Tag: photon

How Plants Produce Food Via Photosynthesis

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If a leaf is magnified 1000x, green bacteria like structures can be observed, referred to as “chloroplasts,” which are packed into virtually every cell of a plant. These chloroplasts behave like bacteria, retaining their own deoxyribonucleic acid, and are only 5000ths of 1 millimeter (0.005 millimeters or 5 micrometers) in diameter. It is inside chloroplasts that photosynthesis occurs. Photons, which are tiny and rapid moving particles of electromagnetic energy (e.g. rays of light), are harvested upon the surface of the plant’s leaves, where they then enter the plant’s cells and are absorbed by the light harvesting complex located within the chloroplasts themselves. It is here that the photon is leveraged to drive the photolysis reaction, which is to split a water molecule and release oxygen, electrons, and hydrogen ions, fueling the energy transfer mechanisms that ultimately convert carbon dioxide into sugars for the plant’s growth and survival

The Causation of the Colors of the Aurora Borealis

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The colors of the aurora borealis are layered with violet at the bottom, green in the middle, and red at the top, which signifies the structure of the atmosphere. Just as different chemicals create different colored flames (e.g. propane always producing a blue flame etc.), so too do photons bouncing around in the atmosphere off of different elements present. Nitrogen glows violet in a band at the bottom and oxygen glows green and red, creating a curtain 400 kilometers in length

The “Soulmate” Quality of Quantum Non-Locality and Photons

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When a photon, a particle with no mass which is effectively a quantum packet of light, divides due to some external force, its energy is split and it emerges as 2 photons. These new photons are forever intrinsically tied together, able to communicate instantaneously despite their great distances as the universe expands. This should not be possible as light cannot travel faster than 299,792,458 kilometers per second. Regardless of how far apart these particles travel, their profound bond is unbreakable as they will always remain connected regardless of circumstance. This can be thought of as the ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s understanding of love, with a single being split into 2 beings with the new beings becoming soulmates who search for eachother eternally. For as long as the soulmates, or photons, exist, they will be intrinsically tied to each other as the one and only soulmate, or particle, which has the capability to do this with its pair. This long distance relationship between all elementary particles has been on going since the beginning of the universe, a fidelity which lasts for as long as the universe exists. The simple act of observant measurement is all that is required to sever this tremendous commitment between particles. If the spin of one particle is measured, a seemingly innocuous act by a third party observer, the bond between each particle is forever severed, never to return to its previous state. It’s unclear how these particles communicate which includes the break up message sent between them when the integer spin of one of the pair is observed

The Reason the True Age of the Universe Can Be Definitively Proven

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The discovery of the speed of light provided a satisfactory explanation as to why the world becomes dark at night. This is immensely important as the further a star is from an observer, the longer it will take for light to arrive from that point, to the observer themself. If the universe was infinite in its age, all of the light ever created would have had time to reach the Earth which would cause the night sky to be ablaze with starlight, photons emitted from every single possible part of the universe. This clearly is not the case so it is abundantly evident that the universe must have had an origin point. Scientists use the term “observable universe” as it’s entirely possible and likely that matter exists outside of what can be observed predicated upon the theory that as the universe expanded, light from this matter would have to travel increasingly larger distances to reach an observer. Because of constant expansion, this light has not yet had the chance to reach the Earth and perhaps never will, causing it to be outside of an observers field of vision and therefore unable to be proven in its existence using current methods and technologies

How Phosphorescence Works

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Glow in the dark products work because of a chemical additive which allows the product to absorb energy on one frequency, and reemit it as visible light which is a different frequency. Zinc sulphide and strontium aluminate are the most commonly used phosphors for photoluminescent products as they reemit energy over a considerably long period. When light is shone upon a glow in the dark object, incoming photons excite the phosphor molecules and these molecules then release that energy taken in by releasing photons and creating a dim light glow. Different phosphors release energy at different rates and thus, the slower a phosphor releases energy, the longer it will glow. The human eye is most sensitive to green light in the dark which is why night vision technology was traditionally created with a green tint

Dating Pottery Using Thermoluminescence

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The dating of pottery artifacts can be accurately performed by using a technique referred to as “thermoluminescence”. Thermoluminescence involves taking a small sample of an artifact of pottery and heating it up using doses of high energy radiation which creates excited electron states in crystalline materials like pottery. In some materials, these electron states are trapped or arrested for extended periods of time by a localized defect, or imperfection. In terms of the quantum world, these states are stationary states which have no formal time dependence, however they are not stable energetically and when the material is heated it enables these trapped energy states to interact with photons to rapidly decay into lower energy states, causing the emission of photons in the process. The photons are measured and dependent of how many escape, a specified measurement of the total age can be determined. This technique can be used on most minerals and is the only method available to provide exact dating in respect to pottery as the results yielded do not have to be compared against a comparison artifact. Certain minerals store energy from the sun at a known rate and this energy is lodged in the imperfect lattices of a mineral’s crystals. Heating these crystals when creating pottery empties the stored energy reserves, after which time the mineral begins absorbing energy again. Thermoluminescence dating is a matter of comparing the current energy stored in a crystal to what should be there had not pottery not been heated during the creation process thereby establishing a “last heated during” marker or date