Friday, May 06, 2005

Low Frequency Radio Astronomy From Space

I am interested in developments in low frequency radio astronomy. It is necessary to go to space to extend the range of observation because the lower frequencies cannot penetrate to the surface of the earth. The article Low Frequency Radio Astronomy From Space states in part: "The opening of a new spectral window for astronomical investigations has always resulted in major discoveries, significant insights into astrophysical processes, and an enrichment of our understanding of the universe. Interferometric space or lunar based arrays for imaging the entire sky below 30 MHz will cover a frequency range which is totally inaccessible or extremely difficult to observe from the ground due to ionospheric absorption and scattering. This is a region of the electromagnetic spectrum which is essentially unexplored by astronomy but which, at ~106 Hz, is likely to display phenomena as different from those at centimeter radio wavelengths (~109 Hz) as centimeter radio phenomena are from infrared (~1012 Hz), infrared are from the ultraviolet (~1015 Hz), or ultraviolet are from the X-ray (~1018 Hz)." My interest is partly because cosmologists claim that there are 411 photons per cubic centimetre in the universe. This remarkably precise figure comes from measurements of the CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation). However this ignores the fact that over the range from 10^23 Hz to 10^6 Hz the no. of photons per cubic centimetre grows by a factor of 10^15 and looks a lot like it intends to keep doing this at lower frequencies. See background radiation intensity for a graph. With the new space based measurements I predict that the flux will continue to grow at lower frequencies and that the 411 photons per cc of space will ultimately be shown to be wrong by an incredibly large factor. Actually I don't think that there are any "photons" in flight at all. Photons are only a useful concept at the time of emission and the time of absorption of e/m energy - there are no photons in flight, just the continuous development of the e/m fields.

2 Comments:

Blogger Eric Stanley Reiter said...

Glad you understand light itself is not quantized. My beam splitter experiments show the discontinuity is only on emission, and that absorption is continuous. I have been doing it since 2002. Eric Reiter,
unquantum.net

3:56 pm  
Blogger Eric Stanley Reiter said...

I agree, there are no photons. My experiments with splitting the gamma ray killed the photon concept back in 2003.
Eric Reiter
see unquantum.net

7:15 am  

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