The Power Of Light – Energy Talk

The Power Of Light – Energy Talk

5 min readphoto by Diego Marigno (2020)stories

You see the light interact as particles.

It’s like you’re gazing at the stars and the universe — if you zoom out enough, the light changes —, this means that as you back out further, the light you see plays with itself and changes according to its own nature.

It becomes something else.

Light is something quite interesting: we have realized that it can behave like a particle, but we have also realized that it can behave like a wave.

This is so incredible. This means that light lives in some sort of duality, where sometimes it’s one way, and sometimes it’s something else entirely. It may be a wave, but it may also be a particle.

This article poses more questions than answers and is simply a bit of rambling that I’ve done with myself or note apps.

Definition of Light, Energy, Gravity

According to Wikipedia, “light is a form of electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength which can be detected by the human eye.” This means that light is basically energy that travels through space in a specified frequency.

Keep into account that the human eye can only perceive the visible spectrum, which only represents around 1% of all available wavelengths.

It’s like a TV signal, but we can only access 1% of the channels that are being broadcast on the network. What are we missing out there?

Light is everything that we currently see, and it’s the fastest speed that we can get to. Something moving faster than light would mean that we would not see it, since it would be vibrating with higher wavelengths, thus, unable to be perceived by the human eye. Do we have technology capable of perceiving higher percentages of the visible spectrum?

Light is energy, warmth… it’s love. It’s the energy that binds us together, literally. The Sun emits this energy as it slowly dies, but that’s the energy that is holding us alive in space, held in its gravity. Is there something else going on between light and gravity?

The human race has found itself on the third planet of a yellow dwarf, a hot ball of plasma that mainly radiates energy in the form of light, ultraviolet and infrared radiation. It’s literally the energy source for life to prosper and exist on Earth.

It’s also quite interesting to know that the same star that gives us energy and life, would be able to cause total death and despair… and it will do so, in about five billion years (at least according to Wikipedia).

The Sun, our Sun, only accounts for 99.86% of the total mass of our Solar System. We, humans (i.e., the human race), are in that remaining 0.14%.

It seems that light radiation is pretty important, giving life to plants and other ecosystems on our planet. It also seems that by comparison to our Sun, we’re pretty small.

Energy, from the ancient Greek ἐνέργεια, or “activity”, is what we are in essence, given that we only exist thanks to the energy of our Sun. That energy is transferred to us in the form of light.

How Light Works, How Light Creates the World

The following statement is pretty obvious, since I just said in the previous section, but thanks to the light that we get from the Sun, we are able to develop our human life and exist.

The light particles emanating from the Sun take about 8 minutes to reach the Earth. Once the light reaches our planet, it hits the atmosphere and travels down to the surface, where it bounces off and hits our eyes. That’s how vision works.

Even though we don’t see it, there’s a small delay happening right there.

Once light reaches our eyes, it is processed and absorbed by the iris, from each eye, and then this information travels from our eyes towards the brain, where all of this information gets processed, really quickly, and our world is created. This whole process takes less than a second.

But, there are many, many neurons firing and being traveled within that second.

The world is created every single second, over and over again.

Following our previous anecdote, since the light that has bounced off from the ground into our iris takes some time to be processed by our brains, we essentially see the past, or at least a few milliseconds in the past.

Then, from those small moments of the past that we get to capture, our memory and our brain store it and create the world that we see in real life, in dreams, or in deep meditation.

Knowing this, how can we say that we are in the present, when we’re too slow and the present is always fleeing away from our senses?

It would be more accurate to say that we’re reaching for the present but always arriving late to it.

Light is Warmth

I associate light with being warmth, and I imagine that most people do. This is a lovely feeling that everyone recognizes whenever it’s felt. Being warm after being out in the cold, for example.

That light is what keeps us all warm. It’s what allows us to see, to differentiate one object from another. That’s the power of light.

Being warm is just the movement of particles going faster. There is more excitation due to the temperature, thus things are moving fast and quick.

This is what being warm is, and it is what the Sun is meant to do: excite, illuminate, keep in the light, amd keep us warm and alive. Plants do photosynthesis to get their nutrients. They absorb what they need to live from light itself.

We are all bound by light, we all need it.

Light is that warmth that keeps us alive. It’s what allows plants to breathe and carry on, generating oxygen for us to live at the same time.

It’s the warmth that keeps us alive when coldness invades.

It’s what allows us to be here, since it made way for us to exist. Is there more to the light that we yet do not know?

The Power of Light

There are some incredible amounts of energy being emanated by the Sun. It literally takes from 10,000 to 170,000 years for that power to go out of the Sun’s pull and into its surface.

Light is power. The light that we get on a daily basis, which lets us connect with the world, is merely power condensed, emanating from the surface of the Sun. This heat travels vast distances until it hits us.

We are now able to capture and store the power from the Sun. This is incredible when you come to think about it.

It means that the Sun is able to power up our lives. As technology advances, this will become easier and cheaper, allowing humanity a real chance at ditching fossil fuels once and for all. Light has the power to change our future and the course of us as a species.

We emanated from light, since it’s what essentially allowed us to exist on this planet. The power of light is being the creator of life as we know it and continues to give ways to preserve it.

We seek light. We go towards it. Our Earth continues to swirl around its own axis, as well as around the Sun; we continue this endless dance. What is it truly for?

Light is energy, and, in a way, that endless gravitational dance is also filled with lots of energy. Is it the same type of energy? I don’t know.

This article wanted to point out the power of light itself, but posed more questions than answers. I’m genuinely sorry for that, friend reader.

We continue pondering.

I continue pondering.

Just ponder away.

Ponder.

What Now?

Eventually, the human race will be capable of going to nearby stars. This means that we would seek other means of life. This means that we would seek another planetary system to keep us alive, eventually. Or, that’s what I wish for it to mean.

I dream of a world where human beings are no longer bound by a planet or by frontiers. I dream of a world where human beings can go beyond the stars, and find more light.

We all need to continue seeking light. It’s there, within us.

We are headed towards it, whether we want it, or not. It’s only a matter of time. Are you getting ready?

Let yourself flourish and follow your light.

Do you want to tell me something about light that you consider interesting? You can send me an email to diego@marigno.com telling me about it! I might add it to this article.

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September 18th, 2022