Energy and gravity

[Klaynos]

Energy is a property of stuff not stuff itself...

[lemur]

Energy is a property of stuff not stuff itself...

Yes, but it's easy to perceive a wave as a packet of energy in that it bends the shape of its medium giving the appearance of a discrete entity. Since photons supposedly lack any medium, this would seem not to apply - but if they are waves of field-force variability, I think that would explain how they could transport energy without their medium having mass. Mass seems to require closed-field particles and the fact that the EM fields of photons propagate seems to indicate that they are not closed-fields. I hope that is reasonably non-speculative enough to add to the discussion.

Edited January 24, 2011 by lemur

[steevey]

Energy is a property of stuff not stuff itself...

 

What about light then? I know its pure "momentum", but why not energy? Isn't it a particle of pure electro-magnetic energy?

Edited January 25, 2011 by steevey

[Klaynos]

What about light then? I know its pure "momentum", but why not energy? Isn't it a particle of pure electro-magnetic energy?

 

I'm not sure what "pure momentum" is.

 

A photon is a quantised bootstrapping oscillation in E and H fields. One of it's properties is energy, another is frequency, polarisation... they have lots...

[swansont]

Why does that matter? The issue was whether force-fields themselves constitute a form of potential energy. Why or why not?

 

No, because energy is not force. You can have a scalar field, describing the potential energy. Take the gradient of it, multiply by -1, and you have the vector field which is the force. They are different things.

[lemur]

I'm not sure what "pure momentum" is.

I think I know what he means because I have a similar impression; i.e. the electron has momentum and suddenly this momentum drops as it goes down a level and the energy is "teleported" at C to whatever particle it reaches next. I know that photons have their own momentum, hence lasers, but they also seem to just transport momentum between sending and receiving particles at a fixed speed without accelerating, decelerating, or being subject to any friction in between. It's almost as if one atom/electron is able to suddenly convey its energy across a distance (at C), as if it was teleported to the receiving particle and then quickly teleported back to its original position. Although maybe what he means by "pure momentum" is just that energy is completely transferred unlike a particle colliding with another particle where partial momentum may be transferred. Or maybe he's implying that momentum should be treated as a ratio between motion and mass/inertia and therefore that photons would have the ultimate ratio of motion to mass/intertia. I guess there are more ways to interpret "pure momentum" than I at first thought. Are any of these close to what you mean, Steevey?

[steevey]

I think I know what he means because I have a similar impression; i.e. the electron has momentum and suddenly this momentum drops as it goes down a level and the energy is "teleported" at C to whatever particle it reaches next. I know that photons have their own momentum, hence lasers, but they also seem to just transport momentum between sending and receiving particles at a fixed speed without accelerating, decelerating, or being subject to any friction in between. It's almost as if one atom/electron is able to suddenly convey its energy across a distance (at C), as if it was teleported to the receiving particle and then quickly teleported back to its original position. Although maybe what he means by "pure momentum" is just that energy is completely transferred unlike a particle colliding with another particle where partial momentum may be transferred. Or maybe he's implying that momentum should be treated as a ratio between motion and mass/inertia and therefore that photons would have the ultimate ratio of motion to mass/intertia. I guess there are more ways to interpret "pure momentum" than I at first thought. Are any of these close to what you mean, Steevey?

 

I'm pretty sure it means that the photon pretty much travels forever, its always doing work. I guess it could fall into a black hole, but at least under terrestrial conditions, photons never stop being photons. Only the wavelength changes.

Edited January 26, 2011 by steevey

[swansont]

I'm pretty sure it means that the photon pretty much travels forever, its always doing work. I guess it could fall into a black hole, but at least under terrestrial conditions, photons never stop being photons. Only the wavelength changes.

 

Work has a specific meaning in physics, and photons are not doing work while they travel.

[lemur]

I'm pretty sure it means that the photon pretty much travels forever, its always doing work. I guess it could fall into a black hole, but at least under terrestrial conditions, photons never stop being photons. Only the wavelength changes.

Anything with momentum travels forever unimpeded by outside force. Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. I thought you meant that photons are "pure momentum" in the sense that they are just packets of pure energy that transport momentum from one particle to another. Maybe another way to put it would be that particles with mass seem to have internal-energy that takes the form of mass and somehow allows them to travel below C. EM radiation doesn't seem to have any such "internal-energy" and maybe this has something to do with why it can and does travel at C. Honestly, though, I don't even think that photons are comparable to other particles in that I don't think they "move through" spacetime as much as they are spacetime itself in motion. I think particles with mass might be constituted at their most radical level from spacetime-motion-energy but once bound as particles, I think they have to traverse through force-fields instead of using them as a medium. Sorry to throw in personal beliefs, but I find it frustrating that no model is ever given for how light travels without a medium and its other special characteristics as a particle/wave.

 

 

 

[steevey]

Work has a specific meaning in physics, and photons are not doing work while they travel.

 

Well I forgot what momentum and work specifically mean. I think work is something like how much force over what distance, but since the photon would never stops traveling distance, its infinite/pure something. And momentum is something like the mass times the speed.

Edited January 27, 2011 by steevey

[alpha2cen]

Energy is a state function, heat and work are path function.

Heat and work are transfered amount from a system to the surround, are not energy state amount.

Moving electrons or photons have state energy amount. If they release energy as heat or work to the surround, their energy state will be lowered.

System A energy state-------------------> System B energy state

................................Heat or Work released

Edited January 27, 2011 by alpha2cen

[imatfaal]

Well I forgot what momentum and work specifically mean. I think work is something like how much force over what distance, but since the photon would never stops traveling distance, its infinite/pure something. And momentum is something like the mass times the speed.

 

[math] E^2= \rho ^2c^2 + m^2c^4 [/math]

 

setting mass equal to zero for the photon and rearranging

 

[math] \rho = E/c [/math]

 

A photon has momentum without having any mass - per the above equation - which can be experimentally measured .

[alpha2cen]

Some different viewpoint, we can see photon.

Photon has a mass, but it has no inertia mass.

E=mC²

Photon's "primal mass" is (+-)1/2( E/C²)

Photon has it's anti-photon

When photon collide with some particle, it transfer energy to the particle by using it's own annihilation reaction.

The concept has not been authorized yet. More discussion is needed.

It can explain photon disappearing after collide with other particles.

Edited February 14, 2011 by alpha2cen

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The concept has not been authorized yet. More discussion is needed.

Then please do not bring it up as an answer to mainstream science questions. New hypotheses should be discussed in the Speculations forum.

[alpha2cen]

Photon and anti-photon has been discussed in the main stream.

But the annihilation phenomena has not been discussed before.

Annihilation and energy emission can not be considered as different things each other. Two phenomena are very closely related.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Then you can discuss the new ideas in Speculations. In the Physics forum, we answer questions with already-accepted physics, not speculative new ideas.

[steevey]

What about galaxies colliding? How is that potential energy? When our galaxy collides with the Andromeda galaxy, the Earth will be flung in a direction at incredible speeds which would take unimaginable amounts of force to resist, but how is that momentum being transferred through gravity? What "potential" energy was in Earth to all of a sudden cause it to sped up to that?