"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:4a747a87@news.povray.org...
> somebody <x### [at] ycom> wrote:
> > You are thinking electromagnetic waves, which are transverse.
>
>   A photon will travel rectilinearly, not in a sine wave pattern.

Transverse waves doesn't mean that the particle (or force carrier) travels
sinusoidally. In EM waves, field disturbances (E and B) are perpendicular
(mutually and) to the direction of motion. This is all the way back from
classical EM. Photons come in play with QFT with wave/particle duality, but
that still doesn't make EM waves longitudunal. Further, you cannot pinpoint
a photon's trajectory if you precisely know its wavelength (HUP), which of
course doesn't mean photons follow a sinusoidal path, but it makes the
transition from classical to quantum somewhat more intuitive, I think. A
wave packet (short duration in relation to wavelength) with high enough
energy will look just like a classical particle zipping by, but such
characterizations are scale dependent. With everyday EM signals, we are
mostly dealing in the wave realm.

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