I have been attempting to understand if or why there is a difference in the behavior of high frequency photons as compared to those that we can easily measure. One problem that crops up frequently is that the energy of these waveforms travels outwards at the speed of light relative to us the observer. We are limited to being able to detect the time changing fields with instruments at a location removed from the source to determine the frequency of the signal. According to special relativity, we are unable to catch up with a moving wave and freeze it in position to actually measure the distance between field peaks. No matter how fast we move, the wave will always escape from us at the speed of light. This is true even if we are traveling in a direction that is backwards relative to the forward directed wave front.
We do know that the Doppler effect will cause the frequency that we measure to vary with our relative motion compared to the source of the radiation. And, since any time we measure the speed of light in our frame of reference it reads the same, the wavelength must be modified along with the apparent frequency. It becomes tricky when the original source and us calculate different length measurements between field peaks depending upon our relative motion. Perhaps the measurement concept is not valid. Is it possible that we can not effectively freeze time and then move along the now static electric and magnetic field patterns to determine the distance between peaks? Considering that we can not ever actually catch up with the expanding fields in any know manner, then this might be a limitation that is placed upon us by relativity. The best that we can do is to measure the time changing fields that are passing through our reference frame. Then we can determine the frequency of the wave by our local clock and it is accurate as far as we can prove. I can see that there are a lot of interesting implications that arise in the pursuit of these concepts. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Sun, Apr 14, 2013 12:47 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Particle size of photon On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:43 PM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote: What is the currently accepted size of a photon that behaves as a particle? If one of these passes through our very large slit experiment how would it be detected at one location as with light photons? Could it be detected over a large area of the impact region with say a dipole antenna? Has anyone given this concept much thought? I was thinking about this myself. If you contrast a photon involved in the transmission of a radio wave with one that is in the gamma ray range, there is an obvious qualitative difference from our frame of reference. The gamma photon is like a tiny bullet, and the radio wave photon is like a large, and enlarging, bubble. Despite the clear qualitative difference, I am led to believe this difference is entirely relative to the physical and temporal dimensions of the frame of reference. To an observer far larger and more slow moving than the radio wave photon, I suspect that photon will interact with its surroundings like the gamma ray photon does in our world, and to an observer much smaller and more quickly moving than the gamma ray photon, the gamma photon will behave in the manner of the radio wave photon in our frame of reference. If we take away this kind of relativity of the temporal and physical frame of reference for photons, this would appear to imply a kind of absolute position in the midst of a spacetime otherwise characterized by special relativity. Eric
