Photons

When an atom has a little extra energy, say from heat or light hitting it, one of its electrons could occupy a higher-energy orbital than normal.  This is an unstable situation, so the electron could return to its ground state, or lowest orbital because this is the more stable energy state.  In order for the electron to drop down to its ground state, it has to give up its extra energy, either by giving off a photon or causing extra vibration in a molecule.  

A photon is a packet of energy.  It is almost incorrect to think of it as a particle, because it is an excitation of the electromagnetic field.  This is two fields, one electric and one magnetic. This is where it is truly magical, because the electric and magnetic fields oscillate perpendicular to each other, and both are perpendicular to the direction in which the wave travels.  The two fields create a self-sustaining electromagnetic wave.  This is what we call a photon of light, and this continues until the packet of energy hits something.  However, this excitation of the electromagnetic field is true for a huge range of frequencies other than visible light, such as radio waves, microwaves, but also ionizing radiation such as higher frequency ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma radiation.

What is magical about this is that the speed of light in a vacuum is determined by the physical properties of the electric and magnetic fields in a vacuum.  However, this is really fast, and light travels at 186,282 miles per second.

So it is like there is no particle at all, but just excited energy fields.  However, we know that a photon will have a definite amount of energy, and it has momentum, giving it the ability to move particles when it collides with something, such as another electron.  So light is an energy transfer system, sometimes over great distances.

The amount of energy that a photon has determines its frequency.  Higher frequency means higher energy.  The energy of a photon is determined by the equation

E = hf

where f is the frequency and h is Planck's constant.

Photons have no rest mass, which allows them to travel at the speed of light. Other particles, such as electrons, acquire mass through their interaction with the Higgs field. Particles with rest mass, which have inertia, cannot travel at the speed of light.

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The Andromeda and Milky Way Galaxies

The Andromeda Galaxy is about 2.5 million light-years from the Milky Way. The two galaxies have so much mass that their mutual gravitational attraction is pulling them toward each other. They will have their first close encounter in about 4.5 to 5 billion years, with about a 90% chance of merging within 10 billion years.

There is little danger of individual stars colliding because the stars are so far apart from each other.

The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across and is estimated to contain between 100 and 400 billion stars. We don't know the exact number because interstellar dust blocks our view of portions of the galaxy, although astronomers can use infrared and radio observations to study regions that are hidden from visible light.

However, Andromeda, by comparison, is a beast, with an estimated trillion stars and a diameter of about 220,000 light-years. With so many stars, I think to myself that there must be life in there somewhere, and maybe a few civilizations. We will never know because the distances are so vast. Just finding extraterrestrial life in our own galaxy, or even in our own solar system, would be an amazing accomplishment.

Both galaxies are so massive, with such powerful gravitational attractions, that they have satellite dwarf galaxies orbiting them. In the picture, we can see Messier 32 above the Andromeda galactic plane, looking like a bright snowball, and Messier 110 below the galactic plane.

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8K TVs Are Stupid

8K TVs Are Stupid

When 4K TVs came out, some people complained that you can't see that level of detail...

You Don't See in 4K

Much depends upon how big your screen is, how far you sit from it, and whether you are John Coffey. My eyesight has never been 20/20, but even with the corrective lens I got during my cataract surgery, which was a huge improvement, I see more like 20/25. So when 4K first came out, I had a hard time telling the difference between 4K (which is just a marketing name for 2160p) and 1080p.

Although surgery vastly improved my distance vision, it made it harder for me to see up close. I can't see anything up close without reading glasses, and getting the right focus for playing chess has been tricky. I liked my old vision because I needed glasses just for distance, but now I need strong reading glasses to see my phone.

For a large-screen TV, a 4K display makes sense. However, I have two 27-inch monitors, and for these, I feel that 1440p is ideal. On a 27-inch monitor, 1080p is not as good because you can see individual pixels when sitting close, but 4K makes all the Windows and Mac icons look small, so you have to artificially enlarge them to be able to see anything comfortably.

I don't think that a person is going to gain anything by having 4K on a 27-inch monitor. There is a limit to what our eyes can see. Although it doesn't make much difference, 4K requires more overhead from the graphics hardware when playing games, so you can get a better frame rate with 1440p. Although you could run a game in 1440p on a 4K monitor, it is less than ideal because the video output doesn't match the pixels on the screen, requiring the computer or monitor to scale the images.

My iMac is 5K, but I run it at half resolution, which is 1440p, and I am more comfortable with it that way. For people who do video or photo editing, 4K and 5K are better.

On a smaller computer monitor, such as one measuring 19 or 20 inches, I think that 1080p might be fine. Most laptops have displays with resolutions higher than 1080p, but because of their size, I don't think that they need to.

Because of the small screen and keyboard, I don't recommend using a laptop as your main computer, but I have used a laptop with an external screen and keyboard.

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The claim is that we need to go to the Moon so that we can go to Mars. We don't need to go to Mars. It far too risky and to costly to go to a dead, dangerous planet with a 1/3 of the gravity of the Earth. The radiation on Mars and on the way is too dangerous.

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