - two things are either indentical and seen as being at the exact same point in space and time or they aren't - that matches the ideas of a light speed space as well in that we can't truly see what's "out there" except to the extent it reaches "here" ... we detect for things being precisely equal to some point in space, which is generally called the "observer" or referred to as "local" in relativity, or something isn't at that particular point and nothing immediately is known about it).

I know it's pretty tough "wrapping ones mind around" these ideas, but it's also quite an interesting subject as well ... it's definitely enjoyable when some of the pieces start clicking together :D.

I'm part Swedish as well (though mostly German and French).

I was actually thinking of 2 photon detections occuring, not one. So two photons were present and one detector detected, and the other detector detected the other. The detections could even be far apart in time.

The main point was just that by saying each detected one photon, we're losing information because we're throwing away information regarding the time or chronology in which the two were detected.

Here, let's break this down in to all 4 possible combinations of detections, in chronological order for the two photons. If the A detector detects both of them then that can be written AA, if the A detector detects the first one and then the B detector detects the second one, we could write that as AB ... etc. So the 4 possibilities are:

AA
AB
BA
BB

Recognize both photon detections were entirely random and so for the first photon, either A or B could have detected it and that's one binary value of information (A or B) and the same is true for the second photon. So each photon provides a single binary value of raw "information".

We can do the mathematics on the groups as well and get the same results by assigning probabilities of 1/4th to each of the 4 possible events (but I already showed that above, so I'll skip it).

Now if you instead recorded these results in a different format and just handed someone else a paper showing them the number of photon counts each detector had, then you've ended up throwing information if both the A and B detectors detected a photon because you aren't telling them which order the detectors picked up the photons. If both detections occured on the A side, then you're giving them the full information (again, ignoring something like a clock in the picture) and the same if B detected both, so half the 4 combinations are still entirely described by listing the counts, but if the result was either AB or BA, you'd just be telling them that A detected 1 photon and so did B, but leaving out the order, so they'd only know that you got the 50/50 result of being in the AB/BA group and not either AA or BB. That 50/50 probability implies only a single bit of information (and the bit "lost" in the translation was which order they occured).

A way to see how this can cause problems is to imagine something like dyslexia. If someone reversed right and left consistantly, that's not a problem. They'd perceive things on their left as being on their right instead, but they subjective reach to their right (which would be physically on their left) and still be able to interact in a perfectly normal manner (as viewed by everyone else) with the universe (someone could reverse up and down or colors or even swap touch for sight etc. it doesn't matter as long as the round trip results look the same ... something like being color blind though isn't the same because a specific sense is actually missing and so that lack becomes detectable under the right circumstances)

Now if we take the example with the A and B photon detectors and apply it to human perceptions, if I saw at one moment an apple on the ground and at another moment that same apple in a tree, I might assume it moved from the ground to the tree, but we can feel confident that's the reverse of the actual chronological order - it went from the tree to the ground, but if someone didn't know which came first, they would just know the apple moved from one place to the other but wouldn't know which direction it went or where it was currently. (For example if we were sweeping the beam and it passed by A and then B, without specifying the ordering, then we'd only know the beam was swept by the detectors but not the direction of the sweep).

LOL

Actually the 5.5 was referring to bits worth of information contained in the "noise" though would be sort of superimposed upon those 1001 position ... I admit it gets a bit confusing. If you get the idea that for every block of 1000 photon detections between the A and B detectors, we could plot this on a graph as 0 to 1000 for each detector, that's good enough (though behind this recognize that we tossed out a huge amount of information by not listing the ordering in which they occured ... for example if we had 500 in A and 500 in B, knowing that the detections were ordered as ABABABABA... or something more random like BBBAABAAABAABBABBBA... would make a huge difference, because if we could predict the next photon as in the ABABAB... example, then we could see beyond what are believe to be the current limits in physics and delve into the details of quantum behavior)

Yes, I believe it's only the discretes that are "knowable" in a sense. Basically, anything that we can learn about and find to be predictive or useful has some feature that's unchanging and "stationary" or constant.

For example, if we only knew that tomorrow had a 60% chance of being sunny and a 40% of being cloudy then we wouldn't really know whether or not it would be sunny or rainy tomorrow but we would know the specific values of 60% sunny and 40% rainy. So the random components of something aren't "knowable" - they don't provide any handles to predict anything with or be able to learn from.

Part of this could be seen as related to the fact that we need figurative "rulers" or metrics to measure or gain a reference for something. Those metrics need to be rigidly defined, because to the extent they aren't, neither is knowledge acquired using them. Then because we've measured it in terms of those characteristic, we can only compare it to other things that are in compatible units (for example, day and night are related in various ways by time, amounts of sunlight etc. but if day was defined by a distance and night defined by a color, it would be very difficult to find ways the two were related or manners of describing one in terms of the other ... they need to have attributes that can be connected in order that a structure to the relationship between them can be constructed and verified as being consistantly true and that depends upon how we measure and define the attributes of each).

Yes, you're right, you need additional information outside the two detectors in order to determine the distances between the three components. At a minimum, it would seem a clock would be necessary in order to time delays between the emitter and each detector and you'd still need a way to determine the distance between the detectors if you wanted to know all the distances between the points. So, yes, what's commonly assumed to be intuitive and obvious "Look, the detector is sitting 'there'" :D ends up being rather complex to nail down physically and at every point there are things that often go overlooked, and I believe this is true even for people we'd normally expect to be very well educated and recognize these issues.

Hello,

Not gonna crank it up with ring singularities/hypertoroidal stuff, however consider this gibberish:

Imagine if photons reside as an intergrated harmonic on the wave-state surface of an electron; this wave state manifesting as a spherical explosion @ c with regards to its particulate origin.
Now picture this expansion throughout the universe. When this wavefront encounters a harmonically receptive wavicle of less energy it donates this energy into its wave matrix, this mechanism being a natural equilibrating event. I feel gravity works in a much similar way in which energy exchange between wavicles is induced from wave-state to wave-state.

The doughnut has spoken.

GoodElf, I've got to get to bed soon and was busy replying to yor_on, but regarding that emulsion, isn't the phase difference detected by the emulsion just due to self interference altering the probability of detection and not actually recording phase information along with single photon detections?

For a CMOS sensor, the detection over the entire surface is summed in to a single result but for the emulsion you have a much finer resolution that's sensitive on a smaller scale, though I'd assume it could still be equivalent to a discrete (not truly binary though ... I should avoid trying to equate photons with solely a binary value as the information content can be higher even if the detection is discrete), though if you detected many photons with the emulsion a finer scale of resolution would result versus the CMOS sensor because the results of detections in an area aren't "summed" together.

The positional information of a photon does convey additional information and you could correlate this with a phase component because the distance or delay to one area of the material would be different from another but that alone wouldn't seem to require the phase information is actually recorded along with individual photon detections but that instead that the fine scale interference pattern, below the resolution of a CMOS sensor, would be recorded and detectable. If this occurs at distances significantly below the wavelength of the photon then that would definitely be interesting but it still doesn't appear to require an individual photon detection convey anything other than a single discrete value, identical to other detected photons. The higher information content would just be due to having a finer resolution of detection.

fivedoughnut you're a hard one to crack :)

Are you suggesting that photons only exist coupled to electrons?
how far away from each other? We have a lot of photons flying all the time right, Are you suggesting we have as many electrons ? Or maybe you see space as consisting off waves, a fluctuating field with rhythmic oscillations and your wave tops would represent particles and matter?

That is a very complicated view as the wavetops somehow would have to 'know' how to 'coagulate' at the right places in all time states, f ex to constantly rebuild us humans when moving. But why would you then need the photon to be bound to a electron? i'm not sure to what you refer as being a 'wavicle'.

As far as i understand you are using the word harmonics as i might describe 'fields' interacting with each other? You are not pulling my leg here are you? When you use so many new words you imply that there is greater difference's between f ex my 'field's' and your 'harmonics' than it seems at a first glance, no? Probably i got it all wrong (again :)?

ps: Steven i won't read yours before i slept :) well i read it, but as always i need to mull it over. So good night and etc etc :)

This post has been edited by yor_on on Jul 13 2007, 09:28 AM

Are you suggesting that photons only exist coupled to electrons?

Yes.





This post has been edited by fivedoughnut on Jul 13 2007, 10:19 AM

Hi StevenA,

You are right, of course the phase is recorded "indirectly" through depth into the emulsion but this is not the exactly same as recording the phase in a single plane as you have rightly pointed out. Each individual photon modulating the site of detection through "phase". Thin emulsions are not as good at recording this information as are thick emulsions.

It does not stop there... The record in the film itself is not amplitude but is actually still intensity as you have correctly pointed out. This leads to some "unintended artifacts". Since intensity records the gradient of the field and not the field there are nulls at maxima and minima and inflection points. The illumination of the plate with a source LASER leads to not the original scene if you wish to be exact about it (and being "exact" is very important when we wish to understand). The wave functions of the first derivative lead to a very fine "double image" in the Hologram at the level that most observers do not notice. The other issue is all exposed emulsions result in "negatives" and because the Hologram is recorded as actual depth information, it cannot be "reverse printed" without losing some of that information. Recently I have seen an algorithm that is able to reprocess holographic information to remove that "false ghost" in some meaningful way. This would "potentially" restore the hologram in some respects to a more faithful reproduction as an amplitude record plus some depth information due to phase, but I still think some phase information might be lost. Naturally if a computer technique such as this can re-process the hologram "in depth" then it can also make a "positive" as well.

Still in an imperfect way some phase information is indirectly recorded and in an imperfect way the scene recorded closely resembles the original "dark universe".

The CMOS detector is a planar device that "flattens" the data phase wise by collapsing the photon wavelet at the sensor surface. This process either works or it does not ... it is a binary operation as are all emissions or absorptions of quanta. Let this device have access to a third degree of freedom... a depth.. a "translucent layer". It would be possible to consider fabrication of an advanced holographic sensor that records the finer detail that a fine grained emulsion records usually as "depth information". This would sense the depth inside the fronting "matrix" of the sensor and as each photon was absorbed its three dimensional position could be recorded.

According to a "hidden parameter theory" of where the photons were in that "thick layer" the most suitable place in which a photon could be absorbed will depend on "where" the electric field parameters were at an instantaneous maximum. Why?... this is just an expression of the way a photographic emulsion works... it works by a process of electron displacement through photo-absorption in light sensitive micro-crystalline colloid due to the photoelectric effect explained by Einstein. Naturally the photoelectric work function in this detecting layer varies with depth because the incoming coherent standing wave electric field amplitude will be varying within the layer with depth, and when it reaches the maximum or minimum field strength (in excess of the work function) the incident photon is most likely to "expose" that single silver halide crystal there causing it to displace an elemental charge... a feeble inductive surge in the "thick" substrate. A matched CMOS device (in some respects similar to a photomultiplier KI crystal and Detector arrangement) but a great deal more sophisticated, utilizing a microscopic optical beamed array, could potentially detect where this sudden imbalance in charge arose in this "thick" layer and record this position as a single "voxel" in the Hologram Space. Now this electric displacement may be permanent or temporary, if temporary it may lead to a very interesting Holographic Technology capable of providing evidence of "several" features of "hidden parameter theories". The question is are there any inquiring minds out there with sufficient ken to realize the opportunity for them here?

This electronically generated position... amplitude... phase detector could be the basis of several holographic technologies that could be revolutionary. Not to mention the ability to process the signal for the above mentioned defects in real time using a dedicated Discrete Signal Processing Chip to remove the "ghost" and to provide the positive hologram. There could be a flatpanel display technology based on a multi-film transparent screen not too different to the standard computer flatpanel display except with a large number of sandwiched layers and much smaller elements capable of providing a realtime high definition true holographic display.

Cheers

That's definitely something interesting to consider. If we had a plane of detectors, let's say 1024x1024, we'd have 2^10*2^10 possible locations to detect a photon. That implies (for an even probability of detection) 20 bits of information per photon. In reality, with a laser, we have a coherent interference that skews these probabilities and lowers the information content, within a plane (slightly in this case - probably less than a bit lost for this example), but by including a depth to the detection we add a third dimension of measurement (If we had an effectively resolution of 64 depths, then the information content goes up by another 6 bits per photon). A catch here though is that you now have additional material to be exposed, so though the information content has increased slightly per photon (which matches you statement that some phase information is recorded), you still have 64 times as much material to "develop". Still it's something very interesting to consider, thank you.

This is very cool because I've actually had thoughts along these lines. We don't motion directly - if everything in the universe was moving in one direction at the same velocity, nothing would interact. Forces imply a change in velocity, or an acceleration, but it doesn't stop there - we couldn't even directly detect an acceleration as if everything in the universe was under an identical constant acceleration, again nothing would interaction. Because we detect contrasts between things, we could see this as measuring the derivative of a slope in some "density" function to space - a uniform density goes unnoticed similar to having a constant background density of activity in space. Anyway, if what we measure differentially becomes the new reality, which we again measure differentially, then reality is composed of a recursive differentiation to space. Differentiation imposes a phase shift upon the function being measured (though it comes in discrete 90 deg steps) and can, over time, create a relative amplification or attentuation of various wavelengths (high frequency or shorter wavelengths tend to predominate ... not unlike gravity and differentiation isn't specifically directional). Anyway, a function that would to remain constant in such a space would be an exponential (a gaussian has exponential characteristics on the edges, which could be seen to propogate outward, though it's not exponential at the central lobe ... I'm just tossing out some random thoughts here).

Something else interesting to consider is that a constant lateral acceleration creates a circular orbital, whereas a constant second derivative would seem to create a decaying orbit or spiral and I believe the third derivative, if applied as a lateral force could actually appear to remain stationary! (though even the second derivative on some scale could do this) I was just messing around with some ideas where you have 4 phases of differential measurement - 1) a "stationary" mass is measured via 2) a constant velocity which requires a 3) constant acceleration which requires a 4) constantly changing acceleration, or "jerk", which once again appears as a mass ... seems rather funky huh?

If the exposure is done with a constant wavelength you might not lose much of any information as the double exposure could be purely redundant if the wavelength is known (but yes, you might lose more information than that ...)

Ok, though I'd say it resembles the surfaces of that though it's interesting to consider what depth information could be present in the phase component (hmmm... maybe there is a way to "see" in more than 2 dimensions over time).

Something I'd like to emphasize here though is that the additional detectable information arose from an ability to localize mass and wasn't necessarily a part of the photon.

For example, let's say we have access to photon interactions with a single atom. If no other detectable events exist outside this, then we'd be stuck seeing possible long periods of "nothing" (of course this assumes there's a way to measure how long "nothing" lasts) and then an occasional blip as a photon was detected. If we only had two possible states in a single orbital, then only one frequency of light could be considered detectable. If we consider that the periods of time between photons wouldn't be detected without an outside reference for time, then we have only a visible continuous stream of non-directional light (which could also be interpreted as coming uniformly from all directions) and this provides no information content as being in a universe composed of only one absolute thing everywhere, without contrast is informationally no different that nothing (though I guess in terms of a conscious experience it might be considered an instantaneous frozen moment of experience, without meaning in itself). So these photons provide no information.

Now if we have more information available, for example 2 orbitals or more states within a single orbital then we could witness alterations between these but if there's only two such events and no way for any other differentiation to be made outside these, then we're left forever transitioning between two states. If we had a way to select a specific moment between one of these two states, then we could consider that to provide a single bit of information, or we might consider the contrast itself to imply something, but I can't see how it could be more than a single bit (even with an infinite number of such cycles) without a memory or way to accumulate information about these over time. So in this case we'd have (yes, in my opinion) a maximum of a single bit potentially available and that still requires some way to sample it in one state versus another.

If we add a third input from some outside system that acts similar to a clock and samples states of that system, then we can begin to see an ability for binary communication to occur (the lowest discrete form of communication ... again, in my opinion), though this still leaves that third, time dimension, rather nebulous and unspecific in complexity. As we increase the number of possible states that a photon could be seen as moving the system into, we increase the available information content of each photon, but consider that this can also be ascribed to properties of the masses and the network of communication betweem them that we're able to detect or differentiate. (I admit you could consider the source, destination of a communication with its accompanying trajectory and phase to be a property of a photon, but we could also say these are properties of the masses and that communication delays are actual part of orbital characteristics as these can retain a state for a period of time that could appear as a light speed delay through space of a photon. For example, if we had an orbital that toggled between two states every time it interacted with a photon, but the emission was detectably different, then we have the equivalent of a counter that has a delay. It performs a logic function and has a delay and could be interpreted as both a mass and the associated space, and of course photons would never age because they never actually travelled through space and had time to degrade or be altered). The reason why I'm picking to move the pea under that particular nutshell is because atomic orbitals already imply a wavefunction and I don't believe that information necessarily needs to be carried through space in a manner that appears redundant. Consider we construct a perception of space from information detected by masses seeing other masses ... we can't follow along with a photon to verify it actually travels through space ... I'm rambling somewhat and recognize space represents a valuable understanding of physical interactions, but it seems there should be a simplification here. Recognizing that the information conveyed by a photon isn't directly possessed by a photon by instead dependent upon the network of masses (which gives wave features to detections) seems to be something worth looking more closely at.

Again, this is very interesting and I'm thankful you detailed the idea. Hopefully, some of comments adding something to consider as well.

It definitely sounds like an interesting technology. Measuring such detections in 3 dimensions would be a manufacturing challenge, though consider that this might not be entirely necessary as not all of the 3 dimensional structure is continually detecting photons. Let's say for example we had a highly charged chemical that discharged and propogated an electrochemical field outward from a point of photon detection, then electronic monitoring could occur along the edges of this and interprete from an inverse filtering algorithm (a bit tricky to design) where the originating photon(s) were. The issue here would be one of bandwdith. For a low intensity exposure, it should be simple but for higher rates of photon detections, getting adequate computational power and enough amplification and bandwidth through the medium to theoretically deliver the information would be a challenge. (as usual the idea will be patented within a few months if it hasn't already been ... I hate intellectual property laws)

This post has been edited by StevenA on Jul 13 2007, 06:49 PM

Just a question, why not record it in a Bose-Einstein condensate. There i suppose one would have ample 'time'? to study its interactions. On the other hand it wouldn't work, would it, as any observation would be slowed down too? :) On the third hand, if that kind of interference (Bose-Einstein condensate) would lead to different images then that might be of interest too??

This post has been edited by yor_on on Jul 13 2007, 08:14 PM