Photon counting for the masses

Historically there are often also early indications that there is a danger (this is the case with radiation, X-rays, and some of chemicals you mention), but this is sometimes overlooked in the zeal to refine and polish the new technology. So the real danger IMO is often just not knowing quite how harmful new things are -- that's what really takes awhile to fully flesh out.

And was it arthritis that some felt a quick trip to a uranium mine could help out?

Agreed. What's strange is that a lot of diseases do seem very much on the increase these days, and nobody's quite sure why -- asthma and certain types of cancer come to mind.

---Joel

That's probably what was going on. We get dazzled by the new shiny technology, and overlook that there could be some damage from it...

Oh, yes. And "radium water" which, fortunately, was mostly just exposed to radium, but didn't actually contain it. But radioactive materials and devices were used to help with many different illnesses. And electric hernia trusses, and God knows what else.

Lots of theories. Better diagnosis, people surviving early illnesses and coming down with things like cancer and heart disease, etc. And, of course, chemicals and electromagnetic radiations of various kinds. I take comfort that if most of these things were serious dangers, we'd already know it. OTOH, there's *always* that possibility that something takes years to show up, or doesn't appear until the next generation (depoprovera comes to mind)...

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Can't we all just get along? I find the intolerance of some atheists the hardest to understand.

George (confirmed agnostic) H.

True, in the same secular humanist crowd (read: liberals/progressives). The Europoens are just so much more so (of both).

Itself. Auto-immune diseases are on the rise, too.

Sure, I've been afraid a couple of former managers were complete morons. Didn't help my work at all.

Could help some cancers. ;-)

I think JL is onto the cause of this, in a post above.

Everything is dangerous. TANSTAAFL, no matter how much we may demand that there is.

How about foot X-Rays?

As JL posited, the immune system gets bored.

No, it is "science" as long as it is falsifiable. Einstein didn't test any of his theories but did propose experiments that could prove them wrong. Are you saying that what Einstein did was not science?

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Too bad you can't post pics. But at high light levels (counting rates) I see the RC 'recovery' to zero interupted by another pulse. So double pulses. That's totally expected for random pulses. Where the most common time between pulses is zero.

nt

Well light (formerly know as photons) is the most likely trigger.

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Hmm, yeah I should try that too. Bais a zener just below the knee and see if I can get light to trigger it. I've had zero free time lately.

George H.

Well, George, I think you and I can get along just fine because I think your personal religious convictions are your business and my personal convictions are my business. And, I have a very hard time understanding religious intolerance in any form.

Now, then. I have your LEDs here and am at a loss as to what to try next with them. So, I'd be happy to return them to you, if you feel like opening an envelope in a few days.

Cheers, John S

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The issue is not so much detection when the S/N is good, but what happens when it degrades below 3 dB and even further to -3 dB.

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And the magnified blotches of change can swamp the later filters, which are, after all, not immune to noise either.

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Dunno. I do know i would have one hell of a time demonstrating the existence of photons for EM fields below a GHz. Detection there does not seem to involve any sort of discreteness. Or maybe somebody has = something to teach me.

?-)

I suppose i could look up the value but you may know it off the top of your head; what is the Planck length of a 500 nm green "photon"?

?-)

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As always, that is a question/exercise left for the acolyte. Failure to do that is to fail to understand his "guru"ness.

?-)

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Damn straight. I have had the luxury of seeing the milky way in its glory. Bloody impressive. The moon was only quarter, must be really = nice at new moon.

?-)

That is a *disgraceful* slur. Jan represents some lunatic fringe in his country. Antisemitism is rare now in most of Europe.

FTL particles already have a given name "Tachyons". Their possible properties and implications are even briefly discussed in some graduate level textbooks for example Harwitt's Astrophysical Concepts p183-6.

I am not arguing that at all.

I am pointing out that with a suitable experiment you can split a photon into two other photons so that energy is conserved.

Indeed. Each photon explores all the paths open to it *and* interferes with itself. Easier to see in the electromagetic wave treatments. The strongly oscillatory nature of the integrals means that the probability wavefunction of the photon vanishes everywhere except very close to the paths of least time. Fringes result when two equal length paths are available.

In simple cases this reduces to the obvious geometrical optics results but when you have structures made with path lengths equal to within fractions of a wavelength it becomes important.

Anyone care to give a plausible account of how that works in terms of waves?

Jeroen Belleman