Spectral lines of the Solar System

[Cropduster23]

Is it possible to fill out the Dirac equation for the entire solar system (that is, everything inside the Oort Cloud) and calculate, roughly, the "spectral lines" of the star system? If so, how would you approach it?

 

One assumes that such spectral lines would simply report back the percentages of the most abundant elements in the system, with hydrogen taking the number one spot, obviously.

[Mr Skeptic]

In practice such a system is too big to be treated quantum mechanically. You'd calculate the emission spectra of the sun, then subtract based on the quantity and substance of the gas and dust clouds.

[Cropduster23]

Well, just being contrarian here but...

 

In theory, a grand unified field theory would allow you to approximately treat any system of arbitrary size as a quantum system, as that's what the nature of all energy in the universe is. At the very least it would provide the proper context to describe the entire star system as a poly-atomic gas.

 

For the sake of making the world safe for quantum gravity (at least), and because this is the speculation fourms and I'm allowed too, I reject your argument that any particular system is strictly "too big" to be analogized as a quantum field.

 

For example, it's quite possible to find the Schrodinger Hamiltonian for, say, the orbit of Jupiter. It would probably correspond to a probability amplitude of %100, but still.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Cropduster23

[Mr Skeptic]

I'm not sure we can even do it. We have yet to solve the equation for thee or more point masses being acted on by Newtonian gravity. There's very few quantum systems that are exactly solvable, and planets aren't one of them. Not to mention the absurd computational resources that would be required if it were possible.

[Cropduster23]

The length of my renormalization series is longer than yours.