From the dawn of time, man has embarked on a journey to create the most advanced forms of fire. With the advent of oxidation techniques this pursuit has taken on great fervor, but fire can also exist en vacuo. As I consider fire to be a state between plasma and normal matter, where electrons are excited into various states and in falling down to lower energies emit light. I don't believe this is a controversial position.
And so, collisions in particle accelerators create such a condition. As does light emitted from synchrotron light sources. Both of these are very civilzed forms of fire, but the latter brings me to the source of my confusion. Since, as the moon revolves around the earth, why doesn't it emit synchrotron light? Or does it? If it does then why doesn't the moon slow down and it's orbit move closer to the earth? Is it because that motion is gravitational in nature and so by general relativity the moon is just following a curve in space time and is not actually accelerating when it orbits the earth? Sure, the synchrotron radiation would be minuscule for each charge, but there are a lot of charges.
Now, take the Aurora for example, that light is emitted because of acceleration due to the magnetic fields that the charged particles pass through. Does the gravitational acceleration the particles undergo contribute in a direct way, or is it just a red herring?
No comments:
Post a Comment