Sunday 19 January 2014

Eclipse



When three celestial objects become aligned, an eclipse is said to occur. The many eclipse events known to astronomers are of two different types. In the first, the eclipsing body comes between an observer and the eclipsed object. The eclipsed object appears to the observer to be totally or partially covered by the eclipsing object. Eclipses of the second type affect only planets or natural satellites. In this case, the eclipsing body comes between the sun and the eclipsed object. The eclipsed object remains in view of the observer, but the sun's light no longer shines on any of it or part of it, and it becomes darkened by entering into the shadow of the eclipsing object. Examples of this kind of eclipse event are eclipses of the moon and eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter.
Solar and lunar eclipses have long been of interest because they are easily seen without a telescope and offer an impressive spectacle. Primitive peoples were struck with fear by the falling darkness during a total solar eclipse or by the strange sight of the eclipsed moon. Accounts of such eclipses are found among the oldest records of history

Solar Eclipses

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon, revolving in its orbit around the Earth, moves across the disk of the sun so that the moon's shadow sweeps over the face of the Earth. No sunlight penetrates the inner part of the shadow, or umbra. To observers on the Earth within the umbra, the disk of the sun appears completely covered by that of the moon. Such a solar eclipse is said to be total. Because the umbra is narrow at its intersection with the Earth, a total eclipse can be observed only within a very narrow area called the zone of totality. Because of the relative motion of the Earth and moon, the shadow moves rapidly over the Earth's surface. A total solar eclipse thus lasts only a short time—less than eight minutes at any one place on Earth. To observers located within the outer part of the moon's shadow, or penumbra, the disk of the moon appears to overlap the sun's disk in part. This event is called a partial solar eclipse.Because the Earth revolves around the sun in an elliptical orbit, the distance between Earth and sun changes slightly during the course of a year. Similarly, the apparent size of the lunar disk changes to some degree during a month because of the elliptical shape of the moon's orbit. If a solar eclipse occurs when the sun is closest to the Earth and the moon is farthest away, the moon does not completely cover the sun; the rim of the sun is visible around the edge, or limb, of the moon. This type of solar eclipse is known as an annular eclipse. Eclipses of the sun occur two to four times a year. In rare instances more may occur, as in 1935, when five solar eclipses took place.
Total solar eclipses have helped scientists obtain much knowledge about the nature of the sun's chromosphere and corona, the thin external layers of the sun that are usually lost in the brilliant glare from the shining solar surface, or photosphere. During a total solar eclipse the moon acts as a screen outside the Earth's atmosphere, cutting off the direct rays from the photosphere. The brilliance of the sky is decreased greatly, and the fainter parts of the sun become visible. Scientists no longer need to wait for eclipses to occur naturally in order to study the sun. They can use an instrument called a coronagraph to block the photosphere artificially, making it possible for them to conduct studies of the solar chromosphere and corona.

Lunar Eclipses

When the moon travels through the shadow of the Earth and loses its bright illumination by the sun, a lunar eclipse takes place. It can occur only at the time of the full moon—that is, when the moon is directly opposite the sun—because the Earth's shadow is directed away from the sun. A lunar eclipse can be seen from any place on the Earth where the moon is above the horizon. Such an eclipse can be total, partial, or penumbral, depending on the moon's position. If the moon passes through the center of the Earth's umbra, a total lunar eclipse occurs. Totality may extend up to 100 minutes, with the entire eclipse lasting about 31/2 hours. A partial lunar eclipse is observable when only a part of the moon passes through the umbra. The penumbral type occurs when the moon moves only through the outer part of the shadow, dimming its own illumination only slightly. Lunar eclipses generally occur twice a year. In some years, however, there may be none or as many as three.

Other Types of Eclipses

From the Earth, the moon appears against a background of distant stars. As the moon moves eastward across the constellations, it occasionally passes in front of a star or a planet, causing an occultation. Accurately timed observations of occultations are used to study the orbital motion of the moon. Measurements of the time required for a star to disappear also provide information about the diameters of the stars.
The two planets Mercury and Venus, which are closer to the sun than is the Earth, occasionally pass between the Earth and the sun. At such a time either of these planets appears as a small, dark, circular disk projected on the brilliant disk of the sun, crossing it slowly as the planet makes a transit.
Eclipsing binaries are double-star systems consisting of two stellar bodies that revolve around one another. One star passes periodically in front of or behind the other as seen from the Earth, and two eclipses take place during each revolution. From the way in which the light from the binary system varies, it is possible to calculate the orbit and relative sizes of the two bodies
 

Light


One of the most familiar and important forms of energy is light. Nothing is visible to humans when light is totally absent. But light is even more important for other reasons. Many scientists believe that millions of years ago light from the sun triggered the chemical reactions that led to the development of life on Earth. Without light the living things now on Earth would be unable to survive. Light from the sun provides energy for life on Earth. Plants change the energy of sunlight into food energy. When light rays strike a green plant, some of their energy is changed to chemical energy, which the plant uses to make food out of air and minerals. This process is called photosynthesis. Very nearly all living organisms on Earth depend directly or indirectly on photosynthesis for their food energy.
Some of the energy of sunlight is absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere or by the Earth itself. Much of this energy is then changed to heat energy, which helps warm the Earth, keeping it in the temperature range that living things have adapted to.

LIGHT AND ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION

Different kinds of light are visible to different species. Humans see light in what is called the visible range. It includes all the colors beginning with red and continuing through orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet . Some people can see farther into the violet region or the red region than other people. Some animals have a different sensory range. Pit vipers, for example, have sense organs (pits) that “see” rays that humans feel as heat. These rays are called infrared radiation. Bees, on the other hand, not only see some of the colors that humans see but are also sensitive to ultraviolet radiation, which is beyond the range visible to humans. So, though human eyes cannot detect them, infrared rays and ultraviolet rays are related to visible light. Instruments have been built that can detect and photograph objects by means of infrared rays or ultraviolet rays. X rays, which can also be used to photograph objects, are also related to light.

Scientists have learned that all these forms of energy and many other kinds of energy, such as radio waves, microwaves, and gamma rays, have the same structure. They all consist of electrical and magnetic fields that work together in a special way to form electromagnetic radiation.

SOURCES OF LIGHT

Unlike many other animals, humans depend primarily on sight to learn about the world around them. During the day early peoples could see by the light that came from the sun; but night brought darkness and danger. One of the most important steps people have taken to control their environment occurred when they learned to conquer the dark by controlling fire—a source of light.
Torches, candles, and oil lamps are all sources of light. They depend on a chemical reaction—burning—to release the energy we see as light. Plants and animals that glow in the dark—glowworms, fireflies, and some mushrooms—change the chemical energy stored in their tissues to light energy. Such creatures are called bioluminescent. Electric-light bulbs and neon lights change electrical energy, which may be produced by chemical, mechanical, or atomic energy, into light energy.
Light sources are necessary for vision. An object can be seen only if light travels from the object to an eye that can sense it. When the object is itself a light source, it is called luminous. Electric lights are luminous. The sun is a luminous object because it is a source of light. An object that is not itself a source of light must be illuminated by a luminous object before it can be seen. The moon is illuminated by the sun. It is visible only where the sun's rays hit it and bounce off toward Earth—or to an observer in a spacecraft.
In a completely dark room, nothing is visible. When a flashlight is turned on, its bulb and objects in its beam become visible. If a bright overhead bulb is switched on, its light can bounce off the walls, ceiling, floor, and furniture, making them and other objects in its path visible.
Heating some things causes them to give off visible light rays as well as invisible heat rays. This is the case for electric-light filaments, red-hot burners on electric stoves, and glowing coals. The light of such objects is incandescent. Other light sources emit light energy but no heat energy. They are known as luminescent, or cold light, sources. Neon and fluorescent lights are luminescent.

MEASURING LIGHT

The clarity with which an object can be seen depends in part on the amount of light that falls on it, on how well it is illuminated. The amount of light that a light source gives off (called its intensity) is one factor in determining how well a surface will be illuminated by it. Other factors are the slant of the illuminated surface in relation to the light source and the distance between the surface and the source. As a light beam travels outward from most light sources—the exceptions include lasers and searchlights—the beam spreads to cover a larger area. Distance greatly weakens illumination from such sources. The same amount of light will cover a larger area if the surface it reaches is moved farther away. This results in weaker illumination, following the inverse-square law. If the distance from the source is doubled, the amount of light falling on a given area is reduced to one fourth—the inverse of two squared. If the distance is tripled, the area receives only one ninth of the original illumination—the inverse of three squared.
One way of varying the amount of illumination on a surface is to vary the intensity of the light source. Intensity is measured in candles (or candelas in the international system). A candle used to be the amount of light given off by a carefully constructed wax candle. It is now more precisely defined as one sixtieth of the light intensity of one square centimeter of a perfectly black object at the freezing point of platinum (2,046 K, or 3,223.4° F). Photometers are devices that are used to measure the intensity of light sources.
People are often more interested in measuring the illumination of a surface—a desk top or the floor and walls of a room—than in measuring the light that leaves the light fixture. When distance is measured in feet, the illumination of a surface is measured in footcandles. At a distance of one foot the illumination provided by a light source of 100 candles is 100 footcandles. Under the inverse-square law, the same source gives one fourth as much illumination, or 25 footcandles, at a distance of two feet.
Another measurement that scientists find useful is the total amount of light energy that a source gives off over a certain period of time. This amount of light energy is called the luminous flux of a source and is measured in lumens. An ideal one-candle source gives off 4 π lumens. One footcandle is equal to one lumen per square foot.

LIGHT AND MATTER

The way substances look depends greatly on what happens when light hits them. It is possible to see through transparent substances more or less clearly because light can pass through them without being scattered or stopped. Light that bounces off the objects behind a transparent substance can pass right through it almost as if it were not in the way. Clear window glass and clean water are transparent.
Only the surfaces of opaque substances are visible. Light cannot pass through them, and it is not possible to see through them. Opaque substances either absorb or reflect light. The light energy they absorb usually turns into heat and raises their temperature. Mercury, steel, and wood are examples of opaque substances.
Translucent substances permit some light to pass through them, but the light is scattered, and the images of objects behind them are not retained. Usually, if translucent substances are made thinner they become transparent; if they are made thicker they become opaque. Frosted light bulbs, waxed paper, and some kinds of curtain materials are translucent.

Reflection

Reflection occurs when a light ray hits a surface and bounces off. The angle at which the ray hits the surface is equal to the angle at which it bounces off. If the surface is made very flat and smooth by polishing, all the light rays bounce off in the same direction. This type of reflection is called regular, specular, or mirror reflection. A mirror surface forms an image of things that reflect light onto it. This occurs because the light rays maintain the same pattern, except reversed from left to right, that they possessed before being reflected. Mirrors are usually made of smooth glass with a thin layer of a shiny metal such as silver bonded to the rear side
When an opaque surface is rough, even on the microscopic level, the light rays that hit it are scattered, causing the surface itself to become visible. This is diffuse, or irregular, reflection. If a piece of raw steel with a rough opaque surface is polished smooth and flat, it reflects light rays regularly and takes on the qualities of a mirror.

Refraction and Dispersion

Light travels in a straight line as it passes through a transparent substance. But when it moves from one transparent material to another of different density—for example, from air to water or from glass to air—it bends at the interface (where the two surfaces meet). This bending is called refraction. The amount, or degree, of refraction is related to the difference between the speeds of light in the two materials of different densities—the greater the difference in densities, the more the speed changes, and the greater the bend. A slanting object partly out of water displays refraction. The object appears to bend at the interface of the air and water. Lenses refract light. Those that have concave, or hollowed-out, surfaces spread light rays apart. Those that have convex, or bulging, surfaces bring light rays closer together.
For centuries before the 1600s, scientists had known that when a ray of white light shines on a prism, a broad band containing several colors emerges. Some thought that the colors were caused by variations in lightness and darkness. But in 1672 Isaac Newton published the results of his experiments with light. He showed that a second prism placed in the path of a beam of one color could not add more color to the beam. It did, however, spread the beam farther apart. Newton concluded that the first prism broke white light down into its separate parts by spreading them apart, and he was able to establish that white light is not a pure color but a combination of all the colors in the spectrum.
A prism spreads white light into the spectrum because each color has a slightly different speed within the prism, so each color bends (refracts) a slightly different amount as it enters and again as it leaves the prism. Violet light slows up the most, so it is bent the most; red light slows up the least, so it is bent the least. This spreading apart of white light into a spectrum is called dispersion.
Physicists often define dispersion as the fact that different colors move at different speeds within a substance, not necessarily causing a spectrum. For example, when white light enters a glass block that has parallel faces, the colors all have different speeds and bend different amounts as they travel through the glass. This is also dispersion. But the colors all bend back to form white light as they leave the second parallel face, so separate colors are not observed.
Opaque materials absorb all the colors of white light except their own, which they reflect. A piece of pure red material absorbs orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet but reflects red. Transparent colored materials absorb all colors except their own, which they both transmit and reflect. A piece of pure blue cellophane absorbs red, orange, yellow, green, and violet but transmits blue (it looks blue on the side opposite the light source) and reflects blue (it looks blue on the same side as the light source).

MEASURING THE SPEED OF LIGHT

Light can travel through a vacuum. Stars are easily visible on clear nights, though their light must travel for years through empty space before it reaches Earth. A laboratory experiment demonstrates that light can travel through a vacuum. When air is pumped out of a glass vacuum chamber that contains a ringing bell, the bell remains visible while the sound fades away. The vacuum cannot transmit sound waves, but the light rays continue to pass through it.
It is much easier to describe the interaction of light with matter than to explain what light is. One reason for this is that light cannot be seen until it interacts with matter—a beam of light is invisible unless it strikes an eye or unless there are particles that reflect parts of the beam to an eye. Also, light travels very fast—so fast that for centuries men disputed whether it required any time for light to move from one point to another.
Galileo suggested one of the first experiments to measure the speed of light, and Italian scientists carried out his idea. Two men were stationed on two hilltops. Each had a shaded lantern. The first man was to uncover his lantern. As soon as the second man saw the light, he was to uncover his lantern. The scientists tried to measure the time that elapsed between the moment the first lantern was uncovered and the moment a return beam was detected. The speed of light was much too fast to be measured in this way, and the scientists therefore concluded that light might well travel instantaneously.
Olaus Roemer, a Danish astronomer, was dealing with a different problem when he came across the first workable method for measuring the speed of light. He was timing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons and noticed that the time between eclipses varied by several minutes. As the Earth approached Jupiter, the time between eclipses grew shorter. As the Earth receded from Jupiter, the time between eclipses grew longer. In 1676 Roemer proposed that these discrepancies be used to calculate the time required for light to travel the diameter of the Earth's orbit. Since the exact size of the Earth's orbit was not yet known, and since Jupiter's irregular surface caused errors in timing the eclipses, he did not arrive at an accurate value for the speed of light. But he had demonstrated that light took time to travel and that its speed was too quick to measure on Earth with the instruments then available.
In 1849 Armand Fizeau, a French physicist, devised a way to measure the speed of light on Earth instead of relying on uncertain astronomical measurements. His experimental apparatus included a beam of light that was sent through a notch in a rotating disk, was reflected from a mirror, and returned to the disk. The disk had 720 notches. When the returning light passed through a notch, an observer could detect it; if it hit between notches, the light was eclipsed. The distance light would travel (from the open notch to the mirror and back to the point where a tooth could eclipse the light) was measured. Fizeau timed the eclipses and observed the rotational speed of the disk at the time of the eclipses. With this information he calculated that the speed of light in air was 194,000 miles per second. Later investigators refined this method. Jean Foucault replaced the disk with rotating mirrors and arrived at a value of 186,000 miles per second.
One of the most surprising and confusing facts about light was discovered by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley. They measured the speed of light very accurately as it traveled both in the same direction as the Earth's movement and in the direction opposite to the Earth's movement. They expected to get slightly different values, believing that the speed of the Earth would be added to or subtracted from the speed of light. The situation, as they saw it, was similar to that of a person looking out the window of a car traveling at 60 miles per hour. If another car going 80 miles per hour overtakes it, the second car then seems to be moving at a speed of 20 miles per hour, or its own speed minus the speed of the car it has passed. If a car going 80 miles per hour approaches a car going 60 miles per hour, it seems to be traveling at 140 miles per hour, or its own speed plus the speed of the car that it is approaching. Light, the two men discovered, does not behave that way. Its speed appears to be the same, no matter what the speed or direction of movement of the observer making the measurement. Albert Einstein developed his theory of relativity to help explain this phenomenon .
The accepted value for the speed of light in a vacuum is 2.997924562 × 108 meters per second (about 186,282 miles per second), a fundamental constant of the universe. According to the theory of relativity, time and distance may change as the speed of an object approaches the speed of light (its length shrinks and any changes it regularly undergoes take longer to occur, relative to a stationary observer), but the measured value for the speed of light is constant.

LIGHT—WAVE OR PARTICLE?

By the 17th century enough was known about the behavior of light for two conflicting theories of its structure to emerge. One theory held that a light ray was made up of a stream of tiny particles. The other regarded light as a wave. Both of these views have been incorporated into the modern theory of light.
Newton thought that light was composed of tiny particles given off by light sources. He believed that the different colors into which white light could be broken up were formed by particles of different sizes. He thought refraction resulted from the stronger attraction of the denser of two substances for the particles of light. Since the attraction was greater, the speed of light in denser mediums should also be greater, according to his theory. A basic piece of evidence supporting the particle view of light is that light travels in straight lines. This can be seen when a small, steady light source shines on a relatively large object. The shadow of the object has sharp borders. Newton felt that if light were a wave, it would curve slightly around obstacles, giving fuzzy-edged shadows. He pointed out that water waves curve as they pass an obstacle (for example, dock pilings) and that sound waves curve over hills and around the corners of buildings. Newton realized, however, that simple variations in the size of particles did not explain all light phenomena. When he tried to understand the shimmering coloration of soap bubbles, he had to introduce the idea that the particles vibrated.
Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch physicist, proposed that light was a wave. He postulated that a substance called the ether (not to be confused with the class of chemicals called ethers) filled the universe. Waves were generated in this substance when light traveled through it. Huygens assumed that light waves were like sound waves—the movement of alternately compressed and rarefied ether. Such waves are called longitudinal waves because the vibration of the wave is parallel to the direction in which it is traveling.

Polarized Light

Neither particle nor wave theory could really explain the polarization of light by certain transparent crystals. Both Newton and Huygens knew that when light was directed through certain crystals, it would emerge much dimmer. If a second crystal of this class were placed at a certain angle in the path of the dimmed light, the light could pass through it. Then, as either of the two crystals was slowly turned, the light emerging from the second crystal grew dimmer until it was completely blocked. Evidently, something in the structure of the first crystal allowed only part of the light to pass. When the second crystal was lined up properly with the first, it allowed the same amount of light to pass; when it was at the wrong angle to the first crystal, it screened out the light from the first crystal.
Newton speculated that polarization occurred because light particles had various shapes on their sides, some of which were rejected by the crystal structure. This was not a very satisfactory explanation. However, Huygens had to make even more complicated assumptions to explain how crystals could polarize longitudinal waves. Neither the wave theory nor the particle theory was sufficiently developed to account for all the observed light phenomena, but the weight of Newton's reputation caused the particle theory to be accepted by most scientists.

Light Bends Around Corners

In the early 19th century Thomas Young, a British physician, took the next step in developing the wave theory. He demonstrated that light waves were so short that the amount they curved as they passed an object was too small to be visible. He showed that, though shadows from point sources of light appear to have sharp edges, there are thin light-and-dark bands along their borders that are caused by the bending of some light rays into the shadow. This scattering of light, called diffraction, can be observed under certain conditions. A thin tubular source, such as a fluorescent light, is good. A very thin slit in an opaque material, or even two fingers squeezed loosely together so that light may pass between them, may cause diffraction. The slit is held a foot or two in front of one eye, parallel to the light source; the other eye is closed. Light shines through the slit, and a pattern of colored bands, or a colored glow, can be seen outlining the slit. The outline is colored because diffraction disperses white light into its separate colors in much the same way that a prism does. Young observed diffraction and concluded that it occurred because light was a wave.
Three important measurements describe a wave—speed, frequency, and wavelength. Frequency is a measure of the number of waves that pass a given point in a specified amount of time. Wavelength is the distance from one crest (the highest point) to the next crest, or from one trough (the lowest point) to the next. If all the waves have the same speed, a great many short waves will pass a point in the same time that only a few long waves pass it. Speed equals the wavelength times the frequency.
Young set up an experiment to measure the wavelength of light; using the principle of interference. When two sets of waves meet, they interfere with each other in a predictable way. Water waves, such as those made by the wakes of two boats, illustrate this. When two wakes meet, the water becomes choppy. Parts of the waves are very high and parts are very low; the individual waves can reinforce each other or cancel each other. Where two crests meet, the wave becomes higher. Where two troughs meet, the wave becomes deeper. And if a crest and a trough meet, they cancel each other and the water is level.
In his interference experiment Young used a single light source, a pinhole that admitted a single beam of sunlight. This beam fell on a screen that had two pinholes close together. As light passed through each pinhole, it curved and spread out (diffracted). Because the pinholes were close enough together, the two light beams met and interfered with each other. Their interference pattern was seen on a screen behind the pinholes. With this pattern and knowing the distance between the screens, Young was able to calculate that the wavelength of visible light was about one millionth of a meter.
Subsequent measurements show that the wavelengths of visible light range from 7.60 × 10–5 centimeters to 3.85 × 10–5 centimeters (2.99 × 10–5 inches to 1.51 × 10–5 inches). Each color is associated with a range of wavelengths. Red has the longest lengths. The wavelengths decrease from orange through yellow, green, blue, and violet.

Transverse Waves Explain Polarization

Young and Augustin Jean Fresnel, a French physicist, cooperated in developing the idea that light waves are transverse, that they resemble the waves made when a rope stretched from a post is jerked up and down rather than longitudinal sound waves. The rope itself moves only up and down, at right angles to the forward travel of the wave. Young and Fresnel suggested the wave motion of light might also be at right angles to the direction in which the wave was traveling. The motion could be in any direction between sideways and up-and-down just so long as it was at right angles to the direction of travel. Wave motion of this kind could explain polarization. If a polarizing crystal admitted only those waves that were vibrating in a certain direction, then a second crystal would block those waves if it were turned at an angle to the first. The second one would be oriented to accept only waves vibrating in a different direction, and the first crystal would have already blocked all those waves. Fresnel made calculations that accounted for all the light behavior he knew of by assuming that light was made up of transverse waves.
Measurements of the speed of light in substances other than air presented additional difficulties for Newton's particle theory of light. The theory had assumed that light travels faster in dense substances than in rarefied substances. Fizeau and Foucault measured the speed of light in various transparent substances and discovered that it was slower in denser materials than in air.

Invisible Light

Around 1800—while Young was developing his wave theory—three scientists discovered that the color spectrum was bordered by invisible rays. Sir William Herschel, a British astronomer, was measuring the temperature of the colors dispersed by a prism. As he moved the thermometer down the spectrum from violet to red, he observed a rise in temperature. As he moved the thermometer beyond the red beam, the temperature grew even higher. Herschel had discovered a hot, invisible radiation that appeared to be a continuation of the spectrum. This radiation is called infrared radiation because it occurs just below red in the spectrum, where there is no visible light.
Ultraviolet rays were discovered by Johann Wilhelm Ritter and by William Hyde Wollaston, who were independently studying the effects of light on silver chloride. Silver chloride placed in violet light grew dark. When the chemical was placed in the area beyond the violet of the spectrum, it darkened even more rapidly. They concluded that a chemically powerful kind of invisible radiation lay beyond the violet end of the spectrum.
In 1864 James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist, published a theory of electricity and magnetism. He had developed equations that predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves caused by electrical disturbances. He calculated the speed of such waves and found it to be the same as the speed of light. Maxwell concluded that light was an electromagnetic wave. As a single light wave travels through space, its movement consists of the growth and collapse of electrical and magnetic fields. The electrical fields are at right angles to the magnetic fields, and both are at right angles to the direction in which the wave is moving.
Maxwell's theory implied that other electromagnetic radiations with wavelengths longer than infrared or shorter than ultraviolet might be found. In 1887 Heinrich Hertz produced radio waves, which have longer wavelengths than infrared rays, thus confirming Maxwell's theory.

LIGHT: WAVE AND PARTICLE

In 1900 the German physicist Max Planck advanced a theory to account for the behavior of blackbodies. A blackbody is an ideal substance with a perfectly black surface that absorbs all the radiation that falls on it and emits radiation in specific ways dependent on temperature. While such an ideal material does not actually exist, some materials resemble it closely enough to provide experimental tests of blackbody theory. The observed behavior is that blackbodies do not emit all wavelengths in equal amounts. Instead, certain wavelengths are emitted more often than others. As the temperature increases, the wavelengths that are emitted preferentially decrease in length. In other words, the wavelength of maximum emission varies inversely with temperature. Planck explained this behavior by suggesting that matter can handle energy only in specific amounts, called quanta, and that amounts of energy between these quanta cannot be absorbed or emitted.
In 1905 Einstein expanded this idea in his explanation of the photoelectric effect. If light falls on certain metals, electrons in those metals are freed and can form an electric current. Einstein was trying to account for the observation that the energy of the electrons is independent of the amount of radiation falling on the metal. The maximum energy of the electrons was observed to depend on the wavelength of the radiation. Einstein suggested that the photoelectric effect could also be accounted for by assuming that electromagnetic energy, including light, always occurs in these bundles. This reintroduced the particle theory. The results of many subsequent experiments supported the idea that light energy travels in quanta. An individual light particle possesses one quantum of energy and is called a photon.
The way matter becomes a light source can be explained in terms of quantum theory. When certain elements are heated, they give off light of a specific color. This light can be separated into a spectrum that is made up of many distinct bright lines. Each element has its unique spectrum, which can be accurately measured. Since a spectrum positively identifies each element, the chemical composition of astronomical bodies is determined by an analysis of their spectra.
Scientists wondered why the atoms of each element, when provided with a wide range of energies by the heating process, give off only the specific energies in their spectra. The modern theory of atomic structure makes this phenomenon understandable. An atom is made up of a heavy, positively charged nucleus which is surrounded by light, negatively charged electrons.
Modern theory states that the electrons of an atom can assume certain fixed energy relationships, called energy levels, to one another and to the nucleus. These energy levels are the same for all the atoms of an element. An electron must occupy one of the energy levels; it cannot possess any energy between levels.
When an atom is heated, enough energy may be given to one of the electrons to raise it to a higher energy level. But it usually jumps back to a lower level, giving off an electromagnetic wave, which is the energy difference of the two levels. When this energy is in the visible light range, it shows up as one of the lines in the element's visible spectrum. Each element has a different spectrum because each element has a different number of electrons and different energy levels available to these electrons.
In the early 20th century atomic theory had not yet explained why both a wave theory and a particle theory were needed to describe light. Physicists used both, depending on which was more useful in a given situation. The paradox was finally resolved in 1924 by Louis de Broglie. He postulated that matter, which had always been treated as a collection of particles, had a wave aspect as well. This wave nature has been demonstrated in experiments with such particles as electrons.

Dead Sea

Between Israel and Jordan lies the Dead Sea, a salt lake located on the lowest point of the Earth's surface. Its basin lies some 1,300 feet (400 meters) below sea level, making it the lowest body of water in the world. The lake is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) long and 11 miles (18 kilometers) wide. Its surface area is about 394 square miles (1,020 square kilometers).
The Dead Sea extends from north to south in a great depression between rocky cliffs. The depression is a rift valley, caused by the Earth's crust having slipped down between two parallel fractures. The valley is a part of the Great Rift Valley, which continues northward through the Jordan River valley and the Sea of Galilee, and southward through the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea and across East Africa.
The Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea from the north, and four smaller streams feed the lake from the east. Many small, intermittent streams also flow into the lake. No rivers flow out of the Dead Sea.
Temperatures at the Dead Sea are very hot in summer and mild in winter. Situated in a desert, the lake seldom receives more than 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of rain a year. Evaporation carries off about the top 55 inches (140 centimeters) of the lake's waters annually. This evaporation often results in a thick mist that hovers over the lake.
Evaporation also helps to concentrate salt and other minerals in the lake. The Dead Sea is the world's saltiest natural lake. Its near-surface waters are more than eight times as saline as the ocean, and the lake's salt concentration increases with depth. The extreme salinity allows human bathers to float easily, but it prevents all living things except bacteria from inhabiting the lake. Several minerals, including salt, potash, bromides, and bitumen, or native asphalt, are commercially extracted from its shores.
The name Dead Sea can be traced back to at least the first century BC. In the Hebrew Bible the lake was variously called the Salt Sea, the Sea of the Plain, and the East Sea. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose destruction is described in the biblical book of Genesis, were located on its shores. The biblical manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls were found on the northwest shore, near the ruins known as Khirbat Qumran