Recent content by cala

I think everything depends on the answers to these questions: If there are two paths while a photon is "travelling", and we remove one of the paths just before detecting it, will it manifest particle behaviour? If there's only one path while the photon is "travelling", and we make another path...

Stevie, are you just being more specific on how the beam splitters work, or do you mean the beam splitters creating superposition states for the photons would not make the system work as expected?

I've been thinking about a communication system that could allow faster than light communication. The basic principle that would make this system work come from the double-slit experiment and Wheleer's delayed choice experiment, taking advantage of the different patterns that would appear on a...

If the sources are not inside the interference region, and the field from one source is not affecting the other (think of two light cones getting merged far from the sources), why would the forces on the sources have to be asymmetric? You are getting the asymmetry from specific timing of...

Dale, I think momentum is conserved even in this experiment. I'm not saying that there's more momentum on the walls than on the sources, I'm saying that momentum is transferred to the fields in a symmetric way on the sources, then it's collected in a spatially asymmetric distribution on the...

I remade the animation in order to show a setup that keeps the antennas (or whatever method we use to create the waves or photons) outside the interference area. Now it looks more like the double slit experiment (where the interference area doesn't affect the emitter), but with two sources...

Yes, after reviewing my own answer I saw that the antenna system cold be working like a normal engine, but with a photon exhaust. So in a sense it's like a lantern left in space, but with a complicated and inneficient way of letting the photons scape (or appear) on one direction. I thought that...

I get that in order to object the generation of an asymmetric energy distribution that could provide momentum mainly to one side of the box, we need a balancing force somewhere, and that place seems to be the antennas. But if I were talking just about the antenna system alone (with no enclosing...

The point is that I think the radiation pressure on the antennas will manifest equally all around them (they emit waves in all directions, so any possible forces at emission will express as pressure or tension around the whole antenna, so no displacement), yet the patterns the propagating waves...

I made another animation separating the antennas, to show the different regions better. You can see that the interference pattern changes a bit, and that the imbalance on both sides tends to disappear as the distance between the antennas gets bigger (the constructive and destructive interference...

Yes, I thought about that difference between waves and photons. But if the antennas are able to know were the photons will be impacting (in order to "counterbalance" the momentum exchanges that will happen at the right wall), then you're saying we could know where a photon will arrive since...

Hello. The antennas are attached to the box. The signals will be not exactly added or cancelled, but the effect will still take place (there will be an imbalance). I thought also about possible reaction forces on the antennas, but the antennas are firing equally to all directions, so I think...

[Mentors' note - this post has been edited to remove some discussion of the EM-drive. See https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/nasas-em-drive.884753/ for our current policy with regard to em-drive discussions] Hello. Imagine a closed box with reflecting walls. Inside you have two antennas...

Thanks Demystifier. I also started to feel we should use entangled photons to do the experiment, because it's hard (if not impossible) to make photons from different sources interfere. But imagine we can launch entangled photons from the emitters. Does the "one wave affects one particle"...

Ok, I see where you are having problems with what I said. It's precisely on the rate of QM wave/particles and the difference with PW wave rate + particle rate where this experiment could make a difference. Let's use some numbers: QM: Imagine you launch 100 photons from emitter 1. Then, 50...