Binding photons together slows them down and gives them mass.

a reply to: muzzleflash

I think there has to be some kind of aether. The preferred term these days is Quantum Vacuum. Here's my problem. Have you ever heard of a wave independent of a medium? I know...light is supposed to be the only non-mechanical wave...whatever.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no such thing as a wave-particle duality. Particles are just what we call waves that are somehow confined to a point-like boundary (for lack of better words). I think that much is obvious, as super-cooled atoms coalesce into a Bose-Einstein condensate.

So here is my idea: The aether exists. It has ground-state non-zero mass. We can't measure that ground-state mass because it's right under our noses. As far as we're concerned, it is Zero, but we forget that Zero does not quantitatively exist. It's an abstraction fabricated by the human mind. Photons only "appear" to be massless because they are quantized waves of the ground-state medium...the aether..."loss of inertia", as Theoria would put it.

This is the part where I get ripped apart and called a fool by the geniuses of ATS.

a reply to: AMPTAH
And how would one weigh a photon? Is it in grams or ounces?

a reply to: burgerbuddy

Only when traveling through a vacuum or 0 mass.

As soon as they hit something they add that 0 mass to the mass they have entered. So 0 mass + mass = Plus 0 mass. If you get enough of them together, you may even have gravity, which is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000, and many many more zeros latter there is a 1 at the end.

So that may be considered as mass, but only probably when looked on in waves.

a reply to: BASSPLYR
Saying something has energy but no mass is like saying, absolutely nothing.

a reply to: galadofwarthethird

no it isnt. you just don't understand relativistic mass. go break out some special relativity and get back to me.

a reply to: muzzleflash

photons don't have mass. they have

R E L A T I V I S T I C M A S S.

its different. there is no resting mass. if a photon were sitting still it would have no resting mass or weight. it has the equivalent of weight when its travelling because it's energy combined with its momentum gives it relativistic mass. when a photon hits something it imparts some of its energy onto what it's collided with which has an effect on that object.

there is no aether. photons are a wave travelling through an electromagnetic field. the vacuum of space allows all fields. electro magnetic gravitational. fields don't need a material to propagate through. hence if you have a source of an electromagnetic field in the vacuum of space it will have photons traveling through it.

photons are not exactly particles they are quanta of that electromagnetic field. when that electromagnetic field comes in contact with an object that little sample or quanta and it's values at that moment are the photon.

to dispell the argument that if photons have no mass then why are they attracted to gravitational wells. why can the gravity of a black hole suck a photon into it. gravity doesn't pull or attract anything it warps space-time. the photon is still traveling in a straight line. the space time it's travelling through is warped.

So to just clear up a number of misconceptions in this thread here is the preprint of the paper:
arxiv.org...

This is an experiment with photons in a nonlinear medium. The 3 bound photons are so called solitons. They use effective field theory to describe the behavior. This means they treat the photons as particles with an "effective mass" having an "effective attractive force". Effective is the key word here. The photons don't become massive or anything. It is just that their behavior in this medium can be approximated as massive interacting particles.

This doesn't change or affect the standard theory in any way.

originally posted by: moebius
So to just clear up a number of misconceptions in this thread here is the preprint of the paper:
arxiv.org...

Effective is the key word here. The photons don't become massive or anything. It is just that their behavior in this medium can be approximated as massive interacting particles.

This doesn't change or affect the standard theory in any way.

Right, they are just describing the observation of "quasiparticles", which are theoretical approximation constructs used to explain some phenomenological observations resulting from otherwise complex situations involving "many-body" interactions.

This is my personal view on it (it goes against what every scientists believe):

A photon doesn't have "mass" because it's an always expanding magnetic wave, it's not held together in any way so you can not measure the whole wave.

A real particle has mass because it is a bubble where the magnetic wave is held together (until it bursts).

Magnetic waves are everything there is in the universe and when they form bubbles we have particles. When a bubble bursts we have magnetic waves again and when a bubble moves it makes a new magnetic wave.

The term "electromagnetic" is wrong to use, because electricity can be explained with just the magnetic force, gravity too.

Check my previous posts for more info about what I believe.

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
I think there has to be some kind of aether. [...]
This is the part where I get ripped apart and called a fool by the geniuses of ATS.

I'm thinking not quite so much "aether," but more of a kind of expressive interface between the various physical and non-physical dimensions. After all, if there really was so much empty space between things in the universe -- from the space between nuclei and electrons in an atom to the space between galaxies -- one would expect them to all simply collapse. We have names for some imaginary things that might account for it, but we still haven't figured out why these things act the way they do. If that's important.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

God...I have trouble making crazy glue stick to plastic...amazing

originally posted by: moebius
So to just clear up a number of misconceptions in this thread here is the preprint of the paper:
arxiv.org...

This is an experiment with photons in a nonlinear medium. The 3 bound photons are so called solitons. They use effective field theory to describe the behavior. This means they treat the photons as particles with an "effective mass" having an "effective attractive force". Effective is the key word here. The photons don't become massive or anything. It is just that their behavior in this medium can be approximated as massive interacting particles.

This doesn't change or affect the standard theory in any way.

Thanks for the find moebius, unfortunately no one here other than a tiny few will bother to try to read or understand the actual paper. they will continue down their path believing what they want to believe until it has been twisted beyond recognition of what the original science was.

The article is more about photons moving through a Rydberg material, it is purely a behaviour that occurs in quantum mechanical systems, hence the use of such low temperatures and Ruthenium, as it is a metal of great interest due to the kinds of complexes it forms and the quantum transitions it exhibits when cold.

So again... thanks Moebius for doing more leg work than anyone else here.

originally posted by: ParanormalGuy
This is my personal view on it (it goes against what every scientists believe):

A photon doesn't have "mass" because it's an always expanding magnetic wave, it's not held together in any way so you can not measure the whole wave.

A real particle has mass because it is a bubble where the magnetic wave is held together (until it bursts).

Magnetic waves are everything there is in the universe and when they form bubbles we have particles. When a bubble bursts we have magnetic waves again and when a bubble moves it makes a new magnetic wave.

The term "electromagnetic" is wrong to use, because electricity can be explained with just the magnetic force, gravity too.

Check my previous posts for more info about what I believe.

Of which there is absolutely no evidence for at all, and the argument, even at a basic level falls over compared to observation at even the most basic level.

a reply to: moebius
Hi Moebius.
Am i correct that this configuration of photons only exists in the medium they shot the laser through.
The article makes it sounds like the photons exited the medium as particle with mass.

originally posted by: Deluxe
a reply to: moebius
Hi Moebius.
Am i correct that this configuration of photons only exists in the medium they shot the laser through.
The article makes it sounds like the photons exited the medium as particle with mass.

It can only exist in the medium, because that medium is what creates the many-body interactions that gets "simplified" by a one particle description.

They haven't discovered any new laws of physics, they've just discovered new states of interactions, from the same old laws that are well known.

a reply to: AMPTAH
Now this makes total sense to me thanks.
I read some of the paper and it was more clear than the original article posted.

originally posted by: moebius
So to just clear up a number of misconceptions in this thread here is the preprint of the paper:
arxiv.org...

This is an experiment with photons in a nonlinear medium. The 3 bound photons are so called solitons. They use effective field theory to describe the behavior. This means they treat the photons as particles with an "effective mass" having an "effective attractive force". Effective is the key word here. The photons don't become massive or anything. It is just that their behavior in this medium can be approximated as massive interacting particles.

This doesn't change or affect the standard theory in any way.

2014
www.iflscience.com...

The researchers constructed what they call an “artificial atom” made of 100 billion atoms engineered to act like a single unit. They then brought this close to a superconducting wire carrying photons. In one of the almost incomprehensible behaviors unique to the quantum world, the atom and the photons became entangled so that properties passed between the “atom” and the photons in the wire. The photons started to behave like atoms, correlating with each other to produce a single oscillating system.

As some of the photons leaked into the surrounding environment, the oscillations slowed and at a critical point started producing quantum divergent behavior. In other words, like Schroedinger's Cat, the correlated photons could be in two states at once. "Here we set up a situation where light effectively behaves like a particle in the sense that two photons can interact very strongly," said co-author Dr. Darius Sadri. "In one mode of operation, light sloshes back and forth like a liquid; in the other, it freezes."
As cool as it is to produce solidified light, the team was not acting out of curiosity alone. When connected together the photons of light behave like subatomic particles, but are in some ways easier to study. Consequently, the team is hoping to use the solid light to simulate subatomic behavior.

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

now if they figure out how to unbind them we will have real phasers

a reply to: BELIEVERpriest

First off, a Bose-Einstein condensate is a group of like atoms behaving as one large atom when supercooled to near absolute zero. At that point, quantum effects take over and the separate molecules behave as one. So, yes, it seems like that the rubidium molecules are a BEC.

Next, a laser is monochromatic light. The BEC acts like a converter and creates a 1D surface (arXiv paper said that). In that state, photons entangle in groups of three. This is key because the BEC size determines the harmonic combination or cancellation of the wave aspect of light.

At 2D, light acts strange! I believe that you can control it and release it at will. At 1D is what OP is talking about. And this happens at microsecond scales. Which is good news for quantum computing but not quite the light saber level! This is cool stuff but don’t put the cart before the horse.

Please read QED by Feynman as the intro deals with light through a medium.

I keep saying light is weirder than we know... maybe that should be my new tag line!