• Question: Is there a theoretical maximum possible light intensity? Why, or why not?

    Asked by doppler to Adam, Sheila, Suzie on 25 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      Hi there, the light intensity is normally the flux of light in a given area or volume. I suppose at some really huge limit there might be a theoretical maximum as to how many photons you can fit in an area, but I’ve no idea what this number is!

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 24 Mar 2011:

      Do you mean like luminous flux per area? There would be, as that’d be a ratio of how many photos there were in an area, both of which are finite quantities.
      But also in terms of what we can see, yes there is then too. That is because of how our eyes work and the fact that we’d be blinded if we looked at something too bright!

    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 25 Mar 2011:

      Huh. Stumped on this one. Do you think you could get photon degeneracy of some sort – off the top of my head I can’t think of any limiting factor, nor can I conjoir up any scenario excluding possibly the big bang where this might occur. Another one for my coffee break!

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