Einstein, Photons and Backradiation

Shortly before his death in 1955 Einstein confessed:

• All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, “What are light quanta?”. Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken. 
  

In 1922 Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics with the following motivation: 

• ROYAL SWEDISH ACADEMY of SCIENCES has at its assembly held on November 9, 1921, an accordance with the stipulation in the will and testament of Alfred Nobel, decided to independent of the value that (after eventual confirmation) may be credited to the relativity and gravitational theory bestow the prize that of 1921 is awarded to the person in the field of physics who has made the most important discovery or invention to Albert Einstein for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
  

The Prize motivation shows that the Nobel Commitee did not believe in Einstein's relativity theory, neither in the photon particles or light quanta used by Einstein in his derivation of the (trivial) law of the photoelectric effect:

• E + P = h nu .

Why did then the Nobel Committee give Einstein the Prize for the discovery of a (trivial) law, 

while rejecting his derivation based on photons or light particles, because they did not believe in reviving Newton's since long abandoned corpuscular theory of light? 

Because Einstein had become a celebrity after Eddington's supposed experimental verification of the general theory of relativity in 1919. The Committee simply had to give Einstein the Prize for something. But to come up with a motivation showed to be very difficult, because there were so many reasons to not give him the Prize, as indicated in the motivation. Finally, someone came up with the brilliant idea of the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. But a law without a convincing derivation is not much of a law to rely on. If you do not believe in the derivation of a law, why should you believe in the law? A physical law is not like native in the woods that you can discover.

Does this matter today? Yes, it does because the supposed "backradiation" underlying the 

supposed "greenhouse effect" is based on the idea that a radiating body is spitting out photon particles, and if there two bodies then they spit at each other, and the one who spits the most wins.

But if there are no photons, as Einstein and the Nobel Committee agreed on, then this description of radiative exchange does not make any sense at all today, as little as in 1921 and 1955.

What can make sense is a wave mechanics description in the spirit of Schrödinger, as explained 

in previous posts on the non-physics of "backradiation", following up the suggestion by Einstein:

• Would it not be possible to replace the hypothesis of light quanta by another assumption that would also fit the known phenomena? If it is necessary to modify the elements of the theory, would it not be possible to retain at least the equations for the propagation of radiation and conceive only the elementary processes of emission and absorption differently than they have been until now?
  

For more info on Einstein's Nobel Prize, check Einstein's Nobel Prize, A Glimpse Behind Closed Doors, by Aant Elzinga. A fresh approach to relativity is presented in Many-Minds Relativity

including perspectives on Einstein's life and work.

I am not the only one to question the physical reality of (virtual) photons as light particles (or mass-less charge-less "carrier of the electromagnetic force" according to the standard model of particle physics) :

• There are no quantum jumps, nor are there any particles. (H.D. Zeh, Physics Letters A 172, 189-192, 1993)

Or check The Myth of the Photon, by Marshall and Santos:

• ...we do assert that, with a certain natural extension of the term “classical”, all of the light fields, including those currently classified as “nonclassical”, which have so far been produced in the laboratory are, in fact, entirely classical; they are adequately described by the unquantized Maxwell equations.
  

Spencer's Backyard Backward Backradiation Experiment

Roy Spencer reports First Results from THE BOX: Investigating the Effects of Infrared Sky Radiation on Air Temperature: A cavity or blackbody at 300 K is opened into radiative contact with a night sky at 290 K and is then seen to cool off towards 290 K but not towards 0 K. 

Spencer seems to view this trivial observation as a sign of "backradiation" from the sky. The argument is that without this "backradiation" the cavity temperature would drop below 290 K towards 0 K.  

But this is an illusion or play with confusing words: What happens is that the cavity reads 

the temperature of the sky through its blackbody spectrum, then compares with its own

temperature and decides to cool off towards the sky temperature, if it happens to be lower,

and warm up if it happens to be higher. This is illustrated in Mathematics of Blackbody Radiation, Without Backradiation in the equation for internal energy (related to temperature T by E ~ T^4) :

• E_t = int (F^2 - RU_tt^2) dx
  

with the integral of local difference (F^2 - RU_tt^2) between incoming and outgoing radiation intensity driving the temperature (and not int F^2 dx  - int RU_tt^2 dx).

The same happens when you open the door to your garden: Your are not struck by any backconvection/conduction from the garden, are you?

You may compare your own salary with that of a more successful competitor and ask for a compensating increase, but you don't compare to somebody with zero salary, because it serves no purpose.

It is remarkable that climate science even among skeptics can be in such a complete state of confusion. Of course, Spencer does not respond to my comments on his experiment. Evidently there is not any "backradiation" here either. 

The confusion is a result of the abdication by physicists from the throne of rational mechanics, 

because the 2nd Law could not be given a correct understandable formulation, only as a deep mystery beyond human comprehension. The abdicated physicists instead flocked into string theory. And string theory physicists have no reason to say that "backradiation" is non-physical and accordingly don't do it.

Phil Jones Speaking

Phil Jones is breaking his silence in a New Scientist interview:

• I know things aren't going to be the same as they were pre-November. It's just about learning to live with it.
• Unless the alternative views are in the peer-reviewed literature, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change cannot refer to them.
• Muir Russell showed that there was no perversion of the peer-review process. The papers that we were referring to in that email were bad science.
  
• There should be an acceptance that the climate has warmed since measurements began. OK, there's then debate about what caused that warming. But I do find it difficult engaging with people who deny the evidence and say the world has not warmed.
• I haven't deleted any emails that were the subject of FOI requests, but I have deleted emails...

Evidently CRU is back in business: A little bit of warming, maybe, but what may have caused the warming is of no interest. And bad science is bad science. The message from CRU/IPCC is the same, but things aren't going to be the same as they were pre-November...

What is Phil Jones anticipating?

Mathematics of Blackbody Radiation, Without Backradiation

Blackbody in the form of a grand piano as a system of vibrating strings of different eigen-frequencies, including a "cut-off" damping mechanism transforming high overtones into heat.

Computational Blackbody Radiation presents an analysis of the following model of blackbody radiation:

• U_tt - U_xx - R U_ttt - D^2 U_xxt = F
  
• E_t = int (F^2 - RU_tt^2) dx

where U(x,t) is the amplitude of a vibrating string at position x at time t, with the subindices indicating differentiation. The string is subject to radiative forcing of intensity F^2 (incoming waves) and responds by emitting radiation (outgoing waves) with intensity RU_tt^2. The difference between incoming and outgoing radiation acts as a heat source to the internal energy

• E = vibrational energy + heat
• vibrational energy = int (U_t^2 + U_x^2) dx.

Finally, - D^2U_xxt represents a dissipative mechanism grinding waves of high frequency into heat. The coefficient D = H/T with H a (small) spatial mesh scale, represents a cut-off length or smallest coordination length, which is the smallest wave length which can be carried by the vibrating string as coordinated wave motion. Further E ~T^2 with T temperature.

As discussed in Computational Blackbody Radiation the dissipation can take different forms with more or less sharp cut-off. We here consider the simplest case including essentials.

The cut-off length D decreases with increasing temperature T: The hotter the more fine details can be represented and emitted. The colder, the "dumber" is the string.

There is a corresponding cut-off frequency T/H conforming with Wien's Displacement Law.

We assume that R is small expressing that the emission is a small perturbation on top of carrier wave of temperature T ~ 1/R. Incoming waves trigger resonances in the system from which waves are re-emitted. The effect is that an incoming blackbody spectrum below cut-off

can be fully absorbed and re-emitted as the same blackbody spectrum.

A blackbody spectrum is characterized by equal temperature of all frequencies (below cut-off).

The model can be seen as a collection of (atomic) resonators with a range of frequencies from small to medium to large, the motion of which is sustained by incoming waves (with blackbody spectrum). The resonators absorb an incoming blackbody spectrum and react by

• re-emitting a blackbody spectrum below cut-off
• transforming incoming spectrum above cut-off into heat (as part of internal energy).
  

The transformation of high frequency input comes from an inability of the system to correctly absorb certain input, because the required coordination length is too small for the

available precision, and the system therefore distorts incoming high-frequency waves into incoherent high-frequency motion kept as internal (heat) energy, which is not radiated. The heating is similar to blushing from an inability to properly respond to a (sharp/nasty) remark.

The model shows two basic features of blackbody radiation:

• low incoming frequencies are re-emitted without causing heating.
  
• high incoming frequencies are transformed into heat (=incoherent high frequencies).

The net result is that a warm blackbody can heat a colder blackbody, through incoming frequencies above cut-off. But a cold blackbody cannot heat a warmer, because incoming frequencies below cut-off will be re-emitted without heating effect.

Since "backradiation" refers to the latter case, the model indicates that "backradiation" is not physical.

The question is now to what extent the model captures real physics? Is a blackbody an analog computer performing some form of analog computation of finite precision, when absorbing and emitting radiation acting as a system of resonators with finite coordination length?

It is like a system of crickets able to emit variable pitch sound with the top pitch

increasing with "temperature" or "excitation level". Or the frequency of "the wave" in the stadium increasing as the excitation of the public increases. Or like politicians delivering increasingly high pitch coordinated messages as the campaign temperature increases towards election.

Note that the above model is deterministic with the quanta statistics of Planck's classical model (created in an "act of despair" from an apparent collapse of classical mechanics), being replaced by finite precision computation (as an "act of resurrection of the hope" of classical mechanics).

The Wise and the Fools of Backradiation

Roy Spencer feels an urge to make a follow-up to his "controversial post on the effect of infrared "backradiation", the existence some dispute" by suggesting a "simple and inexpensive Experiment to Investigate Infrared Sky Radiation Effect on Temperature Changes". 

This is simply the standard blackbody in the form of a box (cavity) with a hole absorbing and emitting radiation to the surrounding. The air in the box is initially at 300 K and the surrounding is kept at 290 K. Spencer asks for the temperature in the box after some time. 

The answer is of course 290 K. But this is not because of any form of "backradiation", but because the cavity reads the temperature of the surrounding from its spectrum, and then decides to cool or warm depending on its own temperature. As illustrated in the model studied in Computational Blackbody Radiation, now updated with a section giving evidence that backradition is non-physical.

The key feature of this model is that the form of a blackbody spectrum is determined by 

the temperature which sets the cut-off according to Wien's Displacement Law. The result is

that a warmer body can heat a colder body, because the colder body can absorb high-frequency radiation and grind it to heat. But a warmer body cannot get heated by absorbing low-frequency radiation from a colder body, because the required high frequency input is missing and cannot be created out of nothing.

Two blackbodies of equal temperature do not exchange heat energy, because the reason to do so is lacking (according to Leibniz' Principle of Sufficient Reason).

We may compare to the following familiar situation:

• One wise can teach many fools something of interest, because the fools cannot avoid absorbing the message because they are without defense. Even if the message is not understood in detail, it will have an effect as elevation of general knowledge/temperature. Education is meaningful, to some degree in some sense.
• Fools, even many,  cannot teach a wise anything of interest, because the wise will simply not listen, because of an inability to absorb trivialities: We know that intelligent FRSs proudly claim that they cannot learn anything from the blogosphere.
• In successful education, the student may over time become as knowledgeable as the teacher, but not more...as the student learns the teacher gets less and less to teach...

Necessity of High Pitch Screaming to Get Heard

In previous posts on the myth of of backradiation we have discovered that a cold blackbody B can get heated by absorbing radiation from a warmer blackbody A. We have seen that B can "read" the spectrum of the incoming radiation and thereby "understand" that it has a lower temperature than A, without literally measuring the temperature of A, thus allowing to get heated by A because A "is stronger".

But how does A get to "know" that B has a lower temperature? Is it necessary? 

Let us compare with making yourself heard over a the background noise of a party after a couple of drinks: You read the pitch of the background noise and modulate your screaming pitch so that it gets across. The body A thus can read the pitch of the background noise, that is the temperature of B, and thus understand what level/pitch of screaming will be necessary. 

We understand that the cold B reads the coherent high frequency fine detail spectrum of A and converts it to incoherent heat, while A only has to read the overall spectrum of B or its cut-off level, to set up its effective emission.

In other words, the emission of A is relative to the background given by the colder B.

But B does not warm A in some form of two-way heating with backradiation.

Similarly, a blogger has to overpower a certain level of background noise, if you want to  get listened to. The temperature/pitch of the blog must be bigger than that of the background.

Notice that it is the pitch that counts, not the amplitude: A small hot blogger (or Sun at distance) can heat a big lukewarm blogosphere (or big Earth), but not the other way around.

A high pitch soprano can get heard over a big orchestra. A melody on top can be heard over 

a powerful bass line.

Insulation works by establishing (a sequence of) relative temperature/pitch differences which add up to a total temperature difference. This is the way a cloud layer helps to keep the Earth surface warm during night. Not by backradiation!

Computational Blackbody Radiation gives the math.

Compare with the following comment by Stephen Wilde to Spencer's "Greenhouse Effect":

• A cooler object near a warmer object will slow the rate of cooling of the warmer object because of the exchange of energy to and fro between the two objects before that energy departs the combined system.
• If there is a constant energy input throughout then the slowing down of the rate of cooling will cause the warmer object to settle at a higher equilibrium temperature than would otherwise have been the case.
• Thus the presence of the cooler object does indeed result in the warmer object becoming warmer than it otherwise would have done.
• That is the essence of the greenhouse effect which is a concept I have always accepted despite the misleading nomenclature.
• Any sceptical viewpoints that rely on denying those simple facts must be rejected because they weaken the sceptical cause.

This is (more or less) correct, but has nothing to do with backradiation and to call it a "greenhouse effect" is severely misleading. As misleading as saying that an insulating blanket on your bed warms because of a mystical "greenhouse effect" based on mystical "backradiation". In science you are not allowed to deliberately use misleading terminology, only in politics, and maybe not even there in the long run...

PS "Slowing of cooling" is a bit misleading because the cooling is not slowed; it is the temperature which is "lifted" to a higher relative level. 

What the 2nd Law Tells about the "Greenhouse Effect"

To check if the basic postulate of climate alarmism (= "greenhouse effect" of 

"backradiation" from "greenhouse gases"), violates the 2nd Law of thermodynamics, it is useful to understand what the 2nd Law says. 

But if there is a mystery in science, then the 2nd Law has the first place: It comes in many forms and nobody seems to know which one is the right one and why it should be valid. Some of the formulations of the 2nd Law read:

• heat cannot by itself flow from cold (but what is "heat" and  "by itself"?)
• entropy cannot decrease (but what is "entropy"?)
• disorder is always increasing (but what is "disorder")
• a heat engine cannot be more efficient than a Carnot engine (but what is a "heat engine" and a "Carnot engine"?).

To come grips with this mess I propose in Computational Thermodynamics a resolution of the mystery in terms of finite precision computation, where the 2nd Law states that

• a system evolving in time with finite precision necessarily has to destroy fine details or high frequency information in order to move ahead, 
• which effectively means grinding high frequency details into heat. 

This version of the 2nd Law is presented in understandable form in the knol The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Next, recall that "backradiation" is supposed to mean that a blackbody B of a certain temperature (top of the atmosphere) can radiatively heat another blackbody  A of higher temperature (Earth surface).

But Planck's Radiation Law including Wien's Displacement Law tells us that a blackbody radiation spectrum has a cut-off of high frequencies proportional to the temperature, which means that the high-frequency end of the spectrum of A is missing in the spectrum of B, which means that B cannot heat A. The fine details in the spectrum of A cannot be created out of the coarser details in the spectrum of B, because a blackbody spectrum has a unique form (up to cut-off).

On the other hand A can heat B because the (coherent) fine details in the spectrum of A can be grinded to heat (= decoherent fine details) increasing the temperature of B. 

In short: coherent fine details can be destroyed by a coarse process (into heat), but a coarse process cannot create coherent fine details (from decoherent heat). 

We conclude that backradiation violates the 2nd Law and thus is non-physical.

Chilling Greenhouse Gases?

In the earlier post CO2 Cooling we pondered the question if more GreenHouse Gases GHG (like water vapor) will warm or cool the Earth surface? 

Let's consider a simplistic (but possibly relevant) argument: Let's agree that without any atmosphere an isotherm Earth would have a blackbody temperature of 255 K as given by 

Stefan-Boltzmann-Planck's Law. What would the temperature be with a fully opaque atmosphere effectively extending an isotherm Earth to include the atmosphere. Right: Again 255 K.  

The real atmosphere is something in between fully transparent and fully opaque with 

an Earth surface temperature of 288 K. Apparently we cannot say a priori that making the atmosphere more opaque by adding GHG will warm the Earth surface: Adding too much would cause cooling.  

Simplistic, yes, but anyway relevant?

Collapse of Skepticism?

The recent posts by Spencer and Pielke Sr. , supported by Lord Monckton, seeking to supply apparently missing scientific evidence of the existence of a so-called "greenhouse effect" from atmospheric "backradiation", have caused a flood of mostly critical comments questioning the arguments put forward in various "thought experiments". 

Pielke Sr. does not reply to comments but Spencer has responded to quite a few mostly innocent questions, but not to critical ones like those by myself or the Hockey Schtick.

The "greenhouse effect" based on "backradiation" is the corner stone of climate alarmism, without which alarmistic feedbacks have nothing to feed on. 

If you don't buy climate alarmism right away for some reason or the other, it is natural to take a look at the science behind the "greenhouse effect" and if you do that you find that it is empty:

It is not described and documented in the physics literature, and it is difficult to argue that it is not physics. No real experiments show the effect, only invented "thought experiments". No mathematics backs the effect. On the contrary, "backradiation" visibly violates the 2nd Law, and the main argument of Spencer is to show that it does not.

The lack of evidence of any "greenhouse effect" from "backradiation"  is shown by the fact that Pielke Sr. and Spencer feel an urge to supply the missing science. But they are not physicists and their evidence is not convincing from a physics mathematical point of view. It is only suggestive hand-waving in pictures with arrows up and down depicting imagined "backradiation".

What is then the meaning? Why do leading climate skeptics suddenly jump on an alarmist wagon powered by a "greenhouse effect"? 

Why do leading skeptics not respond to skeptical arguments? Collapse of skepticism?

Dark Age of Science?

Why are skeptics adopting the bunker mentality of alarmists? 

Compare with influential IPCC reviewer Sir Brian Hoskins CBE FRS in The Economist:

• It is going warm, the question is only how much?
• Climate models were lousy, and are still pretty lousy...a long way to go...young science...
• IPCC has done a remarkably good work in giving a range of uncertainties...
• Uncertainties should not be a basis for saying that we can't use what we are talking about...
• It is always a mixture of what is predictable and what is not...
• We got to be able to highlight uncertainties and what we are not doing very well...

Compare with the analysis of propaganda techniques in Deprogramming Yourself After Global Warming Scam by Roger F. Gay. Try it out yourself! 

Roy Spencer's "Greenhouse Effect"

Roy Spencer takes on the task of explaining the physical basis of the  "greenhouse effect" in Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still. Why? How?

Some reflections:

• The "greenhouse effect" is not described in the physics literature.
• Isn't it the task of physicists to describe it and give it a mathematical dress, if it is physics? 
  
• Spencer seeks to twist the 2nd Law to allow cool objects to warm, in order to open to "backradiation" the supposed basis of the "greenhouse effect". 
• But "backradiation" is not described in the physics literature either, like "backconduction" or "backdiffusion". Why?
• Spencer does not use mathematics, the language of physics, just pictures. Is this enough? 
• Popular science is fine if there is real physics behind supported by math and observation, but what is the role of popular science without real physics basis? Replace real science?

And so to Roy:  Would you mind taking a look at my posts on the myth of backradiation (with mathematics in Computational Blackbody Radiation) and give some response. In particular concerning your statement: 

• While heat conduction by an object always flows from hotter to colder, in the case of thermal radiation a cooler object does not check what the temperature of its surroundings is before sending out infrared energy. It sends it out anyway, no matter whether its surroundings are cooler or hotter.
  

How do know that an emitting cool object is so "cool" that it does not care about the temperature of the surroundings? What is the underlying physics and mathematics? Is it like a "cool blogger" able to emit hotter information than absorbed?

PS I drafted Computational Blackbody Radiation 5 years ago in connection with work on thermodynamics and the 2nd Law. Surprisingly maybe, it seems to be at the core of the discussion on the "greenhouse effect". Hopefully someone will read it. I believe the mathematical model analyzed carries some thruths about physical reality. DS