Does Light Travel Forever or Eventually Fade Away?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jsa0100
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Light Travel
AI Thread Summary
Photons from an electromagnetic source, such as a flashlight, will travel indefinitely until they are absorbed. Over extremely long periods, they will lose energy due to the expansion of the universe, resulting in longer wavelengths. This energy loss occurs over billions of years, but the photons themselves do not disappear. The discussion emphasizes the distinction between electromagnetic radiation and other forms of energy. Ultimately, while photons can travel vast distances, they are subject to energy loss over time.
jsa0100
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
So from an electromagnetic source, will the photons travel "forever" or will some of them "collapse" after a while ?
 
Science news on Phys.org
Are you talking about an electric/magnetic field (ie a magnet) or light (ie a flashlight)?
 
I'm going to assume you mean a flashlight.
In that case the photons will travel forever until they get absorbed.

They will also lose energy over extremely long periods of time due to the expansion of the universe, but will never 'dissapear'.
 
Sorry i ment Electromagnetic radiation (Radio and Light). By loosing energy do you mean that the wavelength will be longer?
 
jsa0100 said:
Sorry i ment Electromagnetic radiation (Radio and Light). By loosing energy do you mean that the wavelength will be longer?

Yes

(adding text because my post was too short)
 
But remember that takes billions of years :)
 
Thread 'A quartet of epi-illumination methods'
Well, it took almost 20 years (!!!), but I finally obtained a set of epi-phase microscope objectives (Zeiss). The principles of epi-phase contrast is nearly identical to transillumination phase contrast, but the phase ring is a 1/8 wave retarder rather than a 1/4 wave retarder (because with epi-illumination, the light passes through the ring twice). This method was popular only for a very short period of time before epi-DIC (differential interference contrast) became widely available. So...
I am currently undertaking a research internship where I am modelling the heating of silicon wafers with a 515 nm femtosecond laser. In order to increase the absorption of the laser into the oxide layer on top of the wafer it was suggested we use gold nanoparticles. I was tasked with modelling the optical properties of a 5nm gold nanoparticle, in particular the absorption cross section, using COMSOL Multiphysics. My model seems to be getting correct values for the absorption coefficient and...
Back
Top