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#1 2004-11-15 21:38:36

ERRORIST
Member
From: OXFORD ALABAMA
Registered: 2004-01-28
Posts: 1,182

Re: Energy decay in a photon?

Can we measure the energy decay in a photon? Is it by the different wavelength?

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#2 2004-11-16 10:56:57

C M Edwards
Member
From: Lake Charles LA USA
Registered: 2002-04-29
Posts: 1,012

Re: Energy decay in a photon?

Yes, the wavelength should increase as the light lost energy, causing a "redshift".

Individual photons don't radiate.  They can spontaneously form new particles out of their own energy content (e.g., one photon becoming two new photons of half the energy), or they can lose it to space-time effects (e.g., the cosmological redshift).  In each case, the only really observable change would be the frequency/wavelength.

Because "half-energy" spectral lines are not a common thing in discrete spectra, it's safe to say that photons rarely spontaneously form new particles.  That sort of thing requires fantastic energies that most photons will never have. 

Gravitational redshifts are more common.  For example, the light from our own sun is slightly red-shifted by the time it reaches us.  It loses energy coming out of the sun's gravity well.  The effect is infinitesimal, though.  Sunlight - like most visible starlight - has pretty much the same spectrum when it reaches you as it did coming out of the star that made it.


"We go big, or we don't go."  - GCNRevenger

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