Cherenkov, Tamm, and Frank went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1958. Vavilov mentioned the effect to Igor Tamm and Ilya Frank, who figured out what was going on. How Does Cherenkov Radiation Work?Ĭherenkov shared his findings with his thesis advisor, Sergey Vavilov. This is a transcript from the video series Understanding the Misconceptions of Science. When these particles travel faster, the glass emits a stunning yet dangerous blue color. Named after the student, the Cherenkov radiation occurs when a particle carrying an electric charge travels faster than light through an optically transparent medium such as glass. Eventually, he was able to show that even water would glow in the presence of a lot of radiation. Initially, the light was attributed directly to radioactivity but when Cherenkov tried to isolate the effect, he realized that radiation made the sulfuric acid glow. While working with uranium salts dissolved in sulfuric acid, a young Russian physicist named Pavel Cherenkov noticed a glowing light. Learn more about how relativity is misunderstood. Though it has been established that the speed of light would slow down inside glass, the muon does not slow down when it passes through the glass and still maintains the speed of light inside. Assume a photon beam and high energy muon beam point in the same direction and travel at the same speed as light. While nothing can go faster than light in vacuum, it is pretty easy for particles to move faster than light in matter through some medium like glass. The common theory that the universe is expanding at the speed of light is incorrect and a misconception. Read on to find how statements about the speed of light can be confusing. Such assertions are backed by assumptions that are often not expressed. One such statement is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. By Don Lincoln, Ph.D., Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) There are a few statements in science that are absolutely true. You can follow assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter. "If we're ever going to become a true spacefaring civilization, we're going to have to think outside the box a little bit, we're going to have to be a little bit audacious," Obousy said. He called the project a "humble experiment" compared to what would be needed for a real warp drive, but said it represents a promising first step.Īnd other scientists stressed that even outlandish-sounding ideas, such as the warp drive, need to be considered if humanity is serious about traveling to other stars. "We're trying to see if we can generate a very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million," White said. They set up what they call the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer at the Johnson Space Center, essentially creating a laser interferometer that instigates micro versions of space-time warps. White and his colleagues have begun experimenting with a mini version of the warp drive in their laboratory. "The additional energy reduction realized by oscillating the bubble intensity is an interesting conjecture that we will enjoy looking at in the lab." "The findings I presented today change it from impractical to plausible and worth further investigation," White told. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.įurthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more, White found. The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.īut recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light." "Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light," explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind. An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |