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“Another reason Webb's detectors need to be cold is to suppress something called dark current, or electric current created by the vibration of atoms in the dete
by punnerud 5y ago
“Another reason Webb's detectors need to be cold is to suppress something called dark current, or electric current created by the vibration of atoms in the detectors themselves.”
Can this be used for energy production?
- ars 5y agoFor energy production you need a hot source and a cold source. This dark current is no different. You'll need energy to create either the cold source or the hot source.
- seanw444 5y agoHeckin thermodynamics.
- rcxdude 5y agoNo, it's an AC current (basically broadband noise). It provides no overall power, and further it's impossible to rectify it into a DC current with a diode at the same temperature (this is similar to why a wheel with a ratchet, even if microscopically sized, cannot extract work from the motion of particles at a constant temperature).
- ehsankia 5y agoI would assume the effects of this are extremely small, and only relevant due to how insanely precise JWST needs to be. I believe they said they were getting in the order of 1 photon per second from the dimmest targets, whereas your eye looking at a star in the sky gets millions of photons per second. When you're at that level, these small effects start actually introducing noise in your data, but otherwise the effect is so tiny I doubt it could be used for anything useful.