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Pastimes : NNBM - SI Branch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clappy who wrote (26841)	6/13/2003 1:22:24 PM
From: abuelita	Respond to of 104202

cosmosis- LOL anyone ever tell you that you've got some outrageous stuff locked up inside of that head of yours? your forehead should carry a warning sign - "danger - explosive material" ... make sure you maintain your release valve to control the pressure. <g> i shutter to think .... hoser

To: Clappy who wrote (26841)	6/13/2003 6:50:47 PM
From: lurqer	Respond to of 104202

Damn! Gates’ software just ate my response. Talk about your black holes. It went something like this ---> Welcome to the wonderful world of x-ray astronomy It’s a small sub-branch, more akin to particle physics than the rest of astronomy. Most astronomers deal with visible (or near visible – infrared, ultraviolet) light or the radio region of the electro-magnetic spectrum. Photons in the visible (and near visible) are usually characterized by their wavelengths (commonly denoted by the Greek letter lambda). Beyond infrared, in the microwave and radio regions of the spectrum, usually the differing photons are distinguished by their frequency – kilohertz, megahertz or gigahertz. A photon’s energy is proportional to its wavelength, so radio wavelength photons are considerably less energetic than visible light photons. If you go the other way toward shorter wavelength photons, beyond the ultraviolet is the x-ray region of the spectrum. For reasons having to do with history, x-ray photons are usually described by their energy instead of wavelength or frequency. There are simple formulae that given one of the frequency, wavelength or energy of a photon, you can easily calculate the other two. So any of these ways of describing a photon are equivalent. The energy of a photon is usually measured in electron-volts – eV or thousands of electron-volts – keV Lower energy x-ray photons with relatively long wavelengths are referred to as soft, while high energy x-ray photons are called hard. The harder the x-rays are, the more energetic and penetrating they are. (If you check, I believe you will see it’s soft photons, not soft protons.) Most of the fundamental research on x-rays was done in the first half of the twentieth century by Compton and others – see Compton effect eee.ntu.ac.uk . There are a number of circumstances under which x-rays are produced. Synchrotron radiation results when energetic particles are deflected by an intense magnetic field. Frequently, the source of the x-ray radiation (synchrotron, inverse-Compton, bremsstrahlung, etc) can determined by the spectrum. wonder how many of the stars out there are not actually in their proper position but instead have been visually skewed due to the bending of the light near enough to that ultra dense black hole. A glass lens uses refraction to bend light to form an image. One of the first “proofs” of Einstein’s General Theory was the “bending” of light by the gravity of a massive object. (Actually the light travels along the local geodesic in the curved space-time that surrounds the massive object.). This leads to the idea of a gravitational lens. Not only have such lenses been found, but the geometry can be such that you can get double images of the same object. For more see astron.berkeley.edu . For me, part of the joy of astronomy lies in the Haldane quote "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is even stranger than we can imagine." Kindda like the “Oh my gawd” type of surprises that occur in astronomy. Came across this: cosmoetica.com . Note the oblique reference to the Haldane quote near the end. lurqer