[ClaesN]

As if photons interacted with other photons?
Now you added something to Johns idea
The only definition I've seen there is the idea of two 'photon interactions'

"From quantum electrodynamics it can be found that photons cannot couple directly to each other, since they carry no charge, but they can interact through higher-order processes. A photon can, within the bounds of the uncertainty principle, fluctuate into a charged fermion–antifermion pair, to either of which the other photon can couple. This fermion pair can be leptons or quarks. Thus, two-photon physics experiments can be used as ways to study the photon structure, or what is "inside" the photon."

that's more or less about a regime where we had a 'hot' constricted universe. It's what I would call a 'container model'

When speaking of Radiation pressure photons gently push matter even though it’s said photons have no mass, like for solar sails and in optical tweezers and the Casimir effect. If this matter was leptons or quarks, would it be wrong to say that photons may interact with each other, with some extra energy from the quantum vacuum? Maybe that is what happens if they hit each other on a sweet spot? It’s an elastic or inelastic impulse (“+vacuum energy”) which set particles out of path. Is it possible that the probably energetic dense field where this is happening somehow has the characteristics of setting all particles trying to get out from the black hole pushed back?

Just two humble questions: Since light is bent by gravity, do we need to redefine the definition of mass? What may not fluctuate into something else within the boundaries of the uncertainty principal if Big bang was such a fluctuation?

[diethyl]

The law of universal gravitation
Even light, the estimate cannot escape this theory.
This is the most unreliable but possible conclusion that I can think of.

[ClaesN]

I´ve been told to not see universe intuitively since universe is not intuitive. Others may have been told just to continue the calculations without thinking intuitively. Is our force of intuition inherited from universe, or is it the other way around? Maybe we should stop counting, at least for a moment or two, and start to think, intuitively? Maybe we will find if we seek? Maybe there is something north of the North Pole after all? Maybe God is somewhat of a gambler? We are. Have we created God?

Was it an infinitely small volume that set of Big bang trough a quantum fluctuation? Does the volume of space itself expand? Is this volume expanding into nothing? Do we need gravitons, antigravitons and/or gravitational waves when we try to explain forces of universe, or do the Standard model give us what we need? Maybe we should use our intuition when we answer those questions, or is there a widening abyss between the two camps, QM and Relativity theory, that makes it impossible for individuals to think out of the box without risking everything, as easy targets of sharks? What are researchers that partly supported Le Sage's theory of gravitation in the 20th century doing today?

[JohnDuffield (OP)]

Let me see if I get you straight? You define gravity to a varying of the speed of light, as defined from a 'container model' in where we all will agree to different 'time densities' due to this variation? Or would you separate time from gravity, how? And then we come to uniform motion, how do you define the 'densities' there?

I'm sorry yor_on, I'm not clear what you mean here. Einstein said light curves because the speed of light varies with position. That's simple enough. Then think of the wave nature of matter, and think of an electron as some kind of light-like wave in a closed path, then simplify it to a square path. The horizontals curve downwards and the electron falls down. And since only the horizontals curve downwards, light is affected twice as much as matter. 

As if photons interacted with other photons? Now you added something to Johns idea The only definition I've seen there is the idea of two 'photon interactions'

"From quantum electrodynamics it can be found that photons cannot couple directly to each other, since they carry no charge, but they can interact through higher-order processes. A photon can, within the bounds of the uncertainty principle, fluctuate into a charged fermion–antifermion pair, to either of which the other photon can couple. This fermion pair can be leptons or quarks. Thus, two-photon physics experiments can be used as ways to study the photon structure, or what is "inside" the photon."

that's more or less about a regime where we had a 'hot' constricted universe. It's what I would call a 'container model'

That's wrong I'm afraid. Look carefully at what the article is saying. It's saying one 511keV photon somehow spontaneously "fluctuates" into a 511keV electron and a 511keV positron. And that if pair production doesn't occur, they somehow fluctuate back into one 511keV photon in defiance of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. And that this photon somehow managed to keep on propagating at c! It's a fairy tale, and a tautology. Gamma-gamma pair production doesn't occur because pair production occurred, spontaneously, like worms from mud. It occurs because photons interact with photons.

[JohnDuffield (OP)]

When speaking of Radiation pressure photons gently push matter even though it’s said photons have no mass, like for solar sails and in optical tweezers and the Casimir effect. If this matter was leptons or quarks, would it be wrong to say that photons may interact with each other, with some extra energy from the quantum vacuum? Maybe that is what happens if they hit each other on a sweet spot? It’s an elastic or inelastic impulse (“+vacuum energy”) which set particles out of path. Is it possible that the probably energetic dense field where this is happening somehow has the characteristics of setting all particles trying to get out from the black hole pushed back?

When you read the original material by Einstein, you can find answers to most of the questions. Like, the photon has no rest mass, but it does have an inertial mass.   

Just two humble questions: Since light is bent by gravity, do we need to redefine the definition of mass?

No. The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. Trap a massless photon in a mirror-box, and it adds to the mass of that body.

What may not fluctuate into something else within the boundaries of the uncertainty principal if Big bang was such a fluctuation?

IMHO this "fluctuation" stuff is a non-answer pretending to be an answer.

[yor_on]

You're right John. I was thinking of that first radiation in a Big Bang, the one that's 'hidden', more or less.When it comes to the idea of spontaneous vacuum fluctuations though? "In quantum physics, a quantum fluctuation (or quantum vacuum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space,[1] as explained in Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

That means that conservation of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small values of t (time). This allows the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles. The effects of these particles are measurable, for example, in the effective charge of the electron, different from its "naked" charge."

In this case it has very little to do with 'photons interacting', other than it is about a pair production that returns inside some immeasurable amount of time. If it was measurable it would indeed be a violation. As for Claes, I see no wrong in using intuition As long as one find a way to defend it physically. If you instead of a 'propagating' 'field', just leave it be a 'field', locally defined, and then use 'c' as a 'ideal clock' losing its definition first at Planck scale, then you have something with a constant local 'beat'. That 'beat' won't change for anyone, no matter where one go . You can translate it into a 'life span', as locally measured. And that is what we do here too, (as in how it works), even though we could be seen as being 'at rest', with Earth.
=

what I mean Claes, is that it then becomes 'rules' that define how this 'field' behave. Those 'rules' are all local, but also shared by us all, locally measuring. In their extension they then become the base for what we define as 'repeatable experiment', defining our sciences. When we do one we presume a local 'time keeping', being the same for us all, as well as we presume equivalent rulers etc. What we call constants, as 'c'.

[yor_on]

John, when it comes to you stating Einstein saying that 'light curves because the speed of light varies with position.'? First of all, if it did it wouldn't be a local constant. But it is under any and all uniform motion. "the speed of light is only guaranteed to have a value of 299,792,458 m/s in a vacuum when measured by someone situated right next to it." What that states is that it is a local definition. And that's the one working, as soon as you connect 'c' to become your local clock. If you instead try to measure between two defined anchors of matter moving from each other you can define the light otherwise, the same if you're moving towards the light source. But in a local 'two way mirror experiment' (uniform motion) it won't matter for you, there you must find 'c'. And there it won't matter what 'speed' you define yourself to either. So 'c' is a local constant, unless we assume Einstein to invalidate SR? But GR is built on 'c' too.

"Galilean relativity implies that, if a physicist on a station platform performs a mechanical experiment, and another in a smoothly passing train performs the same experiment, the two obtain identical results. (The laws of mechanics are the same in two different inertial frames.)

Einstein's principly of relativity is just like Galileo's, except that now the experiment can be either a mechanical experiment or an electromagnetic experiment. The physicist on the train measures the electric field produced by putting charges on metal conductors and the magnetic field produced by a current in a coil of wire. She will get the same result with her apparatus as would another physicist, on the platform, with similar equipment. Einstein's principle of relativity is just a generalisation of that of Galileo and Newton. If you forget about the source of the light, a light wave passing is just an experiment involving electric and magnetic fields and so its speed must be that given by the electricity and magnetism experiments. Experimentally, we find that the speed of the source does affect some things about the wave (its wavelength changes: the Doppler effect) but it doesn't influence the speed. "

And

"Einstein talked about the speed of light changing in his new theory.  In the English translation of his 1920 book "Relativity: the special and general theory" he wrote: "according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity [Einstein clearly means speed here, since velocity (a vector) is not in keeping with the rest of his sentence] of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity [...] cannot claim any unlimited validity.  A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity [speed] of propagation of light varies with position."  This difference in speeds is precisely that referred to above by ceiling and floor observers.

In special relativity, the speed of light is constant when measured in any inertial frame.  In general relativity, the appropriate generalisation is that the speed of light is constant in any freely falling reference frame (in a region small enough that tidal effects can be neglected).  In this passage, Einstein is not talking about a freely falling frame, but rather about a frame at rest relative to a source of gravity.  In such a frame, the not-quite-well-defined "speed" of light can differ from c, basically because of the effect of gravity (spacetime curvature) on clocks and rulers.

In general relativity, the constancy of the speed of light in inertial frames is built in to the idea of spacetime being a geometric entity.  The causal structure of the universe is determined by the geometry of "null vectors".  Travelling at the speed c means following world-lines tangent to these null vectors.  The use of c as a conversion between units of metres and seconds, as in the SI definition of the metre, is fully justified on theoretical grounds as well as practical terms, because c is not merely the vacuum-inertial speed of light, it is a fundamental feature of spacetime geometry."


http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module3_weird_logic.htm
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html

[yor_on]

As for squeezing with light Claes, that's about the momentum of light. It has a wave particle duality, and you might want to think of it as particles there? Almost classical mechanics if you do I guess 'billiard' with particles of light. As I get it you 'squezze' something by (constantly) using lights momentum, as when using lasers acting on a object, together becoming a (light) pincher.
=

Alternatively. and here's a truly weird thought. If we define 'c' to be the 'fastest there is', nothing faster, not even that magician conjuring. Then, as you learn how to use lights momentum, as we have done, you actually gets something just as 'real' as those ordinary pinchers you use. If you assume that 'c' is a clock, then that clock presenting you 'events' can't do it any better (smoother) than that. And yeah, its a weird one.
=

The question, to me, is one about events, as defined through 'c', using Planck scale as a limit. If you split 'reality' into 'time frames' represented by Planck scale, what differs light pinching a object from ones ordinary pinchers of matter? We call it rest mass, and that doesn't disappear due to light becoming incoherent. But thinking of it in terms of frames, defining objects? Don't know where that one will take you nor me.