What happens to relativity when light is slowed down?

[Bartholomew]

I know that light slows down when it goes through certain substances. Does that mean that relativistic effects would be more visible in, say, water than in space? Or would it be possible to travel faster than light in those circumstances, though still less than c?

I don't understand relativity very well, so please excuse me if I sound like an idiot.

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by Bartholomew
I know that light slows down when it goes through certain substances. Does that mean that relativistic effects would be more visible in, say, water than in space? Or would it be possible to travel faster than light in those circumstances, though still less than c?

I don't understand relativity very well, so please excuse me if I sound like an idiot.

You aren't an idiot, its just a trick!

Light does not ever slow down. It always travels at exactly C.

Unfortunately high school physics teaches that light slows down in a medium. That is true only as an oversimplification and leads to a lot of problems for people who go on to learn more about physics (such as relativity). Personally, I think that the basics of relativity must be taught when the behavior of light is discussed.

Anyway, how refraction REALLY works is that light hits the PARTICLES in the medium and gets absorbed and then re-emitted. The time delay between absorption and re-emission causes the AVERAGE speed of transit through the medium to be slower than C even though when the light exists as light it is traveling at C.

 

[wuyh]

Originally posted by russ_watters
You aren't an idiot, its just a trick!

Light does not ever slow down. It always travels at exactly C.

Unfortunately high school physics teaches that light slows down in a medium. That is true only as an oversimplification and leads to a lot of problems for people who go on to learn more about physics (such as relativity). Personally, I think that the basics of relativity must be taught when the behavior of light is discussed.

Anyway, how refraction REALLY works is that light hits the PARTICLES in the medium and gets absorbed and then re-emitted. The time delay between absorption and re-emission causes the AVERAGE speed of transit through the medium to be slower than C even though when the light exists as light it is traveling at C.

the index of a media is derived from ¦Å and ¦Ì. They are factors which reduce/enhance the effect of the electric field and magnetic field, so does it to the transmiting of radio wave.

What if light is absorbed and emitted in medium? Emission is hard to maitain a uniform direction, how could u explain the direction of light in water?

As we all know, a material can only absorb a photon which has certain frequency match with the energy gap between to energy step. how could u explain all light with different frequency can transmit in water, if the transmission mechanism is as what you've stated.

:)

 

[Integral]

The direction of emitted photons is random, with a perhaps smidge of varition caused by the initial adsorption. Reflections appear where they do simply because it is the shortest time path between your eye and that object. I would recommend a book called QED By Richard Fynman. He addresses this topic prety well in laymen terms.

For a photon to be adsorbed by a atom or molecule there only has to be a energy band corresponding to the energy of the photon. Water is a large molecule and has MANY availble orbitals for the electrons to move to.

 

[FZ+]

I have always wondered about this:

What about in BECs?

 

[Bartholomew]

So, what actually causes cherenkov radiation?

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Originally posted by Ambitwistor
when charged particles do so, they produce what is known as Cherenkov radiation (kind of a "sonic boom for light").

what is their speed in this radiation?

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by wuyh
What if light is absorbed and emitted in medium? Emission is hard to maitain a uniform direction, how could u explain the direction of light in water?

Conservation of linear momentum.

As we all know, a material can only absorb a photon which has certain frequency match with the energy gap between to energy step. how could u explain all light with different frequency can transmit in water, if the transmission mechanism is as what you've stated.

You just described the mechanism. If something can't absorb a photon and hold its energy, it is unstable and quickly re-emits the photon. But it does absorb and re-emit the photon. This is part of the same oversimplification that I described before. Simply saying that a medium absorbs or transmits light is incomplete and leads to incorrect conclusions about what that means.

 

[wuyh]

Originally posted by russ_watters
Conservation of linear momentum.

if the photons are obsorbed and re-emitted, can we consider this process as a two dimension collision case?

if so, conservation of linear momentum does not guarantee the output particle has the same direction of input paticle. Part of energy of input particle(photon) may be shifted to molecule of media, and the freqency of photon may changed for it's energy is reduced..

then the color of the light is changed...


could u give me a clear/detailed explain?
thanks..

 

[Integral]

Originally posted by wuyh
if the photons are obsorbed and re-emitted, can we consider this process as a two dimension collision case?

if so, conservation of linear momentum does not guarantee the output particle has the same direction of input paticle. Part of energy of input particle(photon) may be shifted to molecule of media, and the freqency of photon may changed for it's energy is reduced..

then the color of the light is changed...


could u give me a clear/detailed explain?
thanks..

Why do you suppose objects have a characteristic color?

Emitted photons travel in nearly random directions. The emitted photons may or may not be of the same frequency as the adsorped, it depends on the decay rate and if there is a favored decay path for the electron. Again this is the mechanism which detemines the color of things.

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by wuyh
if the photons are obsorbed and re-emitted, can we consider this process as a two dimension collision case?

if so, conservation of linear momentum does not guarantee the output particle has the same direction of input paticle. Part of energy of input particle(photon) may be shifted to molecule of media, and the freqency of photon may changed for it's energy is reduced..

then the color of the light is changed...


could u give me a clear/detailed explain?
thanks..

What you are describing (for the most part) does happen some times. In the yellow lens on your turn signals for example. If the output particle (not exactly an accurate characterization of light, but I'll let it go) has a different energy then that means some of the energy was absorbed by the particle. Extra energy becomes heat.

And certainly light can be relfected or refracted in random directions. For example, on a white piece of paper.

 

[kartiksg]

Hi,

Im a little confused here... what exactly DOES happen when photons stike an interface between 2 media? People mentioned that it is absorbed and transmitted and hence the slow down. But why the particular direction change... and how can we explain Snell's law on the basis of collisions.. and what is 'shortest time path'? Can I have a formal definition of that pleasez?

You just described the mechanism. If something can't absorb a photon and hold its energy, it is unstable and quickly re-emits the photon. But it does absorb and re-emit the photon.

I thought the electron never gets excited at all... it only gets excited if it has a energy band. Plz correct me if I am wrong.

Also, how exactly is colour produced? For example.. I have been taught that in co-ordination compounds of d-block elements, the coloured ion arises from d-d electron transitions because of the splitting of the energy level of the d-orbitals under the effect of the attached ligands. I wonder.. if the colour arises due to preferential absorption of some wavelengths of light by the electron transition between d orbitals, then shouldn't the same wavelength be emitted when the electron falls back to the lower d orbital? Why arnt we able to see those photons?

Integral pointed to QED by Feynman... I would like to know if there is some good online resource on QED as well... possibly free

Thanks for any help

Kartik

 

[cucumber]

Originally posted by russ_watters

Anyway, how refraction REALLY works is that light hits the PARTICLES in the medium and gets absorbed and then re-emitted.

just wondering: what governs whether a photon is emitted by a substance or absorbed (ie why does visible light pass through glass, but not through aluminium)

oh, and how come light travels through glass in a straight line, if it constantly gets absorbed and reemitted?? why doesn't it get scattered all over the place??

thanks.
cucumber.

 

[yogi]

Why light is slowed in a medium is a question that has arisen before on these boards - and never answered with any proof other than assertions re absorption and re-emission. This notion may not be correct - it would seem that the individual atoms would appear to radiate at different frequences and in different directions - something not generally observed in most optical media. The mechanism may be entirely different - photons may be slowed as they pass near the fields of the electrons and nuclei - rather than being absorbed and re-emitted - it might even be related to close gravitational encounter with the particles that comprise the medium -while we don't think of G effects as being very strong on the scale of atoms - they could be if the photon passes very close because of the inverse dependence - sort of a Shapiro effect on a small scale multiplied by the billions of occurrances that would be experienced in passing through a solid or liquid, i.e., the photon path gets effectively lengthened as it passes by the many perturbing influences of the nearby atoms

 

[Integral]

Originally posted by yogi
Why light is slowed in a medium is a question that has arisen before on these boards - and never answered with any proof other than assertions re absorption and re-emission. This notion may not be correct - it would seem that the individual atoms would appear to radiate at different frequences and in different directions - something not generally observed in most optical media. The mechanism may be entirely different - photons may be slowed as they pass near the fields of the electrons and nuclei - rather than being absorbed and re-emitted - it might even be related to close gravitational encounter with the particles that comprise the medium -while we don't think of G effects as being very strong on the scale of atoms - they could be if the photon passes very close because of the inverse dependence - sort of a Shapiro effect on a small scale multiplied by the billions of occurrances that would be experienced in passing through a solid or liquid, i.e., the photon path gets effectively lengthened as it passes by the many perturbing influences of the nearby atoms

Whatever.

Do you expect to be given a graduate level course in QM on these boards? What sort of "proof" do you require? If you had even a basic understanding of these matters you would see that all who are educated in QM say exactly the same thing. Your personal lack of understanding is not necessarily shared by the world at large. Perhaps you should be reading closely the posts of Chroot, Ambitwistor, Tom, Marcus and others who have knowledge of these things. What you have posted above is not based on anything other then your personal believe. I for one do not much like seeing this sort of thing posted in place of Current Physical theory. Please restrict your replies to that realm. Your beliefs can be posted in Theory Development.

 

[yogi]

Integral - your posts reveal a total lack of appreciation for anything other than unfounded dogma - there are no predictive theories that explain the magnitude of the slowing based upon the idea of absorption and re-emission... if you can't tolerate new ideas you should have been a preacher - I have read many of your posts in the past - they are often plain wrong - you used to post information about some accident you had that affected your abilities - are you sure you have fully recovered? If Einstein after many years of pondering the nature of the photon did not understand its nature - how do you claim such a talent?

 

[yogi]

Another example of sensitivity to new concepts - whatever the mechanism of slow down - if you can show me how to calculate the delays based upon sound methods - fine - but at present this cannot be done without a number of fiat(ly) introduced factors. Moreover - where did I say the photon was effected by the electron(s) - I said its path might be influenced by the mass of the nucleous - and if you are within 10^-15 meters from the atomic center, the G forces are quite large - much larger than the force acting on a photon as it grazes the Sun - and we know that the Sun bends light - so if the paths of the photons are bent at the interatomic level - they will be longer - and therefore the time to traverse the material will be larger -

and don't jump on my case for blasting integral - he started the insults - read his post

 

[Janus]

Originally posted by yogi
and if you are within 10^-15 meters from the atomic center, the G forces are quite large - much larger than the force acting on a photon as it grazes the Sun -

Where did you get that idea? Given the mass and radius of the Sun, you get a value of 276 m/sec² for the acceleration due to gravity at the surface of the sun.

Given the the mass and radius of a silicon atom, you get a value of .0000003466 m /sec², a much smaller value.

 

[yogi]

Depending upon the size you assign to the photon and the number of nucleon encounters in a given length of a medium - you may or may not have a gravitational influence - yes - I know the electrical fields are many orders of magnitude greater than the G fields (10^42 if you consider the electron-positron electrical to gravitational force ratio)- so it may well be that the electrical properties are determinative of the velocity characteristics (I don't have any problem with that), and I never said they were not - but what are the effects of the electromagnetic fields on photons - these are less known than the affect of mass on light. The velocity of propagation of both light and radio waves is determined by the permeability and permittivity (admittedly electrical properties) - what I don't buy is the absorption and release as a physical explanation - take a one meter radio wave photon - how can it get stored in some kind of atomic configuration and released - yet its velocity will be measured to be slower in a physical medium. The reason why the G field appeared worth considering was because photons are influenced thereby. Whatever a photon is - and whatever part of it is acted upon by matter - it is not unreasonable to investigate whether the forces it experiences as it passes through the atomic field may be determinative of its velocity

 

[Integral]

Yogi,
Your brand of misinfromation has a special place on this board.

We call it Theory Development.

 

[yogi]

Any calculations necessarily require a lot of assumptions as to the nature of the model - there are many models - and it would involve many assumptions re the interactions - are you really saying a long wavelength radio wave can get wrapped up in a single atom somehow and reradiated - in the first place they do not have sufficient hf energy to trigger electron jumps

 

[russ_watters]

Side note for kartiksg and cucumber - please don't think I was blowing you off, but my knowledge of the nature of light starts to get pretty thin when we get into quantum mechanics. I was hoping someone else would pick up the ball where I left it. Unfortunately...

 

[yogi]

My doubt is deeper than weasling - I have always regarded QED - the notion of virtual photons - as metaphorical - I know - perturbation theory gives extremely accurate predictions for the second order effect (the gyromagnetic ratio) and a lot of other processes - but I do not think virtual photons, gravitons etc represent reality - they are tools for making calculations - extremely useful tools - but any attempt to derive the electron charge or the force between two electrons based upon virtual photons requires many assumptions and the analysis is abstruse (at least all the ones I have read)- one must make postulates about the virtual photon shower in terms of q^2 and make many other assumptions about borrowing momentum (Heisenberg loans) for short periods, - and the list goes on. I am reminded of something Einstein once said about SR "Now that the mathematicians have gotten a hold of it, I am not sure I understand it anymore"

I appreciate that you have a good command of quantum process - but to my way of thinking - forces arise because of stresses in the medium - and these stresses affect the properties of the medium in bulk - this of course is at least partially in conflict with SR because it implies that photons may not travel at c in a stressed spatial medium (but that is another subject in itself). So I will give some thought to how one might model a stress field that has retarding properties that comport with experiment. I will also try to recover a lenghty article that I once read that treated the subject classically.

 

[yogi]

Yes - all good points - and as I recall, it wasn't obvious initially that Feynman's diagrams were equivalent to the perturbation expansion of alpha (I think it was Dyson's equation). Anyway - I would agree that if one has adequate time - the more one knows about the subject - the better able he is to contribute - but there is at least one counter aspect to that - the new kid on the block enters with a lot of questions - he isn't biased by conventional wisdom - he interrogates what the experts have long dismissed as not worthwhile. In my many years of experience I have found myself on both sides of that situation -

Of course - one must have a little knowledge to know what questions to ask. I tend to think of these forums in that light -