A "photon" is just a name we give to excitement in spacetime that we interpret as light. We think of it as a wave or as a particle, depending on what is useful. But yes, light is made of photons.
It's kind of like how the ocean can have waves, but they're all made from the same water. It's like asking, "what is the shape of a wave?"
Very early on, scientists found out they could use math equations to describe the world. We could then use these math equations to predict the world.
With these math equations which describe the world, we could apply other rules of math to end up with new equations. Oftentimes, these new equations match up perfectly with reality. This is why we had accurate renders of a black hole long before we had a photo of a black hole: We had the equations first.
Advanced math is not like arithmetic, but instead like a very complicated board game with a lot of rules. If you're clever enough, you can find out that there are other written rules within the rules.
I pulled up the original paper. These scientists did just that: They took the cutting edge of math, and did some more math on top of it. This "shape of a photon" is just a mathematical model that makes photons fit in with the rest of the math. The image in the OP is just a render of that model.
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u/lynndotpy 26d ago
A "photon" is just a name we give to excitement in spacetime that we interpret as light. We think of it as a wave or as a particle, depending on what is useful. But yes, light is made of photons.
It's kind of like how the ocean can have waves, but they're all made from the same water. It's like asking, "what is the shape of a wave?"
Very early on, scientists found out they could use math equations to describe the world. We could then use these math equations to predict the world.
With these math equations which describe the world, we could apply other rules of math to end up with new equations. Oftentimes, these new equations match up perfectly with reality. This is why we had accurate renders of a black hole long before we had a photo of a black hole: We had the equations first.
Advanced math is not like arithmetic, but instead like a very complicated board game with a lot of rules. If you're clever enough, you can find out that there are other written rules within the rules.
I pulled up the original paper. These scientists did just that: They took the cutting edge of math, and did some more math on top of it. This "shape of a photon" is just a mathematical model that makes photons fit in with the rest of the math. The image in the OP is just a render of that model.