Hey yhPscis,
Mass is an elusive property. When you consider the masses of the individual quarks that constitute the proton or neutron, for example, and compare that with the mass of these composite particles, it becomes clear that there is something other than 'particles' that constitute mass...
Hey Bapowell,
Not at all. The experiment, even today, is open to interpretation. You are quite right to call it a 'quantum mechanical effect'. This is the Copenhagen Interpretation which holds that this effect can only be truly described with probabilistic quantum mechanical mathematics...
Hey Chronos,
In the Young Double-slit experiment that I mentioned in my last post, a point-source monochromatic light was placed equidistant between two thin slits, light passing through the slits emerged diffracted and photo-sensitive recordings were made of the area where the diffracted...
Hey twofish-quant,
General response to your last posts:
Enough with the SR already. You are trying to root this question in SR. It is not a question of observers. A unobserved photon from a distant source passing over our heads and off into the void has still undergone cosmological...
Hey Chronos,
I think the best example to give here is Young's double-slit experiment which provides a clear demonstration of the interference of lightwaves (interference fringes). The age of the light is not a property of it - though time is inferred from its energy. The significant...
No. The scenarios I proposed are as valid as saying 'There's a little leprechaun in the atom that grabs the electron to fill his magic box of eight at which time it sings and we see that as energy'.
It's like this. The textbook response to your question is that electrons are in a higher...
I know...that's what I'm saying??
Not at all. Dark energy is a hypothetical concept - thought by many to be the effect of the cosmological constant and is a measure of what we don't know. On the other hand the CMBR is very real and measurable. What's more it's the same stuff as a photon...
Hey Brimley,
Ahh. I think this is more to do with the nature of energy itself. Heat or temperature is a measure of energy and there are many - pressure, force, kinesis (motion), luminosity to name but a few. But the true nature of energy is not very well understood at all. So heat is...
Hey edpell,
This is more an electron structure question.
M1+ e e M2+
This a charge neutral scenario. When stuff is bonded you must offset the all protons and electrons in the molecule to determine the resultant charge - though experimentally it is possible to determine if one of the...
Hey Brindley,
Ionic compounds are formed when an atom(s) with normally 1,2 or 3 electrons in its outer valence bonds with another atom(s) with 5,6 or 7 electrons in its outer valence. The electrons in the first atom can attain a lower energy state by making up a complete valence shell in the...
This is the question of energy exchange that I am posing, except you are asking 'where has it gone?' and I am asking 'how was it taken?'.
Logically, if something is acting upon the photon to change it then it must do it by applying a force - in this case it would seem that only a very weak...
Good stuff marcus. I'd been convinced by my cosmology textbook that the Doppler effect in light is perfectly analagous to the Doppler effect in sound. So I was relieved when reading your post to see that the intuitive direction I was heading when I asked 'Did the information change en-route?'...
I was separating out the 'emission' part of the Doppler effect for demonstration purposes and re-reading my post it seems that I implied that the whole of the Doppler effect occurs at that point. It was unintentional. Thankfully the guy with answers, marcus, read through that.
No. I...
Sure, this is a condition for the question.
The crux is this. When the photons were emitted they had the same information, they were emitted under the same conditions - the Doppler effect is the stretching (or compression) of the photon at the time of emission. Once free of the emitter's...
Imagine this;-
Two planets and a star separated by cosmological distances that share an amost linear positional relationship - the star is not in the middle and both planets have a direct eyeline to it. Both planets have intelligent life and both are observing the star's redshift.
Two...