Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonthegreat
Okay. Fair enough. Back to the situation of alternating field interference - can a wavelength be.. 'accelerated'.. to a wavelength of higher intensity without changing the output of the source, such as a beam from a laser? My thoughts, to put it simply, are to construct a resonance device using placed induction of current producing EMR so that a weak wavelength (such as radio &/or laser pointer) would end up an intense wave out the other end.
This may seem pointless, however, due to the fact that the energy required to do so may far exceed both the source and the product combined. The thoughts are of using such resonance to harness such energies found in nature *ie Sun*
Am I a hopeless dreamer? or could there be light at the end of the tunnel, no pun intended.
I am somewhat familiar with how photovoltaic cells work -- this is unrelated. More of a refocusing/amplification of a weak source to a strong product.
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Jonthegreat, I don’t think that you’re not a hopeless dreamer, far from it. In fact your ideas are in the cutting edge of scientific research in more the one area !
First of all, intensity in this context usually refers to the amount of energy produced by a specific light source, i.e. the number of photons, which cannot be changed without 'creating' more photons.
In regards to changing the amount of energy per photon, that would mean changing it's wave length, and that happens all the time. one example is
Red shift in astronomy which is a result of the
Doppler effect.
an example that is closer to what you motioned is
lazer cooling , where essentially they use laser beans that have slightly less energy then what is required in order to excite an atom. since heat is essentially movement (or 'vibration' in solids) of atoms, if the atom is moving *towards* the light , then the light will appear to have a higher frequency from the atoms perspective and will be absorbed, slowing down the atom by 'taking' kinetic energy and momentum from it. Then, it will be re-emitted in a random direction with a slightly higher average frequency.
If you where to build a machine that generates EMR, it will emit photons all on it's own, which if i understand correctly, is how radio's and mobile phones work. So your idea is being used by billions of people already !
In regards to harnessing energy from the sun, it depends, if you are talking about sunlight, that's what solar panels do, convert the light energy into electrical energy.
since you cannot create energy from nothing, the sun itself has to get its energy from somewhere and that comes from
nuclear fusion , something that scientists have been trying to duplicate for decades, but are having trouble containing the hydrogen because fusion requires very high temperatures, in excess of 100 million degrees Kelvin, while any known material will vaporize before it reaches 10,000 degrees.
