I think that light and matter are the same things/non-things. All states of matter being light slowed down, “frozen” per say to varying degrees.
Then you would be wrong. Let's just look at an electromagnetic field. Everywhere in the universe there is a field called the electromagnetic field. The physical electron is not the field, but is only a localized vibration within the field. Therefore, every electron in the Universe has a similar localized vibration of that single field. There is a photon field, an up quark field, a gluon field, and a muon field. In fact, there is a field for every known particle in the Universe. The particles within the photon field are quantum pockets of energy, called photons. When electrons interact with the photon field, they produce photons of light. When the electrons in matter drops from one orbit to another, it will also produce a photon of light. All matter is the result of the interaction of these quantum particles with these Quantum fields. It is only these interactions that can produce protons, neutrons, strong forces, etc., and not simply light. Therefore, no single quantum particle can be considered matter by itself.
Light does not speed up or slow down when passing through a medium. Light is constant. What you are observing is light being absorbed and re-radiated by particles within the medium. The result is the appearance of light slowing down.
So light and matter are
not the same thing. One represents a single disturbance within the quantum field, and the other represents a composite of many disturbances within many Quantum fields. One has no resting mass(no inertia) or charge, and the other has a resting mass and charge. You are talking about apples and orangutans, if you are stating that light and matter are the same thing.. Don
