a-cosmology-group/acg#227

–––– Forwarded Message –––– Sun, 2 Jun 2024 12:53:19 Sahil Gupta via Cosmology Group

A photon emitted let us say 4Gpc away, at a redshift of 1, is measured by the observer on earth to have a frequency of 1/2 the original frequency.

According to d=z*c/H and if H = 1/(13.05 Gy), sure.

A photon emitted 8Gpc away at a red shift of 2, is measured on earth to have a frequency 1/3 the original frequency.

According to d=z*c/H.

A photon emitted at 8Gpc and measured at 4 Gpc is measured to have 1/2 the original frequency.

Ok.

There is no problem here.

There is a problem. According to d=z*c/H, the photon traveling 8Gpc dropped to 1/3 of its energy. But a photon traveling 4Gpc dropped to 1/2 its energy, then traveling another 4Gpc dropped again to 1/2 of its energy, for a total drop to 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4 of its original energy.

You would need to absorb the original photon and re-emit a new photon if you want to measure the frequency from a two-step travel–first 4 Gpc the another 4 Gpc… So there is no expectation that the photon emitted from 4 Gpc will have the same frequency as the one emitted at 8 Gpc when they arrive at earth. They have different ages.

I’m not even bringing up measurement, whether with a photosensor or a human eye or a random hydrogen atom in the IGM. I’m just asking about the state of the photon along its journey. Things have a state even if unobserved. Pondering the state of a photon does not change the gigaparsec-traveling photon’s energy from 1/3 of its original to 1/4.

Even if a measurement were taken, it’s not difficult to fathom, in deep space, an iPhone camera sensor absorbing a blue photon and printing the photon frequency on screen and re-emitting the same color blue photon. Maybe that would take 10 milliseconds? But that’s not important. The frequency of the light incoming and outgoing would be the same, and would not cause the incongruous [1/3 for 8Gpc] and [1/4 for 4Gpc 4Gpc] energy drop of a d=z*c/H model.

Energy traveling by emission and absorption step-by-step across the universe is NOT what we observe. We observe radiation that has traveled unimpeded the full distance from the source.

This is interesting in its own right and doesn’t affect criticism of the d=z*c/H model.

Also, Louis, how does the STz mechanism deal with Eric’s point about “radiation that has traveled unimpeded the full distance from the source”?

Sahil Gupta

–––– Forwarded Message –––– Sun, 2 Jun 2024 16:05:09 Eric Lerner via Cosmology Group

Key question is method, Sahil. Science is about observing the universe and hypothesizing processes that describe how things change. This allows us to make predictions about how they WILL change.

In our existing understanding of EM, a photon propagating freely in space is a DIFFERENT process than a photon being absorbed and re-emitted. In this existing understanding, the coherence of the the photon is destroyed by absorption and re-emission. The photon of the same frequency that is re-emitted is NOT the same as the photon that was traveling freely. (Frequency is NOT the only property that a photon possess, by any means.)

In the linear TL hypothesis, which could equally be called an “ageing light” hypothesis, the freely traveling and re-emitted photons also differ in their age and that , by this hypothesis, affects their energy loss. So the re-emitted photon arrives with 1/4 of the initial frequency and the freely-traveling photon arrives with 1/3 the initial energy. Different photons, different energies, not the same photon with two energies.

Clear?

–––– Forwarded Message –––– Sun, 2 Jun 2024 16:05:09 Louis Marmet via Cosmology Group

Sahil, Eric, […]

Sahil forgets that in our existing understanding of QED, the photon has no measurable properties between emission and absorption. So Sahil’s argument is incomplete.

In our existing understanding of EM, a photon polarizes the medium through which it propagates, causing dispersion. The observed Dispersion Measure shows that light interacts with the IGM between any galaxy and our telescopes. There is no such thing as a “freely-traveling photon” because space is filled with plasma. Eric’s argument is also incomplete.

Regards, Louis

–––– Forwarded Message –––– Sunday June 02 2024 09:09:54 PM UTC Sahil Gupta via Cosmology Group

Key question is method, Sahil. Science is about observing the universe and hypothesizing processes that describe how things change. This allows us to make predictions about how they WILL change.

I know. And I’m alerting you that [ d = z * c/H ]’s predictions about how things change is baffling in that a photon traveling 8Gpc would lose 67% of its energy, but a photon traveling 4Gpc then 4Gpc would lose 75% of its energy. That is neither observed, nor a consistent scientific prediction.

I’ll take it further. Divide 8Gpc into 4 segments, 2Gpc each. Nothing has changed about the total path length or the contents of the column of the path. Your model would predict a photon’s energy drops to (2/3)^4 = 16/81 of its original energy, meaning it would lose ~ 80% of its energy.

the coherence of the the photon is destroyed by absorption and re-emission. The photon of the same frequency that is re-emitted is NOT the same as the photon that was traveling freely. (Frequency is NOT the only property that a photon possess, by any means.)

I know. Still, we’re focused on z and frequency. Do you think that a blue photon emitted from a star and a same color blue photon emitted from a smartphone would experience different redshift in gigaparsec travel? Why?

Anyway, I’m not even making a refutation that depends on absorption or re-emission. I am going along with your scenario that the photon’s travel is unimpeded.

In the linear TL hypothesis, which could equally be called an “ageing light” hypothesis, the freely traveling and re-emitted photons also differ in their age and that , by this hypothesis, affects their energy loss. So the re-emitted photon arrives with 1/4 of the initial frequency and the freely-traveling photon arrives with 1/3 the initial energy.

To recap, I am going along with your scenario that the photon’s travel is unimpeded. I’m only asking about the state of the photon. The state of the photon in intergalactic space is something a model can predict, like how the state of nuclei in radioactive decay is something a model can predict, and my criticism of [ d = z * c/H ] is that it is brittle to divisions of distance segments.

Sahil Gupta

Thank you for sharing. I’m with @sahil5d on this one.

in our existing understanding of QED, the photon has no measurable properties between emission and absorption

Absorption is the measurement, right? So that’s like QED saying “the photon has no measurable properties between emission and measurement”. That’s not much of an insight from QED.

As to a photon having properties between emission and absorption, sure it does. If QED claims the opposite, then I challenge QED. Photons don’t vanish during their travel.

Absorption is the measurement

No, this is incorrect. There are other ways to make measurements without absorption. The polarization of the medium is also a way to make a measurement.

If QED claims the opposite, then I challenge QED. Photons don’t vanish during their travel.

Having no determined property between emission and detection does not mean that the photon vanishes. Who are you to challenge QED, do you even understand the theory? Read Einstein’s EPR paper and the discussions that followed over the decades after publication of the paper, read Richard Feynman’s Lectures on Physics and then come back with arguments that are not limited to 19th century physics.

I am not saying that Eric’s argumentation is valid, his linear redshift-distance relationship is actually incompatible with 20th century electrodynamics and our knowledge of the composition of the IGM. However @sahil5d your arguments show a complete lack of understanding of the theory of electrodynamics; you are not going to convince anyone by challenging QED.

No, this is incorrect. There are other ways to make measurements without absorption.

What is incorrect? I said absorption is the measurement. You said absorption is a measurement. Fine there are other ways to make measurements (collision, scattering).

There are other ways to make measurements without absorption. The polarization of the medium is also a way to make a measurement.

What is an example of polarization of the medium with 0 absorption? I suppose a polarizing filter where 100% of the photons go through?

In fact, if polarization of the medium with 0 absorption is a measurement, then that contradicts QED’s claim that “the photon has no measurable properties between emission and absorption”!

Having no determined property between emission and detection does not mean that the photon vanishes.

You changed it to ‘determined property’. Do you mean ‘determined property’ is the same thing as ‘measurable property’, or something else, or could you say more plainly ‘property’?

Who are you to challenge QED, do you even understand the theory?

Well I’m someone who is challenging LCDM when almost all of academia is convinced it’s true. So that is one mark of credibility. I’m also someone who is challenging Relativity Theory’s Sun going around the Earth, and Maxwell’s Retarded Potential Electromagnetism, and now QED claiming that a photon doesn’t have properties between emission and absorption.

By the way, QED has many critics including Feynman who thought that QED renormalization was a “shell game”, “hocus pocus”, and a “dippy process”.

read Richard Feynman’s Lectures on Physics

I read them long ago. And time to time as the occasion arises.

@RedshiftDrift have you seen Unzicker’s criticisms of QED, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvz4MRpq6xs&ab_channel=Unzicker%27sRealPhysics ?

In addition to Feynman, Freeman Dyson criticized QED for its “mathematical inconsistencies” and “infinites swept under the rug”.

Also, QED is based on Special Relativity (SR). I’ve already written why I think SR is false (the Sun doesn’t go around the Earth and atmospheric nitrogen molecules don’t have the kinetic energy of v=.98c), so with SR debunked, I think QED is debunked too. QED may have a few successful ideas, so they should be factored out and preserved. Those ideas might not even be exclusive to QED (like how the Fresnel coefficient, Fizeau experiment, and Airy experiment findings are not exclusive to SR).

QED, LCDM, BB, SR are one big package.

@sahil5d those mathematical inconsistencies do not change the results of my calculations, I am far from the regime where these problems occur, and well into the experimentally verified predictions of QED.

A comparison: Newtonian physics is known to have some inconsistencies at large speeds/long times/in high gravity. Yet it’s accurate enough to calculate the kinetic energy of your car driving at 120 km/h on the highway as confirmed by decades of observations.

I don’t understand what you mean by ‘my calculations’.? I’m talking about QED at large. QED.. the theory which its inventors said was in the wrong, and the theory involved in scandal after scandal for the electron’s magnetic moment.

Also, this thread started with your point about QED saying “the photon has no measurable properties between emission and absorption”. I challenged that 3 messages above. Recapping: If polarization of the medium with 0 absorption is a measurement, then that contradicts QED’s claim that “the photon has no measurable properties between emission and absorption”!

The photon has no measurable properties. But a quantum superposition of photons, which is the correct description of light, does have the measurable properties observed experimentally.

@RedshiftDrift . Can a single electron be observed? For example if it is released by a single photon with the Photoelectric effect?

Yes, the electron is observable but it is not released by a “single photon”, as the simplified explanation in the article may lead you to think. It is a superposition of photons with a narrow energy distribution that produce the superposition of “electron plane waves”, also with a narrow energy distribution. This is what is observed (the theory for that is called the ‘second quantization’ because both light and electrons are quantized in an interaction).

Math is not physics.

No, but physics uses the language of mathematics.

Math is a an indispensable modeling tool for physics. But all models whether qualitative or quantitative are incomplete representations of whatever they are models of. Modelers tend to focus on certain aspects of a phenomenon while ignoring others that seem irrelevant to the aspects under consideration. This can be a useful approach but usually over a limited range.

It has become a standard procedure in theoretical physics to treat limitations of a model as a consequence of unobservable features that are ascribed to physical reality without benefit of any direct empirical evidence. This spares the model makers of the hard work of making models based on the observed physical phenomena which would require those model makers to come to a physical understanding of the physical system(s) they are attempting to model.

The Sun is not a point mass but it can be treated as such for certain calculations. What is a useful approximation on the scale of the Solar System however is inappropriate for disk galaxies. The fix for that problem was of course Dark Matter.

Dark matter and superposition of states are two examples among many of this behavioral tic among theoretical physicists where the failures of a model are foisted off on physical reality. The theoreticians then run around proclaiming the great success of their “universal laws” that describe a “universe” that doesn’t exist. Coupled with a predilection for reductio ad absurdum reasoning theoretical physics has become a hotbed of unphysical nonsense.

QED turns waves into particles while QFT turns particles into waves rendering quantum theory fundamentally incoherent. Superposition of states is a byproduct “explanation” that attempts to rationalize that incoherence by invoking an unobservable and unphysical condition. Mathematical models do not and cannot determine the nature of physical reality.

@tiredlyndon Light slowing through clear glass is an electromagnetic effect, and not due to absorption and re-emission. In general the photons in visible light do not have enough energy to excite an electron (in glass) to a higher level.

On a classic level all the photons (of a monochromatic source) are slowed in glass equally but on a quantum level there are probabilities to deal with for each photon and my thinking is the interference pattern will be distorted or even destroyed because photons are not exiting phase-coherent, and phase is critical for interference. So in my opinion glass will destroy the interference but I don’t offer this in support of Lerner.

This does not align with Lerner’s thinking, because in glass the wave slows down but the wavelength also shortens. So the photon energy remains $E = hc/λ$ even as $c$ changes. He is looking for a phenomenon that causes frequency to decrease (longer wavelength), while the speed of light remains unchanged, and the photon loses energy. In my opinion this can only happen if the photon did work along the way, and I cannot see where this happens.

Light slowing through clear glass is an electromagnetic effect, and not due to absorption and re-emission

This is correct @Francois-Zinserling, there is no ‘absorption - re-emission’ process in the propagation of light through a transparent medium. @tiredlyndon uses obsolete 19th-century physics. It is known that the reduced velocity is caused by the polarisation of the medium which causes a phase delay in the propagation of the wave.

Put a piece of glass between the laser and the grating and will the interference pattern disappear since the coherence has been destroyed by the glass?

No, glass lenses are commonly inserted inside interferometers without destroying the interference pattern, you have this wrong @tiredlyndon. The absence of ‘absorption - re-emission’ means there is no scattering and no distortion of the wavefront, the interference pattern is not distorted by glass or any transparent medium (like the plasma of the IGM). In terms of photons, they interact coherently by polarising the transparent medium. (Read the first two chapters of Nonlinear Optics of free Atoms and Molecules for an explanation of this.)

You have to go beyond 19th-century physics to understand that photon ‘absorption’ and ‘emission’ are only two of many types of processes describing the interaction of light with matter. I also recommend reading Richard Feynman’s Lectures on Physics

This does not align with Lerner’s thinking, because in glass the wave slows down but the wavelength also shortens.

This is not exactly what Eric argues @Francois-Zinserling. He argues for a “yet unknown ageing light” effect on freely traveling photons (not photons propagating in a medium with an index of refraction.) Eric’s mistake is to think that interference patterns only appear for photons traveling unimpeded, which is completely wrong.

Photons do polarize the plasma of the IGM (as demonstrated by dispersion in radio signals), so the photons cannot travel unimpeded between the galaxy and our telescope. A hypothetical “ageing effect on unimpeded photons” can only happen over limited distances, over which photons do have properties according to QED. Then, @sahil5d’s initial argument

$1 + z(200 \mbox{ Mly}) \equiv [1 + z(100 \mbox{ Mly}) ] * [1 + z(100 \mbox{ Mly}) ]$

makes sense in the context of 20th-century electrodynamics, and falsifies the possibility of a linear redshift-distance relationship.

This discussion won’t go anywhere until the arguments put forward are compatible with established 20th-century electrodynamics. And it won’t go anywhere until Eric joins the forum…

$1+z(200\text{ Mly})=\left[1+z(100\text{ Mly})\right]*\left[1+z(100\text{ Mly})\right]$

That is quite similar to an argument of mine in thread 188.

@mikehelland . We have been going through this quite a while ago. When combining the above comment with (my version of) the Variable Mass Theory, it is found that the maximally possible redshift in your universe is $z_{max}=\exp(H/c.c/H)-1=\exp(1)-1\approx 1.7$ , which is a passed station.

What you seem to be saying is that combining our two models results in a third model, which none of us advocate so I don’t find the argument all that interesting. I’m not saying anything against your theory, BTW. Just that yours and mine are different and that’s OK.

and that’s OK.

It’s not OK. Your so-called physical distance is at best a function of the observed physical distance, which is given by the luminosity distance divided by $(1+z)$. Or, as you have displayed yourself in the header part of thread 188:

$$ d_{ltt} = \frac{c}{H_0} \log (1+z) $$

This has been discussed at length in the thread, especially here. The discrepancy with reality is caused by your “Minkowski time” $\tau$ which is not attached to any physical phenomenon. It’s purely mathematical and it does not correspond with any timing mechanism (clock). $c/H_0$ is not the maximally observable distance and it does not correspond with $z=\infty$.

My model can be computed fully by this:

data = []

H = 70
H = H / 3.08e19 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 * 1e6
c = 1
z = 0
t = 0
x = 0

while z < 20:
    t -= 1
    x += c / (1 + z)
    z = c / (c - H * x) - 1

    data.append([t, x, z])

print(z)

t and x are as described and it goes to as high a z as you want.

@ExpEarth . >So the idea that a single photon is emitted from a star and travels unhindered all the way to us is simply false. [ .. ] We can call it a tired light mechanism [ .. ]

Nope. The idea that there is no TL and that light becomes not tired might be simply true. The Variable Mass Theory says that photons are emitted with higher redshift. And nothing else is happening between emission, and absorption (by us). Simple and straightforward.

photon energy is being transferred to spacetime. [ .. ] this transfer is what gives rise to the gravitational force.

Sorry Matt, IM(NS)HO there is no way to make sense of that.