thought experiment
Offline Throughout our history, many of our greatest scientific progresses have come from what are called, thought-experiments. Now, I, being extremely thoughtful like all the time, participate in a lot of thought experiments that may or may not have bearing on the world at all, but it's really fun to think about the world differently than what we perceive it to be. So, i think I should partake in a thought experiment with all of you guys, just see what happens.
Okay, a photon is a particle of light that is derived off of a reaction from an atom. This can be many things, but for this case say the Sun makes a photon. This photon moves in a predictable wave that travels at a high speed in a straight line until pushed or pulled by a force or reflected off of an opaque surface. Say this photon does not get reflected and it goes out into the universe forever and ever, unstopped.
If entropy has an effect on photons, then this wave would eventually grow larger and larger until their is no wave. Now there a couple of possibilities from here
1. The proton stops moving and then ceases to exist
2. The proton continues to move but with no wave in a circle around the universe
3. the proton collapses on itself causing a giant reaction, possibly making more protons in a chain reaction, sparking the question, where did the protons come from?
4. The proton adds to the expanding universe as a dead atom, making it a possible acceptor of a positive or negative sub atom (not proven, but possible)
5. Something I haven't thought of
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear" -Thomas Jefferson
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if light stopped moving, would it esist?
do you keep meaning to say photon and not proton?
If I understand entrophy correctly, and I don't claim to, then the photon would not surive the excelleration process. Thus it would be completely obliterated and it's energy nullified.
That's my 2 cents.
BB
crap, my spell check went senile on me. ya correction on the above article. all words that say proton were meant as photon
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear" -Thomas Jefferson
As I understand it we are talking about a proton, and flat out, if no other force acts on that proton it will continue on forever and ever. Entropy has nothing to do with it in that regard.
If the proton hits something or is slowed by friction, it would not cease to exist. It would be a (highly reactive) proton, sitting there, or possibly converted into energy like light, I'm not up on my nuclear chemistry. The law of mass-energy conservation applies at any rate.
Now there has been some study on nucleonic particle decay. IOW the proton could break down into quarks and gluons and what not, but that would take billions upon billions upon billions of years. About 10^35 years as a half-life that is to be exact.*
Now we get into questions of the Baryonic number and grand unified theory, which I hope you did not ask this as a prelude to.
* That's a half life of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. IOW, essentially eternal, plus or minus a year or two.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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well what I meant by entropy was the slow and eventual nullifying of the wavelength of the photon
Yellow,
From my understanding, photons are massless and are a form of energy. Therefore any kind of force can not act upon them.
Photons are not just waves, they are wave/particles, meaning they have properties of both a particle and a wave. A single photon will travel forever without losing energy.
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