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Is a Laser Data Link 1.5 Million Kilometers Feasible?
An anonymous reader writes "On the Canary Islands last week, a team from Oerlikon Space demonstrated the feasibility of a laser link across a distance of 1.5 million kilometers for the first time ever. In the future, laser links like this one will be able to transmit data across huge distances through the universe far more rapidly and efficiently than is possible using conventional radio links today."
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Canary Islands and experiments with laser beams? Ahah! There must be sharks there!
I'm not sure the space-technology people will be using "aim." If anything, I'd suspect they'd lean to something OSS like "Pidgin."
Are there sharks there or something?
Because lasers travel at least 42 times as fast as radio waves!
They will all stop at the last mile, rendering the project useless.
If an object 1.5 million kilometres away has a neighbouring quasar, you have bigger worries than communication.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I agree. We should stop all development and research in this area immediately.
Is there anything else that people are working on that you don't see a need to improve? They should have checked with you first, I guess.
The ability to encrypt nefarious messages in a death-ray across long distances.
Some popular messages include:
- "If you are reading this message, you are probably toast"
- "PWNED!!!"
- "(Scorpio) Avoid reading under strong light"
- "Knock, knock"
- "Is this the James Bond? Oh sorry, my mistake."
- "Can you hear me now?"
- "Special Delivery!"
- "Ceiling Cat sez hi!"
Well, Motorola developed something that sounded like this, but from what I understand, they often have to be packaged in an enclosure that's some gaudy shade of pink, occasionally emit short, audible clips of annoying boy-band songs, and they're only useful for conveying gossip between young teenage girls.
(sorry, couldn't resist.)
Either way, your ping times are gonna suck. ;)
BlackNova Traders
If we start shining huge lasers into space, we're going to end up accidentally blinding aliens. Which might be good (if they're chest-explody types), or bad (if they're hot sex-starved space-babes). Your call.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I dunno, I think if they modulated the laser to the harmonic frequency of dilithium they could route the message through a subspace channel on a tachyon carrier wave. This is pretty elementary stuff.
Exactly! Like putting too much air in a balloon!
It's okay. Even NASA confuses SI with Imperial measurements.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
Not to mention the round trip time it's going to take for data to get back and forth over this link.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
They'll just have to up the power on those lasers. A lot.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
What we really need is a laser that travels a few feet, and makes a swishing noise when you wave it around.