Re:Heat energy can travel through empty space
by eesmith on Thursday December 12, 2019 @04:38AM
(#21770558)
"Heat energy" here means "phonons", not "infrared light."
> for many years, textbooks told us that phonons cannot travel through a vacuum," said Xiang Zhang, the professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley who guided the study. "What we discovered, surprisingly, is that phonons can indeed be transferred across a vacuum by invisible quantum fluctuations."
> for many years, textbooks told us that phonons cannot travel through a vacuum," said Xiang Zhang, the professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley who guided the study. "What we discovered, surprisingly, is that phonons can indeed be transferred across a vacuum by invisible quantum fluctuations."
It's due to Casimir interactions.