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- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!siesoft!imw
- From: imw@siesoft.co.uk (Ian Wild)
- Newsgroups: sci.physics
- Subject: Re: The unseen photon (riddle of existence)
- Message-ID: <1992Jul24.164344.19072@siesoft.co.uk>
- Date: 24 Jul 92 16:43:44 GMT
- References: <1992Jul20.161843.26326@hellgate.utah.edu>
- Sender: news@siesoft.co.uk (Usenet News)
- Organization: Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems Ltd.
- Lines: 22
- X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
-
- tolman%asylum.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman) writes:
- :
- : Let us suppose that we fired a photon towards our two slit experiment-
- : yet we set up no screen to absorb it. In fact, the poor photon keeps
- : on going, and is not absorbed by anything. It travels out into outer
- : space, and keeps on going.
- :
- : ...
- :
- : But does that photon exist, or not, if it never interacts again?
-
- Who cares?
-
- Seriously. If it never has any interactions again, how can anyone (or
- anything) be affected by its existence (or lack thereof)?
-
- BTW - why did you need the two slits up front? If I fire off a photon
- from my pocket laser, carefully aiming so that it misses everything in
- the whole universe, does *that* photon exist? And how would you prove
- it?
-
- imw
-