Binding photons together slows them down and gives them mass.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest

So here is my idea: The aether exists. It has ground-state non-zero mass. We can't measure that ground-state mass because it's right under our noses. As far as we're concerned, it is Zero, but we forget that Zero does not quantitatively exist. It's an abstraction fabricated by the human mind.

As is "the aether". Originally the 19th century 'ether' had a specific physical meaning and wasn't vague voodoo. It described a class of theories meant to reconcile the newly discovered Maxwell equations for electromagnetism with the known principles of Newtonian mechanics---there was clearly a conflict.

Einstein took the stupendously bold position that Maxwell was right (it was only 20 years old at this point) and Newton's physics which was the pinnacle of truth for 200 years was actually a bit wrong. With this change, the need for 'ether' disappeared in to um, the ether. Einstein reconciled Maxwell and Newton with a bit of a touch up job, but Maxwell's equations were born relativistically correct. (Did you know that electric charge is an absolute invariant in all reference frames? No relativistic adjustments needed!)

Photons only "appear" to be massless because they are quantized waves of the ground-state medium...the aether..."loss of inertia", as Theoria would put it.

They appear to be massless because they behave as though they were massless, they don't accelerate, they travel at c in vacuum, and you can reflect one instantaneously, instead of slowing it first and then have it go in the other direction like a ball with mass.

If you want to call 'the aether' the electromagnetic field which exists in all space & time, then what you say appears to be correct, but it's better to call things by what other people know them to be and not a distinctly misleading name.

This is the part where I get ripped apart and called a fool by the geniuses of ATS.

No, only unknowledgable about what current physics says.

originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
a reply to: BASSPLYR
OK I will make this more simple.

Photons have mass, and energy and mass are pretty much the same thing looked at from different vantage points.... There I said it! You know what that thing called, relativity, ya its all relative.

Photons in vacuum don't have mass. Energy is a property of configurations of fields. In a generalized sense, 'mass' is a sort of energy but other configurations of elementary fields have energy as well.

A photon (in vacuum) is a great example of something with positive energy, positive momentum, and zero mass.

Relativity is a specific quantitative physics that today tells physicists how to write laws of physics in the proper invariant form which DOES NOT change. It's the opposite of 'anything goes', instead "only stuff that works THIS way goes".

originally posted by: stormcell

My question: Is the cooled rubidium cluster a Bose-Einstein condensate??? That would be good to know.

I think so - that's the main reason they cool clusters of atoms down close to absolute zero. Temperature is a measure of electron energy state. So right at this level, electrons are so lethargic it might take two or three photons to kick them up into another energy level, which the electron then emits tangled together. Each photon can be considered to be a magnetic and electric field perpendicular to each other, so they could end up overlapping and being out of phase to each other by 120 degrees, almost forming a solid particle as no field would ever be zero. Then they would have some mass and slow down below the speed of light by the laws of Physics.


Yes, the extreme cold is necessary to preserve the Bose-Einstein condensate in the atoms. That's an extremely rare and delicate state of matter that would be disrupted by any additional heat. In the BEC, the quantum wavefunctions of the atoms are very different from the usual state, where atoms are compact and generally much smaller than wavelengths of optical light. My guess is that when this happens the types of interactions between the EM field and the atomic electrons is very different from what physicists are used to, and the quantum mechanics of this results in new 'basis functions' for expanding the EM wavefunctions and the consequences are different.

And that nobody can accurately compute this theoretically at the moment so the scientists are guessing about the phenomenology. But in 20 years we may know how to compute this.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF


I keep saying light is weirder than we know... maybe that should be my new tag line!

Light is pretty simple. It's that quantum mechanics is still way #ing wacko after all these years!

What's next, they capture frequencies and create decibels. And trap sample rates.

Freeze pixels? Grow inches in a test tube? Reproduce millimeters in a dish?

(Protons are not a thing, they are a value)

a reply to: mbkennel

staff really should issue you the FSME tag for your avatar in regards to the science and technology threads.

for this thread I'd pay attention to mbkennels posts. he is a hardcore physicist professionally employed as such.

originally posted by: mbkennel
This is entirely untrue. The matter fields of the SM are distinctly different in nature and existence than the EM field.

That is entirely untrue.

I believe I have a much more advanced understanding than that. While you are still concerned with the Standard Model and the four fundamental forces, I have simplified all that into two fundamental forces which are inseparable so it can be considered one force. That "distinctly different nature and existence" you speak of is also the result of a clever arrangement of light. When I say light, I speak of that which forms a photon and not the photon itself. That which defines the line between existing and not existing, the smallest unit of all that is, which is binary by nature. That which you will never observe individually unless you free your self from the illusion of time, and therefor space. That which you can only come to understand if you ask your self, because it is what forms you.

But, perhaps discussing that is for a topic of its own.

a reply to: More1ThanAny1

I'm not buying that at all.

listen to mbkennel guys. he's an actual physicist who works for some pretty serious folks cranking out very complex math and physics. he kinda knows what he's talking about.

a reply to: More1ThanAny1

Not buying it either without any citations, as it sounds firstly too good to be true and secondly somewhat incoherent in its description.

Simplified into two fields that are inseparable and such a single field... so which is it? one field or two?

Any mathematical treatment of said theory?

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
I'm not buying that at all.

originally posted by: ErosA433
Not buying it either without any citations, as it sounds firstly too good to be true and secondly somewhat incoherent in its description.

I guess that all works out then, because I am not selling anything.

Incoherence is an opinion with a foundation formed by a lack of understanding.

originally posted by: ErosA433
Simplified into two fields that are inseparable and such a single field... so which is it? one field or two?

If you thought two forces being one is incoherent, you'd probably also think similarly when I tell you it actually manifests itself and can be observed as 3 forces.

(1) Attraction
(2) Repulsion
(3) Attraction/Repulsion Combined

You see, attraction is one force and repulsion another. There you have your two fundamental forces. These two forces are inseparable based on your frame of reference. Since the same principle instantiates both they can be considered one force, yet it can manifest itself in three ways.

If you observe attraction, you are likely making that observation from a frame of reference of the attracter or the attracted. However, by simply changing your frame of reference this can also be observed as repulsion. For example, and only an example, you may observe you are attracted to Earth via gravity, but perhaps your frame of reference can be flipped so that you observe that you are being repelled from the totality of the Universe into Earth instead. Which would be equally true. So here you can see the inseparability of the two forces.

It is possible to have more attraction than you do repulsion, an imbalance. So you'd observe more attraction than repulsion, and this would be observed by you as "attraction" and several phenomena would thus be studied. Same is true for repulsion, it too can be imbalanced with attraction and give rise to several more phenomena that you'd then study. So you would observe (1) and (2) with imbalance, and differing frame of reference.

Then when you observe a perfect balance of the two you find (3). Equilibrium. Which could be observed as the lack of attraction and repulsion in one frame of reference, or a perfectly balanced amount attraction and repulsion in another.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
Any mathematical treatment of said theory?

Certainly. A fair amount of all current mathematical truths still hold their validity with this understanding. This understanding of the prime material doesn't replace everything currently known to science, it supplements it, and moves it along nicely.

But again, my purpose on this topic was not to hijack this topic, nor tell you about any of this. So, good day.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

Star trek holodecks immediately come to mind. lol

Blue Shift brings up a great point. Can propulsion systems be built around this discovery?

What about other applications?

New forms of 3d printing with the very building block of nature?

If this tech leads to an ability to construct materials out of nothing but light, then space based industries would be the most prolific users and developers in the future.

Light smiths lol, ....is this where we forge our lantern?

Very cool.

"Binding photons together slows them down and gives them mass."....

But what is mass? Could it not be just a fluctuation of density in an underlying aether that appears real in our time line. Perhaps we need rethink our mental constructs.

It is ironic that Einstein's most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed [..] The word 'ether' has extremely negative connotations in theoretical physics because of its past association with opposition to relativity. This is unfortunate because, stripped of these connotations, it rather nicely captures the way most physicists actually think about the vacuum. . . . Relativity actually says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of matter pervading the universe, only that any such matter must have relativistic symmetry. [..] It turns out that such matter exists. About the time relativity was becoming accepted, studies of radioactivity began showing that the empty vacuum of space had spectroscopic structure similar to that of ordinary quantum solids and fluids. Subsequent studies with large particle accelerators have now led us to understand that space is more like a piece of window glass than ideal Newtonian emptiness. It is filled with 'stuff' that is normally transparent but can be made visible by hitting it sufficiently hard to knock out a part. The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo.

Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel Laureate in Physics

a reply to: glend

Careful. Some around here would call that heresy.

a reply to: mbkennel

They appear to be massless because they behave as though they were massless, they don't accelerate, they travel at c in vacuum, and you can reflect one instantaneously, instead of slowing it first and then have it go in the other direction like a ball with mass.

Is it possible that photons do actually slow upon reflection, but that margin of deceleration and re-acceleration is currently immeasurable? Or could it be that because photons are quantized waves in the ground state EM medium, they simply have no other field to resist?

If you want to call 'the aether' the electromagnetic field which exists in all space & time, then what you say appears to be correct, but it's better to call things by what other people know them to be and not a distinctly misleading name.

My problem with the Standard Model (or at least the way it is taught to the layman) is the electromagnetic field is not defined as a medium. Photons are defined as non-mechanical EM waves that can propagated without a medium. So which is it?

Are photons quantized mechanical waves in the EM medium? This would mean that the EM medium (aether) is not abstract, but simply not fully understood (or defined).

Or are photons anomalous non-mechanical wave-particle entities that move through a void that we call the EM field? If so, how can a wave exist without a medium? That would be the underlying issue.

Please forgive my ignorance, and more importantly my arrogance.

The real issue with calling something aether is that it is re-inventing or re-using an old term. That in itself isn't so bad if it wasn't for the massive amount of ignorant abuse that would flow from that.

It (sadly) would for some people validate incorrect or disproven models and theories because of using the same name.

It wouldn't be heresy to use it, BUT here on ATS in particular, people like to invent and tag labels on things that are far beyond irrelevant. This thread is rather ironic proof as such. The original source paper was posted, none of you guys posting appear to have taken any notice of it, and carried on talking about this as ultimate proof that photons have mass and and the whole of physics is obviously wrong in the way the professional scientists model it, and right in the way randomers on a conspiracy theory forum want it.

THAT is why we don't change the word... Field... with Aether.

Firstly a Field and a medium are a totally different thing, but hey never mind that, because ultimately not many people here care to actually try and understand what the standard model says before they throw it in the trash and make random things up like unicorns and pixie dust.

a reply to: ErosA433

I'm actually not a response to your post but adding to it.

The "luminiferous" aether of old was considered to be an actual medium that light waves propagated through. Like sound waves need air to propagate. There was a famous experiment to prove the existence of the aether but it failed. See Michelson-Morley Experiment.

This is very important, if there was an aether there would be an absolute frame for light where it travels C in and all other frames not C

We know that the laws of physics in every frame of reference must hold. In particular Maxwell's Equations which when solved in a vacuum gives a constant speed of light. So therefore the speed of light must remain constant in every frame of reference. That's where Special Relativity comes in.

Anyways, you can see that a medium (aether) is not the same as a field (electromagnetic).

This is very difficult to explain and often times I have trouble understanding it. It's just how things are.

It was not my intention to imply that mediums and fields are the same, but how can a field exist without a medium?

Also, I'm not ignoring the original source detailing the experiment. I intend to address that when I've had more time to chew on the data.

a reply to: glend
a reply to: ErosA433

originally posted by: ErosA433
The real issue with calling something aether is that it is re-inventing or re-using an old term. That in itself isn't so bad if it wasn't for the massive amount of ignorant abuse that would flow from that.

Einstein himself didn't have a problem with referring to the space-time of general relativity as "new aether", which he said had different properties than the "old" or "luminiferous aether". Of course Einstein's "new aether" term never stuck which is just as well because it would now be over 100 years old and not so new any more. I think the reason it didn't stick is for the reason you said of re-using an old term which meant something different in the sense the luminiferous aether had different properties than the new aether. So what's wrong with calling it "space-time" as we do now? That certainly helps avoid confusion with luminiferous aether that would happen if we called the space-time of GR "aether" instead.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
It was not my intention to imply that mediums and fields are the same, but how can a field exist without a medium?

Fields have been measured where no medium has been found. Therefore if you're assuming a medium is required for those fields, you are making assumptions which contradict experiment and observation.

If you're still convinced that's somehow impossible, feel free to measure and prove to everybody there really is a medium for the EM field like luminiferous aether that Michelson-Morley didn't find, nor have numerous experiments since. It was obviously a popular idea over a century ago, but the fact it's never been found since says something to me. At what point and after how many failed experiments to detect luminiferous aether does one finally accept that it may not exist and that EM radiation seems to propagate just fine without it?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

My problem with using "space-time" as a medium or "new aether" is that it focuses on measurements of duration of change and volume rather than focusing on the substance being measured. We could easily rename it minute-millileters, or something along those lines.

And what about the Casimir Effect? Doesn't that imply a ground-state medium does indeed exist. Maybe it doesn't have all the qualities that Michelson and Morley were looking for, but if they had been alive to witness the Casimir Effect, what would they have said?