Has Light got a decay factor?

The 'red shift' caused by the gravity wells of galaxies isn't strong enough but at least that's one source other than a receding body to acount for it.

I agree that the dark matter and dark energy are inelegant solutions, but neither of them really have anything to do with the big bang; one holds galaxies together while the other pushes the universe apart. Personally I would like to think that it is something more to do with space curvature that would explain both effects at once, but I have not devoted my life to this problem so I'm not inclined to speak over the ones who have.

As for photons interacting with the Higgs field; if they did that they would have mass. Which they don't.

I haven't read all of what you've said because there's a lot of it and I'm afraid I don't really care that much. You are coming at the issue with a strong desire to have light decay somehow and to get rid of the big bang, and you need to provide some compelling reason why before I can consider that approach very seriously. I am happy to chew the fat over physics but when somebody has an overwhelming need to prove something it turns me off. In particular whenever you say "there are many examples of x supporting my idea" you need to give one or two examples. This ain't a thesis but it helps to have some kind of in-line reference.

In summary: let's talk about why light decay and no big bang is a better, more elegant or cooler solution, and then I can start to dig it.

Big Bang Theory, I scoff at thee!

ivandh -

Okay, will put together all the reasons and 'evidence'  for Light to have a 'decay factor' and for there to be a steady-state universe but it will probably take a few days.

Light's decay factor and why we have a steady-state Universe

1,Light from the most distant objects have 'red shifts' that indicate a speed away from us approaching that of light. If however light has a decay factor which pushes light towards the red end of the spectrum then they aren't moving away at that ridiculous speed. We know that gravitational wells give rise to red shift but not enough to account for all of it. But the fact that light can be influenced at all when it's supposed to have no mass suggests a mechanism for this factor to exist.

We simply don't know enough about light to rule it out altogether.

2.  

   Einstein was sceptical about an expanding universe model even though he admitted that his model didn't predict a steady-state universe.

2. Carl Sagan suggested there may be a possible alternative to the red shift in one of his broadcasts.

    

3. As Carl Sagan also said “we are made of star stuff” ie super nova's created the heavier elements that we are made from.

   Stop for one second and consider the time required for a star to form then grow old and then die,explode and for our solar system to collect all those heavy elements to form all within 13.7 billion years. I don't believe that's enough time. However if the universe is steady-state and much older than 13.7 billion years that process seems much more reasonable.

4.  

   In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson  discovered microwave background radiation which they concluded was 'an echo' of the Big Bang . For which they received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1978. I believe they came to the wrong conclusion about that radiation. At that time, they couldn't have imagined a universe many times larger than the one we know of today. The Hubble telescope has revealed, in recent years, deep field images taken over days of exposure, galaxies too numerous to count .I believe the radiation Arno Penziasand Robert Wilson detected in 1964 comes from the rest of the universe which we can't see in the visual part of the spectrum if 'light decay' exists.

    

5. In 1933 Jan Ort muted the first rumblings for Dark Matter to be followed by Vera Rubin

   in the early 70's who attributed the apparent 'missing mass' in the universe to Dark Matter.

   Because they didn't know just how huge the universe has since been revealed to be they came to a logical but incorrect conclusion.

   I believe the unobservable universe (because of light decay)along with simple dust particles are that 'missing matter'.

    

6. The model of an expanding universe predicts differing temperatures throughout the cosmos but the temperature is surprisingly uniform. More consistent with a SS universe.

    

7. Since the 1990s 'observation' indicates that the universe is expandingat an accelerating rate !?

    

   How is this happening?...Dark Energy of course. What other possible explanation could there be? There must be an energy force,just as unknowable as it's sister Dark Matter, which is countering the effects of said Dark Matter...not to mention Logic.

   But hang on!..there may be another explanation..what about Light Decay? If Light decay exists

   then there may be a much larger universe than we can see which isn't expending and we wouldn't need Dark Energy and Dark Matter to help explain the universe...simples.

    

    

8. The Higgs Boson.

   If I am right about light having a decay factor the discovery of the Higgs supports my belief in a SS universe. After 13.7 billion years one would expect all the Hydrogen to have been used up.So to have a SS universe there absolutely must be a mechanism whereby energy is being continually converted to Hydrogen..The Higgs Boson! Then you can have an eternal SS universe.

I don't have any experimental data to test or maths to support my view, i'm a furniture salesman not a scientist. I just have some logic, common sense and imagination to support my 'Thesis' but as Einstein said “ Imagination is more important than Knowledge “.

cwwiss wrote:

Light's decay factor and why we have a steady-state Universe

1,Light from the most distant objects have 'red shifts' that indicate a speed away from us approaching that of light. If however light has a decay factor which pushes light towards the red end of the spectrum then they aren't moving away at that ridiculous speed. We know that gravitational wells give rise to red shift but not enough to account for all of it. But the fact that light can be influenced at all when it's supposed to have no mass suggests a mechanism for this factor to exist.

We simply don't know enough about light to rule it out altogether.

The mechanism for gravitational wells to impact light has to do with curvature of space-time, and your conclusion simply does not follow. We have absolutely zero experimental evidence to suggest that light decays with distance or time. We have plenty of direct experimental evidence as well as predictions of secondary effects from the standard model which has been experimentally upheld to show that light does not decay. We also know that energy has to be conserved. If light is decaying, as you indicate, then what is happening to the energy?

Without experimental evidence or a mathematical model that gives rise to a testable hypothesis that suggests light should decay, what you are saying in this point is frankly "I don't like the idea of galaxies moving really fast." You have not presented a scientific argument. You have not presented an issue with existing models. You have no presented observational inconsistency. You have presented an unsupported premise. 

Einstein was sceptical about an expanding universe model even though he admitted that his model didn't predict a steady-state universe.

Yes, Einstein didn't like the idea. However, he noted that adding the Cosmological constant was also his greatest mistake. He did not do so for any reasons grounded in science but, by his own admission, to satisfy his prejudices.  

Carl Sagan suggested there may be a possible alternative to the red shift in one of his broadcasts.

Given the fact that Sagan died in 1996 and that for decades prior to his death he was more a spokesperson for cosmology than a practicing scientist, this has about as much persuasive weight as your Einstein comment. Further, given that Riess' "Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant" wasn't published until 2 years after his death, it is fairly safe to consider his comments dated and irrelevant to a contemporary discussion.

As Carl Sagan also said “we are made of star stuff” ie super nova's created the heavier elements that we are made from.

Stop for one second and consider the time required for a star to form then grow old and then die,explode and for our solar system to collect all those heavy elements to form all within 13.7 billion years. I don't believe that's enough time. However if the universe is steady-state and much older than 13.7 billion years that process seems much more reasonable.

There are more than a few very young stars and protostars known to science for study. We are pretty confident that forming a protostar about the same as our Sun can happen in under 100,000 years, and that transition from protostar to core ignition takes another 50 million years or so. Different spectral types and different masses have different time frames, but 13 billion years is more than long enough for stars to be born, burn bright, and die. 

In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson  discovered microwave background radiation which they concluded was 'an echo' of the Big Bang . For which they received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1978. I believe they came to the wrong conclusion about that radiation. At that time, they couldn't have imagined a universe many times larger than the one we know of today. The Hubble telescope has revealed, in recent years, deep field images taken over days of exposure, galaxies too numerous to count .I believe the radiation Arno Penziasand Robert Wilsondetected in 1964 comes from the rest of the universe which we can't see in the visual part of the spectrum if 'light decay' exists.

The background radiation was predicted by the models of the time. Additional observations have continued to confirm their conclusion. Do you have a model that accounts for their observations and predicts additional testable hypothesis? If not, then again, you're not making an argument based on anything more than you don't like the current state of physics. The size of the universe is immaterial to the predicted effects. 

In 1933 Jan Ort muted the first rumblings for Dark Matter to be followed by Vera Rubin

in the early 70's who attributed the apparent 'missing mass' in the universe to Dark Matter.

Because they didn't know just how huge the universe has since been revealed to be they came to a logical but incorrect conclusion.

I believe the unobservable universe (because of light decay)along with simple dust particles are that 'missing matter'.

This is simply incoherent and demonstrates a complete failure to understand what is being talked about with respect to dark matter and how we know that there is unobserved mass out there. Your beliefs are, yet again, not a scientific argument. 

Since the 1990s 'observation' indicates that the universe is expandingat an accelerating rate !?

Since 1998, yes. 

How is this happening?...Dark Energy of course. What other possible explanation could there be? There must be an energy force,just as unknowable as it's sister Dark Matter, which is countering the effects of said Dark Matter...not to mention Logic.

While we don't know what dark energy is, or how it works, or even if there's a better explanation out there, the term still accurately describes an observed effect -- the fabric of space-time itself is expanding. 

But hang on!..there may be another explanation..what about Light Decay? If Light decay exists

then there may be a much larger universe than we can see which isn't expending and we wouldn't need Dark Energy and Dark Matter to help explain the universe...simples.

And here we get to the crux of the matter -- yes if light decays, then it solves the "problem" of not having to explain how space-time is expanding. However, it  brings with it the problem of breaking pretty much everything else. Now, instead of merely describing a phenomenon and leaving the explanation up in the air, you are denying  functional explanations for thousands of phenomenon in order to explain a single phenomenon. 

This makes this a bad theory for two reasons. First, it is not functionally more useful. Second, is fails to explain observed data.

It's not functionally more useful because while it does explain one observation, it does so at the cost of breaking the standard model for everything else. 

It fails to explain observed data in that we have absolutely no observational data to support the idea, and experiment after experiment to contradict it. Moreover, observations which were suggested by assuming light doesn't decay have held up. Accepting light as not decaying has led to testable hypothesis which have born out. 

The Higgs Boson.

If I am right about light having a decay factor the discovery of the Higgs supports my belief in a SS universe. After 13.7 billion years one would expect all the Hydrogen to have been used up.So to have a SS universe there absolutely must be a mechanism whereby energy is being continually converted to Hydrogen..The Higgs Boson! Then you can have an eternal SS universe.

I don't have any experimental data to test or maths to support my view, i'm a furniture salesman not a scientist. I just have some logic, common sense and imagination to support my 'Thesis' but as Einstein said “ Imagination is more important than Knowledge “.

You basically assume your conclusion.

Your argument as you've presented it boils down to you don't like having an expanding universe (let alone one where it's expanding at an accelerated rate) and without any consideration of what the evidence for accepting the standard model is, you've decided to toss it out the window because it doesn't support an expanding universe.

As for the Higgs Boson -- the observed data is a long, long way from "the Higgs Boson has been observed" to "light interacts with the Higgs Boson to convert energy to Hydrogen." And I am unaware of any model of the Higgs field that comes close to suggesting that is even remotely possible. And, btw, I find it really, really odd that you denigrate the notion of "dark energy" a few paragraphs up, and then appeal to the Higgs Effect for your theory.  

guess that's a no then?

Another quick musing..perhaps the creation of Hydrogen is the by-product of light decaying ?..then there's no energy loss !

Ok, let's turn this around a bit. You've presented two ideas for how decay might happen in this thread so far. The first is that photons really do have a small mass. The second is that photons interact with the Higgs field and get changed into hydrogen. Each of those ideas presents a host of questions that a viable scientific theory needs to answer.

The first is easy. If you claim that photons have a very small mass but if a photon has any mass at all, light should have 3 polarizations, but it doesn't. And electrostatic potential should fall off in a way that it does not. How do you explain the failure of observed data to align to the predictions of your alternate theory. What experiment could we conduct which would demonstrate the truth of photons having mass? Spend just a few minutes on this and you'll quickly realize that a massless photon is necessary to explain our observations of basic properties of light. 

The second "theory," is really out there. This one is much harder. If you claim that some unspecified interaction between photons and the Higgs field generates hydrogen, what is the mechanism by which the proton and electron are not just generated out of the Higgs Field but generated and bound together?  And for this one, this claim is so far out there that I really want to see the formula you think governs this. Without a mathematical model for something that outrageous, it's not even science fiction, it's well into the realm of fantasy.  Because the Higgs Field is not some matter generating magic box. That's not what the current theory on the Higgs field says is happening. 

So how do you change the Yukawa interaction equation to allow the formation of heavy composite particles likes protons without screwing up all the equations used to describe observed interactions between fermions and pseudoscalar mesons? This is beyond non-trivial to do. 

Can you answer either question? 

If you can not provide substantial answers to these questions, why should anyone entertain your musings? 

I'm not asking that to be rude, it's a serious question. What is so special about your speculative science-fantasy that makes it superior to others'? 

The more I think about it i'm realising that light only decays in the sense that the wave length elongates..you don't lose any energy.It's all still there just stretched over a longer space.So we don't need a photon to have mass. Perhaps the word 'decay' is misleading. Perhaps we need a new word to describe what it's doing? How about Photolongation? And give it the symbol Cl (CL) which funnily enough are my initials :)

As for the Higgs being the key to Hydrogen formation,I have to agree, that really is out there.

If Hydrogen is being formed where is it being formed? Not in the heart of stars. It must therefore be in the Aether...out there!

Unless there are White holes which are producing it but we can't see them? Is that any more implausible than Dark Matter ?

Can you imagine the conversation when Dark Matter was first proposed?

Scientist - We've discovered something we're going to call Dark Matter

2. Reporter for Nature - So what is this DM?

3. S - Well..err we don't know

4. R – well what do you think it might be?

5. S- ermm, we're not sure yet..

6. R – can it at least be measured?

7. S – well...no not really but we can see the effect it's presence has

8. R – but you don't know what it might be?

9. S - no sorry not even a guess...it's just out there..being dark and mysterious

10. R – and err..you do,in fact, have a degree in physics?

11. S- Oh yes..i'm sure about that.

The more I think about it i'm realising that light only decays in the sense that the wave length elongates..you don't lose any energy.It's all still there just stretched over a longer space.So we don't need a photon to have mass. Perhaps the word 'decay' is misleading. Perhaps we need a new word to describe what it's doing? How about Photolongation? And give it the symbol Cl (CL) which funnily enough are my initials :)

Visible light is just part of the electromagnetic spectrum. 

For electromagnetic energy, E = hC/l 

where h = Planck's constant, C = the speed of light, and l = the wavelength. 

If the wavelength elongates, and energy stays the same, do you propose that it is the speed of light, or Planck's constant, that is changing? 

Better to have a scientist that admits he doesn't know than one that makes up bullshit theories to pretend he does know. Dark matter ain't pretty, but it is a far simpler explanation than one that wrecks most of physics.

Perhaps light travelled faster back in the day when the universe was much younger? I'm sure time has started to slow down since starting this thread!

As for Bullshit Theories I really can't think of a better example than Dark Matter and without it the Standard Model seems to fail.

I see myself like the child who says that the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. 

I wonder how much energy is required to propel a body the size of a galaxy close to the speed of light..i'm guessing a shed load..then of course you've got to multiply that by a trillion or so.

cwwiss - you're confusing dark energy and dark matter in your reply, me thinks. 

And, frankly, comparing yourself to a child on this topic is apt. Again, I don't mean that as an insult. I truely admire your obvious glee at discussing your ideas, your clear curiousity about the subject, and you've definitely shown a willingness to listen that is far too often lacking in people who are interested but not expert in a subject (not that I'm an expert, but I was a research fellow for the department of energy, I trust my own judgement in being able to discern real experts on this topic at least ;) )

But it's clear you really aren't thinking through the implications of your ideas. 

You agreed that having light create matter through some magic interaction with the Higgs Field simply doesn't work. Great. That's a step in the right direction. 

Given the fact that we've shown experimentally over and over again that E=hC/l are you ready to admit that changing the wavelength of light requires a change of energy? 

Kingpatzer - No offence taken.In matters of Physics i'm an uneducated enthusiast who has a little (dangerous) knowledge.I've never claimed to be anything other than that.My original question was just that..a question.I don't have a theory just an idea things might be wrong somewhere.

The more I get into reading about the details of Physics the more I understand your problems with my idea. If ,for example, the wave length can't be changed without changing a constant I thought perhaps we could adjust the amplitude to compensate rather than the speed of light.But i just don't know enough to argue the point and because ,of course also, to can't accept any point if I don't understand it. 

Even understanding light is confusing ie it's not a wave so it must be a particle but behaves like a wave that is modelled as being inside a parcel so it is a wave but not a wave !! Is it me?

I remember one experiment discovering that light seemed to be in two different places at the same time..enough already!

I'm going to do  a lot more reading on this subject.I love problem solving and so as long as it remains fun i'm going to continue  throwing my ideas into the mix. Who knows one of them might actually be worth something?

Ok, let's talk about what light is. 

At newtonion scales, light is just energy. It's measured in ergs or joules or kilowatt hours, or whatever measurement unit is handy. 

At newtonion scales, no one cares what a photon is, or even really what light is, because newtonion scales can't explain sub-atomic actions. Classical physics break at very small scales, very large scales, very slow temperatures, and very high velocities. Light, as found in nature, involves 3 of those four conditions where pre-relativistic physics break. 

So at the level of Newtonian physics, all we really care about is the energy in the light we're working with. 

But what is energy? It's not a thing, like matter is. It's a property like mass. Now, energy can be present in a system in different ways. It can be a product of the mass of a system. All systems have a rest energy -- the amount of energy that would be measured if the total of the momentum in a system from a given frame of reference were reduced to zero -- and we get close to this effect at very low temperatures (which is why classical models don't work then!). 

Energy can also be present in the relationship between objects with mass. You can see this in classical experiements involving potential and kinetic energy. That potential energy is energy present because of the relationship between objects. 

Unlike mass, which can change within a system through natural processes, the total energy in a system observed from a given frame of reference can not change. 

Mass is not relative to an observer. A person standing on the surface of a planet will see the mass of the planet as being exactly the same as a person riding in a car on the surface of the planet. However, energy is relative to the observer. A person standing on the surface of a planet has zero kinetic energy relative to the planet, while a person riding in a vehicle can have significant kinetic energy relative to the planet. 

This means that the measured amount of total energy in a system is always relative to the reference frame of the observer. And this gets back to energy being a quantitative relative property, not a thing in and of itself. 

Light is a type of energy. 

Now, through the study of quantum mechanics, we've learned about a number of different types of energy. So what is quantum mechanics? it's the study of stuff at those extreme conditions of scale, size and speed. The name comes from the observation that some phenomenon (indeed most every phenomenon) have non-decompositional limits. That is, there is a quantity of whatever it is we're looking at that the thing can't be smaller than. There is a smallest unit of energy of light, and that is what we call a photon. 

Basically Einstein developed a set of equations that extended Newtonian physics. This is important, everything Einstein did included all of the predicted observable results of Newton's equations, and extended them to new areas where Newton's equations broke. This is important. Why Einstein was recognized as right is that even though his formula was more complicated than Newton's, his THEORY was simplier. Instead of multiple explainations for how the world works, we had a single explaination that covered more ground, and it produced identical results (within experimental margins of effor -- an important caveat) as the model it replaced. 

Einstein's work was then extended into quantum mechanics. And again, the goal was to see the two fields merged into a single model. This took longer as the math was getting much, much harder. 

The first success in merging Einstein's relativity with quantum mechanical explanations came with quantum electrodynamics. It gave us a model that solved both relativistic and quantum questions in a single model with regard to hte interaction of light and matter. This theory was the crowning achievement of a guy named Fenyman (along with lots of other people).

Now, in quantum mechanics, we talk about everything in terms of particles. A particle is a unit of something. Some things are decompositonal, like protons. They break up into smaller things when smacked hard enough. Other things are not decomposable. But what is a an elementary particle. 

Well, to understand that, you have to understand quantum fields. 

A quantum field is a something that is:

• present everywhere in space and time
• has an average zero or non-zero value
• can have waves in it
• its waves are made of particles

In this context, a particle has nothing to do with mass or materiality or being. A particle is specifically the least intense wave possible that a particular field can have. 

So a photon then, isn't a thing. Nor, btw, is it the wave in the field. It is the measurement of energy that the wave in the field carries. This is an increadibly important point. A photon is the dimmest possible bit of light. But it isn't a thing, it's an event! Nor is it the wave. The wave, being after all, a virtual thing. The wave is made up of particles, so the particles can be modeled as a wave form, but that doesn't make a photon a wave anymore than it is a thing. It is the smallest non-decomposible measure of light energy possible in the quantum electric field. 

If you get that, then it should be obvious that:

1) there can't be a loss of energy -- because energy must be conserved and a photon is already the least energy that can be present in the field. 

and 

2) there can't be a change into a new thing -- because there isn't an old 'thing' to change into. we're discussing an event in a field, not an object. 

Now it may seem odd to talk about events as "particles," but only if you think that natural language has anything at all to do with scientific terms. And it doesn't really. Scientific terms are "jargon," they have a unique and special meaning within their field of study. 

If you think of a quantum particle in the same way you think of a particle of dust, you've already gone so far wrong that any analogy you attempt to draw will be fatally flawed. 

Energy is a measurement of a temporal property. Photons are the smallest possible unit of energy. That energy is manifest as the smallest possible wave in the quantum electrick field.

And this is tricky non-intuitive stuff. THe implications of what we learn are just simply wierd. But here's teh important point. Like Einstein's take-over of Newton, nothing we're learning breaks what we already know. Rather, what we can already show experimentally still holds under the developing "standard model." And it is still developing, and there are still lots of problems to solve. But what's key is that most of the things the standard model predicts we'll find, we're finding. Those bits we aren't finding are where the problems and interesting questions lay. 

And attempts to solve those problems involve things like supersymmetries, extra dimensions, fewer real dimensions, and so forth. But none of those extentions to the standard model deny the observational data that comes before. 

So if you want to have a wave-packet of a fundamental quantum field decay in any way - you've got a lot of physics to recreate! The scope of what breaks really is astonding. If light has mass, if photons are decomposale, then everything we think we know -- not just about the behavior at the edges, but of our common experiences as well -- needs to be re-imagined. 

And when you start trying to change thousands of equations, and have all the details fall out correct at every level, you realize quickly that it can't be done. 

As a joke, I once tried to create my theory of "darkons" I figured I could have a unit of darkness that created negative light waves in the electromagnetic field. I'd just have use all the photon equations and change the signs everywhere. And I'd have a perfectly good working theory of a universe modeled on a light absorbing wave. The idea makes sense intuitively, right -- if a field is a geometrical space, then you can describe that field either in terms of either an equation with positively valued force carrying variables or with negatively valued variables carrying negative forces. 

It took me less than a day to realize the task was impossible. The maths involves too many necessary uniary transformational operators. Something breaks, the model is really, really fragile to the slightest changes-- and it's a testament to the genius of all the people over the centuries who have contributed to it, that it exists at all. 

So, I can't have my world of radiation anhilating darkons, and you can't have a world of decaying photons. Both for the same reason -- everything else falls over if you try. 
 

I'm honoured and grateful for that...wow!

I've read it three times now and am a little sad that my idea for Photolngation (cl) is dead. But worse, i've got to accept a universe with trillions of galaxies moving at close to the speed of light...and getting faster!

Yup - it's a crazy place out there :) But don't think about it as "but worse . . " accepting the best available explanation is always better than refusing to be objective based on ideology rather than evidence. 

Of course, you aren't suggesting that evidence based objectivity alone should be ones only criteria are you?

All of the experiments on light to determine it's properties, speed,zero mass,frequency and amplitude that I can find, have been conducted in a vacuum. But space isn't a perfect vacuum right? If that is so then a journey of some 13.7 billion light years would cause that particle/wave of light to encounter quite a large amount of...erm...'friction' ?