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“ Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of radiation, with wavelengths that can be smaller than the nucleus of an atom. (Radio waves, for comparison, have wave
by gigatexal 7y ago
“ Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of radiation, with wavelengths that can be smaller than the nucleus of an atom. (Radio waves, for comparison, have wavelengths ranging between about a millimeter to hundreds of kilometers.)”
This is so insane to me. I knew the wavelengths were small but not this small. Nature is so cool!
- maxnoe 7y agoDoesn't really make sense to speak of wavelengths at these energies any more. For all intents and purposes, these are particles. The energies we detect go into the hundreds of TeVs and charged cosmic rays have been detected to much, much higher energies.
- kace91 7y agothe transition/duality of particles and waves is something that, despite having heard about it many times, I'm still unable to grasp intuitively
- sathackr 7y agoI'm still not grasping it either, to the point that I feel we may eventually learn they are neither, something else that looks to us sometimes like a particle and sometimes like a wave.
- maxnoe 7y agoWe already did learn that. QED describes a photon perfectly mathematically. There is just now word that maps that to ordinary terms.