5 ms·
Note that in all the pictures the receiver seems to be on a tower or at least above the emitter. No doubt this is a safety consideration. Nobody would dare te
by sandworm101 4y ago
Note that in all the pictures the receiver seems to be on a tower or at least above the emitter. No doubt this is a safety consideration. Nobody would dare test one of these things horizontally. And good luck with this anywhere near an airport. If they are worried about 1w handheld lasers, a 400w one aimed skyward will require a NOTAM every time you want to turn it on.
The boiling tea thing goes back long before the Japanese team working on this tech. That is a reference to pre-WWII request from the British government for tech that could boil a few liters of water a distance: a death ray. That request eventually resulted in what we now today call radar.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41188464 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41188464
>> "Suppose, just suppose," said Watson Watt to Wilkins, "that you had eight pints of water, 1km [3,000ft] above the ground.
- TameAntelope 4y agoJust put them underground.
- bialpio 4y agoAt this point you might as well just put cables in the hole that you had to dig up, right?
- minsc_and_boo 4y agoWired cables still have electrical resistence. Better to beam power over buried vacuum tubes.
- ben_w 4y agoThese systems are less efficient than even mediocre cables. But if you could affordably construct a continental scale vacuum tube, you could do much better than even a good existing industry standard cable: Vacuum is a good insulator, so you can put any superconducting cable you like in the middle of the vacuum tube and keep it cold with minimal cost. In principle you could even do away with the cable, by shooting electrons down the tube and collect them at the other end. No resistance so this is a room-temperature superconductor (non-quantum, I believe the term is "ballistic superconductor").
- minsc_and_boo 4y agoI know, that's why it was a joke. Buried vacuum tubes would be stupid crazy.
- bialpio 4y ago> Note that in all the pictures the receiver seems to be on a tower or at least above the emitter. No doubt this is a safety consideration My understanding of the article is that the system has a safety mechanism built into it that cuts the beam off when something is detected in the path, so likely it's an issue with providing uninterrupted service rather than safety?
- sandworm101 4y agoAnd electrical lines have fuses, insulators and all manner of safety devices. That doesn't mean they don't also regularly start fires and sometimes kill people.