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Hydrogen atoms can't store photons that do not have the same wavelength as any of its spectral lines. Nonetheless, hydrogen gas has an index of refraction that is a continuous function of frequency, and as a result it can reflect light of any wavelength. Therefore, hydrogen does not store any energy for any length of time in the course of typical reflection. Even if the Feynman diagram for reflection looks like a combination of absorption and re-emission, if the absorption and emission process can't occur at separate times, then it is not right to say that one is followed by the other.

Isn't hydrogen gas almost exclusively H2, giving it plenty of possible electrons to interact with photons?

That's a good catch, but H2's spectral lines are still discrete. It's not that gasses can't absorb photons, it's that they can only do so at very specific frequencies.

To simplify the argument, you could use Helium instead. Here is a (discrete!) list of its spectral lines: https://physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/Handbook/Tables/heliumt...

And here is a chart of its (continuous!) index of refraction: https://refractiveindex.info/?shelf=main&book=He&page=Mansfi...

> They are not the same photons.

How do you define "the same" for two photons?

This is the question that should be higher up in the thread. This whole discussion makes no sense. Photons carry no hidden identity.

A photon doesn't need to carry a UUID for people to conceptualize a difference between a photon going through free space and being absorbed and re emitted. The parent comment asks the right question, what is being meant by "the same" is required to know before being able to say the discussion makes no sense.

Taking your first literal interpretation as the only way the discussion could have value is no more helpful than this exchange: "I'm going to the store, do you want the same hot dogs we have in the fridge?" "That doesn't make sense, the store can't have the same hot dogs we have in the fridge".

> "I'm going to the store, do you want the same hot dogs we have in the fridge?" "That doesn't make sense, the store can't have the same hot dogs we have in the fridge"

Yeah but hot dogs belong to classical mechanics, while photons to quantum mechanics, and in quantum mechanics you can actually have the same hot dogs in different places, until you observe them

That a photon can be in superposition is even a better example than my hot dog example. Nobody is impressed if you can find a corner case interpretation that makes the question sound dumb they are impressed if you can try to figure out what the person really wanted to know and answer it to the best of current understanding.

In the hotdog example the point is the person is actually trying to figure out if you want them to buy you more hotdogs not whether or not the exact same hotdogs can be found at the store and fridge at the same time. In this actual discussion about the photon it's not about whether or not the photon actually carries an ID card with it it's about what actual interactions are happening to photons when the light is reflected or refracted in different ways.

Sometimes what a person is trying to figure out may not line up with how things actually work, in fact take any science and add 100 years of knowledge and pretty much all discussions are this way. That does not mean it was nonsensical to talk about it just means the details are more exact and complicated than the asker knew how to phrase (and again, it's always like more exact and complicated than any of us know as we don't know everything there is to know about the universe).

The point is, if A) photons carry no individual identity, and B) the interaction happens instantaneously, then there is no meaningful difference between saying "the photon bounced off like a ball" and "the photon was absorbed and a new one was instantly re-emitted". It's literally a distinction without a difference.

As humans living in the classical world, we hear that and think "oh, that just means we don't know what's really going on, it either bounces or re-emits, it just looks the same to us." But no - reality is just an interaction of quantum fields and we're putting these human stories on top of it. It's like debating whether or not submarines swim.

I'll try again in another way and if this doesn't work I may need to come back to trying to communicate what I mean.

When you encounter an XY problem question/statement only stating "this doesn't make any sense. Computers are very complicated and don't work like that in the first place" is useless to everyone except maybe a comment or that wants to boost their ego. Taking the XY question, explaining why it's wrong, and trying to explain how things actually work at a deeper level is helpful. I think your comment about them being field interactions and needing to think about them that way is a good start on that kind of answer rather than the ones above.

I understand that my previous comment lacks of explanation, but I'm not a native English speaker so it's really hard for me to dig into details. I beg your pardon

There is no classical mechanics, only quantum mechanics. Or are you suggesting it's an optimization of the simulation or something?

What do you mean there is no classical mechanics? I was referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_mechanics

>The parent comment asks the right question, what is being meant by "the same" is required to know before being able to say the discussion makes no sense.

This is true, but I think the comment you are replying to is correctly identifying a fundamental conceptual misunderstanding of the comments preceding it. In the sense that they likely mean, it's not really a valid question. Sort of like the "are you still beating your wife?" question. Asking it is making incorrect assumptions.

Who knows, maybe they actually do, but we do not know it yet. I mean, how do you know they do not?

The absence of evidence doesn't make an idea more plausible, it makes it less plausible.

I can't disprove that a celestial teapot is circling the sun between Earth and Mars, so how do you know it isn't?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Less plausible != impossible.

"Knowing" for me means, that there is no way, that we can be wrong about something. Otherwise it's only "believe", not "knowledge".

It would be good to say the following, instead of "it is so": "So far experiments did never show any sign of identity of photons." (Were there any such experiments?) Oh and what about quantum entanglement of photons? Could that not be interpreted as a sign of identity?

Modern physics is built on the idea of fundamentally indistinguishable particles.

We may not know but we can only know what we can see and what we can see is explained by what we know.

it's all the same photon

For those missing the reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

I wonder if there’s an antimatter universe going backwards in time from the Big Bang.

You didn't address the concern. A given atom cannot absorb any photon. They can only absorb photons of certain energy levels/wavelengths. Electrons can occupy only certain energy levels. So they can only absorb photons that match the difference if two energy levels.

But that's just not true. The electron will only get excited if the incoming photon has a very specific wavelength, so most of the light that hit your house's walls, for example, is reflecting. The photoelectric effect is real, but it only applies in specific circumstances...

There will be a transfer of energy to the system if there is an interaction, but will only absorb the incident photon at specific energies. In the case of reflection in this classical view, it simply re-emits the energy back out as there are no valid energy transitions. The reality is far more complex and this thread is mixing multiple theories together, wave and particle views and simultaneously comparing single atom mechanics with those of lattices/solids. This is all causing a lot of confusion that's hard to address in comments.