🧵 Untitled Thread
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 13:04:50 UTC No. 16632609
Can someone explain light like I'm an idiot? (I am)
I'm trying to reason about dark energy vs timescapes and got down a path of how light functions. It emits as a wave but becomes a particle when observed, the photon wave function collapses. I get that.
I try to think about a single photon, it can cross the entire universe - omnidirectionally as a (spherical?) wave expanding at the speed of light - "as long as it doesn't hit anything", once it's observed its waveform collapses and it becomes a particle of light. So a single photon can only interact with one "thing" - what counts as a thing? All fermions I suppose, how about hadrons and other bosons? Light is affected by gravioli but isn't absorbed by it...
And is there some kind of object that can suck up a lot of light? Like a black hole but less dense. Something that would act as an observer/absorber of photons in the interstellar medium, significant enough to dim the light that passes through it. Does dark matter do that?
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 13:12:29 UTC No. 16632624
>>16632609
On the scale you're thinking of, they're called galaxy filaments. Infalling photons are treated like a gas on those length scales.
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 13:22:22 UTC No. 16632632
>>16632624
>like a gas
How does this work? I've only heard of them as a wave, which transforms into a particle when the wave function collapses. So as I understand when I turn on a lamp it starts shitting out tons of photons, which are waves that fluctuate omnidirectionally from it, until they interact with something and become particles, or particle-like. Like an eyeball has some atoms that enter a higher energy state when they interact with a photon and that's how we see. Then they go down to a lower energy state very quickly to be ready to receive more light, somehow (how, I do not know).
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 13:27:44 UTC No. 16632635
>>16632624
Wikipedia still says this
> Due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, the individual clusters of gravitationally bound galaxies that make up galaxy filaments are moving away from each other at an accelerated rate; in the far future they will dissolve.
I guess it's somewhat recent experimentation that put focus on timescapes as being more of a possible explanation, so that may not be the case. I see a lot of videos from the past couple months about "dark energy may not be real!" etc. That the typical model of approximating the cosmos as homogenous isn't really correct and that redshift from Ia supernovae is better explained by void regions of space in which time moves faster.
I guess it's a very fundamental question that would change a lot of underlying assumptions about the universe, and the math is more complex when it's not treated as homogenous.
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 13:34:04 UTC No. 16632638
I think this is the actual study these articles and videos are talking about
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/arti
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 14:28:20 UTC No. 16632686
>>16632609
>I don’t understand basic shit like Maxwell’s equations
>I am trying to reason about dark energy
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 14:46:12 UTC No. 16632708
>>16632686
Explain it to me
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 15:13:28 UTC No. 16632718
>>16632708
Pick up a book on introductory electrodynamics and learn it yourself, you stupid fucking nigger. You are lightyears away from understanding general relativity.
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 15:33:41 UTC No. 16632728
>>16632718
I was looking more for an explanation on the quantum nature of light, not dark energy anyway
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 15:44:41 UTC No. 16632734
>>16632728
Then take a course on quantum electrodynamics. You fundamental understanding is wrong. Sometimes it is better to use the wave description of light, other times the particle one but in the end it's neither. It's a quantum field.
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 15:48:42 UTC No. 16632738
>>16632609
You can test non reflective black materials, but you are equalling light absorption with gravity generation?
Cause it's a mass issue, as in cold condensed mass, maybe it will work
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:08:44 UTC No. 16632755
>>16632734
Hmm, usually being wrong on 4chan is the best way to get an answer, but it didn't work
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:15:09 UTC No. 16632760
>>16632755
You got your answer. Pick up a book before pondering about topics you don’t understand. I don’t know shit about cellular biology and never feel the need to come up with all that wall of text about it. Crackpots were dropped as babies.
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:17:02 UTC No. 16632764
>>16632760
I don't think it'll make me more money so I'll have to stick to youtube videos in free time. Is ScienceClic good?
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:23:03 UTC No. 16632771
>>16632764
Will those make you money? What spectrum is your bugatteh?
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:27:15 UTC No. 16632773
>>16632771
What makes me money is doing stupid computer stuff that's boring. Web development, IT. I am too old to study science and math and understand it well, but it interests me so I just want dumbed down explanations, I'll never be an expert.
Anonymous at Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:32:03 UTC No. 16632775
>>16632773
>I just want dumbed down explanations
Unfortunately not possible. It’s like trying to explain how assembly code works by drawing pictures of rainbows and unicorns. It’s possible, but things get lost in translation. Math is its own language and dumbing it down only results in less clarity and more questions.