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Topic: How fast is the speed of light? - page 2. (Read 1711 times)

donator
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Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
June 25, 2012, 04:09:01 PM
#10
Space-time can be compressed. In many ways it acts like a medium. Light bends around dense objects like water around a rock. If space-time is a medium, wouldn't it make sense for that medium to have differing states? Most space would be fluid. Black holes may be frozen. Planck-time may be plasma. Dark Matter may be the gaseous state of space-time. What we call matter is a suspension of remnant solid space-time as particles that decay based on the temperature of the gravity they exist in, kinda like floating ice.
hero member
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June 25, 2012, 03:23:13 PM
#9
There are no particles and there are no waves.  There is light; and we sometimes find it convenient to think of it as a TEM wave, sometimes

Waves do exist.  Sound waves.  Sound moves through a medium by means of high and low pressure states. (analog)

Who's to say photons aren't prone to vibration?

I was talking in the context of light.  Light is neither a wave nor a particle, but sometimes behaves as one or the other.

I'm not even going to bother with your nonsense about vibrating photons.  Are you going to tell me about the ether that the waves can vibrate in next?
sr. member
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June 25, 2012, 02:04:40 PM
#8
There are no particles and there are no waves.  There is light; and we sometimes find it convenient to think of it as a TEM wave, sometimes

Waves do exist.  Sound waves.  Sound moves through a medium by means of high and low pressure states. (analog)

Who's to say photons aren't prone to vibration?

sr. member
Activity: 369
Merit: 250
June 25, 2012, 02:02:13 PM
#7
The 'speed' of light is different than the 'velocity' of light.
sr. member
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June 25, 2012, 12:04:37 PM
#6
that 2-dimensionally we call a wave

OMG

also learn to Wave–particle duality
hero member
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June 25, 2012, 09:28:37 AM
#5
The speed of light in a vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. The value is explained as 299,792,458 metres per second, or represented as 186,282.397 miles per second. From a perspective, this may appear correct but in actuality is incorrect. The photon does not travel in a straight line, it travels in a corkscrew, that 2-dimensionally we call a wave. Light does not travel at 186,282 miles per second, in actuality, the particle of light travels 3.41 times faster than we are lead to believe.

On the scale you're talking about, there is no such thing as "the particle of light", and it certainly isn't corkscrewing.  We might perhaps think of the vector sum of the electromagnetic wave components (electric and magnetic waves at right angles) to be drawing out a corkscrew, but nothing is physically travelling along that path.

I think you're making the classic mistake of carrying the analogy we use to represent the physics of the universe to ourselves too far, and treating it as real.

There are no particles and there are no waves.  There is light; and we sometimes find it convenient to think of it as a TEM wave, sometimes as a packetised ball of energy we call a particle.  Neither of those is real -- there is only "light".


Edit: here's a picture that I find helpful:

sr. member
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We are bees, and we hate you.
June 25, 2012, 02:19:25 AM
#4
I'm not even going to start on this one...  Tongue

sr. member
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June 25, 2012, 02:07:48 AM
#3
*Ahem* and what about the other eight spacial dimensions that photons travel through?
donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1014
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
June 25, 2012, 01:17:24 AM
#2
Well, straight lines do not exist in nature either. The corkscrew analogy you give offers no explanation for that behavior. I believe you are almost right, but instead of a spiral, you are looking at fluid-dynamic vortices created by the density of the vacuum as a state of the gravitic temperature.
full member
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Web Dev, Db Admin, Computer Technician
June 25, 2012, 12:58:41 AM
#1
The speed of light in a vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. The value is explained as 299,792,458 metres per second, or represented as 186,282.397 miles per second. From a perspective, this may appear correct but in actuality is incorrect. The photon does not travel in a straight line, it travels in a corkscrew, that 2-dimensionally we call a wave. Light does not travel at 186,282 miles per second, in actuality, the particle of light travels 3.41 times faster than we are lead to believe.

635,222.97377 miles per second is the true speed of light.
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