So we see cause photons hit our eyes. Cool. But what about after that? Do they just stop and lose their energy? Are they absorbed by us?
And generally, what happens to photons that “run out of energy”? Having no mass, they shouldn’t be converted to heat right?
In: Planetary Science
Photons are quantum mechanical objects. They cannot be “half there” or even “99.9% there”. They are also massless and have momentum (momentum = frequency times planks constant).
Once they interact with something like the photo sensitive chemicals in the rods or cones of your eyes their energy/momentum is absorbed and they cease to exist.
So, you cannot see photons in the sense that you cannot see light in a dark room unless it’s shining at you. If you see light from a flashlight shining across a room in front of you at night what you are probably seeing the rare photon bouncing off of dust or being absorbed and remitted by the dust (scattered).
Now I lied a little. all QM objects can kind of be 1/2 there. If their field equation of probability is at 50% … there is a 50-50 chance a particle (photon on this case) is present. Only by checking, via attempting to detect it, would you know for sure. It’s pretty fuzzy wazzy, and beyond ELI5.
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