4 ms·
> If it did, we wouldn’t be able to see stars at night from the Earth. Ha! I love straighforward sanity checks like this. My initial reaction was to ask myself
by xelxebar 7y ago
> If it did, we wouldn’t be able to see stars at night from the Earth.
Ha! I love straighforward sanity checks like this. My initial reaction was to ask myself about photon-photon collisions which are im fact possible, but your comment gives a nice Fermi bound on how rare such events actually are. Cool!
- Robotbeat 7y agoPhoton-photon collisions are still technically possible... I remember a professor mentioning this as one question he got in grad school... draw out the Feynman diagram and you see a vanishingly small probability of photon-photon interaction. But yeah. Ionized particles like Galactic Cosmic Rays can be repelled by the local stellar magnetic field, but mostly the lower energy rays are deflected. Higher energy -to-charge-ratio GCRs can punch right through the weak stellar magnetic field, just like do for our Sun’s interplanetary magnetic field.
- soulofmischief 7y agoThank you for understanding my question before reaching for dismissal :) I knew low-energy waves are partially deflected, I just wasn't sure about high-energy waves. Makes sense!