MadSci Network: Physics |
Hallo Dick, and thanks for the question! Two problems arise when you try to fit an 'infinite' (nothing is infinite in this Universe of ours, so think about 'infinity' as just another way of saying 'as big as you can get') number into the optical fibre. The first one is that every optical fibre has very specific optical properties. This is to say that it can only transmit electromagnetic signals (i.e. 'light') within the certain frequency range. Feeding the signal which is out of this range into the fibre results just in the heating of the fibre due to the dissipation of the signal's energy. You can think of the dissipation process as if there was some sort of 'friction' within the fibre to the given electromagnetic wave, this friction beeing caused by the properties of the material that the fibre is made of. The friction sucks the energy from the wave until it has none left, i.e. until there is no more radiation (at that frequency). So to conclude, you can only transmit a limited frequency range through a optical fibre without energy losses due to the dissipation. Further, even within this 'allowed' range, you can not stuff the fibre with as much energy as you want. The reason for this is that, the fibre beeing a material object, it gets torn appart (it burns) if you try to pass a large ammount of power through it - it simply can't stand the strain (just like a copper wire if you try to feed it with too large electrical current). What happens in this case is that great radiation power enables the individual atoms to snatch some of the energy and break the bonds that hold them attached to the surrounding atoms in the fibre which causes the fibre to quit beeing a fibre... And now to the title question: can we fit all the photons in the universe on the top of the needle. I guess we can't, and I see few reasons for this. The first is that we can't really travel arround the universe with the light net (the equivalent of the butterfly net, i.e. the thing you use to catch the butterflies...) and catch photon after photon until the darkness is all around us (no more light, that is!). Second, say that we somehow manage to evade just mentioned problems, so we finaly get all the photons in the universe in a single spatio-temporal point. But alas, this gleaming gathering would last just for a feeble instant, as these photons would not be too happy with sticking arround this single point but would instead preffer to dash off with the speed of light (litteraly) whichever way they can... Hope I've been helpfull Duje
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