Skeptic Agrees with Climate Change

“”””” Phil. says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:53 am
George E. Smith says:
December 14, 2011 at 1:23 am
an atmosphere equivalent to about 33 feet of water, isn’t a very good black body absorber or emitter, but it still emits thermal radiation when it is above zero Kelvins; and I believe that is what Dave Springer originally said. I agree with him..
Well George I’m afraid you’re both wrong, gases emit only as a result of electronic, vibrational and rotational transitions, all of which are quantized “””””
Well Phil, I’m not comfortable with your being afraid. If you say I am wrong, then of course I am wrong.
But what do I do about all of the references regarding “Thermal Continuum Radiation from Gases”, that popped up immediately on Bing. Well there evidently are even some Astrophysicists Teaching at Cal-Tech, who also have it wrong, and don’t know that gases can only radiate quantized spectra from vibrational and rotational states.
I don’t have a PhD, so I don’t know enough to understand why when electric charges accelerate in monatomic and diatomic gases (except HCL), they still don’t radiate EM radiation, because somehow the molecules know they are gases, and can’t do that. Perhaps I am wrong, in not believing that when charge symmetric atoms or molecules collide with each other they still retain their charge symmetry, despite the fact that the nuclei typically have 3675 (or more) times as much momentum as the electron “cloud” around them, and despite that they decelerate (during a collision) at exactly the same rate as the electrons; and of course all of this despite the fact that to the nucleus, the electron cloud tends to look somewhat like a charged spherical conductor, which by virtue of the Biot-Savart Law, contains no net electric field.
It’s amazing how many ordinary processes of Physics simply go out the window, when somehow an atom or molecule deduces, that it is gaseous, rather than liquid or solid, so therefore it may not radiate a thermal continuum spectrum, like everything else above zero Kelvins does (and must).
But I’ll take your word for it; obviously the former NASA PhD Physicist (and Medical Doctor too), that I discussed this with is also wrong, in believing that gases radiate thermal EM spectra, as a result of collisions.
My last line of investigation will have to be asking a Nobel Physics Laureate about it, next time we are at a party together. He might not know enough, Physics to know the answer; apparently does know something about quarks, if that helps, and he knows a lot about the Stanford Linear Accelerator; for all I know he could have been the designer of it, or had some function in its existence.
I’ll let you know what he says, when I get a chance to ask him.

Check out this analysis of the difference between an atmosphere of non-radiative gas and one with a wee sprinkling of CO2 or H2O:
http://jinancaoblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/physical-analysis-shows-co2-is-coolant.html
The latter radiates more to space. Huda thunk?

“”””” Phil. says:
December 15, 2011 at 4:38 pm
George E. Smith; says:
December 15, 2011 at 2:20 pm
My last line of investigation will have to be asking a Nobel Physics Laureate about it, next time we are at a party together. He might not know enough, Physics to know the answer; apparently does know something about quarks, if that helps, and he knows a lot about the Stanford Linear Accelerator; for all I know he could have been the designer of it, or had some function in its existence.
I’ll let you know what he says, when I get a chance to ask him.
Feel free, although a Nobel Chemistry Laureate might be more useful, the AstroPhysics guys tend to think everything is a star or a dense plasma cloud. 😉 Rowland or Molina have the required backgrounds or Zewail, they are around your neck of the woods I think?
Don’t forget to mention that the pressure is less than 1bar and the temperature is 300K or less.
Season’s greetings. “””””
Thanks for the suggestions Phil, and also for the Seasons’s greetings. It has always puzzled me how a season could have greetings; and today it seems to be more common to say “Happy Holidays.”
I always respond to that by saying I didn’t know it was a holiday; and what holiday they meant.
Maybe the Winter Solstice holiday, or the Druid Witches holiday; perhaps it is Gaiana Day holiday, or maybe Quanset holiday. For us Kiwi folk, it would be summer solstice holiday I suppose.
I grew up thinking it was actually Christmas, so I don’t buy greeting cards, unless they specifically say Christmas on them (and not xmas). Well for our Jewish friends, it is also Chanukah I suppose, although I forget how that all fits together.
Is it ok Phil, if I wish you a Merry Christmas , and a happy new year. I can tolerate the Santa Claus part, but happy holidays is a bit too commercial for me; even an ignoramus non believer like me knows the recorded history of Christmas, and less so of Chanukah.
As to the emission or non emission of a continuum radiation spectrum from gases, at non quantized frequencies; that is well documented; and one can find old photographs of such spectra in Text books, such as Herzberg “Atomic Spectra”. It commonly occurs in the case of a gas atom, that started out as an ion, lacking one (or more) electrons. The ion can capture a free electron, which can have any energy value whatsoever, non quantized, and become a lesser ion or a neutral atom, and subsequently emit a photon which can also have any frequency at all, depending on the energy or the captured electron.
So the energy or frequency of a photon is NOT quantized, in the sense of photons only being allowed to have certain frequencies and energies. It is not like the molecular specral bands that consist of many fine lines, that may broaden ionto bands due to Doppler and other effects; photons of ANY energy (and corresponding frequency) are allowed and common.
Even the Black Body Radiation spectrum is a continuum of all possible frequency values. Planck made no requirement that only certain frequencies are allowed in ther BB spectrum; only that the energy be emitted in finite sized chunks, rather than a smooth continuous stream; but those chunks are allowed any possible size.
Like the earlier Raleigh-Jeans derivation, the emitting “particles” are assumed to have some sort of Maxwell Boltzmann distribution (continuum) of energies; but Planck insisted that the value of that “mean” energy per particle be quantized into h(nu), or hf if you like, chunks. The individual particle energies are NOT discrete quantized values, which is why the BB spectrum goes continuously from zero to infinite frequency (almost).
Unless one believes that Newtonian mechanics (dynamics) and Coulomb’s Law for the force between electric charges; do not apply at atomic dimensions, and at velocities well below relativistic speeds, such as occur in ordinary (say atmosphere like) gases at ordinary Temperatures and pressures (say STP like); then a simple classical Physics model describing the collision (perhaps in cm space) of two neutral atoms; REQUIRES that the electric charge distribution shall become assymmetrical during the collision process. And at ordinary STP conditions, the time of collision between two gas atoms (or moleculaes) is pretty much equivalent to the age of the dinosaurs, in geology. A whole encyclopedia full of interesting physics can and will take place during that interminable time during which two molecules face off against each other.
For starters, in order that an atom or molecule in free flight, exhibit zero electric dipole moment, it is necessary that the “electron cloud” be essentially spherical, or a tleast have an axis of rotational symmetry. The single atom case is easier to see; the elctron cloud must be essentially spherical for the dipole moment to be zero, since the nucleus, is essentially a point at that scale. So there is no net electric field inside the elsectron cloud; per the Biot-
savart Law. Hence the nucleus is unaffected by the surrounding electron cloud.
An approaching second atom, would exhibit no external electric field at dfistances of the order of ten atomic diameters, so the first atom nucleus experience pretty much zero electrostatic Coulomb force. And assuming that the nucleus contains the same number of neutrons, as protons, then the nucleus is at least 3675 (1837 + 1838) times as massive as the entire elctron cloud; so it contains virtually all of the kinetic energy and momentum of the atom.
So the nuclei charge on towards each other largely unaware of each other’s presence; but the electron clouds do see each other, and start to mutually repel and decelerate. The nucleus can move virtually anywhere inside its electron cloud with impunity because of the Biot-Savart effect, and if the electron clouds are mutually decelerating, the atom must distort. In a head on collision, the elctron clouds will eventually reach zero velocity, in cm space, and then start to rebound, and accelerate in the opposite direction. The nucleons will not become aware of each other untill they are much closer, and the inverse square law of the Coulomb repulsion, starts to decelerate them too. At these thermal energies, the nuclei are not going to collide; they too will decelerate to zero velocity (cm), and then reverse direction.
In a general collision; not head on, the two atoms will bounce off each other in unpredictable directions, and with a continuum of energy exchange between them, as a result, but the whole time of the “collision”, the atom is going to be charge assymmetrical; and it WILL have a non zerto electric dipole, and will be singing a song by virtue of Maxwell’s equations for the radfiation from varying electric currents flowing a non zero distance (antenna length).
So Phil, ANY gas atom or molecule can and does obtain a non zero electric dipole moment during the eons that comprise the time of collsion, and can and will radiate (or absorb) EM radiation that is nOT quantized due to the continuum of energy exchanges that take place in collisions..
And you will recall Phil, that collisions are a part and parcel of the concept of Temperature; which is why the Black Body radiation spectrum; which is but a special case of THERMAL radiation, is a cointinuous non quantized spectrum covering all frequencies, and all materials which contain electric charges.
The absence of thermal radiation from neutral gases, is in the company of other “rules of thumb” such as “All electrically conducting materials are optically opaque.” Ergo, Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is either non conducting, or else not transparent; since that would violate the rule of thumb. It doesn’t matter how many flat panel monitor screens are coated in ITO; they cannot be both conductive and transparent; it is not allowed. Also even gold and silver are optically transparent, in thin films where the numbers of atoms present is much lower than with bulk materials. Well isn’t that the situation with gases; they are simply not thick enough to exhibit strong optical absorption (and emission) in common earthly experience; but they certainly can and do at the individual atomic or molecular level.
Yes I do agree most of them don’t exhibit quantized emission spectra from vibration rotation states, that more complex molecules have; but then those are not thermal radiation.
And let’s not forget “Ohm’s Law” ; E = IR , as every electrical engineer or electronic technician knows from his first class. But don’t confuse that with “R = Constant”, which is the Ohm’s Law, that George Simon Ohm discovered. Well poor chap never realized that most electrical conductors don’t obey “Ohm’s Law”; he only studied a few substances, like pure metals; which somewhat obey his law (R = C). E = IR or, R = E/I, is simply the definition of R (electrical resistance); it isn’t “Ohm’s Law.”
Did I say Merry Christmas Phil or Happy Chanukah if you like.
PS my Ex NASA PhD Physicist/ Medical Doc told me, that Quantum mechanics can add nothing to the classical model, I outlined crudely above. Going to the Schroedinger Wave equation, or other, can only yield a statistical picture of the process, and can’t tell you what happens, when two specific atoms collide as I described above. Well of course, even the classical picture is statistical because of the uncedrtainty of any specific collision incident. I’m sorry I can’t tell you who he is; everybody in the world has seen him on television during his NASA years; and I certainly don’t have his permission to use his name. I’m happy to have the opportunity to chat with him occasionally.
I worked for 50 years around PhD Physicists et al, and never encounterd one of them that showed any interest whatsoever in talking about simple physics problems that should be in every elementary physics text book. They truly do learn more and more about less and less.

“”””” Phil. says:
December 17, 2011 at 6:20 pm
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But that tiny distortion of the electron cloud as a result of the collision is not significant when compared with the ~1000 bending vibrations that a CO2 molecule will experience (~20THz) during the average time between collisions. I’m not sure why you don’t consider rovibrational emissions to be thermal since the population of those energy levels are determined by the gas temperature?
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Well isn’t that the situation with gases; they are simply not thick enough to exhibit strong optical absorption (and emission) in common earthly experience; but they certainly can and do at the individual atomic or molecular level.
Really George? Check out NO2 or Iodine. “””””
I clearly don’t write anywhere near enough words, to explain very simple ideas; or else I presume too much of the reader.
Take your statement here Phil: ” I’m not sure why you don’t consider rovibrational emissions to be thermal since the population of those energy levels are determined by the gas temperature? ”
I AGREE with you that the population of states IS a function of Temperature; I actually studied solid state physics with Dr Andrew Grove (later Intel CEO) at Fairchild Semiconductor, 45 years ago.
The problem is Phil that the ENERGIES of those states; and the related absorption or emission LINES are a function of the atomic or molecular structure of the material; they are not set by the Temperature; well at least not first order anyway. They are still “line spectra”, not thermal spectra, where the frequencies are determined by the Temperature, and not by structure. The purely mechanical collision energies of individual atoms or molecules in a gas are strong functions of Temperature, which therefore sets the scale of the collsion interraction times, and the charge accelerations, and hence the (continuous) spectrum of frequencies of the emitted (or absorbed) radiation. In the time domain, the varying electric current flowing (during the collision) is some sort of transient pulse, and a Fourier Transform can give you the resultsnt frequency spectrum, which as a result is strongly Temperature dependent.
Your rotational and vibrational energy levels are not strongly Temperature dependent, although their population may be, which is why such spectra are still line spectra.
Thermal radiation is a continuum containing all frequencies.
“But that tiny distortion of the electron cloud as a result of the collision is not significant when compared with the ~1000 bending vibrations that a CO2 molecule will experience (~20THz) during the average time between collisions. ”
Are you sure about that ? Particularly in the bending mode, the CO2 molecule is a clumsy animal with a lot of moment of inertia. So what is the typical amplitude of the bend vibration; and the resulting velocity and acceleration of the O atom, in center of mass space..
So in the atmospheric case, we will have 2500 times as many other molecules, as there are CO2 molecules. Thats quite a few collisions while the CO2 does it’s knee bends
“”””” Really George? Check out NO2 or Iodine. “””””
Like I said Phil ; “there are no transparent conductors”. So I’ll be careful next time I encounter a cloud of iodine, in case I get lost in it.
I suspect that the time averaged electric dipole moment of an ordinary atmospheric molecule at STP conditions, will be shown to be non zero, long before they determine the electric dipole moment of the Electron. Well just a hunch.