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skurk t1_j4vgrsu wrote

Reply to comment by ellipsis31 in What happens to the energy of sound in space? by full_hammer

This may be a silly question, but why infrared?

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the_agox t1_j4vqzs4 wrote

The short answer is blackbody radiation. Everything naturally glows a little bit, and that glow changes with its temperature. At "room temperature", it's in the infrared (Planck's Law). As temperature increases, so does that frequency of the radiation. If the tuning fork was heated to 500ish degrees Celsius, it would glow a dull red.

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