Re: Energy Cancellation (or conversion of radiation to dark rest mass?)

Roy Lewallen wrote:

It's a tossup among poltergeists, Cecil's math, and Art's theories. I'm not sure which would have the best shot at it.

The whole question is pretty much the same as "If pigs could fly, how could they generate enough energy to do it?" Here's a challenge I put forth some time ago, and I'll repeat it now.

Draw a diagram showing how you would get two laser beams to overlap in a straight line as you describe. Feel free to use partially reflecting mirrors, or one or two lasers. Show where all the beams go, including both the transmitted and reflected beams if you use partially reflecting mirrors. I claim that no energy will disappear, and you'll be able to account for every erg of the energy the lasers are putting out, in the form of non-canceled beams. The law of conservation of energy will be obeyed. No wave bouncing, "momentum" altering, or other imagined effects will be necessary to account for all the energy being produced by the lasers. I've been eagerly awaiting the simple diagram which will prove me wrong, but all that appears is more smoke, mirrors (figuratively only), hand waving, and the repeated posing of this and other impossible questions.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Exactly right. In fact it's a perfect example of how energy is distributed without need of ideas like "reflections caused by interference".

If we have two lasers positioned at a right angle to one another, and both are pointing at a beam splitter* oriented at 45 degrees to the light path, assuming the beams are coherent and collinear, we can create light along the path set by laser A and not laser B. If we then change the distance of one of the lasers by half a wavelength we will have light along the path set by laser B and not laser A. The canceled waves carry no energy of course. All the energy is carried by the waves which don't cancel. As Roy suggests, similar experiments having the same results can be done for example with one laser and two beam splitters. But there's more. All of the source energy is obtained using reflectors that are only partially reflective, and there are no other reflective "mechanisms" required.

Now, if you can get the apparatus to work with 100% reflective surfaces, as Cecil has described, you should then be able to get out more energy than you put in. :-)

73, ac6xg

* a beam splitter is a partially reflecting mirror which allow half the light to pass through, and half to be reflected (i.e. it has a reflection coefficient of .5).


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