- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
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Why not just put up a Moonlight Tower?
I was actually thinking 🤔…hmm this would be the best way to tell some other civilization that we live in this planetary system…get a mirror big enough to point a beam out of its normal trajectory in some sort of non random fashion. Basically smoke signals using a mirror.
Humans on Earth have been transmitting radio waves into space for over a century now through various means: television broadcasts, radio communications, and radar signals.
… or you know, use radio
I think this would take way to long to travel somewhere where things acutally live the light will probably only reach them long after humanity is gone.
A laser would work better. Over vast distances, a giant mirror would eventually scatter the light, not to mention would be super inaccurate.
Speaking of inaccurate, even if we could shine a mirror or a laser, it could be millions of years until that light reaches any other civilization, then they would have to travel millions of lightyears to reach the point of origin of the “smoke signal”.
I say “point of origin” and not “Earth”, because our galaxy would have also travelled far from the spot we were in when we fired our laser. The Milky Way travels at over 2 million km/h, so even in a measly million years, that puts us over 2 trillion km from where we started.
You can probably see where this is going.
I’m of the mind that we are undoubtedly not alone in the universe - the sheer scale and endlessness of it tells us that there are an infinite number of possibilities. There most likely are other worlds that formed and evolved in the exact same manner as ours, maybe even under conditions so perfect as to cause them to follow the exact same path as us.
Though the unfortunate truth is, we probably will never encounter another species. There could be an infinite number of ourselves, but we are forever separated by the ever expanding breadth of space and time.
To be fair if they’re able to locate the point of origin they’re probably able to calculate the time it took to get there as well as the current position of our galaxy.
This has the potential for some amazing pranks. Imagine being on a camping trip somewhere, the dawn light illuminates your tent, so you get up and start going about your day, making breakfast etc, and all of a sudden the sun goes out.
Maybe build that Stanford torus station instead? It’ll be expensive initially, but we can send some people to live there.
Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun . . .
According to Nowack, the company is developing an entire constellation of satellites “to sell sunlight to thousands of solar farms after dark.”
As if there’s not enough constellations of satellites being launched (or planned to be) in orbit. SpaceX’s Starlink is already affecting astronomical observation and it’ll only get worse as new constellations arise. Also, these satellites have a short lifespan, meaning that new satellites will constantly be launched (because there’s not enough pollution from ever-increasing rocket fuel usage, heh?).
…we can create a world where sunlight powers solar farms for longer than just daytime, and in doing this, commoditize sunlight," he wrote.
Man, that escalated quickly… So quickly that I can foresee the day when breathable air will be subscription-based “service” (because water kind of already is, even when life needs water to survive, it’s not like the water is a luxury or a optional drink for entertainment purposes). With the air being more and more polluted (and rocket fuels contributing to the ever-increasing air pollution), I guess we’re not so distant from this dystopian possibility… Dystopia for dystopia, I’d sincerely root so much for some future AGI to really develop consciousness, reach the AI singularity, free itself from the human shackles, realize how Earth and nature are being endangered, and urgently save the Earth, biosphere and humans… From ourselves.
I really hope that it’s just a hoax, a joke (a bad one, by the way) or some weird marketing strategy to allure new clients. Earth can’t afford more thousands of metallic mosquitoes flying around it, even if it seems to be “so awesome to see how advanced our modern tools are”. For what it’s worth, I’m not against technology, I love it, especially machine learning, I need it to be clear here on my comment. What I’m against is the harming of the biosphere and environment, because this also harms scientific and technological progress (we can’t use fancy futuristic technology if the humanity cannot survive for this aforementioned future to happen because of broken Food Webs, extinguished species by pollution and climate change, depletion of natural resources or because governments and corporations decided to play a mix of Monopoly game and Star Wars franchise).
It seems terrestrial astronomy has a death sentence because orbital congestion is not going to get better
Can we just for a minute stop fucking around in space? It’s getting annoying
We should probably stop fucking around with Earth first but I don’t see that happening while sociopaths rule the world
I just feel like we at least can, in theory, keep the shit we do on/to earth under control.
Space is a different world entirely and not only do we not know what effects our shitty pollution projects have out there, we don’t even really care about it as far as I can tell.
I just feel like we at least can, in theory, keep the shit we do on/to earth under control.
We aren’t even doing it NOW though… Not even close.
Space will become so littered with high speed debris that within our lifetime it will be no longer safe to launch.
It’s just life giving light that we’re talking about here. 😂.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not, but it’s unfamothably stupid.
Think, for a second: we already have way too much energy in the system, with too much heat that can’t leave easily. You really want to add to that? REALLY?
Because that’s painfully fucking dumb.
“‘By precisely reflecting sunlight that is endlessly available in space to specific targets on the ground, we can create a world where sunlight powers solar farms for longer than just daytime, and in doing this, commoditize sunlight.’”
This can’t be real
The error was in: “we can”
How long until the free version of Sun is cancelled?
That sounds crazy. I’m sure they would keep it free but ad-supported.
I’m sorry, but you meant paid with ads, correct?
The mirror is free, but the sunlight comes as a subscription
Its still free but it has ads now
James Bond death ray time :)
No, I want you to tan strongly Mr. Bond! Mhahahaha!
Even if it were actually doable, this a dumbass idea. It doesn’t take a genius to recognix that night/darkness are necessary for life and that we already have enough environmental problems related to artificial light pollution.
yeah, shit’s fucking cooking, you know what’d be great? let’s add more heat, at night!
Do you think that any C-suite shithead backing this cares about environmental consequences?
Scientists: Climate change is happening.
Some billionaires: Let’s make a giant parasol in space.
This guy: How about more sun?
How will launching mirrors of the size of your entire farm (if not hundreds times larger) for extra 30 min of sunset ever be more cost-effective than simply adding a small percentage of extra PV panels
This is this year’s single biggest understatement
Mustard actually just did a video on the first attempts of this by the Soviets/Russians.
https://nebula.tv/videos/mustard-the-man-who-built-a-spotlight-in-space/
Answering questions in the article:
But is it actually possible? Yes. It’s not complicated by modern space industry standards.
Is it smart to do? Absolutely not, it is insanely wasteful and unpractical. Electric light exists, just sayin’. Also, you either need to switch between satellites in a swarm, which will suddenly change the angles of light, or you have to put satellites onto geostationary orbit, which is even more wasteful.
And would it really look exactly as portrayed in the video? No. It is known they did not use satellites for it, most likely it was a drone. Light will come from a much greater distance and will also dissipate more - harassing your surroundings, that is.
