Does the force of a single photon act in 1 dimension?

jcatom

Well in comment #22 of this thread jedishrfu says and chill_factor asks Both, I assume, are talking about the same thing that I am. 'Everywhere at once' was a poor phrase to use. I'm talking about the wavefunction collapse.

Crazymechanic

I could agree that a photon is not everywhere at once , remember that even "c" the speed of light is a speed no matter that the highest possible one but still a speed , if photon could be everywhere at once then i think light wouldn't have to travel those 8 mins from sun to the earth.
Maybe you thought of that because you can't detect one without having to change it's "life" so then it is easier to think it is everywhere at once.
A photon is like a criminal you never know what his doing until you catch him but when you do so you interrupt his plans and may never know what was about to happen or where did it all began.

i think it is pretty hard to think about photons as they are more of a mathematical human made way of saying what is light and the fact that I know of no source in nature that would emit just a single photon over a longer period of time , they usually come in many and by many in this case is a number with atleast as much zeros after it as Bill Gates bank account.

@jcatom yes the wavefunction collapse , but I think the assumption of the everywhere at once comes from the fact that we can't predict where a particular photon will end up encountering a particle, the possible outcomes are too many to count maybe that's why some just go on to say that a photon is everywhere until we see a photon/particle intervention, something like going down the street not knowing the people coming your way until you accidentally run into one of them and start to talk,but by talking you ultimately change the other persons view of you so you never know what he thought there in the first place just like the photon position before the intervention.

DaleSpam

Because of this I would recommend sticking with non quantum concepts in EM if you are trying to draw a parallel or make a comparison between the two.

jcatom

There's no use then in looking at it from the other perspective--that gravity behaves like EM, but for whatever reason it doesn't have a wavefunction collapse?...or, is able to resist the quantization.

I'm cool with that not working, but this seems to be the closest I've gotten to the question I was originally trying to ask about the weakness of gravity in relation to EM. If the EM wave didn't collapse (assuming that's the real mechanism and that being why I was mentioning 3D as opposed to 1D) would it's 'strength' be similar to that of gravity?

If I'm still not making any more sense than I was to begin with I apologize.

MikeGomez

Your original question was

“Does the force of a single photon act in 1 dimension?”

That is a much different question than…

“Why is the force of electromagnetism stronger than the force of gravity?”

After all this, Is that the question you really want to ask?

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O.k., after reviewing your posts, I see in post #6 that you mentioned that
If that is really the question you want answered, the problem is that you keep obfuscating it with comments about 3 dimensionality and 1 dimensionality, and that doesn’t help at all with your real question (from post #6). It seems as though you have some theory of your own about dimensionality that explains the relative strength differences.

DaleSpam

Yes, it is no use. Until we have a working theory of quantum gravity it is all just speculation.

jcatom

DaleSpam,
Then I guess the real question I'm asking in the end, regardless of my apparent misconceptions, is if quantum gravity is possible at all?

Gravity as a curvature of spacetime is apparently a 3d phenomenon. EM in the form of a photon travels in a straight line which I understand to be a 1d path. Yet, a photon is represented by a wave function until the point of interaction. So if gravity is the same but doesn't collapse into a single point would the apparent disparity in the strength of the two forces come closer? I asked a question that seemed to be at the root of what I'm thinking and if it weren't true then the idea I've got wouldn't be either. There may be several problems with my understanding, but that's why I'm here--to better understand.

--of course have theories, I'm a human man. But I'm not quite dumb enough to think they're correct.

jcatom

So, the difference to me is that the gravitational interaction isn't one that has collapsed. It acts in 3 spacial dimensions as opposed to 1.

DrewD

That is a very bad conclusion to come to since you arrive at it by comparing the classical force of gravity to the quantum particle description of an electromagnetic wave. You need to compare apples to apples.

The photon collapse happens when light is emitted. The gravitational analogue would be a gravitational wave, not the static gravitational force. In both cases, a spherical wave front would be emitted in all directions when considered in a classical theory. In a quantum theory, the same thing (probably) happens, but at the smallest scale the wave is measured in discrete particles. There are some good contenders for a quantum theory of gravity, so it probably works in a similar fashion, but it'll be a while until anyone knows for sure.

Either way, both theories act in 3+1 dimensions period.

jedishrfu

Someone please end this thread. Its wasting time and energy and going nowhere.