Sam Wormley wrote: > > Mathlete wrote: > > Sam Wormley wrote:
Mathlete wrote: > >>
Having an expression for c gives us the
opportunity to differentiate it (say) with respect to proper time
and get an expression for the acceleration of ... there seems
to be so much controversy, can we legally talk about acceleration
of photons.? There was a time when the velocity of light was thought
to be infinite. When a photon is emitted by the electron of the hydro-
gen atom: does it start it's journey INSTANTANEOUSLY at the value
of c?
You have a lot of misunderstanding among these words. The speed of
light is a constant of nature and is the same for all observers.
Light and its interaction with matter is beautifully modeled by
Quantum Electrodynamics (QED).
Thank you for being polite. We need more of that. With respect to the equation
that gave an explicit expression for c, (which I know to be constant for all Inertial
observers in Minkowski Space-Time), I am simply asking under what circumstances
can you plug experimentally measured values of v, u and t into the right side
of that equation and get the correct value of c on the left?.
I know that if you differentiate a constant you will get zero. But the history of science is
full of quantities that were thought to be constant (or even infinite as the speed of light
was once thought to be) but turned out to be not so constant after all.
The relative error in the predictions of QED (when compared with experiment) is
the lowest among all the scientific disciplines including GR. QED is
the result of the union of Quantum Mechanics and SR (and not GR).
What I am basically wondering about is: can we generalize SR "one step up" and obtain
generalizations of such things as the elegant and canonical Lorentz Transformations?
I wonder also what is the speed of that photon 1/10^12 of a second after it is
emitted by the electron in the hydrogen atom. Is it already 186,000 miles per
second ? Assume that we can "turn off" the Heisenberg Uncertainty
principle in this analysis.
No matter when you measure the speed of that photon it comes out c.
$ Dimwit.
brian a m stuckless
<> >><> >><> >><> >><>
Why are you assuming c would have a different value during a shorter trip?
.
