Someone here on HN pointed to an article making what seemed to me to be a reasonable claim that the fundamental unit of EM radiation is not the photon, but inst

Someone here on HN pointed to an article making what seemed to me to be a reasonable claim that the fundamental unit of EM radiation is not the photon, but instead the single oscillation of an EM wave. It seemed reasonable to me that if our ability to detect EM phenomena is limited, then we’d artificially pick whatever units were easiest to measure, namely the photon, as the quantity to reason about, regardless of the possibility that a smaller quantity might actually be more naturally accurate. Since reading that proposal, I’ve found myself looking a lot of physics journalism with a much more skeptical eye, especially when claims are made that the photon is part of the families of primary particles. I find myself reading this article, and getting a feeling that some of the foundations we build upon aren’t what they seem. And that always leaves me a little more excited about the future.