Spooky Photons

[Maxie the Taxi]

I've learned not to be too skeptical about this stuff. Over my long lifetime I've seen so much science fiction turned into fact that it's mindboggling.

Lucky. I wish I had been there when they invented fire. :P

Oooo. That one stung a little!

[Maxie the Taxi]

If photons are the particles from which light is made, are photons released in the chemical reaction that is fire, or are they summoned out of the ether?

That's a good question. However, I'm still trying to figure out how they track one particular proton after it's been split in half and spread apart by a billion miles...especially when you can't see it when it's right in front of your eye...and then it changes if you look at it.

I'll concentrate on fire...it's a whole lot simpler.

[KYPack]

Better head back to porno, boys.

This stuff may just be over our heads.

[Harlan Huckleby]

If photons are the particles from which light is made, are photons released in the chemical reaction that is fire, or are they summoned out of the ether?

I think it was the greeks that thought that all matter consisted of three elements - earth, wind and fire. It seems kind of silly now to think the whole universe could be encapsulated in a 70's funk band.

I had forgotton about photons. They are the tiniest quantity of light (or xray, radio, microwave .... ) possible. When an electron changes energy state in a heated tungsten atom of your light bulb, it emits exactly one photon of light. Photons are just as much waves as they are particles.

I don't think this experiment is so uniquely spooky. IF you hooked your car battery to some cable that extended a million miles into space and back, the impedance of that load would be sensed instantly. The correct amount of current would start flowing right away. So that sensing of impedence is happening faster than the speed of light. I forget the explanation, something like phenonmena can exceed the speed of light, just not light or matter.

That's similar to the mystery of this experiment.

[swede]

Here is more crazy, mind-bending science.

The warp drive is exactly that: it warps the time-space continuum rather than propels in a Newtonian sense.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/090506-tw-warp-drive.html