mananvpanchal said:
One moving light clock with LASER. Please, explain me why there is diagonal path of the laser beam?
Dwelling on what others have told you, this development may also help:
- At atomic level, light is emitted omnidirectionally.
- But that happens inside an instrument, which has walls, where the photons reflect, and an aperture, which let's them out.
- The smaller the aperture, the more difficult it will be for the photons to go out unless they come perpendicularly to the aperture.
- The instrument is just a reproduction at small scale of the path that a photon must follow in the outside world if it wants to hit its target, the top mirror of the light clock. Hence if a photon succeeds in going out, it is because it already possesses that trajectory, which in the frame of the instrument we paint as vertical and other frames paint as diagonal.
- You can visualize it as a camera with a pinhole.
- The laser is not substantially different. It also has a cavity and a "hole" (a half-reflecting mirror). It just happens that its mechanics strongly favor the emission of photons in the "right direction". But it does not eliminate a certain degree of divergence, even if unnoticeable.
An interesting question is then: what about massive objects, like a cannon ball? We see it at rest with us. Unlike light, it does share the motion of the source. And then we assume that, when accelerated, it will acquire the additional state of motion that we have chosen, in a certain direction, without further requirement. But there is further requirement. I have no time now to comment upon this, though. Maybe someone would like to.