Re: a paradox ?

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> Am I going to be ionized or not? The atoms have the right to know; they
> belong to real reality.

The answer is yes, certainly atoms will be ionized if electrons pass
sufficiently close with sufficient speed. That's why they are called
"ionizing radiation".

The business about E-field vectors getting longer or shorter is hokey,
however. The electric field of a moving charge is not spherically
symmetric, but it is higher in the directions transverse to its
velocity, and lower both fore and aft. It is still purely radial (!),
something which might bother people who think electric fields
"propagate" at the speed of light. I think of the E-field of a moving
charge as being squashed.

Leigh