Light/Anti-light

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Engineer_00
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Light/Anti-light

Post by Engineer_00 »

Since I'm just beginning to educate myself in physics, I'm going to ask a potentially stupid question. Light is evidently made of photons. A photon is a particle. Since it has been predicted that for every particle, there is an anti-particle, is it possible that anti-photons exist? If they already do, please forive my ignorance. :roll:
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Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

You're not gonna believe it, but a photon is an antiphoton is a photon is an antiphoton is a photon is an antiphoton is a photon is an antiphoton is a photon is an antiphoton is a photon...
I think you get the point now... :mrgreen:
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Wicked Pilot
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Re: Light/Anti-light

Post by Wicked Pilot »

Engineer_00 wrote:Since it has been predicted that for every particle, there is an anti-particle,
I am unaware of any such predictions within mainstream science. Could you please provide the source from which you got this from.
The most basic assumption about the world is that it does not contradict itself.
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Post by Shinova »

The big question is whether gravitons and anti-gravitons exist. If they do, then we've taken our first step towards gravitic drives and artificial gravity :)
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Post by Shrykull »

Since I'm just beginning to educate myself in physics, I'm going to ask a potentially stupid question. Light is evidently made of photons. A photon is a particle. Since it has been predicted that for every particle, there is an anti-particle, is it possible that anti-photons exist? If they already do, please forive my ignorance.
Everything in the EM spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays is made of photons, not just the visible light spectrum that we can see, and they act as both waves and particles (sometimes called "wavicles") and they all the product of (I think) when an electron has some extra energy from it revolving so fast, when it dumps the extra energy. I don't know really how to answer it, it kind of hard to imagine what anti light would do, since the opposite of light is darkness and that's when you have the absense of light.
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Post by Beowulf »

photons are their own anti-particles.
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Post by Shrykull »

The big question is whether gravitons and anti-gravitons exist. If they do, then we've taken our first step towards gravitic drives and artificial gravity
You said it man, it's 2002 where's my flying car dammit! I didn't really think gravity had an explanation, that it just "was" and if we were to generate artificial gravity and anti gravity wouldn't that require an immense power source, to make as much gravity as there is to hold us to the ground (in the case of the earth) or the sun in the sun's case, Is there a formula you can use just to see how much energy it would take to hold us to the ground like the earth does, by calculating the Earth's mass and the gravity it generates on us. Obviously with a bigger more massive object you have more gravitons. Also, I remember back when back to the future 2 came out that people were saying that hover boards do actually exist, I never saw one. I've seen a jetpack, but there's a slight problem with those, they gun out of fuel very quickly- in seconds.
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Re: Light/Anti-light

Post by Engineer_00 »

Wicked Pilot wrote:
Engineer_00 wrote:Since it has been predicted that for every particle, there is an anti-particle,
I am unaware of any such predictions within mainstream science. Could you please provide the source from which you got this from.
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Engineer_00
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Sorry.

Post by Engineer_00 »

Sorry, I must have hit enter by mistake. Paul Dirac predicted in 1932 that electrons have positrons, and therefore, all particles have a related anti-particle.

Now to photons. They're neutral? Then what are they composed of? Are there electrons? protons?
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Post by Durandal »

Photons have no charge and no spin, so they are their own antiparticle. They aren't composed of anything. A photon is a special type of particle called a boson, a particle which mediates a force. In this case, photons transmit the electromagnetic force. It was found that light is transferred in discrete packets of energy at certain wavelengths and energy levels, and we call those packets photons.

Gravitons are not theorized to have a charge, as far as I know, but they are theorized to have a spin of 2, but I don't think an anti-graviton is theorized to exist.
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Re: Sorry.

Post by Wicked Pilot »

Engineer_00 wrote:Sorry, I must have hit enter by mistake. Paul Dirac predicted in 1932 that electrons have positrons, and therefore, all particles have a related anti-particle.
That is an incredible leap of logic.
The most basic assumption about the world is that it does not contradict itself.
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Re: Sorry.

Post by Durandal »

Wicked Pilot wrote:
Engineer_00 wrote:Sorry, I must have hit enter by mistake. Paul Dirac predicted in 1932 that electrons have positrons, and therefore, all particles have a related anti-particle.
That is an incredible leap of logic.
Physicists look for symmetry in nature, but it has been shown that any particle with charge and spin has a corresponding anti-particle.

That wasn't Dirac's only evidence for his postulation, though. Numerous things like particle interactions and conservation of quantum numbers necessitated it, and the current cosmological model predicts a strong dominance of matter over anti-matter.
Damien Sorresso

"Ever see what them computa bitchez do to numbas? It ain't natural. Numbas ain't supposed to be code, they supposed to quantify shit."
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