On Feb 24, 10:01 am, WarLord <warlordb...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Feb 22, 7:09 pm, Luke Campbell <lwc...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > You are considering absorption, but two other physical processes must
> > also be available when absorption can happen. These are spontaneous
> > emission and stimulated emission. In this case, spontaneous emission
> > would mean the atom could jump to a higher energy state and emit a
> > negative energy photon without any outside interference. Stimulated
> > emission means that if negative energy photons can interact with the
> > atom, they can make it transition to a higher energy state and emit
> > more negative energy photons.
>
> Interesting. About the spontenous emission and the stimulated
> emission: I thought that when the negphoton interact with the
> electron, it would make it try to jump to a LOWER energy state... if
> it's not in the ground state i think.
If the matter is already in an excited state, absorption of the
negative light will cause it to transition to a lower energy state.
Stimulated emission by the negative light will cause it to transition
to a higher energy state while emitting more negative light. So both
things can happen. The relative probability depends on the details of
the electron wave functions before and after the transition and the
polarization of the light. We see this with normal light - in a
medium where most of the atoms or molecules are in an excited state
that can couple to the electromagnetic field (i.e., emit or absorb
light), you get spontaneous and then stimulated emission - we call it
a laser. However, if only normal light exists, things tend to settle
down to thermal equilibrium where there are always more lower energy
states than higher energy states, so lasers are transitory unless you
keep pumping them with an external source of low entropy energy.
> > If a beam of negative energy light struck cold matter (that is, most
> > of the atoms and molecules were in their ground state), it would
> > stimulate them to produce more negative energy light, raising the
> > energy of the matter and amplifying the light beam.
>
> What this means exacly? The light beam would be amplified in every
> interaction forever? o.O
The light could saturate the medium, bleaching it so that no atom
remained in a state where it had just the right energy difference with
another state to absorb a negative photon. But pretty much, yeah, as
long as the light passes through matter that is primarily in its
electronic ground state, it will tend to be amplified rather than
absorbed. Highly excited states of matter may be affected
differently.
> >This would form
> > the gain medium of a negative energy laser. Far from freezing matter,
> > it would end up heating the matter.
>
> Wow neat! Actually that blows my entire idea about the freezing death
> beam to the realm of nothingness, but is neat anyway. Do you know why
> all the internet references state that the beam would cool the target?
Because they didn't think things through?
> Anyway, if such a negative energy light could be produced, could it
> have any utility (apart from being an excelent way to give me
> headaches)?
Yeah, you could extract free energy from normal cold matter. Set up
two mirrors facing each other so that light will be bounced back and
forth between them - this is the optical cavity of a laser. Now send
a bunch of room temperature stuff through there, maybe plain air.
Your negative light beam will bounce back and forth, with its absolute
value of its intensity increasing, while the air is heated. Now send
your hot air through a turbine attached to a generator and you have
free electricity with no fuel.
Luke
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