So if we look at a real microwave beam, it would seem to me it carries some
rates of entropy S_dot and energy E_dot, but its temperature T is *not*
E_dot/S_dot in general.
I should have said that *is* how you define the beam's thermodynamic
temperature, but that is *not* in general the same thing as its brightness
temperature. The brightness temperature is the temperature of a blackbody
which emits the same power per unit bandwidth (and per unit solid angle and
unit area, I believe) as the observed beam. Carl
Dr. Carl E. Mungan, Assistant Professor http://www.uwf.edu/~cmungan/
Dept. of Physics, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL 32514-5751
office: 850-474-2645 (secretary -2267, FAX -3323) email: cmungan@uwf.edu