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.
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.
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.
You do know the moon doesn’t generate its own light, right?
Apparent magnitude DGAF
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?
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.
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…
I wouldn’t compare the brightness of a laser to a reflection of itself. That’s the issue I’m seeing.
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:
Pssh! You still believe in the moon?
How could it? I’ve never seen cheese glow.