The Light Fantastic

Author's note - I recommend reading The Cat And The Photon or having a basic knowledge of the Two-Slit Experiment before reading this article. I can't believe you're reading this, really. Do you have any idea how blinding the world around you is right now? The light from the sun is beating down into your eyes right now, surging through your pupil and searing across your retina. Light energy from every star in the galaxy is whipping around the room you're in right now, and the leftover moonlight from three days ago is ricocheting off the walls around you. I'm impressed that you're managing to see through the glare of an eternity of light. Impressed in some ways. Of course - you can't see it, can you? In fact, if I told you that right now the sun was shining in your eyes (despite the fact that it could well be nighttime where you are reading this from) you'd probably think I'd had one drag queen experience too many. Well, ladies and gents - it's true. And in fact it's better than true - it's Physics. Allow me to elaborate. According to everything that we know, light is a wave. For the astute of those amongst you (and any avid readers of Phoenix Publishings), you will know that this has not so much been disproved as it has been turned on its head. Light is a wave. But it also acts like a particle - a packet of light energy which physicists have coyly named a Photon. If you're worried about how something can be both things at once, then check out my other article on the subject. If you're not, well... either my explanatory techiques aren't that hot or you've already had your primer on Quantum Physics. Well if you thought the cat was a little strange, wait until you're through with this article. So... photons. Funny thing is, it turns out that photons don't just behave strangely when you give them two holes and ask them to choose one (they choose both, incidentally). In fact, if you give them a wide open space they behave strangely. In fact, they behave strangely even if you've got somewhere where they can't actually get to. Photons are, in a word, strange. Let's take the desk/table/area you're at right now. There must be a shadow somewhere, right? Maybe under the monitor, between the keys on the keyboard, the corner of the ceiling. The area is dark because the light waves are being blocked by something right? Right? Nu-uh. As the photons stream out from the sun, the bulb, the monitor, they go wherever the hell they want. They loop-the-loop up your left nostril. They turn corners. They reflect at angles that defy the laws of physics. They stop in mid-air. They go back in time. They go into your eye and bounce around your rods and cones. They do anything you can imagine. So that little shadow between the space bar and the letter 'b'? Light from yesterday's Sun is hitting there. So is light from every bulb on the planet. In fact, that area of darkness is subject to just as many photons as the surface of the monitor you're reading this off of. And now for the confession that should have come during The Cat And The Photon. The Cat experiment is pure pedantry, and Schrodinger, the physicist who devised the experiment, came up with it because he despised what he had discovered. Every physicist who has made an advance in Quantum Physics has disliked what they have discovered - more and more probability. And so the Cat theory is only theoretical. The photon really does do two things at once. The cat, of course, does not. It only works on a theoretical, micro-level. And so, when I say that the gap on your keyboard is receiving day-old light from a bulb in the same room as you... Well it's a bit of a cop-out, really. Here's what's really happening... Light really does take every possible path to a detector from a source. Photons from the monitor in front of you actually are looping around your head and then entering your eye. But you don't see them, and you never will. Because as a photon loops around the left side of your head and enters your right eye, another photon takes the opposite course and enters the same eye. They cancel each other out. For each photon that leave the lightbulb and tracks the left hand wall before diving into your keyboard, another will track the right hand wall and end up at the same point. Each photon has a partner, and the two combine to create something called destructive interference. This creates darkness. And the only photon that doesn't have an opposite path? You guessed it. The one that goes in a dead straight line, at the speed of light. And so we come full circle to a rather empty conclusion. Photons are everywhere. They're buzzing around, coming in and out of existence like there's no tomorrow (which, for a particle that defies time, there isn't). In vacuums (or as near as experiments can come to) photons have been monitored coming in and out of existence for no reason. It completely defies the Conservation Of Energy, but try telling a subatomic particle that. You know more about the world, but I haven't really explained anything to you. The reason you're taught - we're all taught - that light travels in straight lines is because, essentially, that's all that matters. People that have not read this article will not be mystified when a beam of light stretches around a corner because it never will (not of its own accord anyway). But hopefully this will have sparked an interest and awoken you to one thing - the world around you is not as black and white as it seems. 90% of that desk is nothingness. Have you never considered that? And all around you, light is buzzing in and out of existence. You've probably never considered that. I don't like the idea of science proving or disproving the existence of God. Science does not provide answers to everything, but nor does it imply that we should therefore turn to a divine being. But what it does do is remind us that nothing in this universe of ours is what it seems, and a revolution of our sciences, arts and culture is always on the brink of happening. And if you think time-travelling light is a pretty far-fetched concept, you just wait until the next time we talk Quantum. Thanks for listening. Any questions or queries, email me.