Dark Light - Light's counter-part?

[Hypercube]

I was watching a show on the Discovery Channel the other day about particle physics. In that program, they mentioned in passing that photon's do not have a counter-part, that the opposite of light is darkness. After they said that, I realized that that was not true, at least the part where they said that darkness is opposite of light. All darkness is is the absense of light, saying that dark is opposite of light is like saying that 0 is opposite of 1. If we were to represent light with a number 1, then darkness would have to be represented by 0, since darkness occurs when you take light away.

 

Most things in the universe have a counter-part; matter/antimatter, acid/alkalyne, positive/negative, etc. and when opposites come in contact with each other, they cancel each other out to form a neutral substance; matter + antimatter = photons, acid + alkalyne = water, and so on. That being said, darkness can't be opposite of light because it is represented by 0, in other words it is what you would theoretically get if you put light and dark light (for lack of a better word) together, they would then cancel each other out and leave darkness.

 

I am not saying that this is necessarily the case, but I am correct in saying that darkness is not opposite of light.

[insane_alien]

do you mean like shining to coherent beams of light (with phase offset of pi radians) at the same spot and not seeing any light?

[Hypercube]

I guess you could think of it that way, but the main point I tried to make is that dark is not opposite of light.

[BenTheMan]

I think you're reading too much into this thing you've heard---the point they (surely) were making is that there are no ``anti-photons'', in the way we have positrons, which are anti-electrons.

[jackson33]

Reality; Light is a result, of some Electromagnetic energy, as it reflects off matter and then only to the degree our eye/brain or our equipment can understand as light. Darkness could be explained as the lack of matter. Emptiness/Something then so to speak...

 

Opinion; Darkness is an entity (something) which we do not yet understand.

We do understand that what we perceive as darkness is full of all sorts of EME, somehow could be the reason even energy is limited in velocity at C.

[Hypercube]

Not like positrons no, but how do we know that the "anti-photon" isn't the same as the regular photon, but has negative energy? In that case, the two would theoretically cancel each other out. My uncle has a degree in physics, and he practically knows everything there is to know about topics like this, and he said that yes, theoretically, the two would cancel out to make darkness.

[ajb]

I agree with Ben. The "anti-photon" is considered to be identified with the photon and so the anti-photon does not really exist.

 

Maybe you could consider the photino to be the "counter" particle to the photon. But the photino is not "darkness"!

[Hypercube]

What is it about this thread that you guys don't understand? I am not saying that the anti-photon whatever it might be is darkness, in fact I said the exact opposite; DARKNESS IS NOT LIGHT'S OPPOSITE!!! The photino, if that it the photon's opposite, would cancel out if it came in contact with the photon, destroying them both, leaving darkness.

[Royston]

Lack of (darkness), doesn't mean opposite (in physics terms) if that's the answer you're looking for.

 

The photino is the photons superpartner, but I know very little about gauge theory and supersymmetry, but I do know that it doesn't class as an anti-photon, as already mentioned, they don't exist anyway.

[Reaper]

All that we perceive as "light" is in reality electromagnetic forces. The human eye can only see between 400 nm to ~700 nm wavelengths. So therefore anything outside of that range would be "darkness" to us.

 

I don't think any of us here are really understanding what you mean by "darkness" because the term can be applied to more than just lack of light.

[losfomot]

What is it about this thread that you guys don't understand? I am not saying that the anti-photon whatever it might be is darkness, in fact I said the exact opposite; DARKNESS IS NOT LIGHT'S OPPOSITE!!! The photino, if that it the photon's opposite, would cancel out if it came in contact with the photon, destroying them both, leaving darkness.

 

So you just started this thread to make the statement 'darkness is not light's opposite' ... and... that's it?... ok... good for you. Nobody is arguing with you about that because you go on to explain that, by light, you mean photon, and by opposite, you mean some sort of anti-photon, which darkness obviously is not.

 

But then you go on to say that the photon's opposite (or 'dark light') would cancel out the photon leaving darkness. And that is what people are trying to set you straight on. Your scenario does not work because the photon has no opposite.

[Severian]

Not like positrons no, but how do we know that the "anti-photon" isn't the same as the regular photon, but has negative energy? In that case, the two would theoretically cancel each other out.

 

I think you have a misconception about antimatter. A positron does not have negative energy - it has positive energy, just like an electron. In fact, it is convention which one is matter and which is antimatter. The fact that the 'cancel each other out' is just that they have opposite quantum numbers (eg charge, lepton number etc) so the resulting object must be neutral etc but will still have energy. In fact, when a positron and electron meet and annihilate, they produce light.

 

Your statement "how do we know that the "anti-photon" isn't the same as the regular photon" is exactly correct. The photon is its own antiparticle.

[swansont]

What is it about this thread that you guys don't understand? I am not saying that the anti-photon whatever it might be is darkness, in fact I said the exact opposite; DARKNESS IS NOT LIGHT'S OPPOSITE!!! The photino, if that it the photon's opposite, would cancel out if it came in contact with the photon, destroying them both, leaving darkness.

 

Answered already, I think. It was the Discovery channel; it's possible they were just wrong, it's possible they intended something other than how you interpreted it.

 

A problem with a particle having negative energy is we don't know how to describe it. We already have adequate mechanisms that get rid of photons (e.g. absorption) to give us darkness. What phenomenon would mandate a negative photon? How do you make them? What would the frequency be? You can shift the phase by pi and give destructive interference (as i_a noted), but that's not the same thing.

[BenTheMan]

What is it about this thread that you guys don't understand? I am not saying that the anti-photon whatever it might be is darkness, in fact I said the exact opposite; DARKNESS IS NOT LIGHT'S OPPOSITE!!! The photino, if that it the photon's opposite, would cancel out if it came in contact with the photon, destroying them both, leaving darkness.

 

So you're arguing semantics?

[Hypercube]

I don't really know what semantics are. And I also know quite well that antimatter does not have negative energy. Also, I only posed the cancellation scenario as a possibility, if you think about it logically; if photons did have some kind of antiparticle (not necessarily related to the electric charge of the particle), why shouldn't the two do what every other "antipair" do: cancel?

[timo]

if you think about it logically; if photons did have some kind of antiparticle (not necessarily related to the electric charge of the particle), why shouldn't the two do what every other "antipair" do: cancel?

And when the photon and the anti-photon meet they vanish, leaving only an energy-burst consisting of a photon and an anti-photon?

[Sayonara]

This thread is better than TV.

[BenTheMan]

se·man·tics (sĭ-mān'tĭks) Pronunciation Key

n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)

 

Linguistics The study or science of meaning in language.

Linguistics The study of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent. Also called semasiology.

The meaning or the interpretation of a word, sentence, or other language form: We're basically agreed; let's not quibble over semantics.

 

You're just arguing over words. There are no ``anti-photons''---the opposite of ``light'' is ``no light''.

[Sayonara]

Absence is not opposition though is it?

 

The opposite of light would be "anti-light" were it not for the inconvenient fact that anti-light doesn't exist, except in the sense that light is its own antiparticle, as Severian said.

 

Yes it's a semantic argument but there is something to be said for using words correctly, and while Hypercube's search for anti-light will be fruitless he is quite correct that the TV programme wrongly ascribed the status of anti-light to "darkness".

 

The only thing to take away from this thread of any value is that Discovery Channel shows are not as scientific as they could be, which shouldn't come as any great shock.

 

I am not saying that this is necessarily the case, but I am correct in saying that darkness is not opposite of light.

Yes. Light has no conventional opposite, and darkness is simply an absence of light.

[YT2095]

look up Classification method.

 

take a classroom full of kids, to break then into classifications you may start with

 

Male and Not Male

 

then move onto Light hair and Not light hair

 

and so forth...

 

the Opposite of light is No Light or Not Lit, like white and black, All colors and the absence of color.

 

not the Anti-Photon

[Realitycheck]

Not everything in existence has to have an opposite. That's just a myth that somebody made up and got way too popular. In most binary systems, even zero is not the opposite of 1, it is simply the absence of 1. Absence of 1/Presence of 1, Absence of 1/Presence of 1. Nevertheless, the Absence of 1 is extremely different than the Presence of 1.

 

Of course, you could say that 0 was actually a 1, and 1 was actually a 2, but that's just semantics.

[timo]

Not everything in existence has to have an opposite. That's just a myth that somebody made up and got way too popular.

Explains why I never really found an answer to the mystical question "what's the opposite of my telephone" (I was tending to "a well-working ultra-modern technical device", btw).

[Sayonara]

the Opposite of light is No Light or Not Lit, like white and black, All colors and the absence of color.

 

What's the opposite of porridge?

[insane_alien]

What's the opposite of porridge?

 

fry up

[Realitycheck]

You could also explain it this way. The sun makes photons. The universe is pretty much just a vacuum. They just keep going, and going, and going, like the Energizer bunny. Sometimes, they probably run into dark matter, but dark matter is pretty much just in the way. I doubt it would constitute antiphotons, as antiphotons would have to be emitted by an antistar, if they were truly antiphotons.