The astigmatism of the eye ==> some quantic problems.
No one photon can be 5 m wide on the mirror of the Mount Palomar, simply because the geometrical defects of the mirrors limit the size of the real entry pupil to what can really be focused on the quantic absorber of this one photon. The same restriction applies to the photons passing by our pupil, to be absorbed by the retinal in one opsin.
However a category of geometrical defects in the eye cannot be solved by restricting the effective pupil by the Abbe condition, it is astigmatism. No more one focus, but two quasi-focal distances according to two perpendicular directions. However ONE retinal in ONE opsin absorbs the entire photon, it is about 5 to 9 Å wide x 18 Å long, with no depth of field. Even from a far star.
In the Newtonian background of received ideas, such a punctual convergence through an astigmatic eye is just impossible.
As soon as we admit the existence of the absorber in quantum physics (sure, we are a minority to admit it), we are compelled to admit that the astigmatism of the eye modifies the shape and the angles of the aerial Fermat spindle incoming in the eye, to an elliptical cross-section, instead of a circular one. And that, statistically on all photons incoming in an astigmatic eye, that will be absorbed by an opsin, a quantic reaction, a small one.
An experimental testing? No idea. And you? Have you better ideas?
Dear Jacques Lavau
We know that matter is quantised. We know that matter only can emit an amount of electromagnetic energy in units. We are used to call these units photons. If however the electromagnetic field is the sum of all these quanta of energy, then we can assume that this field enters the eye. In this eye the field interacts with the different opsin. In their extreme sensitive configuration they are slightly displaced. This results in a chain reaction that returns at one side the energy to the field so that it scatters and next to returning the energy it generates the signal, using the stored energy of the opsin. In this way one unit of electromagnetic energy can interact with several opsin and make that we are able to detect a single photon. Yet this photon is never absorbed by one opsin but either absorbed at the side or even exits the eye again.
Is that a better idea?
Regards,
Paul Gradenwitz
The resonance frequency of the retinal bound to a rhodopsin is about 498 nm, that is 602 THz. Such a photon is typically several decimeters long, and at mid-journey from Sirius, about 200 km wide. However, if its Fermat spindle was of revolution symmetry before entering into the eye, the known laws of optics forbide it to focus onto a such tiny molecule, 9 Å wide x 18 Å long, when the optics, lens or eye, is astigmatic.
My suggestion is to give up the "macroscopically causal" assumption of symmetry of revolution before entering into the eye. So there is a retro-causality from the eye to the space.
As the Hanbury Brown and Twiss bunching implies a retro-causality from the bosonic interactions in the intermediate space to the emissions of the photons by the star.
In the anti-transactional tradition, the Fermat spindle of the photon "cannot know" it will soon come into an astigmatic lens or cornea, so cannot adapt its incident angles to achieve the final absorption by the tiny dye molecule, the opsin.
But if you reason by the end, the emission of an anti-photon by the absorber, with negative energy, negative frequency and negative flowing of time, you have no more difficulty to rate how much the section of the tangent cone of the photon should be elliptical in the air to accomodate the astigmatism.
Or you abandon the total Idea that one single photon is involved. Assume your photon with a couple of decimetres by 200 km would give about 10 cubic kilometre volume. This is enough for me to have severe problems with an assumption that a single photon ever can find the rhodopsin.
Now you take a bunch of these photons behind each other, take a cylinder with a diameter of the pupils, 5mm, and you cut that out of all these photons. Then you have a long train of wave fronts. That enters the eye and interacts with the rhodopsin. When enough wavefronts have entered to fill up one unit of energy equal to a photon of that frequency, then an electron can move up a level and stay there for some time. No need for negative energy negative time and negative frequency. The photon is defined as the amount of energy needed to advance an absorber one quantity of energy level up in its energy status. While in space we can keep track of the energy that was related as one photon, but the same amount, absorbed by the absorber, does not need to be from exactly the same packet of energy.
If you want that the original packet of energy from Sirius enters one eye then what about my partner standing next to me and also gazing at the stars? Should she wait until I have assembled my photon out of that 10 cubic km and then take the next one? Who decides the order of absorption, First me, then my partner, then the oldest or first the youngest child, or maybe first that bat that happens to fly around 50 km away?
I hope this makes clear that I have severe problems with such large photons. I have no problem with quanta. The absorber needs to have enough energy to step up its energy level. There are distinct energy levels. That results in emission and absorption in energy quanta. But that does not mean that the photon is a real object.
Transactional definition of a photon :
A photon is a successful transaction between three partners: an emitter, an absorber, and the space or optical devices between them. This transaction transfers by electromagnetic means, a quantum of looping h, and an energy-momentum that depends on the respective frames of the emitter and the absorber.
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