ok, so more stupid jc here, so isn't the target also sending photons toward it and they actually meet somewhere in between? That is if all things radiate.You cannot make a piece of matter go as fast as the speed of light, and you can't make light go slower than the speed of light bosons and fermions are different, and follow different rules. You cannot make direct comparisons.
We aren't talking about matter...we are talking about photons.
But I agree that photons know where they are going, just not that they are in physical contact. Someone, Feynman perhaps, postulated that inertia is a consequence of changing the destination of photons after they were emitted but before they arrived. Hey its good sci-fi at least.
If you agree that photons experience where they are going from the time they come into existence...that must mean that they experience all possible places they can go unless you are saying that they are aimed from their point of origin....So if they experience all possible places they can go, why would they go towards a warmer body in opposition to the second law?
And again, what is the difference between zero distance and physical contact.
One other thing...I asked toddster and crick but got no answer, and I am really interested in getting someone else thought on this question. If you could see a photon from its point of origin going to some point say, half a light year away, what would you see? Would you see a particle zipping away, or would you see something more like a string instantly stretched between its point of origin and its destination which would allow it to exist at every point between its point of origin and its destination?You cannot make a piece of matter go as fast as the speed of light, and you can't make light go slower than the speed of light bosons and fermions are different, and follow different rules. You cannot make direct comparisons.
We aren't talking about matter...we are talking about photons.
But I agree that photons know where they are going, just not that they are in physical contact. Someone, Feynman perhaps, postulated that inertia is a consequence of changing the destination of photons after they were emitted but before they arrived. Hey its good sci-fi at least.
If you agree that photons experience where they are going from the time they come into existence...that must mean that they experience all possible places they can go unless you are saying that they are aimed from their point of origin....So if they experience all possible places they can go, why would they go towards a warmer body in opposition to the second law?
And again, what is the difference between zero distance and physical contact.
One other thing...I asked toddster and crick but got no answer, and I am really interested in getting someone else thought on this question. If you could see a photon from its point of origin going to some point say, half a light year away, what would you see? Would you see a particle zipping away, or would you see something more like a string instantly stretched between its point of origin and its destination which would allow it to exist at every point between its point of origin and its destination?
Perhaps more like a chain, with alternating electro/magnetic cycles. It has to know if it synches up with the target as attractive or repulsive. Radiative photons just go.
Photons aren't matter. Two photons or a billion can be in the exact same place at the exact same time and they don't know the others are there. It is only when they start interacting with matter that they stop being just a probability wave and condense into something that can be measured.