Timeline for Could an infinite number of photons fit into a finite space?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
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| Oct 19, 2020 at 2:32 | comment | added | craq | I might be getting in over my head here, because my understanding of GR is shaky at best... But I don't understand why the formation of a black hole would pose a limit for the number of photons. They would no longer be observable from outside the event horizon, but won't they still be photons? I don't quite follow why Hawking Radiation is relevant either, except as a special case of photons disappearing due to pair production? If photons are contained in a finite volume e.g. by mirrors, I don't see why Hawking Radiation couldn't be confined in the same volume? | |
| Oct 17, 2020 at 20:56 | comment | added | John Dvorak | Even if the black hole were stable (and if its radius is over one femtometer, it pretty much is), you couldn't increase its mass indefinitely. At some point the Schwarzschild radius would exceed the dimensions of the box, and it would inevitably collapse. Presumably much sooner. | |
| Oct 17, 2020 at 17:10 | comment | added | OrangeDog | Yes, as the wavelength of the photon increases it is increasingly likely to no longer be in the box. | |
| Oct 17, 2020 at 16:04 | comment | added | JEB | @Javier This is how bremsstrahlung works: at low energy, the number of emitted photons diverges, but the energy is finite. | |
| Oct 17, 2020 at 6:04 | comment | added | Níckolas Alves | @Javier I believe you would then have an issue with keeping the photons trapped. Once you fix a box, you are quantizing the frequencies allowed for the photons in there, and in particular you get a minimum energy | |
| Oct 17, 2020 at 3:05 | vote | accept | Sagar Patil | ||
| Oct 17, 2020 at 1:04 | history | edited | joseph h | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 17, 2020 at 0:56 | history | edited | joseph h | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 17, 2020 at 0:36 | history | edited | joseph h | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 17, 2020 at 0:35 | comment | added | user65081 | @Javier doesn't the Fourier transform of a box include all frequencies? | |
| Oct 17, 2020 at 0:24 | comment | added | Javier | You can do some mathematical trickery by having the energy of each added photon be smaller than the previous in such a way that the total energy is finite. Although, on the other hand, you can't really have wavelengths larger than the box... | |
| Oct 17, 2020 at 0:10 | history | answered | joseph h | CC BY-SA 4.0 |