Cherenkov radiation is the result of the experiment.
A nice reminder that, contrary to the sickly green you usually see in fiction, glowy radiation is usually a lovely blue. But what’s happening? Well, something’s going faster than light! I’m not a physicist, so i might be getting some details wrong, but this is as far as i understand it:
See, the speed of light is a universal constant, the c of e=mc². But that’s only in a vacuum—so much of physics is based first and foremost on activity in a vacuum—and the speed of light through matter is often significantly slower. Instead of 1 c, light moves through liquid water at about 0.75 c. That may still be ludicrously fast, but it’s still slowed down enough that charged particles like electrons can exceed that speed within the medium in question. Exceeding that speed does all kinds of weird, somewhat terrifying and very exciting things to the electromagnetic field of the medium, including the creation of a shockwave in a manner very similar to a sonic boom.
In other words, that bright blue visible radiation is what happens when a particle exceeds the speed-of-light-in-water and creates a luminal boom.
Oh. So THAT’S what my favorite color is
SCIENCE WOOOOH I QUITE LITERALLY JUST WENT OVER THIS IN CHEMISTRY A WHILE BACK IT’S SUPER COOOOOOL
“Luminal boom” is a term I wish I had encountered much earlier in life.
Tumblerette was originally developed by the insanely talented Garrett Ross and Jeff Rock at Mobelux. We had the pleasure of hanging out with them in New York last month. Not only are these guys remarkable developers, they have an incredibly inspiring vision for building consumer products, and we couldn’t wait to start working with them on the next suite of Tumblr/iPhone features.
There’s a ton we have planned for mobile devices and the iPhone, and we’re obviously thrilled to be working with Jeff and Garrett 🙂
If you’ve already downloaded Tumblerette, you’ll need to re-download the new Tumblr app to get the updates. This version comes with some slick new features, including the iPhone native Dashboard. Go download it!! →
the idea of consuming two conflicting things that promise to do the opposite of each other has always been hilarious to me. there’s a liquid shot-based sleep aid called 6 hour sleep and as soon as I saw it i immediately imagined mixing it and a 5 hour energy together for a 1 hour nap
I was working with a seagull and I said “as someone in Wildlife I know I should never anthropomorphize animals or hold them to any human moral standard, but seagulls are capable of and regularly knowingly commit evil” and the vet tech with me said “no yeah that’s true.”
PTA archive 