Perpetual motion?, Cyclic photon reflections

Look up Feynmann's papers and also see the comments of Wilson as it relates to that. wbw[/QUOTE]

Hi Precursor562 and StevenA,

I see you have found "perpetual motion".... You do mechanical work and it can be done as often as you like without the expenditure of any energy since it is experimentally known that the energy of photons does not usually "leak away" in reflections.

This makes sense to me. I also think this clearly distinguishes the wavelike nature of quanta from their particle aspects. They never show these two separate aspects simultaneously. In the quantum state a photon is not able to be "seen" (photon to particle energy exchange process), therefore you can say nothing about its actions. As a propagating "quanta" of light it is unable to "age" and thus enter into dynamic processes of energy or momentum exchange. What they do involve themselves in is wavelike behavior. They can spread, diffract, interfere, tunnel etc. In all these operations the photons do not exchange anything with the rest of the universe other than "geometry". If the photon cannot experience time then it can't experience a change in momentum... impulse which must occur over a short period of time. It also cannot change its energy since that would result in a rate of transfer of energy. Finally... after many zero sum unseen "optical" maneuvers... the single photon will engage in a single quantum demolition event that "precipitates" the photon from its unobserved quantum state... For me it also drops out of higher dimensional "stringy space". I will ignore that part of this for now.

To "see" what is happening this must occur inside your eye, at the back of your eye in the retina. The receptors are designed to absorb at particular frequencies and thus partake in a chemical energy process. Equally this could be a Phosphide Screen which emits a flash of scattered light. It is then that this interference phenomena is observed for the single photon in the eye's "Camera Obscura". The wave function collapsing after its long journey to be observed. A number of these events make up the "picture" of the external world. Other photons are still traveling through "empty" space unobserved as invisible waves. Look into the night sky and "out there" in that darkness it is filled with so many photons you cannot ever see because they travel totally invisibly as "quanta". A few photons are required to see those specks of light in the sky... the stars. You know that "out there" near the earth, vast quantities of photons are streaming from the sun and are passing through the earth's shadow. you can't ever see them because they will never reach your eye. What we know of the external Universe beyond the eye is a pattern of these photons of different frequencies that have crossed the vast distances of the universe without ever losing any energy until the very moment you saw them.

A rose you might "see" in your garden is an "inverted image" on your retina activating receptors through absorption and giving up their energy after a focusing by the lens system in front of your retina. Some photons will "dissipate" their energy in the aqueous humor and others will dissipate their energy inside the lens. You will never see the information these damaged photons had encoded in them because there is no optical "ordering" in those regions of the eye. These few will become "scattered" light... secondary emissions that contain no information of the original source (noise).

We will see light as if it was from a long way off but is only an image in the eye. The information the photons are carrying are quantum qubits from the source... where they originally came from... maybe from a distant star. Without that information ... the phase and frequency... we would not know just how the world really looks at all. If mirrors intercepted these phenomena the information of the source is retained... this includes the phase... any increase or decrease in the phase from the source "en-route" would mix up this "perfect" picture. This instantly implies that the photons can't linger in an atom along the way to the Earth or to your eye or risk losing this valuable qubit of information if it is to retain a perfect cohesion in time and space... the "image". Quantum physics deemphasize this phase aspect of this process in order to gain simplicity. IMHO it is "oversimplified". All synchronized photons arrive on the one wavefront usually in perfect relative phase, even over the distance of galaxies. When you consider just how short the wavelength of a average photon is, this is an incredible spatial "synchronization". The image is for all close examination ... perfect and it really does not matter how far it travels since photons cannot "destructively" interfere with each other and many can exist in the one place in space at the same time exercising Bose-Einstein Statistics. The qubits are the "information".

Cheers

Well I'm not really into wave theory but rather more into particle theory. Where in the case of light traveling in photon pairs. The pairs have a bond and as they travel they do so in a wave like path. Literally moving up and down vertically while the other literally moves back and forth horizontally. One is at its peak while the other crosses paths so they're at odds in their travel but are parallel.

The photons get absorbed by the atom. This is in the sense that the photon pair no longer exists and the energy contained within the photons now belong to the atom. The atom then creates a new photon pair (using the energy it contains) and sends them out. So the collision of the first photon pair exerts a force. The emission of a new photon pair exerts a force once again. Kinda like how a car hitting a wall exerts a force on the wall and how a rocket receives a force by releasing hot expanding gas.

Thank you all for the responses, I don't have much time now, so I'll have to response more and go and read Feymann's paper later, but I quickly wanted to add a couple comments:

I believe that without these two force being complimentary, you still have the potential for perpentual motion. And if the forces are complimentary you have another problem conserving momentum as emitting a photon would need to pull you in the direction you emitted it in order to compensate for the recoil absorbing it.

So for the momentum to cancel you'd have a laser jump forward when emitting a photon and then if it struck something else, that also would be pushed forward so a laser could potentially accelerate in one direction, but a laser could be built symmetrically and should have no preference for one direction versus another, so this seems highly unlikely as well.

I believe we see things rather similarly. My view is that events that create time could be seen as the ultimate fundamental unit of the universe, and because these are discrete events, everything observed is finite and composed of discrete units.

What we see on a human scale is the wavelike and continuous approximations of a fundamentally discrete universe. In a sense, a reflection could be interpreted as the edge of an observable universe (at least at whatever wavelength or associated energy the reflection occurs for, not all wavelengths give the same view of things).

So the waves can move instantaneously because they aren't tangible, nor can the actual continuous wavelike property of light be physically detected ... it's ultimately a particle.

The quantum confusions come in by showing our wavelike and continuous views don't truly match the underlying physical properties of space. So when we place an object in the patch of a beam, the waves correlate with approximations of the errors between our macroscopic understanding of space and the microscopic reality. We can make errors in judgement instantly and so waves can appear to travel instantly. We can also misunderstand time by approximating it with rates and so when something deviates from an approximate rate we can interprete this as a warp in time or space etc.

I'd love to post more but I've got to take the family out

Oh well, have fun. I think there's more to this than meets the eye ... or maybe it's in imagining there's more than meets the eye. (Just kidding but when there's a mismatch, I'd recommend going with physical senses and tangibles first before constructing intangible spaces)

Hi StevenA and Precursor562,

I guess I am trying to provide the minimum of information that is needed to solve this problem. If you think about it for an instant it takes time to absorb a photon and then re-emit it. This would place that "renewed" photon at least on the next wavefront leaving from the "station". This would change the optical path length and through Feynman Many-paths integration methods would probably cancel or interfere with the wave effect propagating from other expanding "light shells". This "delayed" photon can never get back to its correct place in time and space since light is the maximum velocity for any disturbance and this photon can't adjust its phase to compensate. It is stuck on the next wavefront. That is sort of the "nuts and bolts" of photon phase.

Speaking of the "Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment", and now I am getting far more complicated here, the emission and absorption of a photon that happens in time as we see it is an expression of a single event.
"A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser" by Yoon-Ho Kim, R. Yu, S.P. Kulik, Y.H. Shih, and Marlon O. Scully
This is because a single photon "has no life of its own". It does not suffer time between the emission and absorption process and because it also undergoes extreme "length contraction", everything . The only time a photon can experience is while in the actual process of that emission and absorption which actually takes a finite time to occur.

Short diversion here... You might ask why does a photon take any time to be emitted or absorbed? Consider the extreme case of a dipole antenna one light year long being excited from its midpoint by a EM oscillating field. The frequency of this field is the time it takes for one cycle and this is a year. In that time the electric field lines of the centers of charge on this line pass each other twice "snipping off" the field lines into "loops", just outside the evanescent zone of the transmitter. The photon "created" from this example process is physically huge and takes 1/2 a year to form. In the process of creation there are no photons "launched" as yet. Once launched they cannot "return" and are forced to propagate outwards in an expanding shell as an event at the speed of light on a wavefront. The "absorption" process is assumed to be something similar. In that "birthing" process proto-photons experience "forces" and thus time. This is why electromagnetism is so powerful in that short near-field range. It is also why magnets are very powerful too since they are EM oscillating fields with periods so long we cannot measure them. These "virtual photons" and I suppose the real photons are the exchange forces of our Universe that drive those currents of electrons around circuits. They can never leave the source in these non-emitters since the energy is below the work function of the systems as explained by the photoelectric effect.

Getting back to the "Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment", the photon then coasts according to our time at the speed of light toward its final destination. If you consider that one event process... nothing changes at all regards to time. Entangled photon's fate is "fixed" and nothing anyone can do can change it, that includes anything you can think to do in the future. The event of emission and absorption and the "long" timeless trip of the single photon is a frozen moment that knows the future about the configuration of all interacting matter as long as a single photon "continues". The "event".... this is the qubit... knows beforehand .... before it arrives at its final destination... everything that will happen everywhere it will be... the position of every obstacle and orifice and the thickness of all materials it will tunnel through possibly right across the intervening space which may be many light years away... and you cannot change its fate. It is like a crooked roulette wheel... everything is fixed.

This single instant in time, carrying the qubit of information, as a single "event" now needs to paint itself through the universe at the finite speed of light starting from the "causative" end and terminating at the "effects" end as an immutable changeless layer. Wherever the photon will go and wherever it diffracts, tunnels, refracts or ultimately is absorbed is all decided the moment it is emitted. Events happen to even entangled photons in the future that affect the events that have happened to the long "dead", absorbed or entangled photons that were in the same bosonic state (on that one wavefront). This is not conjecture this is an experimental fact. It is possible that others may interpret this differently but I am unable to see that any other explanation explains all the facts of this "delicious" experiment. The next instant in time with a different event, even if from the same physical place, is a layer over this original event so they cannot interfere with each other or "mix". What we are psychologically unable to accept is the play of the passage of time which is simply the speed at which this event propagates from the "cause" to the "effect"..... We are unable to change the past because from our temporal perspective we cannot fundamentally modify any of these events once they are "initiated".

If this is not the way others out there see it ... please feel free to respond with a good explanation. We elves do not bite.

Cheers

Hello StevenA,


Some comments & questions on Good Elf's last post. Maybe the points will shed light on your question. (pun/no pun)



On absorption/re-emission: we have nothing to offer as evidence as to suggest this is the same photon going out that came in.

We have nothing to describe the state of the absorbing atom during this period. There is no hard data on whether the electron gains velocity or mass to allow this energy safe harbor.

It takes consciousness to experience time; we have nothing to suggest that a photon has consciousness.

This "harbor" time is NOT the same every time for a given energy.

Essentially, all of the above, and the fact that we can NOT measure the photon while "in flight", means we can not measure it during the "other time" that it "exists" either.

Sadly, this means the photon is never measurable, or as I prefer, never exists.

All we can do is take measurements of electron states before and after an energetic exchange with another electron. This energetic exchange is resonance, the 2 electrons must have the same frequency (ground state) in order for this to happen.


On a second note, let me ask about a "photon" with a frequency of less than or = One. What is the meaning of this? Can you justify its' existence? Anyone here ever heard about a Electro-Magnetic wave being measured at that rate? What would that do to the f/c = w inverse relationship? Don't forget, we have to maintain constant velocity, c = meters over time, and c = f * w . Can c = w/f ? Or is it more accurate to say that f and w change places (definitions)?


T.Roc

I much enjoyed reading this.

The idea that absorbtion and emission can take time but that the travel of a photon has timeless characteristics seems to agree with many observations, including time dilation at light speed, under relativity (at least some aspect of the photon is frozen in time travelling at light speed)

In another way this also appears obvious from quantum mechanics simply because you can't detect a photon without disturbing it, so if you detect it, then at least some aspect of absorbtion has taken and place and so if you were to envision this as a midpoint in a longer original path, that it would have travelled if you hadn't measured it, then as in the twin slits experiment, you find that the original path is now destroyed.

In the case of quantum mechanics, time only occurs as discrete events and motion through space alone doesn't create these.

So the only tangible times for the path of a photon are during emission, when it detectably alters the "from" location and upon absorbtion when it affects things at the "to" location (though in some cases the "from" and "to" locations can appear swapped in a reversal of cause and effect and I'll ignore the "funky" interactions that appear to be able to destroy or create something from nothing)

In many ways, it seems, a path is constructed in some potentially faster than light speed manner (group delays can be much faster than light) and after this has averaged the necessary delay for a speed of light connection between two points, a "burst" of information occurs that again could be interpreted as faster than light, though there's no easy way to detangle these two components. At least not without a clearer perspective on how motion within a single dimension occurs (we see a mish mash of multiple dimensions on macroscales though I believe discrete motions within a specific dimension aren't inherently limited to this other than probabilistically)

But anyway, I really enjoyed your description of the 3 components emission, travel and absorbtion and it seems very analogous to creating a magnetic bubble(likely with toroidal characteristics) in a space acting as a super conductor and then being detected by "breaking" this bubble and absorbing the information/energy.

(I'm getting some interesting ideas from this for my more abstract ideas ... it could be a wave collapse is associated with an exchange of two "quarks" between points. The phase component of light has faster than light characteristics which could be a literal and physical perpendicular motion relative to what we see as the wavefronts, imagine two quarks spiralling out, perpendicular to the wavefronts from two separate atoms and being swapped if they encounter each other. If they spiral out 180 degs apart, then they wouldn't encounter each other and hence no "photonic event" or wave collapse associated with these two quarks would occur and if this spiralling had a specific universal alignment, we wouldn't see wavefronts as a physical spiral because distance measurements each way would have a 180 deg phase shift and cancel the observed spiral ... just thoughts)

Yes, this seems the reality. It's not so much that a photon doesn't exist, but that we can't detect it in any physical form other than as a change in a measured energy. So for example, the image of it travelling through space as wave etc. could be seen as a mental assumption that may not correlate well with the physical events and associated energies detected ... given a doubt, I believe we both agree that conflicts between the two in defining an objective reality should be in favor of the physically detected energies.

So without being hypocritical, I'd have to say that if we truly do measure energy being delivered from light reflections, then there's either something wrong with the idea of conservation of energy or there's an unrecognized loss (at least from my understanding) occuring in the system, if not from the photon, then from somewhere else.

There are two views of this that I can think of:

1) If time occurs as discrete events, then frequency (and associated wavelength if they're defined as reciprocal components, which seems an approximation for limited applications) would necessarily be discrete - you either count 1 of something or 2 etc. and you wouldn't have a frequency count of 3.237... in a physical sense, but instead only as a mathematical abstract of ratios.

2) In theory all finite waves could be described in terms of a fourier series, so in theory, even a half wave could be described as a sum of complete sinusoidal cycles of various frequencies. So in this case it could be that a half cycle could be equated to a series of physical components that, as a system, act to provide a half cycle wave. In this case you could create characteristics of such impulse events or fractional relationships by using various ratios of different subcomponents or particles to mimic it.

It could be that this is how virtual particles operate. You have a certain spectrum of frequencies and amplitudes and depending on how you break them up and approximate the new energy spectrums, they can appear as different groups of particles .... just thoughts.

StevenA, GE, ..


I don't mean to split hairs, but whenever I see "photons" being described, I see the contradictions and confusion that the many-theories-patched-into-Standard-Theory have caused us.

About the eyes, I agree that several "photons" are necessary to active (energize) an image; one won't work. Finding one "photon" is itself, a debate waiting to happen, as Good Elf would attest.

I believe that he inclines towards the idea that we can not have just one "photon", because of the "packet" nature. Indeed, when looking at a fourier transform, it is hard to disagree with that. However, QM has a few experiments that demand that discreet actions are caused by discreet frequencies. An electron jumps only at a specific f, and values below do nothing, as well as values above, to the limit of the next state jump. This then means that the fourier view creates losses, for the lead, and trailing amounts upon absorb/emit cycle.

About a frequency of <= 1: I am just asking if anyone can provide an electro-magnetic wave with a frequency below the ELF cutoff of 30Hz?

If not, then it is an invalid "gedanken". We can only use our imagined labs to perform valid, real experiments. No elevators, clocks in space, etc. It would seem that we have a lower limit to "photons" time of 1/30 s . (this is ~ triple the "refresh rate" of our eyes) So, the Universe doesn't make us ever wait (long) for a photon to complete a cycle.


Back to radiation pressure to create motion.

Wikipedia:"

You can see there are more gains to achieve; a 6:1 ratio is possible.

What if we devised a solid base with a circle cut out, and mirrors correctly aligned around the whole. Then, on a separate disk (able to spin freely), also aligned with mirrors around it, we put into the whole. The initial light would be reflected off the bases first mirror, and then to the soon to be spinning disk. Every reflection would have to go from base to disk, and back. Momentum transferred from the mass energy of the base, to the kinetic energy of the disk. ??


T.Roc



This post has been edited by TRoc on Aug 31 2006, 05:04 PM

Hi TRoc, StevenA and Precursor562,

Single photon experiments are well known and there are no problems with me about that.

Single photons indicate that individual photons actually do indeed occur and reflect where the "apparent" contradictions in our present theory exist.

This statement is not true. What is stated is the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Relationship.

What this strictly implies is as the energy of that photon falls down among the dead men the uncertainty in the band to which it is jumping increases quite rapidly. When you reach zero frequency this band goes "infinite". I have indicated how this process is a continuum of the Special Theory of Relativity... just the low velocity end. As to providing this "special photon" or even particles, it occurs all the time with those "quantum leaps". The "mechanism" is the de Broglie Matter Wave.

You may recall that a dimensionally confined photon is a particle in string theory. A "free photon" is a wave "propagating in a timeless quantum space" as an event. They are the same phenomena seen from different sides of the speed of light and the dimensional "environment" of a "Holographic Universe".
P343, "A First Course in String Theory" by B. Zwiebach
All standard model sub-atomic particles can be constructed from "boosts" and "spin" of a single photon... at least in principle.

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Sep 1 2006, 01:27 AM

Single photons indicate that individual photons actually do indeed occur and reflect where the "apparent" contradictions in our present theory exist.

Though you're technically correct, I can't speak for TRoc, but I think I know some of what he's thinking about:

1) Photons can appear to have bidirectional effects.

2) A photon is seen as being composed of two quarks.

3) Wavelike characteristics seem to require a photon interact with more volume than the immediate path it took.

All these (1-3) seem to imply a photon is not a fundamental unit but has a substructure, which of course is already assumed to exist.

4) The energy of a photon appears quantized (at least for atomic spectra and background radiation). In this case, can a photon exist as a single quanta, or is the minimum 2 or 3 etc.? (I recognize the wavelength would be so long and energy levels so low, it's likely almost impossible to do experimental tests at this level)

This last one is just for curiousity. I've been wondering what the wavelength of a single quanta could be physically associated with. For a resonant model, it would seem related to the width of the universe, but then would it require a time related to the age of the universe to form and if the width or age changes, wouldn't that fundamentally alter relative quanta? I have my doubts about such an infinite and continuous model of underlying space.

This post has been edited by StevenA on Sep 1 2006, 10:35 AM

Hi TRoc, StevenA and Precursor562,

I realize that it would be hard to accept. If a particle is a persistent soliton, then considering this particle we cannot see its "matter waves" embracing all space. what we do see is a tunneling of matter waves from within the evanescent zone of a particle into the external environment which is our common 3D "bosonic void" of spacetime. If this was a reciprocal space relative to our current Universe then properties of this apparent external matter wave to the particle surface disappear quickly with distance. This is because the advanced and retarded potentials effectively cancel throughout spacetime almost globally except in the region where the particle and the "residual" matter waves are found. The behavior of the matter wave is similar to any other electromagnetic disturbance except it is usually at a vastly higher frequency than the apparent interference effect that we are able to notice when we see this in the diffraction of electrons or other particles. It is most certainly the same as electromagnetism since the physics is a kind of electromagnetism confined to the influence of particle fields. You may realize this already since QCD is an extension of QED to the next level. It is clear that the force carriers in these smaller realms cannot penetrate our world very far since they carry mass so the range is very restricted "outside the geometry that they originate from". In a Holographic interpretation of the Universe the different levels of this structure are different levels of abstraction but representing identical phenomena as seen from an external perspective. Effectively a conformal mapping from one realm to the next.

Regarding what these matter waves really mean read this...

The de Broglie relationships are given by this equation from Wikipedia...

To illustrate this point consider the De Broglie Relationship above for a particle. Lets make the most elementary assumption (and mistake) that space and higher dimensions are connected "linearly". Then now lets say that a particle executes transverse simple harmonic motion due to trapping of this particle (confinement) in higher dimensions. Put another way lets say it "bobs up and down on the spot with a regular frequency". Now lets "translate" this particle in space from one point to another. This bobbing up and down now becomes a truncated wave motion. The faster the particle moves the longer the apparent wavelength of the particle. Woops you say... De Broglie insists (and experiment) that the wavelength shortens not lengthens. OK... lets say the internal space is non-linear but a reciprocal space where distances are 1/distance yet remaining connected with our spacetime of distance and time in 10 (or 11) dimensions. We substitute these internal dimensions into the formula and we immediately see the relationship now works. The faster the particle moves the wavelength in our space is shortened. This is simply because the internal space "tunnels" into our space in the "near field".

If we consider a particle or a photon as this "wave packet object", then it will classically extend both forward and backward in time (the central maxima of the wave packet being the most likely place to find this "particle"). A quick look at this Java applet indicates "spreading" and the extension of the wave packet classically "to the ends of the Universe" excepting that the confluence of waves from the past and the future lead to a local maxima and a cancellation elsewhere.
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~cywon/Quantum.html
Where these ends of the Universe are is simply the outside of the hypersurface. This surface may be exceedingly small and communicates via dynamic strings on the surface of the D6 brane. It is assumed that the future waves and the past waves are dynamically canceled. The idea is extended here if you wish to look...
Double slit experiment, Quantum consciousness: Good Elf
In the case of a photon quantum level overlapping due to the Heisenberg Relationships then it is possible for the photon to be "dragged into that common state of all similar propagating monochromatic photons" as a common traveling bosonic state... a kind of spontaneous quantum coherence through rearrangement of the internal mutual energy of all photons in the one Bose-Einstein Statistical wavefront occupying that narrow uncertainty in bandwidth and occupying a minimum of least action. This is why simple monochromatic light can be used to create holograms and was used for this purpose before practical optical lasers were invented. This is the photon (or low velocity sorted electron beam) equivalent of the Bose-Einstein Condensate... a single quantum state where all photons occupy the same physical space and time on a single wavefront as many other similar "operationally entangled" photon "particles". The main difference is this "stuff" is traveling at the speed of light. Electrons are obviously a much lower velocity analog of this process.


Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Sep 1 2006, 01:28 PM

Hi TRoc, StevenA and Precursor562,

An interesting question has cropped up elsewhere in the forum... this has led to a few additional comments to the preceding.
Stimulated emission,, how did Einstein discover it ?
It is a very deep idea and Einstein seems to currently have the last word on it.

This adds another consciousness to the discussion and another position to consider.

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Sep 1 2006, 10:38 PM

I just posted a comment on another thread that might have some similarities with this idea of spontaneous emission, but in terms of a photon being similar to a shared orbital of two quarks between different particles.

In this case individual quarks in the exchange neither represent an electron (2 quark), nor mass (an observation of "spacetime" created by a sequence of 2 quarks interacting with a third witness ... 2 quarks "looking" at each other is a timeless exchange as each only sees the other) and so faster than light effects can occur without the necessity of a physical momentum either.

http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=8863&hl=

Also because the two quarks in an exchange don't necessarily need to be physically attached during the entire time, as the "wave collapse" occurs when they interact and exchange information, then an associated wavelength can exist between them and multiple paths can appear to have a simultaneous impact on whether the final "photonic interaction" or exchange occurs.

(Oops, I just started reading the article you posted Good Elf, and realized I was thinking of spontaneous emission and not stimulated emission. I'll continue reading it, but I've wondered about why no phase lag occurs during this ... you'd tend to assume such events would incur a small delay and so some phase lag should occur over time. I don't know if stimulated emission actually does incur some phase delay during the process ... if it doesn't, that adds some interesting considerations)

This post has been edited by StevenA on Sep 1 2006, 11:48 PM

Here's a couple quotes from that article:

There's a catch though. If this is the case, an emitter, unless the physical process is different than stimulated emission, would need to jump forward when emitting a photon and the detector would be pushed back. This would allow for motion in a single direction and violate the idea of equal and opposite forces.

Of course a few possibilities are: 1) reflections may not operate via. the same mechanism as stimulated emissions 2) because reflections reverse the wave function, this could invert a component and cancel the wave function along the immediate surface of the mirror - at least dependent on the incident angle and then polarize the force so that no future momentum would exist in that direction, like a vector product with the surface ... these seems likely because reflections off metal polarize light, though a pure reflection doesn't appear to do this, so there must be a difference in that a pure reflection doesn't absorb some component of the energy, 3) a reflection could be seen by a specific wavelength as the "edge" of its associated universe and so the wave is pushing against - nothing. If any edges existed to the universe, they would likely appear as reflections.

(just some rambling on this)

Wouldn't it be interesting if the delay time for a photon was exactly a 90 deg phase lag at each point, emitter and detector, with a 180 deg phase shift in space and possibly some integer multiple of 360 degs during the trip?

Or another possibility would be a 90 deg phase shift at emission and absorption points, for a 180 deg reversal, but with a feedback path providing a seconday inversion for a total 360 reinforcement along the path. In this case wavelengths could be in terms of 180 deg phase shifts, as this delay would apply both directions and maintain a 360 reinforcement over the path.

Let's assume for a second that light speed was effectively infinite. No matter what the velocity, if such a classical view of the field were true, then we'd have these various phase shifts in time and you could still interprete relative ratios of phase delays as distances ...

/mode ramble off

(Yes, sometimes my posts are too abstract)