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BobiG
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Is there a limit on how much energy a single photon can carry? What is the most ever observed (detected(measured))?
Vorde said:I can't imagine there being an upper limit to the energy, In fact I'm positive. As for the highest energy photon ever observed, I know a cosmic ray was once detected that had the energy of a baseball traveling at 100 mph (which is insane, btw), but I can't remember if that was a photon or not, I'll edit this if I can find my source.
Vorde said:I can't imagine there being an upper limit to the energy, In fact I'm positive. As for the highest energy photon ever observed, I know a cosmic ray was once detected that had the energy of a baseball traveling at 100 mph (which is insane, btw), but I can't remember if that was a photon or not, I'll edit this if I can find my source.
Vorde said:Not feasibly, something like that (energy of an asteroid) isn't physically realistic, and of we are talking purely theoretically I know there are limits on the amount of energy you can force into a single point, but I don't know the details enough to expand on that.
BobiG said:I thought there was no limit on how much energy you can have in a single point, didn't the universe start from a singularity, aren't black holes singularities too?
The maximum energy that a photon can have is determined by its frequency, which is directly proportional to its energy according to the equation E = hf, where h is Planck's constant and f is the frequency of the photon. Therefore, the maximum energy of a photon is theoretically infinite, as there is no limit to the frequency of electromagnetic radiation. However, in practical terms, the maximum photon energy observed is around 1020 electron volts (eV) in high-energy cosmic rays.
The maximum photon energy is significant because it represents the upper limit of the energy that can be emitted or absorbed by a single photon. It also plays a crucial role in various phenomena such as the photoelectric effect, where photons with energy greater than the work function of a material can liberate electrons from its surface.
Yes, there is a limit to the energy of photons in different wavelengths. This is because the frequency of a photon is inversely proportional to its wavelength, according to the equation f = c/λ, where c is the speed of light and λ is the wavelength. Therefore, as the wavelength increases, the frequency decreases, and so does the maximum energy that can be carried by the photon.
The most observed energy of photons in the universe is in the range of visible light, with a wavelength of about 400-700 nanometers. This is because our eyes are most sensitive to this range of wavelengths, and most of the light emitted by celestial bodies falls within this range. However, the most energetic photons observed in the universe are in the form of gamma rays, with energies in the range of millions to billions of electron volts.
The maximum energy of photons is directly related to the speed of light. According to Einstein's famous equation E = mc2, energy and mass are equivalent, and the speed of light is the maximum velocity at which matter and energy can travel. Since photons are massless particles, they can travel at the speed of light, making their energy directly proportional to the speed of light.