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jayandp ,

Mustard actually just did a video on the first attempts of this by the Soviets/Russians.

nebula.tv/…/mustard-the-man-who-built-a-spotlight…

werefreeatlast OP ,

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.

funkajunk ,
@funkajunk@lemm.ee avatar

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.

Halcyon ,
@Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

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.

browse ,

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.

Ashelyn ,

Why not just put up a Moonlight Tower?

yesman ,

I watched a video yesterday about the laser range finder on a tank. The interesting thing is that at long enough ranges, the laser expands into a cone that may be bigger than the target and give inaccurate readings.

Anyway, I look forward to this totally real and feasible technology.

dsilverz ,
@dsilverz@thelemmy.club avatar

Exactly, a laser pointer, while casting a millimeter-sized dot of light at short distances, its light easily gets meter-sized when they reach flight cruise heights, shining airplane’s cabins and interfering with the pilot’s vision. However, as by inverse square law, the power is distributed across the beam.

Nomecks ,

So you’re saying a space orbiting death ray will cast an area large enough to generate solar power eh? HEY ELON!

dsilverz ,
@dsilverz@thelemmy.club avatar

On the contrary.

Nomecks ,

So a really bug death ray? Perhaps some sort of doomsday device?

werefreeatlast OP ,

You just need perfectly rigid solar mirror technology that you can store in a rocket while being launched.

homesweethomeMrL ,

Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun . . .

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