4 ms·
> But you're right, the light from the moon is reflected sun light, plenty hot to start a fire. That's my impression as well. A blackbody has albedo 0. The moo
by baddox 8y ago
> But you're right, the light from the moon is reflected sun light, plenty hot to start a fire.
That's my impression as well. A blackbody has albedo 0. The moon has an albedo of around 0.12. While I suspect you can't start a fire from moonlight in practice, I don't think the arguments in this article are correct.
- stcredzero 8y agoWhile I suspect you can't start a fire from moonlight in practice, I don't think the arguments in this article are correct. I guess if you're reading that as some kind of absolutely logical argument. I read stuff like that as an abstraction which just kinda works in the messy real world. Pretty much like how the typical explanation for how a wing works turns out to be an over-simplification. It only partly works that way. Actual wings are complicated, but in the aggregate, they just get enough air molecules to go downward to net out the forces to keep the plane from going downward. It turns out that there are a lot of mechanisms contributing to this all at once. (Which is something else he discusses in that series.)
- baddox 8y agoIt’s presented as an absolute logical argument of the form “you can’t use a lens to make anything hotter than the average surface of the moon.”
- stcredzero 8y agoAnd it "kinda" works in the same way the simplified Bernoulli explanation of the wing works.
- starbeast 8y ago>While I suspect you can't start a fire from moonlight in practice Ivanpah may be able to, I wonder if we can borrow it at night for an experiment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
- alanh 8y agonow this is an idea i like.
- starbeast 8y agoI wonder what the protocol is for 'borrowing' Ivanpah to point it at the moon at night and at what point in the exchange the phrase, 'well, you won't be using it', will finally occur. edit - And by whom. Should probably get it in early, just in case.