I like that Bushido gave the two statements equal priority.

monte carlo works better than intuition

Amen to that James.



Quiet,

Nope, that's not what it means. Just because we don't understand or accept the 'rules' does not mean their are none.

I love quantum chaos! Think of it! A whole branch of physics dedicated to the study of "what ifs".

ummmmm actually that is EXACTLY what it means

it means there is a discrete measurable probability that you can walk through a wall after enough attempts

the cat really isn't in the the box while at the same time it really is

just thinking about observing an atomic particle changes its behavior

There are still rules, but the can all be broken.

Oh, but there are rules!

If you use a single slit you get no interference pattern.

If you use a doublt slit you always get an interference pattern.

There are definintely rules!

The key to understanding this is to 'back off'.

Back away from trying to follow an individual photon and look at the whole experimental situation.

What does this experient truly say?

It's say,....

Quit trying to divide the universe up in to this and that individual things. The universe is one whole beast! You need to take everything into consideration at once.

That's precisely what each and every "individual" photon is doing. It's taking in the whole universe all at once.

Why? Because photon's aren't really "individuals". They just appear to behave like individuals when they interact with standing waves (matter wavicles, or atoms)

And we can even point to the 'interaction' and say, "Hey that was a quantum of interaction! We'll call THAT a single photon!"

Yeah right.

A quantum of interaction is a photon.

So what is a photon again?

A 'particle' of light?

Or a quantum of energetic vibrational interaction?

Hmmm?

Maybe we shouldn't be thinking in terms of 'particles' at all.

Just a thought.

That's what I say. There are no quanta. Quanta does not exist.

Quiet, I wonder if we mean different things by the word 'rules'?

You are right, that many of the 'normal' rules no longer exist - but, like Abra, I would say that there are still rules. As bizarre as those rules may be.

You mention walking through walls - well, the rules place a very limited upper bound on the probability that you would do so... to my mind,

Random observation: The mutual exclusivity of fermions is still a rule.

Random observation:

Cherenkov Radiation appears to move faster than light in a non-vacume gaseous invironment...

.

The non-vacuum environment is the key factor here:

The following website has this to say,...

"The Cherenkov effect is thus not considered to be a real example of FTL travel."

Details here:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html#1

But could it be used to stimulate or excite a real FTL engine?

Its not faster then C. Light can go slower then C.



Too bad really only physicist and mathematicians seem to make any progress. We are all dreamers JB, some of us just hold off on believing the dream until something objective peaks its head out of the dream.

I've heard the we've slowed light down to 38 mph. If this is true, everyone who owns a car owns a FTL vehicle! And every spacecraft is FTL!

(Were we talking about going faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, or just faster than light?)

Cherenkov radiation just goes faster then light does at the time of this phenomena occurring and being witnessed so if we are talking about Cherenkov radiation we are talking about slower then lights maximum speed.

The confusion around lightspeed is tasty.

Technically it's impossible to slow down the speed of light.

Light has never been slowed down to 38mph.

What has been slowed down is the propagation of light through a medium.

What's actually happening is that light (photons or quantums of energy), are jumping from one atom to the next (at the SPEED OF LIGHT in a vacuum), those atoms absorb the light energy (the photon or quantum of energy), become 'excited' for a while (a delay), and then re-emit the light energy (photon or quantum of energy) to the next atom over at the SPEED OF LIGHT.

So if we stand back and look at the big picture, light APPEARS to be propagating thought the substance at LESS than the speed of light.

And in a very real sense it is propagating overall slower than photons (quantums of energy) actually travel.

But nowhere within that process did any photons actually travel slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.

Photons cannot be slowed down. They always travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. In materials they just get sucked up by atoms and re-emitted causing delays as the propagate through the substance.

In fact, we could basically say that photons never travel "through" anything but empty space.

When they propagate through a material made of atoms, what's actually happending is that they keep bumping into the atoms, momentarily becoming part of that atoms vibrational configuration, and then being remitted as a photon again.

So photons never actually 'travel' though anything but empty space when all is said and done.

yet, no matter how much "darkness" you pile on a light, it does not extinguish it.

And what would a particle of "darkness" be called? A darkon?



Sorry. That's just the first question that popped into my mind when I read your thought.

Abra,

You make some very interesting claims about the difference between light traveling in vacuum and light traveling through matter. I do not discount the possibility that 'the best way' to think it is - as you say - that light is traveling is 'always at C, but sometimes matter makes it appear otherwise', in fact, I vaguely recall equations from which I concluded something similar, however, I don't accept this as an explanation:



Are you speaking of the excitation of electrons surround the atom? This process, of course, does happen - under other circumstances. When it does happen, the direction of emission is generally not the direction light was traveling when absorbed. When we observe light being slowed down (so to speak) when traveling through matter, the overall direction of the lights traveling is not changed in the same way that it is when the light energy is absorbed and re-emitted in the process which (i think) you are describing.