At no one in particular, but specifically to @QReciprocity42 , for anyone bored, what’s something of scholastic or scientific concern that has bothered you for a while that someone else might be able to address or answer?
I’ll start…The degredation of lightwaves in a highly reflective/scattering enclosed “uniform” environment. Does light decay at a linear rate, or does it decay exponentially? Is there a way to suspend a light source in a non-emissive state until that region of spacetime gets energized to uniformly emit light say, within a sphere?
Another question is, can you transport a specific region of spacetime physically? I.e., if you could suspend that region of spacetime where light SHOULD be, (i.e. pause the frequency somehow) could you put it in a box, like water, or would it be impossible because it would slip through physical containment and retain its special “inertial” superpositioning in space? All matter contains and emits some form of energy, and all EM is essentially “activated” spacetime.
I read this twice ,well three times. I think you’re asking if you can capture light in a box and move it to some other location and set it free. If that is the question then I need to know what kind of box it is.
It doesn’t matter what kind of box it is. You can’t put the cover on fast enough. As you are putting the cover on the box you will be blocking the light. By the time you get the cover fully on, there will be no light in the box.
Edit. Added.
As for the decay or degredation.
Not sure those are the right terms.
Light will get reflected, deflected, absorbed, ect as it encounters various “things”.
it’s kind of a variation on schrodinger’s box, and a few other thought exercises about entropy, lol. if we set up a potential for energy in a box, then have it go kinetic, we can surmise from a practicality standpoint that eventually, some sum of that energy will leak out until it can maintain some level of equilibrium within the box.
From a hypothetical standpoint, the box would have to be extradimensional in nature, and generally be able to contain gravitational forces. how would that function, if in 3rd dimensional terms, physics “necessitates” mass? (notice the quotes, because light has no mass relative to itself, and instead imparts a small force or energy to its destination).
Get this, even light in the VISIBLE spectrum is invisible to the naked eye, unless it interacts with matter.
So…back to the exercise, I’m asking how one would do something like put light in a box, with the assumption or inference that we currently have the capability to do so…
Not quite the same, but from my understanding, long-lived phosphorescence is kinda like this; photons “trapped” though a couple of different physical effects.
I’m hoping for a major scientific breakthrough within my lifetime (if physically possible) with materials that outperform the current strontium aluminate based crystals, it would be awesome to double the current performance.
How efficient is the reflection of a mirror surface I wonder? If you could get light in a sphere with a perfect mirror interior without compromising the surface (big if) I wonder how long it would take for the light to dissipate. Also, I wonder what it would look like if you broke it in a dark room?
Edit: Googled it. The answer isn’t very exciting. Mirrors can be up to 98% efficient but it doesn’t matter because after 450 reflections the light would be invisible to the naked eye and light travels so fast this would be almost instantly. Maybe the number 450 is bogus from the LLM but the explanation makes sense regardless of the exact numbers.
Hypothetically, if we could somehow combine @gravelmonkey’s point about energy conversion/suspension/controlled dissipation with a substance that is highly microreflective or internally reflective, could we store more luminous energy per unit volume?