Tired Light

Are photons really able to give up just a portion of their energy to an electron? My understanding is that a photon is either fully absorbed by an electron or not. If it is absorbed then the electron rises to a higher energy level. When the electron returns to a lower energy level it emits another photon. If the energy level it returns to is higher than the electron's original energy level, then the photon it emits will be lower in energy than the photon it absorbed.Because the direction of the outgoing photon is not governed by the direction of the original photon, there should be scattering of light. Is this observed?Statistically, some photons will encounter more of the matter in the intergalactic medium than others, so some arriving photons will be more "tired" than others. Is this observed?Also, the degree to which light becomes tired in your theory must be a function of how much of the intergalactic medium it interacts with. Do we observe differences in red shift according to density of intergalactic medium?Added by edit: Since in your theory the decrease in energy of photons is due to interaction with electrons, and since electrons can only change energy by quantum amounts, light can only become tired by quantum amounts. Is this observed?--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 03-16-2005 09:11 AM

The entry on the Compton Effect at Wikipedia talks of a re-emited photon: After thinking about this a bit, perhaps it doesn't matter whether the original photon gives up some of its energy to the electron, or whether the electron absorbs all the photon's energy then re-emits another photon at a lower energy, keeping some of the energy for itself. I took a peek over at Hyperphysics, and it echoed your description. I guess I'm not yet convinced which is correct, but as I said, it might not be an important point, at least for this discussion.--Percy

You must have clicked on the General Reply button, and you didn't quote any text, so I can't tell if you're replying to me or to someone else. In case you're replying to me, I was already aware of the information you provided, but you didn't address any of my questions from Message 25: --Percy

Atomic nucleus? What happened to photons interacting with electrons? Am I confusing two different arguments? Sorry, unable to figure this part out.--Percy

Atoms in a rigid matrix behave much differently in this regard from atoms in a gas. You'll have to explain how i and ii support your position. While the electrons in a plasma are not totally free, they definitely will not behave like electrons in rigid material like glass. You don't have to put it on your website before presenting the evidence. The red shift was discovered 70 years ago. Where can I find evidence of this blurring (not broadening) of spectral lines? I'm actually focusing on something simpler than the debate between two groups of scientists about the value of the Hubble constant. Do we observe different amounts of red shift as a function of the total amount of intervening intergalactic matter? While I suppose you could argue that one could only detect quantum energy changes in simple gases, all energy changes are in units of quanta. It seems your red shift should be by quantized amounts and that it should be detectable through statistical analysis of many measurements.--Percy

There are two problems with this:

1. We all have great respect for Feynman, but "Feynman says so" is insufficient justification. Could you provide something more concrete to go on?
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2. If the light goes in straight lines after interacting with electrons, why does Feynman call it 'scatter', which is the opposite of straight lines? Is it possible you misunderstood what Feynman was saying?

--Percy

Neither link answers the question. By the way, you can include images in a post using the [img] or [thumb] dBCodes. They're documented at Adding Images and Adding Thumbnails.What you need is a measure of the width of the spectral lines produced from a stationary sample here on earth, then you need to show how the spectral lines blur with increasing distance according to your equations. They do not go straight, they scatter. For example, see Plasma Radiation and Scattering, page 206.You left two issues unaddressed:

1. I'm actually focusing on something simpler than the debate between two groups of scientists about the value of the Hubble constant. Do we observe different amounts of red shift as a function of the total amount of intervening intergalactic matter?
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2. While I suppose you could argue that one could only detect quantum energy changes in simple gases, all energy changes are in units of quanta. It seems your red shift should be by quantized amounts and that it should be detectable through statistical analysis of many measurements.

--Percy

I'll have to read QED someday, but I'm just going by the Compton Effect. Ashmore has said his theory is not the Compton Effect, that it is more a "Mossbauer type of thing", but the Mossbauer effect applies only to tightly held crystalline structures, not to gases. Ashmore is in effect claiming that the plasma nature of gas in space gives it the same qualities as solid matter, something for which I've not yet seen any evidence.To me it looks like Ashmore's tired light theory really is only the Compton Effect, and therefore Compton Scattering applies. But no scattering is observed in the spectral lines from distant galaxies.--Percy

I wouldn't worry about it, for two reasons. If you commit copyright infringement here, it's me that'll get in trouble, not you. And second, you're not creating a copy, only a link.I guess I'll add a third point. I don't have a lot of respect for copyright laws because they're so much at whim of industry. Disney a few years ago pushed a modification to copyright law through Congress that extended copyright protection another 20 years, because the copyright on several Disney characters was about to expire. This also affects copyright on written material, and it was devastating to my former co-worker Eric Eldred who runs Eldritch Press which makes public domain literary works available for free on the web. Were you hoping to see Robert Frost on the web? Well, now you'll have to wait another 20 years. See Supreme Court Upholds Copyright Extension for a simple account, or Eldred v. Ashcroft for the details of the arguments on both sides.The record industry is just as bad. Here in the US it's illegal to copy your own CDs onto your own computer. There are some weasel words in the law that disallow enforcement officials from taking action against those only involved in personal use, but it's still illegal. The record industry will only tell you it's illegal, but iTunes and Napster and RealPlayer and Windows Media Player can all copy your CDs to your computer, so obviously it's okay. It's illegal but it's okay - gee, that makes me feel good!Getting back to the original point, I believe giving attribution so important that it's included in the Forum Guidelines. But a link to an image at the owning site sure seems like attribution to me, so I have no problem with it on that basis. If EvC Forum becomes so successful that activities here start coming to the attention of law enforcement authorities, then as they haul me off to jail I'll still be a happy man! Sure it is. The reference was to page 206 of Plasma Radiation and Scattering, and at one point it says: Has this scattering been observed? But the Hubble Law is a mere function of distance, while the Ashmore Law is a function of intervening intergalactic material. The amount of intergalactic material is not the same everywhere. Just by chance, there is more in some directions than others. If the Ashmore Law holds, then red shift should be a function of the amount of intervening intergalactic material, which is only approximately a function of distance but can vary widely according to circumstance.Is this observed? Wrong type of quantization. I was referring to quanta. As I said before, while I suppose you could argue that one could only detect quantum energy changes in simple gases, all energy changes are in units of quanta. It seems your red shift should be by quantized amounts and that it should be detectable through statistical analysis of many measurements. Certainly the gas of the intergalactic medium is simple and under low pressure.But after thinking about this some more, I think perhaps the number of potential interactions might be too great to make individual quantum changes detectable, even statistically. I'm okay with dropping this point.--Percy

Okay, let's review my original list of objections.Because the direction of the outgoing photon is not governed by the direction of the original photon, there should be scattering of light. Is this observed? Also, the degree to which light becomes tired in your theory must be a function of how much of the intergalactic medium it interacts with. Do we observe differences in red shift according to density of intergalactic medium? Statistically, some photons will encounter more of the matter in the intergalactic medium than others, so some arriving photons will be more "tired" than others. Is this observed? But we're talking about photons traveling through the intergalactic medium, which is not glass.Summing up, you haven't yet identified any phenomena that distinguish between expansion of space and tired light. These are the remaining open points (and since Sylas didn't respond to your last response to him in Message 22 a couple days ago, I'll pick up his points):

1. You claim that the intergalactic medium would affect photons like glass rather than like the gas that it is. This claim needs to be supported.
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2. Sylas's point 1 from Message 9, supernova light curves. You called this "gobbledy gook", but offered no specific rebuttal. His description:
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   The light from a type Ia supernova has a characteristic light curve. It peaks in about 20 days and then fades at a fixed rate. However, there is a linear relationship between redshift and the fade time. The more redshifted the supernova, the more slowly the light fades. The data is a good match with expectations arising from modeling redshift as recessions. After 20 days, the supernova is that much further from earth as it recedes with the Hubble flow, and the light takes correspondingly longer to reach us. Tired light models predict no change in light curves; and are falsified by the data.
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3. Blurring of spectral lines, Sylas also made the same point, #2 from Message 9. Sylas's description:
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   Lyndon's model involves a loss of photon energy from repeated interactions with the intergalactic medium. But when a photon loses energy it also loses momentum; and momentum is a vector. A change in momentum also means a change in direction; and this is (contra claims in Lyndon's papers) an observed fact of life where there really are significant interactions with gas; and it is a prediction of theory. This change in momemtum should lead to blurring of high redshift objects. The effect does not exist; hence the particle interations model for redshift is falsified.
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4. Black body radiation, Sylas's point 3 from Message 9. I was going to raise this point myself after we completed discussion of scattering. Sylas's description:
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   Energy lost to the intergalactic medium will inevitably heat the medium, and result in more radiation. Such radiation would not have a blackbody spectrum, which is a distinctive feature of the cosmic background. In much the same vein, such interactions should distort the spectrum of stars. Such distortions are seen as a result of interactions with known gas clouds; but not with the uniformity or magnitude required if the large cosmological redshifts we see were due to loss of energy to the medium.

--Percy

I didn't mention any "perfect CMB cueve", so I have no context to go by. You'll have to refer me to the message or source you're talking about. Again, you've provided no context. My guess is that you're offering this in response to the supernova data, but a Google on "hawkins quasar time dilation" returns too many links with only ambiguous application to the topic. Anyway, we try to encourage people to make the arguments themselves in the messages they post. Well, don't discuss it just for my sake. I expect you've gone over the same ground at many discussion boards, and I doubt I'm going to raise any issues you haven't seen before.--Percy

The paper you cited, Time Dilation and Quasar Variability by M. R. S. Hawkins, has a different assessment of the supernova data: Moving on: The paper has a somewhat different assessment in the conclusion: If you want people to trust your arguments, then the references you cite should actually say what you claim they say.The paper also offers a possible explanation for the apparent absence of quasar time dilation: If my accounting is correct, then this is the list of issues that still remain for you to address:

• You claim that the intergalactic medium would affect photons like glass rather than like the gas that it is. This claim needs to be supported.
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• Time dilation of distance supernova light vs. time curves.
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• Blurring of spectral lines.
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• Black body radiation.

--Percy

Could you explain a bit more why this is an issue? I posted a message about the Ashmore Coincidence in the admin forum before Lyndon started posting. I'd taken a quick look at his website and just wanted to make sure he had the units and values correct. I wanted to see if he was like Cresswell, in which case I would have taken action to prevent him wasting too much of people's time. I found the units *do* come out to sec^-1, and that his values and calculations were correct except for his use of 64 for the value of the Hubble Constant. I felt uncomfortable that he felt the need to divide by unit volume, but couldn't come up with a specific objection. Can you explain this better?--Percy

Eta,Doh! Thanks for the explanation!Lyndon,In case you were missing the point like I was, the value of your "constant" for hr/m is a function of your units. If you start with units of meters: You then divide by m³ to yield your value per unit volume of 2.05 x 10^-18s^-1, which is sort of close to the Hubble Constant. There are two problems with this. First, if your value were really per unit volume then the units would have volume in the denominator, but they don't. All you've done is arbitrarily divided by m³ to improperly address the disparity in your units .Second, your value is a function of the units you choose to work in. As Eta has pointed out, if you perform the calculation in units of feet you get a different constant: You then divide by ft³ to adjust the units, and you're now left with 7.25 x 10^-17s^-1 for your constant, which turns out not to be so constant and nowhere near the Hubble constant. Your paradox isn't really a paradox, only a result of playing games with numbers and mishandling units.--Percy

The problem with Ashmore's Paradox is that his constant, the one that is supposedly equal to the Hubble Constant, is not actually a constant. The value of Ashmore's constant changes according to the units of distance used. This has been explained several times in posts by Sylas and Eta, and the precise math illustrating the problem is given in Message 123. That Ashmore is wrong isn't ambiguous - there's no doubt. Go through the math yourself.--Percy