Laser Light Stars
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A question of light?
Now let assume there are three objects
earth and 2 stars
the 2 stars are 10 light years away
and the 2 stars are 10 light years apart
if you on earth shines a laser at star 1 and move the laser quickly across to star 2
will the same information on the front of the laser reach the 2 stars at the same time.
and what will be the speed of the beam be between the 2 stars and what will be the difference in the informatin part
and will the light beam curve as you run it through star 1 to star 2
For this kind of thought experiment I suggest you go to the quantum theory of light (as all electromagnetic radiations) displaying both wave and particle like behaviour, and is called a photon when we treat it as if it was a particle.
You aim the LASER at Star1 and photons are being sent towards it. If you move the LASER instantaneously to point at star 2, no more photons are directed at star 1, but start being sent to star2. So iiiiiif it was instantaneous, the photons would stop being detected at star 1 just as they were detected at start2.
To think about its detection at the stars we can use the wave theory just as happily as photons. Wave have an associated wavelength and frequency when they are sent by the laser, and lasers are generally coherent monochromatic light sources. This means that the properties of the light arriving at star1 will be the same as the light arriving at star2 ie they will have the same energy, wavelength and frequency.
BUT. Due to the the earth probably moving away from the stars you are talking about, the wavelength and frequency will change. You might know this as the Doppler shift, h eard as when a car moves away from you the engine note sems to get lower. This is also called the redshift for objects moving away from each other relatively, because the wavelength gets longer(ie frequency gets smaller) and the colour red is of the longer wavelengths of the visible spectrum)
If the earth was getting closer to the two stars there would be a blueshift because the wavelength would get shorter (ie frequency gets larger) and the colour blue is at the shorter end of the visible spectrum.
Sorry for the essay!
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