4 ms·
It’s a fascinating mystery, but I gotta say that’d make a crappy lightsail, considering that even at our current tech level we could make a much lighter one if
by abecedarius 8y ago
It’s a fascinating mystery, but I gotta say that’d make a crappy lightsail, considering that even at our current tech level we could make a much lighter one if we could manufacture it in space. (The experiments that have flown were all constrained to survive launch and unfolding.)
- jacobush 8y agoOr was it a lighter sail, still carrying a payload?!
- jacobush 8y agoHm, say you are designing a light sail for interstellar travel. Instead of having it be made of thin film and actuators capable of swinging these sails like on a sail boat... because actuators are more likely to die after millennia in space: say you instead make the space craft tumble but make the sails able to change their albedo (how reflective they are). If you wanted to make a course correction, you'd alternate how reflective they were. If you wanted a push away from a sun, you'd make the side facing a sun bright. If you wanted to fall in more towards a sun, you'd make the side facing a sun dark. Would that work? How much do light sails depend on brightness (light pressure) vs just absorbing molecules in the Solar wind? Edit: Wikipedia says light pressure from photons is most of the effect, but still I can't figure out the difference between a black body sail and a reflective sail.
- abecedarius 8y agoWouldn't a perfect absorber facing the sun directly get half the light pressure of a perfect reflector? I'm assuming after it heats up to equilibrium it emits in all directions (no net momentum from emission, so you're left with absorption only).
- jacobush 8y agoInteresting thought! And also, maybe some of the stored and emitted heat can be directed somehow.
- skykooler 8y agoMicroscopic debris impacts could have degraded it over its lifetime to its current state.
- ansible 8y agoYes. Something of that size (area) and weight doesn't seem like some kind of naturally occurring object though. Even if it is a piece of debris, that is super, super interesting. Eh, who am I kidding, even if it was produced through some natural process, that is still interesting.
- bottled_poe 8y agoPerhaps, but would the design you are proposing survive millions of years of space travel? This appears to have zero moving parts.