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Re: Is photon a wave packet ?



Okay, but it seems it is possible to do a set of experiments that imply
something is traveling along a particular path. For example, a second
detector placed between the source and the original detector seems to
"intercept" the event. Would the proper way to describe this be...
insertion of a detector between the source and the original detector changes
the boudary conditions for the subsequent emission of radiation from the
source?

If that is true, would it be possible to have the original detector in
place, thus setting some boundary conditions for emission, then after
emission the second detector is moved into place "before the E&M wave gets
there?"

In astronomy we are detecting photons that took several years to billions of
years to get here. Presumably, when some of those photons were created
Earth wasn't even here let alone people with telescopes and detectors. But
now we are here, and it seems we are intercepting signals from ancient
events that initiated before we were here, and these signals would have gone
someplace else were we not here to intercept them.


Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817


Bob Sciamanda said...

One's conceptual model might indeed attempt to adhere to a strict
"actio-in-distans" mechanism, whereby a cause might produce a distant
effect (perhaps with a time delay) without any thing travelling between
the two locations. Note that this is conceptual modeling, where one man's
weirdity might be another's loverly.

On the road to considering dissertation topics, Feynman (under Wheeler)
tried to construct an electrodynamics based solely on this
actio-in-distans mechanism. I don't have details, but they finally
abandoned the idea. I think (?) one of the difficulties appeared to be
that the advanced solutions to the wave equation had to be taken
seriously, with undesirable conceptual consequences. Perhaps someone
knows more - it is an interesting question.