Anyone keen to photograph some candles, for scientific experiment?

[amolitor]

Tris, I can describe a universe with an infinite number of stars in it, all visible from a designated viewing point, all non-occluding, where from that viewing point the sky is uniformly bright.

It is not THIS universe, and it is is infinite in extent. But I can describe it.

 

[tris_d]

Tris_d, what is your motivation for pursuing this discussion, both on this forum and on the other ones? And why are you so doggedly persistent when it appears your question has been answered?

I want to publish a paper, thus I want challenge my conclusions to make sure I did not make any mistakes in my reasoning. I'm posting this on more than one forum simply because more people know more and so I can speed up this verification process. Please join the discussion.

 

[pixmedic]

I like pie

 

[christop]

Ok... read (or re-read) my thought experiment about taking pictures of an LED traffic light which pretty much summed up the issue of different resolutions.

You re-read what I said. Can image with resolution of only one pixel give you any other brightness than uniform?

Nope. I'm not arguing against that.

The brightness of a single-pixel image is the same as the average brightness of an image with higher resolution.

Edit: oh, and "uniform" is not a brightness.

 

[unpopular]

it's like a black hole in here...

 

[amolitor]

Where were you planning to send this paper for publication?

I've published the odd thing here and there.

 

[christop]

tris_d: I re-read what you said and replied to it. Now I want you to re-read my post about the traffic light and to comment on what you agree or disagree with.

 

[Helen B]

Tris_d, what is your motivation for pursuing this discussion, both on this forum and on the other ones? And why are you so doggedly persistent when it appears your question has been answered?

I want to publish a paper, thus I want challenge my conclusions to make sure I did not make any mistakes in my reasoning. I'm posting this on more than one forum simply because more people know more and so I can speed up this verification process. Please join the discussion.

Please just publish the paper. Have it peer reviewed first, of course. There are huge mistakes in your reasoning, but you don't want to, or can't see them. You can't even discuss them scientifically.

There's no conflict between asserting that the radiant energy from a star (or a candle) passing through a unit area at an observer decreases according to the inverse square law and the assertion that the brightness of a 'perfect' image does not decrease with distance. If you don't understand that you don't understand the reasoning behind Olbers' Paradox.

I asked you for your version of Olbers' Paradox because I wanted to read it in your words, with your reasoning. If you are going to write a technical paper that description will have to be in it.

 

[unpopular]

tris - have you even actually ever read a peer reviewed study? I mean, the study itself and not just the abstract or USA Today version?

Do you even know what a paper is supposed to look like? Or for that matter, how to even cite works?

Being that as far as I can tell your primary source here is wikipedia, I sort of have my doubts.

 

[tris_d]

tris_d: I re-read what you said and replied to it. Now I want you to re-read my post about the traffic light and to comment on what you agree or disagree with.

I didn't get to that post at the time I replied, I was referring to your previous post.

The overall brightness of the traffic light in each camera would be the same (when using the same exposure settings), would it not? Or would you argue that the low-res camera would produce a dimmer image of the traffic light simply because the LED's cannot be individually resolved, no matter how many LED's you put in the space of a single pixel?

I'm saying lower resolution would produce higher overall brightness when looking at the picture as a whole. I'm not sure about that, you tell me and I will trust you. But the point that is really important in regards to resolution and Olbers' paradox is that if you ignore resolution in mathematical equations, as they did, you practically work with 1x1 resolution, and thus you can not get any other result but the one that indicates uniform brightness. One pixel can only have one overall brightness, that's my point.

 

[tris_d]

Where were you planning to send this paper for publication?

I've published the odd thing here and there.

Anywhere I can. I know most of the journals will not even consider it when they realize it does not go along with what they've been putting in text books for more than several hundred years. Lets write the paper together, and then we will share Nobel prize when we finally manage to convince them, if ever. If you look at the history of science you will notice scientists like to hold onto their opinions dogmatically as if it is religion.

 

[unpopular]

I suppose if you're going to be publishing in UFO Weekly, it doesn't matter what you say. You could claim Nikolai Tesla told you.

 

[christop]

I'm saying lower resolution would produce higher overall brightness when looking at the picture as a whole.

That would exactly contradict what you've been saying about the effects of resolution on brightness. You effectively have been saying that lower resolution would decrease brightness.

I'm not sure about that, you tell me and I will trust you.

The overall brightness does not change. It's the same as taking a large image file and scaling it down to create a thumbnail for the Web. A proper scaling algorithm will not change the brightness of the image. It simply decreases the resolution.

 

[runnah]

I suppose if you're going to be publishing in UFO Weekly, it doesn't matter what you say. You could claim Nikolai Tesla told you.

Did you see "The Prestige?". I thought Bowie did a great job as Tesla.

 

[tris_d]

The overall brightness does not change. It's the same as taking a large image file and scaling it down to create a thumbnail for the Web. A proper scaling algorithm will not change the brightness of the image. It simply decreases the resolution.

Photo of 10 street lights at night with image resolution of 1000x1000 has the same overall brightness as it would image with 10x10 or 1x1 resolution have? I expected pixels would receive much more light individually when there is less of them. -- In any case, that's not important. Brightness is relative to exposure time, which is also ignored by the original treatment of Olbers' paradox. And the most important thing in the whole story is about UNIFORM brightness. That is when they ignore resolution the result can not indicate any other brightness but uniform.