Maglights / M-lights

Physics

Light is an electromagnetic wave particle known as a photon. Through mathematics they are thought to be very short lived emissions that, because they travel at the speed of light, as it is light, it doesn't actually age. Photons of light are thought to have no mass as if they even had a little, then traveling at the speed of light, they would gain the mass of the universe. That is one theory. That said, if it does have mass and we can't see it, maybe that explains dark matter, and it only expresses it as a partical, not as a wave, just a thought. You personally only know of light when it hits something and departs its energy. You cannot be aware of a beam of light that is passing next to you, such as the light from a laser pointer. You don't see it pass you, but you do see the reflection on the board. To see lasers, such as a laser show, you need something in the air for the laser to reflect off of and head to your eyeballs. Generally stage managers use smoke but enough water in the air will have the same effect.

To emit light, an electron on an atom needs to drop an energy (think orbit) level where the energy given up is emitted as a photon. With the cooling of Earth's surface, most of the atoms we interact with have emitted all the light they were going to. To get atoms to emit light, which is energy, then first we need to put energy into the atom, to raise the electron up a level. It will then naturally decay back down again an emit a photon of light. Traditionally we do this through burning something. As we've being doing this for a few hundred thousand years, where we gained the advantage of extended days for improved communication, warmth at night, upgraded food sources (cooking), killed bacteria (cooking) and scared off predators, we've become rather attached to fire. All modern human lighting however is electricity based.

The electron itself is a half twist fermion with two spin potentials (up and down), and it exists in a probabilistic universe where the half twist interaction means that they cannot occupy the same space. While interacting with the atomic nucleus, atoms end up with electrons with a shell. Note that an atom that has the right amount of electrons to fill a shell, has no ability to react, and so doesn’t. These are the noble gasses. So an atom has electrons orbiting (electro static, not gravitic) the nucleus and as these orbits are in effect fixed, each atom when energised, will have different electrons move up and down from different energy potentials (locations in orbit). In a nutshell, each atom emits a different wavelength of photon i.e. a different colour. You therefore need can see what atoms stars are made from by looking at their emission spectrum and you can make different colour florescent lights by using different gasses. Equally, a gold light bulb can only be made by using a gold filament. No other element will emit gold light (although some will be close)

Fi-sics (that is to say fictional)

Everything before this point has been real physics (or wrong). Everything from this point onwards is fiction. Magnetic lights or M-lights work by channelling a very strong magnetic field around an atom, which causes a semi-plasma. That is to say that the electron is free to escape the atom and reach higher energy level before falling back down to the atom. Precise control of the magnetic field allows the height of the fall to be specifically controlled, and therefore the photonic emissions take on a frequency directly proportional to the magnetic control. Only the atoms chosen to be the focus actually reach a semi-plasma so M-lights can produce light of any colour very efficiently.

Story

2040AD. Working with Humanitarian Alliance University, RobEng invented the Magnetic Light. Using iron as a platform to electronically control the energy of atoms, a light that could produce any colour was suddenly available very cheaply. Every light fitting on the planet within ten years was replaced with the superefficient ‘M-Lights’. Holding the patent, both the university and RobEng became super-rich allowing the HAU to seriously begin its political agenda of uniting the world.