Particles are alive; their energy desires take them toward energy sources where energy excesses cause them to withdraw. It is why particle’s vibrate or relocate according to their energy surround. High photon energy environments result in high particle energy interactions and thereby more rapid particle vibrations. Even higher incoming photon energies result in electron particles moving to perhaps temporary new locations in their parent atom further from its nucleus. Yet higher still photon energies can move electrons out of an atom so that they are under the influence of another atoms nucleus.
The photon energy releases emitted into space by particle interactions vary in energy content and associated frequency. The variations form the electromagnetic spectrum as under and the range of energies is considerable. Even the least energetic gamma ray has an energy pulse about 20,000 times bigger and more frequent than that of a visible light pulse whilst typical radio wave energy pulses are a mere one millionth of those of visible light.
Photons are pulses of energy that leave particle structures at light speed (about 300,000,000 metres a second) and engage with particle structures at light speed. You might think of wavelength as the space distance between the rising (like direction ) light speed energy pulses. The chart above shows how wavelength varies considerably across the spectrum range
You can imagine how the energy pulses of the longer wavelengths create wave like influences on the receiving structures particles. You may also imagine how the higher energy pulses of the shorter wavelengths will act like particles when interacting with structure particles. Remember structure particles are themselves composed of energies.
We are told that light speed is the same everywhere; that it is a universal light speed. Is it not more likely that it is consistent in its interactions with particle structures and therefore always the same when we measure it. After all. we cannot measure photon speed without involving particle structures. If you have ever wondered why photon energies from space bodies that are moving rapidly away from or toward us are red shifted or blue shifted consider this.
Photons leaving a structure moving rapidly away from us do so at light speed relative to that structure. On joining our solar system and heading earthward they are encountering photon energies moving at light speed relative to the solar system heading earthward at a speed greater than theirs.
It is as if you have been walking slowly along a rural lane and now join a city pavement where the pace is faster. What do you do? You use energy to speed up. That is precisely what the photons from outer space do, particularly as energy interactions with the earth based photons will be less courteous than most of the general public. We see them as red shifted because they have used some of their “on board” energies to interact with and speed up to be in tune with earth photon energies. Photon energies like independence but are supportive of one another in flows.
We recognise an absorption or emission pattern coming from a fast receding or fast approaching space body as being the same as that coming from an earthly elemental structure and thereby know that it is coming from the same elemental structure on the space body. The shift is an energy loss or gain related to the relative speed of the space body and us. It is energy lost or gained to maintain light speed in the current energy environment.
Much scientific argument is about whether radiation energies are particles or waves. The particle argument has photons as frequency related packets of energy but there are no packets. The wave theory of light originated with the idea of an aether that filled space. It was the media through which light propagated like the expanding ripple on a pond that propagates in its water media when a stone is thrown into it. But there is no aether. Photon radiations are responsible for all energy interactions.
Visible light photons of energy are what pass across space from an object to the retina particles of our eyes enabling our brains to create the image we see. The ripple we observe in water, and indeed all observed motions, are caused by photons acting on particle structures. Our senses of sound, smell, touch and taste are likewise brain interpretations of photon energy signals transmitted to it from our body sensory particles that are responding to the photons they receive. But what are photons of energy; are they particles or waves?
I can only imagine them as being, like the vibrating particles that emit them, a composition of energy fragments. But are these photon energy fragments spread out across a full wavelength rising to a peak when vibrating particles are nearest and falling to a trough when the vibrating particles are furthest apart or are they compacted into particle like photon energy pulses that send them to and fro? Do engaging particles exchange energies continuously or do they exchange them as discrete (set value) energy packets?
If we regard engaging particles as being composed of fragments of living energy, that want to control their engagements, there is every reason to suspect that they make the decision to release photon energy pulses. It means they choose the timing and the level of photon energy releases so as to secure their withdrawal from the engagement and supports Max Planck’s E = hf and the idea of energy quanta.
Photon energy emissions flow at light speed away from their source. We should not think of them as having purely linear motions because as we saw, when dealing with electricity and magnetism, particles have spin and generate spin energies around them. Consequently engaging particles will generate photon energy emissions with some element of spin.
Polarised light : Particles that have vibrating motions relative to one another and in a specific direction send out light speed photon energy pulses that are polarised in that plane. In a radio mast antenna, for example, its directional to and fro high frequency currents determine the alignment of the emitted photon pulses. They are usually horizontal or vertical and we align our receiving aerials so that the electron flows in it can best respond to those polarised photons.
What we term non polarised light comes from random particle motions. It is really photon energy pulses polarised in a multiplicity of directions. A polarising filter, as in sun glasses acts like your receiving aerial. Its material structure is usually doped with a crystalline structure whose electron vibrations are very much directional. In the polarising filters of sun glasses electron side to side vibrations dominate.
Photons that are highly influenced by other close by photons in their passage through space, suddenly become highly influenced by particles when they encounter a particle structure. The directional electrons in our illustration particularly attract and react to horizontal photon energies, influencing them and dispatching them elsewhere whilst the vertical photon energies are transmitted through the polariser in the normal manner. The light reflected from the surface of a lake has a high intensity of horizontally polarised light we call glare. Sun glasses seriously diminish that glare
Coherence: Atomic particles exchange tiny portions of their energies as photons. It is how they link up with one another and is what establishes and maintains them in the relative positions that constitute structures. Likewise, photon energies are not fixed. They too exchange tiny portions of their energies. They support one another in photon flows via tiny energy exchanges yet maintain independence.
Coherence is both the attraction that draws photons together in supportive flows but also the repulsion that holds them apart. It can be spatial or temporal. Spatial coherence is where like frequency photon pulses travel side by side with an almost unchanging distance separating them whereas temporal coherence is where photons follow at an almost unchanging time related distance.
I can only imagine phenomenal numbers of emitted photons at a distant tiny atomic location exchanging energies so as to establish their cohered positions relative to one another. Bundles, comprising high numbers of cohered photons (both spatial and temporal) form the energy pulses we call a wavefront. As the wavefront radiates outward into space the photons adjust their positions relative to one another and the bundles start to break up into smaller bundles. It is how light becomes less intense so that we no longer see detail but instead see blocks of colour.
We can’t see particles, even with our most powerful microscopes, and the atoms they create appear only as fuzzy shapes. Bring any structure up close to an observed structure and its particle positions are changed because particles react to photons and photons react to particles. All microscopes interfere with the structure.
Photon energies interact with other photon energies, as we have seen with coherence but their interactions with particle energies are considerably greater. In my blog on visible light we will see how these two competing desires and interactions are responsible for diffraction and refraction.