At 09:11 AM 9/22/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> > The point is, that it may indeed be possible that there is some form of
> > energy in the universe around us that we just don't understand (yet?). We
> > just might stumble onto a means to convert that energy into a useful form,
> > without really understanding where it is coming from.
>
>Terahertz electromagnetic radiation?  Petahertz?  Who knows?
>
>I recall hearing an article (NPR) about EXTREMELY high frequency EMR.
>Apparently, the study of it is still fairly new, and it has some very 
>promising
>applications.  Empirically I feel as though there must be some upper limit
>on frequency, but mathematically I don't know that I could understand it.

You go through far IR, IR, visible light, ultraviolet, soft X-rays, hard X-rays
and gamma rays as the wavelength decreases. The nomenclature changes from
frequency to wavelength to photon energy (eg. gamma rays start at 100,000 ev
and are expected to exist at >100 Gev or even Tev)

http://flux.aps.org/meetings/YR98/BAPSAPR98/abs/S1320006.html

Supernova may briefly create them:

http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/rcfta/anrep94/anrep94/node17.html

At those wavelengths/energies, even our thermonuclear sun is dark, but the
moon glows somewhat (due to cosmic rays).

At such high energies, matter itself (and matching antimatter) can be
created from the EM radiation when they collide with something.

If there's an upper limit, it doesn't seem to be very important in this
universe, at the moment anyhow, at least from what I've seen.

Using the Planck length for the wavelength yields an energy of 8E+28 eV
(if I did the calculation correctly), which is more decades above
ultra-high-energy Tev gamma rays than they are above EM radiation at
the frequency of your heartbeat!

Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com




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