Idiot ideas you had when you were a kid

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Idiot ideas you had when you were a kid

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

I was like 12 when I registered my forums account so I guess that

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 02:39

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:04

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

smug n stuff posted:

thx for ur support, I'll shoot an email to NASA asap, I think they'll be real interested!

Isn't it basically just a space elevator?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 02:41

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

VendaGoat posted:

Had to explain to my brother why this was impossible. He was in his early thirties.

We actually do "store photons" on a regular basis in a different way: inside a resonant cavity. Once the photon enters the cavity, it remains there as a standing wave (rather than traveling in a circle as you suggest). Losses in the cavity cause the photons to be eventually absorbed. To my knowledge no optical or microwave cavity will preserve a photon for more than about 1 second, and they typically can't store many photons (maybe a few billion or even trillion, but that's a tiny amount of energy). But yes, conceivably you could make a resonant cavity with such little loss that you could store a photon for a year, and conceivably this cavity could be robust enough to hold the ~10401040 or so photons that hit the Earth in a day, but realistically probably not.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 02:42

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

VendaGoat posted:

So nothing actually like a box of regular house mirrors? Gotcha.

idk I didn't read it

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 02:45

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

smug n stuff posted:

kinda but I thought you could use it to communicate instantaneously
like you could push one end of the cable in a morse code pattern or something, and the other end would move at the exact same time, so you could communicate faster than the speed of light.
Space Elevators are different I think?

oh I get it now, that's a good idea you should call nasa

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 02:49

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

VendaGoat posted:

Lotta people about mirrors not working at 100% efficiency.

Light boxes, controversial subject, who knew?

nice meltdown

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 02:52

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

Parallax Scroll posted:

lol that owns

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 02:53

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

I thought 0.999.... repeating was the same as 1. Yeah I was dumb

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 02:56

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:04

Second Hand Meat Mouth: Sep 12, 2001

Toadvine posted:

I think I read in a thread forever ago that a stick of any material would 'bump' through space no faster than the speed of sound

"the speed of sound" is a bit misleading here because people assume it's the normal speed of sound in air that people talk about but it's the speed of sound for that material (which is why what you wrote is basically a tautology)

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 03:02

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Idiot ideas you had when you were a kid