Re: matter

From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pigdog.org)
Date: Tue Sep 23 1997 - 19:17:03 MDT


danny asks:
> Does anyone know where on the spectrum the frequencies of matter
> lie?

I'm guessing about what you mean by "the frequencies of
matter", but the usual frequencies associated with an electron
or a baryon or an atom are very, very high... much higher than
X-ray frequencies, probably higher than gamma ray frequencies.
Another way to put this is that the wavelengths of matter waves
are much, much, much shorter than the wavelengths of visible
light. (This is why electron microscopes are effective at
resolving details much smaller than light microscopes can
resolve.)

But X-rays and gamma rays lie on the electromagnetic spectrum,
the spectrum of photons. Matter waves don't lie on this same
spectrum, so it sounds like you're comparing apples and
oranges. The only thing that saves the comparison is that both
matter wavelengths and photon wavelengths are measured in
meters, and both matter frequencies and photon frequencies are
measured in hertz.

--
Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pigdog.org ++ expectation foils perception -pcd


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