Glider Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 light doesn't have mass afaik, otherwise it would be incapable of moving at the speed of light. And yet it is affected by gravity and can be bent by stars and pulled into black holes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 And yet it is affected by gravity and can be bent by stars and pulled into black holes? Yes. General relativity says that gravity is a geometric effect on space rather than a product of having mass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmileyUK Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 I don't think it's possible to 'fill' the 'sphere' in the first place... Any photon entering the sphere will just be reflected back along its path to the source when it hits the reflective surface... and all you've created is a very weak laser that requires constant pumping for no benefit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x__heavenly__x Posted May 8, 2004 Author Share Posted May 8, 2004 But wat if we tilt the source and it reflects internaly, like in a diamond or something....and on top of that it shouldnt be used for a reservoir after all. But before i go any further can anyone tell me that can the light that reflects back from objects used for seeing, be turned into a laser type( i mean parallel istead of converging or diverging) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radical Edward Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 all materials have both a real part and a complex part to their refractive indices, and the light would get absorbed very quickly indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x__heavenly__x Posted May 8, 2004 Author Share Posted May 8, 2004 http://www.msnbc.com/news/242698.asp?cp1=1 Here is the news page for slow glass!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 does anyone remember my post some time ago that was almost identical to that OP idea? it`s not original nor is it workable, my idea was a laser grenade. the only way you`ll make anything usefull from "trapping Light" would be plants or photo-electric convertors to battery Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 http://www.msnbc.com/news/242698.asp?cp1=1 Here is the news page for slow glass!!! Yes, that's the EIT stuff I mentioned earlier. It's a vapor - gas, not a solid, certainly not glass - and be sure to note that "In each experiment, the information about the light pulse can be stored for about a thousandth of a second before it starts to decay." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 But before i go any further can anyone tell me that can the light that reflects back from objects used for seeing, be turned into a laser type( i mean parallel istead of converging or diverging) Laser light isn't parallel. It converges and diverges, depending on the optics involved. It can be made to diverge slowly, i.e. over a fairly long distance. But it's never parallel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmileyUK Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 My analogy above about the 'weak laser' was bad and has probably confused the issue. Lasers don't focus, they filter... the point of a laser is that it produces light that's exactly (or very close to) a particular colour/wavelength. Once you've got a beam of a certain wavelengh, you can control it with a higher degree of accuracy, because you can work out details like focusing with more precision. Whatever... it's probably a lot cheaper and easier to just buy a candle and a box of matches than invent a lightsphere Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x__heavenly__x Posted May 8, 2004 Author Share Posted May 8, 2004 Yes it maybe a useless expariment but it might not be that expensive too. And no one here , Ithink, can be sure how light behaves once inside the sphere for a set period of time, whatsoever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmileyUK Posted May 8, 2004 Share Posted May 8, 2004 I'd always thought that lights properties were pretty well understood. Assuming a pure vacuum, perfect reflective coat, no leaks and no outside influence, then it's easy to predict how any light inside the sphere will behave... and also how long it would take to exhaust the 'reservior'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kedas Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 The universe is a nice reservoir to store light Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrainMan Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 The universe is a nice reservoir to store light Ok, so if we have an expanding reservoir to help prevent the energy disipation at the reflective boundaries, how long can we store light? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x__heavenly__x Posted May 9, 2004 Author Share Posted May 9, 2004 Since light has no mass it may be possible to store a large amount of light in the small shere maybe for a small time but the concentration is high...So what happenes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radical Edward Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 Lasers don't focus' date=' they filter... the point of a laser is that it produces light that's exactly (or very close to) a particular colour/wavelength. [/quote'] no, the point of a laser is that it produces amplified coherent light via stimulated emission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fafalone Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 ..this really doesn't sound very useful, practical, or even feasible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 it isn`t as I`ve already established in an earlier post several months ago Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fafalone Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 Should link to it, everyone is too lazy to go looking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest fulcrum Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 Hello all, Hello to all on the forums...this is my first post Suffice to say this this isn't a new idea - Ive heard it atleast once before, but I have always had a few doubts about it fundamentally. 1. A closing mechanism or a mechanism to spin the ball as soon as photons enter the pinhole must be very very rapid in its action, and this necessarily depends on the amount of energy you want to be inside, and the size of the sphere. 2. A purely (100%) reflective surface is only a theoretical assumption for several calculations in optics. I have heard of mirrors that come very close, but none that achieved 100% reflectivity. 3. Is there a maximum limit on how much energy you can store in it? If we were to take a fixed dia for the sphere and get the length of the paths that the photons travel through (that is, assuming the particle theory of light) we can get the minimum time within which the sphere must be tilted away or rotated by a minimum amount equal to the amplitude of the photon. This is to prevent the photon reflected from coming right out of the other parallel mirror 'face' of the sphere. (assuming again that the sphere's radius is much much larger than the wavelength and amplitude of the wave, wave theory this time, since it concerns reflection) So we need a very very large sphere and an equaly capable mechanism to rotate it by an angle which will cover for the reflecting back of the light that went in. Even if we do build something like this: 1. How long can we expect the light photon to reflect inside the sphere without transmitting its energy to the atoms that make up the sphere? 2. Does the question of chaos (disorder) affect this situation, i.e, does the reflection of light become more and more disorderly with time and does that result in the incoherence of any information that we may use the ligt to represent? What do you say? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x__heavenly__x Posted May 9, 2004 Author Share Posted May 9, 2004 Those are the Q i asked. What happens to the light inside after how much time?? and there is no spinnig here...just on pinhole thru which the light can enter at an angle so it dosnt reflect back...Well there is no practical perpous but it can be used to study the behavior of light when its reflecting too fast inside a very small sphere!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmileyUK Posted May 10, 2004 Share Posted May 10, 2004 no, the point of a laser is that it produces amplified coherent light via stimulated emission. That's just a description of what a laser IS... not what it DOES... and isn't very helpful unless you already understand what the words 'coherent', 'stimulated' and 'emission' mean in that context. For someone whose sig. claims to rail against one theocracy, you seem to be content to keep science at the level of a religion where only a chosen few understand the 'secret words'... with yourself, of course, being one of the chosen few. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrainMan Posted May 10, 2004 Share Posted May 10, 2004 Is light preserved within a black hole? Not that you could get it back out... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radical Edward Posted May 10, 2004 Share Posted May 10, 2004 That's just a description of what a laser IS... not what it DOES... and isn't very helpful unless you already understand what the words 'coherent'' date=' 'stimulated' and 'emission' mean in that context.[/quote'] I did a better job than you, given that your description of "the point of a laser" was entirely wrong. A significant number of lasers are not even monochromatic, and of these, the monochromaticity isn't always the most important feature. The most important feature tends to be it's coherance, which is the primary reason for being able to look at a 60 watt bulb for a couple of seconds and suffer nothing more than temporary night-blindness, whereas looking into a 60 watt laser for any appreciable length of time would blast a hole through to your brain. There is no reason to get aggressive about my use of language, if you don't understand anything, feel free to ask what I mean. It is pretty inevitable that science has to use long words, just as it is inevitable that car mechanics have to use words like "engine", "spanner" and "gear". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x__heavenly__x Posted May 10, 2004 Author Share Posted May 10, 2004 So thats wat I am tring to ask for a long time...that what happenes to a laser in the shpere??!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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