Sep26
The Tim The Tool Man Approach
on September 26, 2012 at 8:10 am…to lighting up the moon.
One quibble. If you really bought that many one-watt green lasers, I’m sure that you’d get the price well below $300.
…to lighting up the moon.
One quibble. If you really bought that many one-watt green lasers, I’m sure that you’d get the price well below $300.
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On the other hand, without checking the details, it would seem if everyone in a stadium had a high-powered laser pointer aimed at a particular point on the field, you’d get a pretty spectacular effect.
Arthur Clarke wrote a short story like that.
That was “A slight case Of Sunstroke”, a stadium of 50,000 men from the “Perivian” army used reflective match programme’s to vaporize a referee.
Here’s an interesting video on the power of concentrated sunlight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0_nuvPKIi8&feature=player_embedded
He’s going about it the wrong way. The proper way to do this would be during the new moon. That way, the eye is dark-adapted and better able to see the illumination.
Also, he gets sidetracked after forgets to answer the original question: “Would it change color?”
The dark adaptation effects of reduced moonlight during a new moon would probably be outweighed by the effects of increased sunlight.
It clearly changes color in the last installment of the series, from yellow to gone.
Uh, did any one else notice he talks about a quarter Moon but uses a half Moon in all his illustrations?
For historical reasons that -is- a quarter moon. I supposed it might be because the half-lit portion of the half we can see it is a quarter of the whole surface, but …
http://earthsky.org/moon-phases/first-quarter
The last scenario had me thinking: “Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL battle station!”
The Time Machine: “We cracked the moon.”