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Word Gems
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Quantum Mechanics
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What happens to photons when absorbed? Can they ever come to rest and inactivity?
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Paul Dirac: “The light-quantum (photon) has the peculiarity that it apparently ceases to exist when it is in one of its stationary states, namely, the zero state, in which its momentum and therefore also its energy, are zero.
"When a light-quantum is absorbed it can be considered to jump into this zero state, and when one is emitted it can be considered to jump from the zero state to one in which it is physically in evidence, so that it appears to have been created.
"Since there is no limit to the number of light-quanta that may be created in this way, we must suppose that there are an infinite number of light-quanta in the zero state…”
Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Zero-point energy: vibrational energy that molecules retain even at the absolute zero of temperature. Temperature in physics has been found to be a measure of the intensity of random molecular motion, and it might be expected that, as temperature is reduced to absolute zero, all motion ceases and molecules come to rest. In fact, however, the motion corresponding to zero-point energy never vanishes.
“Zero-point energy results from principles of quantum mechanics, the physics of subatomic phenomena. Should the molecules ever come completely to rest, their component atoms would be precisely located and would simultaneously have precisely specified velocities, namely, of value zero. But it is an axiom of quantum mechanics that no object can ever have precise values of position and velocity simultaneously (see uncertainty principle); thus molecules can never come completely to rest.”
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