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Re:Rumours swell over new kind of gravitational-wave sighting by Koshkin on Saturday August 26, 2017 @08:58PM (#15108405)
This picture is incorrect: the electromagnetic wave has a mechanical momentum in the direction of its propagation, which means that something is moving in that direction.
Re:Rumours swell over new kind of gravitational-wave sighting by erikpukinskis on Sunday August 27, 2017 @01:41PM (#15111737)
Does it have momentum before we measure it? I thought momentum was a property of the collapse event, not a property of the wave?
Re:Rumours swell over new kind of gravitational-wave sighting by Koshkin on Sunday August 27, 2017 @02:24PM (#15111934)
According to the classical electrodynamics - it sure does. From the quantum mechanical point of view, it also does - in the sense that we can always measure it (i.e. it is an observable). The "property" in this case is not so much a particular outcome of such measurement as much as the expectation value; actually, I'm afraid that the use of the word "property" in this context can only lead to confusion as it effectively conflates several different things: the (quantum-mechanical) state, the observable, and the particular value observed.