Timeline for Why EM waves lose energy via the square of distance but the light will not? Does that mean that EM propagate forever in vacuum?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
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| May 5, 2022 at 21:40 | vote | accept | Boliotis Manousos | ||
| Apr 13, 2022 at 17:31 | comment | added | Boliotis Manousos | True, I figured that myself later when I was thinking that if energy is proporcional to 1/(distance)^2 then distance must go to infinity so that 1/(distance)^2 go to zero. | |
| Apr 13, 2022 at 15:11 | comment | added | TooTea |
@BoliotisManousos There's no X_max. The inverse square relationship asymptotically approaches zero as distance tends to infinity, it never becomes exactly zero. Of course you might not have instruments sensitive enough to detect light weaker than some threshold, but that's just a technical detail, no law of physics.
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| Apr 13, 2022 at 12:33 | comment | added | Boliotis Manousos | for example the background cosmic radiation haven't reach that X_max (i guess) because we can still detect it. | |
| Apr 13, 2022 at 11:42 | comment | added | jensen paull | That depends on the sensitivity of your instruments. Or perhaps some quantum weirdness, which I am not able to comment on | |
| Apr 13, 2022 at 11:41 | history | edited | jensen paull | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 13, 2022 at 9:47 | vote | accept | Boliotis Manousos | ||
| Apr 13, 2022 at 13:23 | |||||
| Apr 13, 2022 at 9:45 | comment | added | Boliotis Manousos | I understand your explaination. So no energy is "lost"(converted to some other form) but in contrary it's spread over a wider area so if you are far away from the source the energy you can detect seems reduced. I guess that after a distance: X_max, you can't detect energy at all. So is there a way to calculate this X_max? | |
| Apr 12, 2022 at 23:21 | history | edited | jensen paull | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 12, 2022 at 23:16 | history | answered | jensen paull | CC BY-SA 4.0 |