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Radio Waves Employed in Space Construction
CDeity writes "Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology claim that radio waves could be used to shape and fuse debris in space to form massive structures according to this article. Scientists have in the past employed sound and light waves to position small particles, and every expectation indicates these techniques could work on a large scale. One engineer estimates " it would take approximately one hour to form a rubble cloud into a 50-meter long enclosed structure.""
All electromagnetic waves, including light, are made up of photons and they do excert a force. The momentum of light can be calcuated via its frequency. The smaller the wavelength the more momentum and energy it has. According to Einstein: E^2=p^2c^2 +(mc^2)^2 Since the mass of a photon is negligable, if it even has one, E=pc where the energy is dependant on the momentum. C is a constant, ~ 3.0e8 m/s P is the momentum of the photon. Light is both a particle and a wave. P = h/(wavelength) where h is plancks constant. In fact P = h/wavelenght is true for all matter as well. If you want to learn more do some reading on quantum physics.
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What is your point? Of course you can send sound through space encoded in some form of radio transmission. But radio is not sound. There is no sound in space. Saying that there is sound in space is like saying there is sound inside the telephone wire. Sure there is information about sound waves traveling through the wire, but there is no sound. Sound is a vibration of matter. There is no matter in space to vibrate. Hence, no sound. (if you want to be pedantic about it, there is matter in space but the amount is so incredibly tiny, on the order of a few atoms per square meter, that it is not worth talking about. Certainly not enough matter there to carry sound).
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}