Black-body radiation

Much of a person's energy is radiated away in the form of infrared light. Some materials are transparent in the infrared, but opaque to visible light, as is the plastic bag in this infrared image (bottom). Other materials are transparent to visible light, but opaque or reflective in the infrared, noticeable by the darkness of the man's glasses.

Black-body radiation is the thermal electromagnetic radiation within or surrounding a body in thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment, or emitted by a black body (an opaque and non-reflective body). It has a specific spectrum and intensity that depends only on the body's temperature, which is assumed for the sake of calculations and theory to be uniform and constant.

The thermal radiation spontaneously emitted by many ordinary objects can be approximated as black-body radiation. A perfectly insulated enclosure that is in thermal equilibrium internally contains black-body radiation and will emit it through a hole made in its wall, provided the hole is small enough to have negligible effect upon the equilibrium.

A black-body at room temperature appears black, as most of the energy it radiates is infra-red and cannot be perceived by the human eye. Because the human eye cannot perceive color at very low light intensities, a black body, viewed in the dark at the lowest just faintly visible temperature, subjectively appears grey (but only because the human eye is sensitive only to black and white at very low intensities - in reality, the frequency of the light in the visible range would still be red, although the intensity would be too low to discern as red), even though its objective physical spectrum peaks in the infrared range. When it becomes a little hotter, it appears dull red. As its temperature increases further it eventually becomes blue-white.

Although planets and stars are neither in thermal equilibrium with their surroundings nor perfect black bodies, black-body radiation is used as a first approximation for the energy they emit.Black holes are near-perfect black bodies, in the sense that they absorb all the radiation that falls on them. It has been proposed that they emit black-body radiation (called Hawking radiation), with a temperature that depends on the mass of the black hole.

The term black body was introduced by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1860. Black-body radiation is also called thermal radiation, cavity radiation, complete radiation or temperature radiation.

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