Hello all,
I’m working on a sci-fi project rn, and one of the creatures communicates telepathically via electromagnetic waves. However, I’m kinda confused as to exactly what “electromagnetic” means. EMPs, electromagnets, and (from what I can tell) light are all electromagnetic, what do they have in common that makes them such?
Thanks in advance 🙂
EDIT: I know I said “how is these things connected in the title”, forgive my grammar mistakes ;-;
In: 5
A normal magnet is a static magnetic field. Alternating the fields direction forms a wave. How fast that field alternates is the frequency of the electromagnetic wave.
The electromagnetic spectrum is a way to organize electromagnetic radiation in order of increasing frequency. The lowest frequency are radio and microwaves, which is probably what is being used for communication in your case. Then infrared and visible light are electromagnetic waves with higher frequency than that. Finally you get into ultraviolet, x rays, and gamma rays which are even higher frequency and are called ionizing radiation because they can energize your body to the point where it damages your cells.
Light is different from magnetism. And EMP is more so radiation. When detonated, it gives off this radiation in the form of waves (similar to radio waves). It can be high-altitude (nuclear) or ground level, disrupting electronics in the vicinity.
Im not good at giving definitions but this is from what I can remember of it. Hope this kinda helps!
Edit: “why are you booing me? I’m right!”
Think of a single photon of light as a single drop of water. Noce and concenient coming put of your hose or sink, right? An EMP is the tsunami version of that.
Well, electromagnets are magnets we’ve made by using electricity. By winding up cables into coils, you’ll get a magnet which you can turn off and om; change the polarity. Which is a popular thing to do in science fiction. ‘normal’ electrity in a single cable forms a magnetic field around it (thus electromagnetic). By winding and stacking cables you amplify that effect. This field consists of waves; radiation. Like microwave, or x-ray, radio, wifi. Light also behaves in this way (sometimes, otherwise I’ll get some physicists mad) an emp is basically an bomb of the these waves, to overload everything in its path. Computers run on electricity, and magnetic field can be disturbed if something is strong enough. Or an emp is small and could be used for something like communication. It’s a pulse, a directed signal with specific characteristics. Could indeed be used for communication. But I think that in popculture it’s mostly a weapon to disarm everything electrical.
Electricity and magnetism are directly related things. Typically they both need to exist near a source, but under some specific circumstances they can form a wave that travels freely away from its source. This wave must contain both electrostatic *and* magnetic parts or it will not travel freely.
This wave is light, radio, microwaves, gamma radiation, and a few others. The frequency of the wave (how quickly it waves) determines which one it is.
This wave can revert *back* to electric and magnetic movements. An antenna is designed specifically to catch these waves and convert them to electricity.
Many devices can work as an antenna, and so a very strong radio wave can generate high voltages where they shouldn’t be. This breaks electronics. The inside of a microwave could be called an “EMP”, although it isn’t particularly strong.
The creature you describe just uses radio to communicate – it’s that simple.
Electromagnetic waves are essentially the same thing as light: everything you know about light is true for electromagnetic waves – they shine, they reflect from things, they pass through things, etc.
You can think of them as a colors, that our eyes cannot see. Radio, microwave and infrared are colors “redder than red”. Ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma are “bluer than blue”.
If you could somehow see all those colors, you would see interesting things. You would see, that everything in your room actually shines infrared color. You would see your WiFi router and your phone have an “microwave lightbulb” inside. You would see satellite dishes as a spotlights, pointed into space. And satellites themselves – as a bright “stars” in the sky. And radar dishes – as a microwave cameras with a flash.
You would also see, that magnets shine when you move them, that any wire with AC current turns into a lightbulb, and so on. When you tune your radio, what you actually doing is picking a “color” of the station you want to hear.
Now, EMP is just a “flashbang”. It is a short, but very bright flash of light, that makes everyone watching it go temporary blind (or sometimes even permanently).
An electromagnetic pulse is an emissions of high energy (and usually but not always high frequency) in a very short period of time. The purpose of this pulse is to cause inducted currents in electronics which the pulse passes through. When a high energy magnetic field changes polarity occurs in the presence of a conductive material (a wire) it produces electricity. This actually how a generator works.
The electricity is of high enough power to burn out electronics.
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