cyrek1 wrote:
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When TT says light transmission uses the EM fields for its movement through space, I agree.
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I do not think that was Tim Thompson's meaning when he wrote:
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The waves of electromagnetism could propagate through the "emptiness" of space without the need for mechanical support.
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The EM field is not responsible for the motion of the photon. Aristotle thought that a moving object had to be continually pushed in order to stay in motion. Newton taught us otherwise. In the same way that a mass object moving in space does not have to be pushed (or push itself) to maintain its motion, no action is required on the part of the photon to keep itself moving. That accords with the equivalence of energy and mass.
My model of a photon is not an a priori conception. It is a synthesis of prior knowledge and experimental observations. I hope these few additional comments will give all of you a more complete understanding of my interpretation.
A photon has three intrinsic properties: its energy, the periodic transverse extension of its EM field, and its forward/propagation velocity. Therefore, we should expect to observe three distinct kinds of effects from a photon.
The first effect is dependent on the energy of the photon. We observe the energy of a photon by its heating effects (the pleasant warmth of the autumn sun), by the photoelectric effect, and by fluorescence effects, to name a few.
The second effect is dependent on the periodic transverse extension of the field of the photon. We observe the transverse extension of a photon by the striking efficacy of a half-wave dipole antenna when broadside to a received signal, by diffraction effects, and by transmission aperture effects, as examples.
The third effect is dependent on both the periodic transverse extension and the forward velocity of the photon. The relationship of the periodic transverse field extension and the distance traveled is what we call the wave nature of the photon. We observe the wave nature of the photon as interference effects and standing wave effects, as examples.
Since we can't know a photon's energy until it is measured (and that energy is dependent on the observers frame), how do you propose to determine what that independent energy is?
Tensor: You claim that we can't know the energy of a photon until we measure it. In this thread we have not been considering an isolated photon in space. We are really dealing with observations of photons from celestial objects when we speak of red shift. Dont we know from spectrographic evidence, and especially from the relative location of Fraunhofer lines, exactly which atoms and which of its quantum states is reponsible for a given spectal line? We are not measuring the energy with a bolometer, for example. We are measuring the wavelength. And if we can identify the quantum state responsible for the photon when it was emitted, doen't that tell us the energy of the photon without having to directly measure its energy?
I happily stand corrected about the spin interpretation. Thanks.