| ▲ | kccqzy a day ago |
| Amazing article! It seems incredibly to weird to hear about transitions causing photons at 21cm wavelength; I guess I'm only used to seeing (no pun intended) much shorter wavelengths at hundreds of nanometers. |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | next [-] |
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| ▲ | AnimalMuppet a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, it's weird to me that an atomic transition can create something with a wavelength so much longer than the atomic radius. (Yeah, I know that it's a really low-energy transition, and I know about the relationship between energy and wavelength. But the net result I still find highly counter-intuitive.) |
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| ▲ | jpmattia a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Yeah, it's weird to me that an atomic transition can create something with a wavelength so much longer than the atomic radius. Then it will be even weirder during an MRI: The protons in your body produce a wavelength that can be of order 1-10 meters. | |
| ▲ | strongpigeon a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What helps me is thinking of it in term of period instead given that the wavelength is the spatial propagation of a change in field. It’s big, but that’s because C is high. | |
| ▲ | arthurcolle 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Segmentation fault! Core dumped |
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| ▲ | BurningFrog a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It does feel a little odd that something the size of 5.29×10⁻¹¹ meter can create something 10 billion times larger. I mean, I understand how and why, but it feels odd. |
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| ▲ | IshKebab a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Wavelength isn't an object though. Like if you walk around the world you haven't made something the size of the world. | | |
| ▲ | nomel a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Wavelength is a time thing though. To make something that low frequency (1.4GHz or 7ps), things have to happen pretty slowly. | | | |
| ▲ | pixl97 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | At the same time any one individual walking around the world is a highly improbable event. |
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| ▲ | justlikereddit a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | My subwoofer is approximate cubic with 30 cm to a side. But the wavelength of sound it makes at 20Hz is approximately 17 meter. Wavelength is merely a human conceptualization. If we reconceptialize it as peak-to-peak interval it suddenly stops being length and becomes a time instead | | |
| ▲ | ttoinou a day ago | parent [-] | | The sound pressure wave does take 17 meters in the air to make a full cycle, no ? It’s real, same for the photon | | |
| ▲ | MaxikCZ a day ago | parent [-] | | It's not about measuring peak to peak in distance, it's about measuring how long it takes for one spot to encounter second peak after first. The fact that the first peak traveled some distance is irrelevant, as its entirely dependent on propagation speed, which doesn't affect the frequency, only vawelenght. | | |
| ▲ | 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | ttoinou a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Would you then say that the wavelength is meaningful for the sound example as its properties are really of a wave propagating, and meaningless for the light as the wave analogy isn’t a full description of the light phenomenon behavior ? | | |
| ▲ | MaxikCZ 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have pretty strong intuition for how "sound looks". I know how to imagine a wavelength of sound, how the medium works over time etc. I don't have the same intuition about light, as the sound analogy of a wavelength (distance between 2 peaks) clash with the part of photon that behaves like a particle. From that standpoint I can confidently say that wavelength is meaningful for the sound example, but not so much for light. Someone more knowledgeable than me would probably offer better insight. |
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