In article <5bdb06F2s19l9U2@mid.individual.net>, Bob Kolker <nowhere@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Michael Press wrote: > > > > > > They did not trap a photon. They got a detector to fire, > > Only a photon could have set the detector off. There is no other known > explantion.
By explanation do you mean theory? There are other theories.
For instance an atom can be considered a harmonic oscillator. In an EM field its parameters are changed, so it is a non-linear device. It can be considered a harmonic oscillator perturbed by a field. As a parametric oscillator it will be seen to change energy in a positive feedback loop. The solution goes as the hyperbolic secant. This resembles a quantum jump, or photon if you like. Existence of a photon is not part of this theory. Parametric resonance of a real body is all that is called for.
> > and only inferred the existence of a photon, but when the detector > > fired there was no photon. They did not see a photon leave a > > source, and did not see a photon in flight. > > Nunc vides, nunc ne vides. Not much of a result to declare the > > existence of something. > > No one has ever seen an electron leave the hot element of a t.v. tube > either, but sure enough, you get a picture on the phosphor. By the way, > no one has ever seen a phosophorus atom either. But the evidence > indicates that it exists. > > Most of physics is about things that no one has ever seen. No one has > every seen a gravitational field, but we observe the effects of > gravitational fields. You to can observe the effects. Jump off a tall > building.
Show me a photon in a cold trap the way a positron can be held and observed in a cold trap.
