The birthday of a photon

Size zero means no extended birth process

Macroscopic objects are born through a process. A star forms from a cloud, a cell divides, a person is carried for months before birth. Each has a finite spatial extent and a period of development.

A photon does not. By definition, it is treated as having no internal size. If it has no volume, there is no interior where a wave could build up or a shape could be slowly formed. The idea of “photon formation over time” is a habit imported from large objects, not a property of the photon itself.

A photon’s “birth” is the moment a discrete amount of electromagnetic energy is released, not the end of a long construction process.

In discrete logic, this is natural: we move from one state to another in a finite step. A photon is that finite step in the electromagnetic state of matter.

Birth as a state change in matter

Photons do not spring out of nowhere. They are created when matter’s electromagnetic configuration changes sharply:

• an electron jumps between energy levels,
• a bond forms or breaks in a chemical reaction,
• a charged particle is sharply accelerated or decelerated,
• a nucleus rearranges or decays.

At some threshold, the configuration cannot change smoothly any more. A discrete “packet” of energy is released. That release is the photon’s birthday: a single step in a sequence of finite changes.

Why “wave packets” are misleading for birth

Traditional explanations speak of a “wave packet” forming and moving away. This picture silently assumes that the packet:

• has a finite spatial length,
• contains many cycles of oscillation,
• can be stretched or squeezed as a continuous object.

None of these assumptions fit a size-zero photon. They belong to sound waves in air or ripples on water, not to discrete quanta. They accidentally reintroduce continuous media into a problem that is already quantized.

If we insist on the wave packet picture, we quietly deny the photon’s point-like nature. Defining its birthday correctly forces us to choose: either it is truly discrete, or it is secretly an extended wave.

AI logic and photons as events

Digital machines do not simulate “almost continuous” changes. They update bits. At one time step, a bit has value 0; at the next, it has value 1. There is no intermediate half-bit.

Photons can be modeled the same way. Before birth, the configuration of matter is in state A. After birth, it is in state B, and one photon has been emitted. The photon’s existence is the difference between these two discrete states, not something smeared over a time interval.

A photon is an event in the ledger of the universe: one precise entry at one precise time, marking a finite change in energy and momentum.

Consequences for how we define light

Taking the photon’s birthday seriously has several consequences:

• There is no room for a classical wave to “live inside” the photon. Wavelength must be reinterpreted as a pattern in emission and interaction, not as an internal structure.
• There is no extended wave packet to be continuously stretched or compressed, which already hints that Doppler-style reasoning does not belong at the photon level.
• Light generation must be described in terms of discrete thresholds in matter, not in terms of slowly building oscillations.

Once we accept a photon’s birth as a point event, the rest of this site follows: rethinking Doppler, redshift, vacuum, and the structure of the universe from a discrete point of view.