• /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    The moon is more useful than the sun since the sun is already out when it’s daytime but the moon gives us light when it’s night time

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Okay, so the Moon weighs about 0.012 Earths. The Sun weighs about 333,000 Earths. Meaning the Sun is about 27.75 million Moons. Clearly, then, we can’t assume they mean that 455,000 Moons would collapse into a star and be just as luminous.

    So now what I’m wondering is: does ~1/455,000 of the Sun’s light hit the Moon? That can’t be true at all, right?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOPM
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      6 months ago

      I’m guessing this was more the reality:

      “Boss, we have one more panel to fill. What do I put there?”

      “Deadline’s in an hour. Just put some shit in about the moon and send it to press.”

      • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        A mirror doesn’t generate its own light either, but would you try shooting a weapons grade laser into one and pointing it at one of your eye sockets?

        • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          The original post is equivalent to saying “this mirror is 1/8 the brightness of the light bulb in my room” and then buying 8 mirrors and turning off the light bulb.

          • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            That’s the fun of out of context comics. This one doesn’t state that the goal is to replace the sun, but to equal its brightness.

            Suppose batman has a new sun-powered gadget, except well he’s Batman so it needs to work at night. But he’d need 455000 moons to pull that off, and yet he does it somehow.

            I’d read that comic…

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOPM
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          6 months ago

          I wouldn’t compare the brightness of a laser to a reflection of itself. That’s the issue I’m seeing.

          • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Why not? There’s a bunch of applications where that is a requirement.

            The Lunar Laser Ranging experiments are a fun one, I think. Scientists shoot lasers at mirrors placed in the moon and measure the trip time of light to calculate the distance of the moon to the millimetre.

            However:

            Out of a pulse of 3×10E17 photons aimed at the reflector, only about 1–5 are received back on Earth, even under good conditions.