(Searched and although this has been asked before I still can’t find an answer that makes much sense to me)
So how does a photon come into existence, and how can it instantly be travelling at C? I turn on a light bulb and photons are instantly created and travelling at C…but created from what, exactly? The light bulb filament is in a vacuum, but every time I turn on the light bulb new photons are simply created out of nothing (with no “fuel” to draw from)?
I guess I’m struggling to understand how heating the filament results in billions (?) of photons in a constant stream travelling at C, when a millisecond earlier there was just an inert metal thread in a vacuum.
In: Physics
Hi /u/ixtechau!
Our everyday-experience gives us the intuition that “stuff” should be conserved, i.e. that the amount of particles should stay the same during physical processes.
However, this intuition is simply wrong. There is no rule to say that the number of particles has to be conserved.
The wire is heated up by the electric current, and this thermal energy is given off in the shape of photons. Thus, energy is conserved, but the number of particles is not.
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