Power Amounts

Kinds and Scales of Power... Can you see it ? How big is it ? At what scales ?

Firstly, Can You See It ? There is power we can see and power whose results we don't see. The huge thing we stand on and don't even feel moving, our planet, the Earth, is loaded with energy. The Sun beams its gaseous explosions down on us as sunshine and other rays that are invisible to us. We don't feel Cosmic rays, X-rays, or radio waves and many more radiations, yet they affect us. There is often a transmutation of one form of energy radiation being channeled, transformed and poured into another form for a use that we want. Energy visible and invisible is worth exploring in context of what we think we know, close to us, under our hands and in front of our noses.

How Big Is It ? The powers we intentionally interact with and those acting upon us come at many scales, some of these are beyond easy comprehension. Numbers alone do not convey the amounts involved, numbers are artificial. It is natural to relate in a tactile and sensorial manner so as to make understanding and meaningful decisions about what actions we can expect to get results. If I do this, that can happen. If we can do "this" with a machine, then "that" bigger thing can happen. We are really moving from touch to imagination. We consolidate what we imagine by experiment and prediction to then make things or events, bigger or smaller than ourselves, things we can no longer hold or see. To make such things, we return to using scales and ranges of numbers. We compare, we measure, we make.

Scaling is the tool we use to imagine and aim for what is in the realm of the possible. In our 10 fingered, decimal world with numerical powers of 10, that is scaling by 10, or 10 to the power of some exponent, e.g. 2 x 10^23, aka 2 e23, allows for measurements. Something small is on the order of a very small or negative power of 10, something big has a large power exponent. Between a power of -100 and 100 is where most items in daily life are encountered. However, scaling by even 1 order of ten, say going from some number times a hundred to that number by a thousand can have immense effects. We must tread carefully when designing and specifying installations.

Energy and Measurements... Some informal explanations and abbreviations

Informal explanations and abbreviations.

The Joule

The unit of amount of energy, j, often used is called the Joule and is denoted by the capital letter J. There are other units such as the erg, the electron volt, the foot-pound, the calorie and the BTU. Here we look at the Joule.

1) It links the amount of acceleration, a, of a mass, m, multiplied by the distance it travels, d. So, j = a x m x d. Another explanation is that energy shows itself as the force on an object multiplied the distance it is moved.

The measured mass of an object on Planet Earth normally has the same as value as its weight. A mass hints at being the amount of material in an object being acted upon by, or rather sharing interaction with, another mass. Any object on Planet Earth is attracted, overall, to the centre of gravity of the planet, so the force of that gravity on a chosen mass can be measured and compared to other masses under the same gravity.

2) Acceleration means how fast the velocity, v, of something is changing, which in turn is the change in units of distance per units of time, t. so "a" = v/t and v = d/t, so a = (d/t)/t or d/(t x t), which is often written as d/t2, or alternatively as d t−2.

Putting 1) and 2) together;- j = ( a x m x d ) = ( ( d/t2 ) x m x d ) = m x d2 /t2 ) = ( m x d2 x t−2 ) = ( m d2 t−2 ) .

Now the units of measurement for those entities is kilogrammes, metres and seconds, so, 1 J = 1 kg m2 s−2.

Of particular interest also are the other items or qualities related to movement of mass, such as radiation, heat and temperature, magnetism and electricity. The concepts of potential energy, energy that can be relocated, and kinetic energy, the energy actively being relocated, are very important. Both depend on the local conditions surrounding whatever is being examined and it is those conditions and opportunities to change them that interest us.

The Watt

How quickly and how much energy is being moved or used, soaked up or expended, transferred or converted, is measured in Watts.

Watt is the unit of power and denoted by the capital letter W. It is the amount of energy related to the time that the energy is moving and in turn is equally well measured as Joules per second. It is the rate at which energy is flowing, running, jumping, bouncing, transmogrifying, moving.

So 1W = 1 J/sec = 1 kg m2 s−3.

An often used amount of energy is the kWh, the kilo-Watt-hour. This is energy flowing at the rate one Watt for 3,600 seconds and so is an amount of energy, 3,600 seconds x 1 W = 3,600 J.

Joule or Watt ?

Please remember that a lot of energy can be expended very slowly or very quickly, for example a strike of lightning, can liberate the amount of 5 x 109 J in 10 millionths of a second, that is equivalent to a rate of 500 million, million Watts, or 500 Terawatts. The wattage is high, but over a very short period of time, the amount of energy in this example is also a lot. Lightning has been estimated to strike globally between 40 and 100 times per second, year in year out. That gives estimates between (1.6 to 4.32 ) x 1018 J per day. An average of 3 x 1018 J per day.

Alternatively, a process could use a huge amount of energy, but over a long period of time and so have a small Wattage. An example;-

If a mature oak tree has 250,000 leaves, and estimates vary as high as 1 million leaves, and it lives for 300 mature years, they can live for over a thousand years, what energy is associated with this one tree? Let us propose an average leaf size of 5 x 10 cm., which gives an area per leaf of 0.005m2, with an overall green leaf area of 1,250m2 for the whole tree. Solar radiation is on the order of 1kW /m2, so the tree is getting 1250kW. The efficiency of photosynthesis of Oaks, which are listed as C3 carbon fixation plants, is 3.5%. That figure gives us an "oak tree rating" of about 44kW. If we now suggest that the average annual daylight the tree gets is 10 hours per day, we have over 300 years about 1,100,000 hours. 44kW for 1.1 million hours gives a figure of 48.4 million kWh, or 48.4 thousand MWh. There are 3.6 million Joules in 1 kWh., so overall we get 48.4 million x 3.6 million Joules = 174.24 x 1012 Joules, or if you prefer, 1.74 x 1014 J., which is a good definition of a "lot".

Lightning;- 5 x 1014 W, 1 x 10-5 sec, 5 x 109 J.

Oak Tree;- 4.4 x 104 W, 3.96 x 109 sec, 1.74 x 1014 J.

The Oak Tree to Lightning energy ratio is 35,000 : 1.

At one level this seems a useless comparison, on another level it cautions us to think carefully when looking at figures and statistics, to examine if we are seeing the whole picture in a useful way, or question whether we are missing some context. A sobering thought is that a single lightning strike, critically placed, can kill an oak tree in less time than the blink of an eye. Both can be thought of examples of energy installations.

Unseen Energies... What energy can we see? What are we oblivious to? Energy waves.

Wireless transmission is nowadays ubiquitous with radio waves of increasingly subdivided sections of the electromagnetic spectrum. Bluetooth is in the 2.4GHz to 2.5GHz region, wireless routers are in the 2.4GHz and 5GHZ, with computer readable transmission of 1.3Gbit per second being commercially available. We depend more and more on invisible-to-visible transformation of coded information, so much so that we rarely seem to need to question or inspect it closely as long as the screens and machines we use do not act up.

7 important electromagnetic, EM, wave ranges in the EM spectrum, going from high to low energy are: gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, infrared radiation, and radio waves.

A gamma ray has energy on the order upwards of 1 × 105 eV while a radio wave has 1 × 10-10 eV. For scale : 1 Joule is approximately 6 × 1018 eV. On the astrophysical scale, a long duration gamma ray burst can liberate 1063 eV in 30 seconds, that is 1044 J, while our Sun will produce that in its whole life time, calculated at 10 billion years.

The source of energy is important in relation to the amount supplied. A candle and an electric torch can both shed light, but the energy associated with those lights is experienced at different distances. They also emit energy as heat. You can warm your hands close to, but preferably not directly over a candle, while with a torch there is heat produced very close to a filament, or emitted extremely close to the internal parts of a diode.

For medical, gamma ray uses;- radiography, PET and CT scans and fluoroscopy, 0.06 mS to 50 mS is the scale deemed safe. 1 mS, a milli-Sievert, is otherwise known as a milli-Joule per kilogram. The gamma ray penetrates deeply through matter and delivers the equivalent of mini-scale explosive energy and that is why it is important. Going upwards from 50mS, i.e. 1/20 J/kg, deemed safe, to 1J/kg gets into lethal territory and permanent body changes. Going further to only 5 J/kg reaches the lethal 50 dose, where half the population delivered such a dose will die. Scale counts.

Wireless energy transmission at low energy levels and over very short distances is now commercially used to charge small electronic equipment such as phones and watches. This has been researched since the 1800's, and large scale wireless energy transmission is still seen as a holy grail. It is a form of energy translation where the principle that it can be done is now a practical reality and only the task of scaling up to bigger power scenarios remains.

Visibility of the Powerful

What we can directly see with our eyes depends on light described in a narrow range and part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The visible wavelengths are roughly between 1/4 and 3/4 of a millionth of a metre. Outside of that we are all visually blind, but a huge amount of action is happening all the time. Sea and oceanic waves interact with light in a way that we can see, their wavelengths are roughly in the range of 8m to 200 m. Water slows down visible light by a small amount, so that we can still see water after light has passed through it, and wave speeds are such that we can detect them, both waves and their speeds. The interactions between the light, air, water and how they are dynamised are such that they are in range. Consider instead a wristwatch or wall clock that has a seconds hand. Seeing the seconds hand is easy. Noticing the minute hand move is harder. Detecting the hour hand move is difficult...unless.... you have a clock with very large arms, then you will be able to detect all the hands moving. However, the scale of clock needed, its size is outwith what is typical. Here we have only scaled the motion of each hand by 60 and then only by 12, respectively, to leave our universe of observation. When we notice something, it is retrospectively observable, we will also more readily see it in future and, contentionally, it has become putatively obvious. Many things we take however as obvious have attached to them aspects that are far from obvious, far from observable but can be reached with imagination.

Invisibility of the Powerful

Magnetism offers a whole field of possibilities that are firmly in the land of unseen energy. Heat, static electricity and also relatively weak molecular bonding, such as Van der Waal's bonding, which paradoxically has powerful effects, when scaled up, are tools in the energy transformation design toolbox. They are themselves invisible energies, but we can make very visible things happen with them. We see not them, but their effects. A bar of white hot iron, we intuit as being full of energy, but we still can not see that energy, only what it is doing.

Relating to Energy

Examples help us relate amounts of energy to the sizes of matter they involve. We rationalise and so learn where we fit in the enormous ranges of energy around us. Traditionally we relate energy to the ideas of doing work, power, horse-power, machines, icebergs moving, sports cars, big bangs, lightning, earthquakes, tsunami, power dams, torch batteries, candles, Superman, heavy meals, light salads and so on and on. From subatomic and molecular sizes to planetary and solar we are involved in negotiating our paths in the worlds of energy.

An Approach , An Attitude...

The examples we find useful are those that also help us relate to new events and phenomena. Examples are a tool of the imagination to rationalise the world around us. But...

Striking and useful examples are very personal. They appeal to us individually and are more or less meaningful depending upon our own life experiences and also culture. For example... while putting mopane grubs on the menu for an elementary school in New York or Paris might seem unsettlingly strange and result in the canteen manager being fired, they could however be very welcome if instead the school was in Zimbabwe. What is normal or special in one place might therefore only seem locally to be a universal concept of general subjective agreement. Universal concepts require challenging and testing, and this is hard.

We have to balance the sublime and the ridiculous. We have to tread between interest and boredom. Bizarre comparisons of items juxtaposed in an unusual manner are all the more compelling if at root they do relate items in a logical manner. The rare event is noticeable if it is important in a very good or a very bad way. Meaningfulness of examples and comparisons also has to be brought close and delivered. Unfortunately the concept of time when it relates to expectation and delivery is problematic. If it would take 10 years and cost Y billion dollars for the transportation of X billion tons of rock, earth and vegetation to raise the height of an island by 5 metres, it could be done. If it would take 10 years to reduce Siberian permafrost and result in ocean level rises of 20 metres, it not "could be" done, it will be done. We have only got the options on a few "could be-s", we do not have the options on the "will be-s" or the "whens", which is why the ridiculous and boring examples should be explored by all of us more often.

Invoking Celestial Mechanics... Daily and Annual Rotation

Let us look at the scales of the energy embodied in the planet and compare it with the other associated amounts.

The kinetic energy or "energy-of-movement" of the Earth is made up of all the energies that affect it, both internal and external.

Two expressions of those energies are how the planet spins and how it orbits the Sun.

Daily Rotation

The kinetic energy of the Rotation of the Earth , depending upon how it is calculated and the reference figures used, is either a "simple" 2.58 × 1029 J, or a "not so simple" 2.14 × 1029 J.

Either way 2 x 1029 is a big number.

What could you do with this level of energy?

What do these numbers compare to?

What does the kinetic energy of the Earth's rotation relate or compare to?

If you tried to slow down the Earth and stop it from turning in one year it would require a mechanism powered at 6.78 x 1021 W.

To do it in one day it would require 2.47 x 1024 W. And that for each of the 86,400 or thereabouts seconds in a day.

A nuclear power station can output between 1GW and 1.5GW, say an average of 1.25 x 109 W. So, 2 x 1015 nuclear power stations would be required to produce the equivalent energy to slow down the planet. There could be a problem if that was the intention as there are only about 7.8 x 1011 humans currently on the planet. Every human, from babe to pensioner, in or out of bed, would each have to manage 2,500 nuclear power stations in such a concert of stoppage.

Some energy comparisons as starter samples...

The daily food energy required by humans, using an averaged value for men and women, is 1.0 x 107 J. This figure is rounded up from 6000kJ for women and 7000kJ for men. Using a roughly 80 year lifespan or 30,000 day life, gets a lifetime requirement of 3 x 1011 J.

An average elephant eats an average 150kg of greenery a day. An average amount of energy in 1kg of greenery is 10 MegaJoules. So, the elephant consumes 1500MJ or 1.5 x 109 J of potential energy a day.

A single lightning strike can deliver an estimated 5 x 109 J, while an oak tree can soak up 1.74 x 1014 J of sunshine in 300 years.

So, in a sense, energy-wise, a single lightning strike is about 3 days-food-worths for an elephant or enough for 500 people.

A single oak tree collects energy equal to the lifetime food requirement of 600 humans or 5 African elephants that have survived for 60 years.

A typical ant weighs between 2 to 3 milligrams, unless it is a queen ant at 10 times that weight. An ant has a metabolic rate of about 0.5 J per day to 1.5 J per day, although "per day" does not mean a 24/7 work rate. Ant food for the colony is on the order of milligrams per ant and is at the output rate of 1kg to 2MJ, seemingly one fifth that of elephant food. Colony size matters with ants. Multiple nests are considered to be part of a colony when they can recognize each other by their pheromone, i.e. chemical smell, similarity. So at one level there is the individual ant, while at the nest level, we are dealing with 500 to 10,000, but at the colony level that could be many millions, if not billions. Still, a nest, 10, 000 ants at 1.5 J per day each is only 15 kJ.

As with ants, so with people in that when considering energy and the implication s of its sources and uses, what is fundamentally important is the scale of activity. We are firmly in a numbers game. There are on the order of 10,000,000,000 people on the Earth. Some are very energy hungry, using a lot of produced power, and some do not use much at all. We can talk of an energy user's diet. There are many alternative phrasings and descriptions of how energy is "consumed". The distribution of the users is ever increasing to the larger demand end of the range. The causes of demand coupled with the numbers doing the demanding have serious implications for other forms of life as well as for the chemistry of the planet and its habitability.

Orbiting the Sun

If we use the formula for kinetic or moving energy, E = 1/2 MV^2, where E = energy, M = Mass, V = Orbital Velocity and the following numbers for Earth ;- M = 6 x 10^24 Kg and V = 3 x 10^4 m/sec, then E = 2.7 x 10^33 J, aka Joules aka kg m^2/sec^2. This is a wholesale figure, and, there is more going on. The Earth is not flying off into space, it rotates around a notional and wobbly axis while also it revolves around the Sun, which in turn is part of a bigger picture. The important things are that there is a number between 3 and 2.5 at the front and 10 with 33 zeros behind it as the multiplier. It is a massive amount of energy. A one-bar electric fire rates at 1 x 10^3 J per sec, an electric kettle at 2 x 10^3 J per sec. Between 10 ^ 3 and 10 ^ 33 is a staggeringly huge difference in experienced realities. Reality effectively becomes something abstract, conceptual. Yet if a satellite is to be sent into orbit, or a power dam to be built or a factory for car batteries to be built, we need to get to grips with big numbers of all the quantities involved. The planetary power consumption has been estimated at 1.5 x 10^18 J per day, or 6 x 10^20 J per year. This level of energy is a lot in a human context, but very small in a planetary setting. A problem is that 87.4% or thereabouts of energy production currently is squeezed out of gas, oil, coal and nuclear ore. The mining, for not one of these is non-toxic to the planet, yet all of those sources could be set to zero if water based energy production is ramped up. There is a lot of planetary scale and planetary generated energy just waiting to be used that does not require such poisoning of the planet as is the current situation.

Lunar Forces... and Uncharted energy

The main effect of the Moon orbiting the Earth, readily noticed but among many interactions, is the gravitational attraction between the Moon and all the water on and in our planet which results in the tiny lacustrine and large oceanic tides. Tidal energy is huge. It is also deeply linked with marine currents.

The Moon takes us exotically into energy territory where some things are known, but, we are really only in the infancy of this knowledge. It is extremely hard to qualify, much less quantify.

Uncharted Energy... an example

Aside of tidal power, the growth of organic life is also affected and influenced by the lunar cycle. This level of power use is far more directly vital yet relatively occult and difficult to ascertain. The atomic level action known as van der Waal's force, vdW, is just one force at play with respect to the Moon and is important with the molecule H2O. The van der Waal's force is one of the weakest interatomic forces and at the same time is exotic and because of its ubiquity it is one of the most powerful in the effects it mediates in biological evolution.

The vdW has been likened to Gravity and used as an explanation for it in some current research. It has been used to explain how geckos can climb vertical surfaces. It is of considerable interest in military and commercial settings. If climbing up sheer glass walls with 120kg of mass is your Adrenalin rush, then vdW is useful for you. vdW mediates atomic level particle interactions and atomic level structural morphology. The wrinkling of graphene sheets is one topic that might sound a bit vague and "so what"-ish, but if vdW mediated effects are found and used to make electrical cells, batteries, last say 4 times longer, that suddenly becomes a bright light event and something of global importance and very relevant here.

Lunar effected power is an example of energy whose direct and further effects cannot readily be distinguished in quantitative or qualitative terms. It is there, it does a lot and really, we know very little about it. Lunar power is integral to life and therefore even if its measurement gave a low number, the energies to which its effects are fundamental are huger yet by many orders.

Solar Power

Solar energy falling upon the Earth has been calculated as 1.5 x 10^22 Joules per day. We think of the Sun primarily as a hot thing. It has other aspects of energy. It is a nuclear thing. It is a radio thing, an X-ray thing. It is a very bright and very live "many-thing". It is a highly, highly, highly magnetic thing.

Magnetism is something beyond human vision, the effects of magnetism are visible around us. You can't see lines of force, or a magnetic field, but you can see how matter interacts with magnetism. You can see the shapes made by iron filings around a bar magnet, or the wonderful shapes made by liquid magnets, also known as ferro-fluids, when a magnet is brought close to such a liquid. The electric motor is possibly one of the most ubiquitous of devices, yet it only bears half its name. It ought surely to be called an electromagnetic motor?

When we view the Sun we are viewing predominately matter meeting magnetism. It is arguably the causal force. Light and heat follow after, they are what seem to affect us the most, they are the visibles and tangibles.

The energies of our Sun are immense, even individual Solar flares eject energy on a fantastic scale. The energy of the Sun is still in the infancy of being understood. There are vast currents of energy about which little is understood, and probably much that has still to be observed. Together with the ocean, where life may have first usefully formed, to crawling infant-like in the light dawn of human development, humans still know the least about the Oceans and the Sun. The light of the Sun underpins aeons of DNA , RNA and proteinic evolution, which includes us.

Electrical Suntan

Sunshine, Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections

Nasa indicates that a single Solar flare typically emits between 10^20 J per second and 10^25 J per second. Solar flares can last from minutes to hours and occur along the pattern of an 11 year Solar cycle. A decade-wise, consistent average of one flare per day is a reasonable and modest statistic. NOAA, the American National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration state that the total energy in a typical Solar flare is 10^23J.

Coronal Mass Ejections, CME's, pose difficulties in tracking down their shapes, their distributions and also in the amounts of energy and mass they have. Give or take a few orders of 10, a CME would not surprise if it had a kinetic energy between 2x10^23J and 2x10^26J. If it visited us, that however might be a surprise, but not so statistically. Statistically, a CME bathing the Earth is simply an event that could, has previously and is more likely than not going to happen many times again.

There is a range of radiation and substance in a Solar flare or a CME. A Solar flare has wavelengths from X-Rays and Ultra-violet through the human visible spectrum to Infra-red and radio waves. CME's are bits of the Sun and they have matter also. Solar flares and CME's have spectral compositions that are like signatures or songs.

As regards Solar energy reaching the surface of the Earth, there is also the added radius and sweep of the atmosphere to consider. There are also the effects of clouds, reflective surfaces and their interactions. One point is that the Earth absorbs more energy than that only intercepted by its solid surface as it orbits and revolves around the Sun. The sweep of a larger shape is done. The Earth's radius is approximately 6370 km., the radius of the atmosphere is approximately 7990 km., that is quite a lot extra. The Van Allen Radiation Belts extend even further and bluntly we may ask the question here, "Who knows what effect they have in gathering Solar energy?". A place utterly and furiously teeming with particles that can fly through 6 inches of lead, is an energetic place, so something is going on and it is part of the natural order of things.

It has been estimated that Solar energy reaching the Earth's surface is within the range of 70% to as low as 10% of all that is incoming . This is primarily due to the sum of all the transmission, refraction and reflection effects occurring.

🔮 Experiment 🔮

👁A quick comparison here;- 👁🔎

Consider Solar radiation blocked by the Earth, not counting the extra radius of the atmosphere.

That is "as blocked by the area of a flat disc the average radius of the Earth", aka Flat Earth Sunshine...think what shadow the Earth casts.

🌕Sunshine per day is 1.5 x 10^22 J, 🌕

🌕Sunshine per second is 1.73 x 10^17 J, 🌕

🌕Sunshine per second per square meter coming in is approximately 1,365 J, 🌕

🌕Sunshine per second per square meter averaged at some surface locations is only 200 J, 🌕

🌕Sunshine per second per square meter averaged at some surface locations can be 1,100 J, 🌕

⛱🏝 Sunbathing for 1 daytime, say 12 hours, a whole 43,200 seconds, getting 1 square meter's worth of 1,100J for that whole body experience. 🏝⛱

☀ Energy in suntan session 4.75 x 10^7J. ☀

☀️ Energy in 1 second's worth of a small Solar flare 10^20J. ☀️

🧮How many suntan sessions could the Solar flare provide? 🧮

🧮 2.11 x 10^12 suntan sessions in 1 second's worth of flare. 🧮👀🕶

⌛️5,760 million years. ⏳🦖 🦕

🔆Hmm might need good suntan lotion? 😎

⚖️Or, with a planetary population of nearly 8,000 million, everyone could get 263 sessions, for that 1 second of Solar flare.⚖️

If the Solar flare lasts 2 seconds or 2minutes, or...

Coronal Mass Ejections, CME's

Larger eruptions of energy from the Sun are called Coronal Mass Ejections., or Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections. The subtleties and distinctions between these are still not well known, and are characterised by their style of behaviour in relation to times taken. Solar flares are explained as high energy bursts of light and other radiations that reach Earth, at the speed of light, in 8 minutes, and longer for the other radiations, whereas CME's are eruptions of Solar material and these take 2 days to reach Earth, for the ones that travel in our direction. CME's can and do interact hugely with our magnetosphere. They can significantly affect communications and also power equipment, if melting large power transformers counts as significant, that is.

On 1st September 1859 what was described at the time as a solar flare, was the first and largest CME ever recorded. It was named the Carrington flare after a pioneer observer, Richard Carrington. It was so powerful that apart from vividly coloured skies around the planet, telegraph equipment and cables were affected such that a fires were reported when sparks jumped from wire terminal equipment to recording paper and telegraph operators received shocks from their equipment. Consider; that was in the days when telegraphy was still in its relative infancy. Jump a century and a half, and, now what playthings did humans have in their kindergarten? In 1989 a CME caused power transformer equipment in New Jersey to melt through shorting and a massive power outage in Quebec . These resulted from the effects of Geomagnetically Induced Currents, GIC's. The ability to "reach ground" on a massive scale was hindered by the geological make up of the tectonic plate. The scales of interaction here were immense, at planet level, and humankind's concerns are small in comparison.

If a sufficiently significant solar event happens nowadays, only 3 decades later, there is now a mass of communications and transmissions equipment to safeguard. From the lighting in a room, everything plugged into a socket, to aircraft, ships, hospitals, and phones, you can imagine what equipment you have that works under the magic of electricity. If you depend on something electrical it may get directly fried or whatever communicates with it may go down.

Bigger Yet, Gamma Ray Bursts

Snap, Crackle and Pop

Gamma Ray Bursts, GRBs, are massive explosions of energy throughout the whole Universe. That energy, the Gamma Ray, is composed of photons and these are often described as packets of energy. GRBs are classed into two groups, Long and Short Gamma Ray Bursts, using 2 seconds as the dividing standard. They are events that range from milliseconds to usually less than 10 minutes, but as long as several hours, as far as is known. Long GRBs account for two thirds of GRBs. Short GRBs average a third of a second, and long GRBs average 50 seconds, roughly. The events of which they are a part last longer and other radiation is also emitted. GRBs can appear as rays or beams: the overall distribution of the photons emitted is similar in shape to the beam of a torchlight, albeit a very big torch.

GRBs can flare, that is they can show up as a burst and then have continuing activity with major emission of gamma ray and other wavelengths energy. The vibrational directions of the photons change with time and resembles a spiralling outwards of energy.

GRBs seem to happen in several ways. One of these is when stars that are several times, say five times, larger than the Sun die. GRBs are also linked with Black Holes and Kilonovae. GRBs are associated with the production of gravitational waves. They are the biggest and brightest events, akin to heartbeats, of the Universe.

How often GRBs happen and how they can happen, their behaviour and what is going on when they happen are all fabulously intriguing things. We can only detect some of them, when, and from a very far distance and time way back, they come in our direction.

GRBs have other characteristics and the intrigued reader could be well rewarded by delving into the references below. Suggestions for more references are very welcome.

An animation below displays how after initially bursting out, a reflected shockwave of energy bouncing back off debris in the path of the burst can complicate the dynamics of the burst in a most fascinating way,

Nasa

https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/bursts1.html#

Nasa - Hubble

https://hubblesite.org/contents/articles/gamma-ray-bursts

Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing

https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/G/gamma+ray+burst+types

Space magazine

https://www.space.com/gamma-ray-burst.html

University of Leicester

https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/physics/research/xroa/astrophysics-1/gamma-ray-bursts-research-summary

Frail and Co

https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0102282

https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0102282.pdf

Video animation of radio data of energy bouncing off debris encountered by a GRB, GRB 161219B.

https://astronomynow.com/2018/07/27/radio-rebound-observed-in-aftermath-of-gamma-ray-burst/

https://vimeo.com/281629644

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zRwT7aZuF8&ab_channel=TheNationalRadioAstronomyObservatoryNRAO

GRB Wikipedia

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Gamma-ray_burst

Kilonova Wikipedia

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kilonova

Black Hole Wikipedia

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Black_hole

Supernova

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Type_Ia_supernova

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kepler%27s_Supernova

Notes on Units;-

1 Joule = 1E+7 Ergs.

Teraelectronvolt = 1.60218 Ergs.

Wavelengths

The ranges of wavelength and frequency detected around us cover all the effects and properties of matter, and, of which we are part.

From the Gamma rays of nuclear power, via X-rays, Ultra-violet, the Visible Spectra, Infra-red and beyond Radio waves to whatever energy we are able to detect, there is a very direct relationship that we have with the Sun, life. The wavelengths that popularly concern us are those centred on the portion of the spectrum visible to humans and affecting plant life. Here is where an imaged representation of wavelengths is very useful. Otherwise it is hard to imagine what the significance might be of sensory capability between 480 and 580 nanometres.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Visible_spectrum

Aerial Transmission

The transmission of power through space, and also vacuum, atmosphere or water is of considerable interest. It would save on lots of messy cabling. At present, there is very small scale charging of small, battery powered devices at close range to a nearby separated base unit.

Research into larger scale transmission is ongoing. An important point is that this energy has quietly passed from science fiction to science fact.

The Observer

Is Being Human Not Enough?

If we are being baked by energies that we cannot see, it could be asked;- "What importance does human vision have?". It is by the "seeing" done by the human visual system that a lot of discovery and learning has been done in the past. We can phenomenally extend vision in many ways using different sensors and imaging their outputs. But, even though we now use machines and their sensors to see in frequency or wavelength ranges outside of our own, there is still a strong element of human guidance. We are not fully automated in the world of sensing what occurs around us. What is bright and observable to a machine, may not be anything like the same for a human and vice versa. It is important to know what is happening around us especially as many emanations happen over a large range of energies, frequencies and wavelengths. A tsunami for instance is something that is felt, heard and seen. It is vitally important to have skills and information transfer here from the machine world to the humans who could be affected. This is and can be done by many forms of sensing. Basically, machines and us see in different ways and so may respond differently to the intensity measured of a given event. The amounts, levels or importances of an event could be registered fundamentally differently in regards as to what we would consider imperative to know. It is therefore important to be able to translate between the levels that are measured of an event or emanation. This translation is not a clear and obvious thing.

Call That Bright ?

Brightness indicates how intense and so how big and how far away something is. Brightness can be emanated or reflected, basically that is it. Light itself can be refracted, dispersed, diminished, attenuated, amplified, modulated and a host of many other complications. But with light coming out of space, it is predominately the light that is seen first and not the actual form of the body or source producing that light or other radiations. A change in brightness indicates that some process is happening or has already happened and also what, how and where it is moving. When we acquire data, evidence and knowledge, we can infer why an event occurs and hope to predict what might happen next. So brightness might well be an important thing to know about.

What we see as being "very bright" does not have a number. Neither does "very, very, very bright", but if it did have a number, it would surely be a bigger one. Perhaps it would be useful to have some numbers to relate what might be important?

How bright something appears to an observer depends on several factors. It depends upon the display context of the items being observed, for example, their surrounds, their lighting conditions and how they are being observed, at rest or, dynamically, on the move. It also depends upon the viewer's retinae in the case of a human and on the sensing array in the case of a machine. The measurement units used are often Lumens.

Lumens

Lumens relate to how well green light is absorbed and sensed by humans. We have evolved such that green is a very important colour. It is numerically described in the electromagnetic spectrum over a range of wavelengths or of frequencies. There is also debate whether humans see in terms of wavelength or frequency and there are differences that matter in this respect. For the now we note here that the "human eye" responds "best" or "most" to green light in the 500 to 550 nanometre range. Our sensors are internally tuned to respond well to an average wavelength that corresponds via evolution to an external average green, the greenery of the world outside. We have to be able to see in the jungle, not just that there is a jungle, but what is going on inside it, where invisibility can be dangerous.

In dark viewing conditions, aka "low light", also called scotopic conditions, that is when looking at light emanating or reflecting from something on its own, and, all else is dark and there are no other bright lights nearby, the brightness of a green item will be up to 3 times greater than when that same object is viewed in a light background or with greater profusion of other lights around, which is also called photopic conditions. Human vision is a multipurpose, multi-tasking system and there are many contributing reasons why this extra phenomenon exists, but let us note that this so and save those "Whys" for later.

Just how a human eye responds to the visible spectrum has been mapped to give a representation known as the luminosity function. With a stellar event there is radiation of many kinds, not all of which, perhaps even very little of which, is humanly observable. In terms of power, how much energy is moving, the amount of radiation that is humanly observable is called the luminous flux and the total amount of all radiation is the radiant flux. The luminous efficacy is the relative amount of the humanly observable to the total amount. It is a ratio, a number and it has no units of measurement.

The lumen, lm, is a standardised item. One lumen relates 1/683 W at 540 THz and a wavelength of 555.016 nm. The peak of the luminosity curve is 555nm. The curve is a concept arrived at by averaging responses, it is not an exact and magical thing, but we do refer to the numbers it relates. So 1 lm is the response of "a" human eye when energy at a frequency of 550-ish nm radiates at a power level of 1/683 Joules per second. The human eye responses to all the other frequencies around that are calibrated in relation to calling the perception of the effect of the response to 1/683W at 550.016 nm as being a size of 1. So the brightnesses of different observed colours can be compared and the amounts of energy to which they relate can be estimated. This way of comparing perceptions is firmly in the land of subjective experience, but it is primal and we instinctively and intuitively respond well to such a way of measuring.

Not Lumens :

Aggregating, Feedback and Refining of Data to Create an Image

Other intensities are all eventually and fundamentally related to the energy associated with whatever has produced an emanation. Some can be directly measured, some must be inferred, that is must be indirectly ascribed a value. This is done by comparison. There are many kinds of energy sensor and the comparative rating and amalgamation of data from small separate sections of the electromagnetic spectrum is itself an evolving science.

Energy estimates can be refined as sensors are improved and also as observations from the past are collated and compared. It is not always a restriction that earlier sensors were less accurate, because either what has been observed has a form and it is the form taken by the energy process that is informative, or because it can be reasonable to infer what previous data would have been by retrospective corrections. The refining of estimates of size, age and distance from Earth of the Veil Loop in the Cygnus Constellation, also known as the Cygnus Loop is a good example. It displays how historic data can be compared with incoming data to get new insights and is worth the reader's time to examine independently. Many different satellites and sensors have been used and their archives are usually freely available on the internet.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Luminous_efficacy

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Luminous_efficiency_function

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Lumen_(unit)

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Candela

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Radiant_intensity

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Radiant_flux

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Photon_energy

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Visible_spectrum

The Cygnus Loop

An eastern section of the Cygnus Loop, the blast wave of a supernova in the Cygnus constellation with the movement inferred by comparing two Hubble Telescope photographs 4 years apart of luminescence as the wave travels through material at 5 Million Km per hour from an explosion that took place between 5000 to 15000 years ago and far, far away in our galaxy . The blast wave and the other motions are not simple unitary entities. There is a roiling and counter blasts of star cloud material. The material travelled through may be interstellar gas, interstellar solids and material from the collapsed star.

Here the speed and size of the blast wave, the age of the event and the distance from Earth are all data that are still being refined, so that those quoted above are only valid as guesstimates.

Data has been combined from various cameras, sensor arrays, viewing or filtering various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum and continues to improve our picture, understanding and conception of any implications this solar event may have for us.

Movement can be inferred by sensing ultra violet light. That requires being able to see outside of Earth and was done for example by the now de-commissioned GALEX satellite. Some of the emanations used to see the Cygnus Loop are also in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, but it has taken radio, infrared, and X-ray images to build a fuller picture of its shape and form.

https://www.astrobin.com/4kxgvn/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia15415-cygnus-loop-nebula

https://esahubble.org/images/heic0006b/

https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/hst

https://hubblesite.org/resource-gallery/learning-resources/hubble-heritage

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_688.html

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cygnus_Loop

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/GALEX

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hubble_Space_Telescope

https://www.stsci.edu/hst/instrumentation/legacy/wfpc2

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wide_Field_Camera_3

Energy Distribution in the Universe

Big Bang or No Big Bang in an Empty Forest ?

How much energy there is in the Universe and where it is all going are hotly debated topics. It is useful to know about them so that we can see where we fit in the universal scheme of things. An informal approach is to compare the situations where we are examining energy by going "big to small" and then back again. Measure what we can and then make some suggestions. The Universe has Galaxies, Galaxies have Solar Systems, Solar Systems have planets. There is also all the stuff, negative-stuff and energies in between. There are considerations such as;- what is Dark Matter, what are Anti-Particles, what is Anti-Matter, where does the Universe end, what dimension and shape does it have, when did time begin, how does gravity relate, and as many other fundamentally important questions as we can develop intellect to ask. Here we are not, yet, going that far. We are just making some small notes.

What follows is a very informal description, open to correction and completions. One problem in representing the physical world is how much detail is it really necessary to bring in. What contexts and ranges of measurements are relevant? When is it necessary to refer to what may seem to be minutiae but are fundamental. Does a gravity or magnetism or electrical data point have to be included if, for example, we are examining thermal energy in terms of frequency and wavelength? What have we assumed or missed out?

Start with Sol

Our sun, Sol, is in our Galaxy, the Milky Way. What can we do with this contextual setting? Firstly, a concept, the Black-Body is used as a thinking tool or reference. This requirement of a tool, and its definitional setting, is then used to suggest a model, Black-Body Radiation. That model, B-BR, we shall use a way of observing and measuring energy. It is a far from complete school of thought.

Black-body

A black-body is the idea that some imagined body can absorb and also transmit all the energy coming its way and also do that equally well for all kinds of radiation, energy, wavelength, frequency, no matter how much or how it arrives. Put another way, it isotropically absorbs all electromagnetic energy regardless of details of incidence or type. If next, the body is in some state of equilibrium, not heating up, then it is proposed to also be transmitting out as much energy as is coming in. This contradiction is rarely pointed out, it is just an instance of proposing that "if it could be so, what else might be possible". The equilibrium is in the sense that with regard to time, there will be little change from one instant to the next, although over time that may not be so at all. This transmission is also suggested to be being done isotropically, the same in all directions, but now, also with an effectively uniform distribution of types of radiation as regards the ability to be able to transmit a specific radiation, not how much of each type there is. No particular type of radiation predominates.

Black-body Radiation

Black-body Radiation is a heat model, aka thermodynamic model, of how energy radiates from objects. It is concerned with thermal energy. Here we don't consider too closely how or why the black-body is radiating, we just propose that it is and ignore that surely it is no longer a black-body. Energy, described in terms of photons, is emitted. Some photons are in the form of light. The attributes of that light and other radiations are indicative of the amount of the energy, the rate at which the energy is being emitted and also the history of the whole process. Orange means warm, white means hot. Hot means a lot of energy in one place.

Does the model matter?

How closely the behaviour of something resembles those of the idealised black-body displaying black-body radiation indicates how strong and important are the model's assumptions in the real thing being observed.

In astrophysics, the model is used as a tally, an idealised reference against data from star locations to infer what other processes are happening or might have happened. If data points are clustered away from the "ideal line", then something extra must be going on.

Bright light generally means that something is hot. Water therefore does not resemble a black-body very much, because to the casual observer hot water and cold water look very much the same, to a first approximation. That is, with typical vision and over the range 0 to 100 degrees Centigrade, C. An orange also does not resemble a black-body. A piece of iron is a lot more similar. Over a temperature range of 0 to 1000 degrees C, it changes colour and stays in the same overall form and place. Over the next 1000 degrees, the changes are more dramatic. By 1500 degrees C it has gone from a solid piece glowing very brightly and white to being a very hot white puddle. If the iron were heated up in space, the puddle could take the shape of a ball and resemble a mini-sun. Rocks also glow when hot, as with lava.

How important is it to be like a black-body? If the idea only applies to 20% of what exists, does it matter? Most of the matter in the Universe that we can see is solid stuff and overall it behaves roughly like a black-body. It is estimated that Dark matter, the stuff we can't see makes up 70% to 85% of what there is, depending on who has been doing the counting. We are part of that 1/5 of stuff we can see, so it is relevant to us. Also, if resembling a black-body is rated on a scale of 1 = a black-body to 0 = nothing like a black-body, it has been suggested that humans are about 0.9.

Scale of operation

The ranges of energy and temperature involved are large. Boiling of water is over a range of 100 deg C, the decimal exponent is 2, that is 1E+2 or 10^2 or 3 decimal positions to do the measuring. Boiling of metal 1,500 deg C is over 4 decimal positions. Vapourising a city is also at 4000 deg C only over 4 positions. Our sun is estimated to be at 15M deg C, that is 8 positions. An atomic bomb, or thermonuclear explosion if you prefer, is estimated to require 9 decimal positions, being on the order of 100,000,000 deg C. These temperatures refer to localised matter. So that the amounts involved are also relevant. The mass of the Sun is about 1.99 E+30 kg, an atomic device is about 2 E+3 kg, a hot glowing piece of metal, a spark, can weigh on the order of grams, so 1E-3 kg. The duration of each of these is also very different so that their overall amounts of energy also vary hugely. Arching over all of these situations, the model of black-body radiation seems to hold well and when it doesn't seem to, it is interesting. As with all things, the higher the detail of specification that can be examined, the more new details and departures from short rules there are to be found.

A series of curves have been plotted on the graph of energy with respect to notional energy levels, e.g. 3000 deg K, 4000 deg K, 6000 deg K. These plots indicate the relative amounts of energy associated at neighbouring wavelengths. The peaks of each plot occur a different wavelengths. By observing the wavelength distribution, that is the relative amounts, of a source or event, a comparison of the observed peak to the model allows a guess to be made of the overall energy of the event observed.

Scientific E Notation

1,234,567.89 = 1.234 × 106 in scientific notation, and = 1.234 E+6 in scientific e notation.

If you require fuller precision, you have to make more space for more numbers.

If you require an approximation, shorten to one number place at the limit, here it is the size of the exponent that emphasises the amount.

Spectral Energy Distribution

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Spectral_energy_distribution

http://coolwiki.ipac.caltech.edu/index.php/SED_plots_introduction

Spectral Power Distribution

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Spectral_power_distribution

Spectral Flux Density

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Spectral_flux_density

Solar System