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This is for everyone who has a strange fascination with loopy structures, paradoxes, science, quantum physics, the nature of duality, the internet, cyber culture, philosophy, and any one who has stayed up into the late hours contemplating infinities.If any of you have any contributions for posts, paradoxes, mathematical infinities, or anything that has loopy nature send it to DamntheMachine09@aol.com

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Saturday, July 24, 2010

Double Slits


Greetings my friends, I bring you my first post here via iPhone. You know sometimes, things happen to me that I can't help. Sometimes we just have no control over what befalls upon us. Car accidents, being robbed, losing your wallet, all various calamities that seemingly we have little control over. That being said there are things in life especially in the social aspect that I can control, but I don't. Let me explain in the way of analogy. Photons, can be thought of the tiny little "carriers" of light. They are essentially massless. Now these photons, as you may know, have the attributes of a wave, but also those of individual particles. Using the famous double slit experiment, photons were shot out toward a board with two slits in it. The two tiny slits allowed only two thin lines of photons to pass through, and impact on the wall in back of it. At the time when this experiment was first done, people thought photons were particles. Meaning tiny little orbs. When they performed the act of firing photons through the two slits, they showed properties of waves. Just to be sure, scientist fired photons one by one at the slits. But alas they still received wave like properties! And how, dear reader is that possible? If fired one by one the photon should either bounce off the wall, or make it through one of the slits, and impact on the far wall. Some how, the photon which was fired singley, managed to interfere with itself, and create a wave pattern. What a concept! That a single nearly massless object could interfere with itself! When I first read of this, I thought of myself really? It seems the biggest road block in my life is myself.

5 comments:

  1. Light can travel as both a wave, and a particle. I think the reason that it can travel in either way, is because of the unpredictability inherent in quantum physics at the photon level, and because gravity/space affects the travel of photons, whether in a vacuum or not.

    Because of that, I think light probably travels in both ways, at different times, and the results occur because of the specific way the photon was traveling at the specific time it hits the slit.

    Here's something to ponder. A photon travelling at the speed of light in a vacuum doesn't "age". Because time doesn't exist at the speed of light, that photon is just existing at one time, like a photograph.

    Talk about the ultimate loop...the photon exists forever while travelling at its default speed.

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  2. Yep, that definitely is something to think about N1ck. The fact that the photon just 'exists' forever is really wild.

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  3. It exists forever as long as its travelling at the speed of light, which is kinda a weird way to think about "forever". A physicist might be able to give more details, but I think general idea is solid.

    Without time, as a photon is at the speed of light, it just always "is". Confusing and fascinating.

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  4. Is that Lain!?
    I love this blog all of the posts are very interesting!

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  5. Thanks, I was heavily influenced by Lain, which quickly became one of my favorite anime series. Hope you stick around, another update later tonight!

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