array9

Hi,

I am thinking about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which can be interpreted as one can borrow a finite amount of energy for a finite amount of time. dt times dE must be less than ih, or something like that.

Now there are rather a lot of things left out of this description, such as

- how often can I borrow it?
- does it matter if all my neighbours have just borrowed stuff?
- how close is a neighbour?

I think this is something like how bright is a blackhole?

Why have we not heard about this sort of experiment, other than just confirming that the Hawking radiation exists, rather than quantification of its strength.

Maybe I should read a bit more on this.

MartinW

Vacuum and Light

It occurred to me that since a vacuum is full of pairs of particles coming into existence and then being destroyed, as it borrows some energy for a some time, whether the existence of light traversing a vacuum in some depends on these particles for some ( or all ) of its properties.

One might only be able to test this very close to a singularity / black hole. Indeed might light be reflected from a singularity.

Not my field, as you can tell

I think that this is also related in some way to the thought that a photon actually can only interfere with itself, and not with other photons, but this might break down if two intereacted with one or both virtual particles

martinW