With 50k satellites it can become an effective space weapon. Assume about 250ish miles orbital altitude. also assume the satellites you target with this weapon are at about the same altitude. That makes for roughly 140 miles average between satellites in the cluster and target, but much of the time there will be multiple satellites closer than this. Even low amounts of light coming from unexpected angles can blind sensors like surveillance cameras, but at shorter distances if the mirror has appropriate focal length and multiple mirrors can be used, it can dramatically increase the heat experienced by the satellite but far more importantly it can push the heat from unexpected directions. Satellites often employ heat shielding to stop the direct heat from the sun from baking the satellite and also have heat pumps to push it out the dark side. By heating that avoids the heat shield, or better yet, raises the radiator to a high temperature, the satellite bakes and self destructs. The focused energy does itself not need to come close to baking the satellite on its own. The use case is very compelling for destroying enemy satellites while getting funding and permission by pretending to solve a civilian purpose.

Two problems with that are,
1) this only locks in the rate of the system, and building, or far worse renting, the system to meet 100% of needs into the future is basically unaffordable on a cost basis and specifically because you could take the 5-6 figures and invest it in markets or such creates a vast lost opportunity gap. Even breaking even long term is very bad for this reason. And.. I’m close to 45 latitude, and in a climate that sees quite a few overcast days. This greatly reduces the efficacy and thus increases the cost for installed kWh you actually receive and can use. This compounds the problem in #1. This is why I’m all for starting a trade war on solar panels and getting China to glut the market with crazy excess capacity to the point homeless are sleeping under perfectly good discarded solar panels because cardboard is too expensive. We don’t even manufacture them to 3% of our needs and the cost of the government subsidizing domestic production is only a tiny fraction of the wealth we would extract from china, not to mention the saving the planet as a byproduct. But until panels cost what cardboard does, and until storage costs drop (lithium isn’t even the most cost effective given chemistry maturity, something like sodium ion would be vastly superior for home grid), it does not make financial sense at all.

Of course, with just a touch of polish they are so shiny and gleam. With the consumer push for physical media, wouldn’t you want games made with element 13?

It’s not. Literally through the 60s all the way to the 90s improper construction methods caused widespread destruction and unaffordability in Florida and its suffering to this day with no one wanting to insure those homes. In my state stucco homes in the 80-90s were built with a sealed style of construction that worked well in dryer/warmer areas but caused billions in damages to the point around here a stucco home is considered garbage and has a bad name to this day. It’s not that homes can’t be built with stucco even here, it’s that when you build without understanding the environment then practices that work quite well can fail systematically and catastrophically.

A problem (or rather a lack of a problem) in my state are fixed rate utilities. kWh are the same price during peak usage as middle of the night and the rate is quite low compared to much of the US so batteries don’t make sense from a power savings perspective. About the only thing it provides is uninterrupted power during outages but the problem there is infrastructure around here is well regulated and down times are exceedingly rare and when they do happen statistically last only a few minutes. In two decades we have only lost power twice that lasted over 24 hours.

Getting insurance dramatically changes depending on home construction. If you have a ground level 60s style house where they took regular building practices and simply put it on a beach or within a hundred or so miles of the ocean then you get total destruction and unaffordablity. However, if you put it high on stilts that are 18’ above high tide on the coasts to avoid surges (height depends on location), use hurricane proof windows, siding, roofing, and internal bracing, etc. The cost may go over double per square foot but it will survive hurricanes largely without substantial damage the majority of the time. You can actually see aftermath videos where ground level old construction homes are completely absent and modern construction stilted homes are unscathed and they used to be neighbors after a major hurricane.

Astronomers renamed it to avoid those jokes forever

I have been following climate science from the 80s and the most consistent thing has been what we’re dealing with actually is worse than what’s been the “consensus” so far. Not to say an administration hostile to inconvenient facts and logical reasoning isn’t a problem, but science in general across all fields tends to resist change in ideas. Going against the established precedent is difficult (and this isn’t always bad), but it does take a long time and when it impacts how people live their lives this change always seems to greatly lag behind where logical reasoning from facts places us. It’s part of the human condition.

The big deal here is the signal to noise ratio was close to 70, whereas most mergers are 20 or less. This lets scientists see the merger, or chirp signal, with much better fidelity. While it’s true it’s not necessarily a smoking gun of any particular new insight, getting cleaner and stronger measurements is what will ultimately show what spacetime is actually doing so that it can be compared to theory.

What’s left off this article is the technicality of what an event horizon is, for there are several types depending on how you look at it. For example, there is the formal event horizon, which is the boundary across which light rays internal to it won’t reach outward but this is nebulous and spread out across space and time. Then there is the apparent horizon, which is the colloquial one people are more familiar with that is the schwarzchild radius static in a moment of time and space that is the boundary where light rays can’t escape from. When two black holes merge, as the two separate horizons approach each other, the localized spacetime can become closed off from the rest of the visible universe without passing either of those two radiuses and before they merge because the average mass in that spacetime vicinity forms a horizon around the two merging black holes. PBS Spacetime has a nice episode on it. Detailed measurements of mergers will give us a better understanding of the entire picture of how these events play out and shape spacetime.

Ha, just like being close to a supernova can cause such extreme neutrino flux you can actually die of radiation from it interacting with your body, being within a couple of horizon widths of the merger can probably put such excessive stress on your body from the force of sloshing space time as to actually kill you. Which is kind of insane.

Better get a rubber out for this one.

Interesting. I think the main problem with this approach is human limitations of thought. If we fire all the engineers and let AI do everything this will synergistically push the envelope to a new paradigm. -CEO

User name checks out, plus that’s correct. This is a purchased ad to raise investment for a 3m dollar ultrasonic emitter array to replace a 5k dollar chunk of high resistance conductor. It’s also the reason why it’s unlikely to make it to coffee shops or homes until the emitters become fantastically cheap. It’s also why ultrasonic cleaners (this is a glorified one) are so damn expensive.

This isn’t specifically accurate. The intruding water proceeded at the speed of sound in the sea, far faster than the speed of sound in air (1500 m/s+). From the ideal gas law (which holds up until molecular bonds break or are made in this case and even then is mostly right if you add that back in) means half the volume is twice the absolute temperature meaning the air temperature would definitely reach insane values. However it’s even less time than the event which was, given about 1m from the walls tops for passengers, much less than 1 millisecond. Air is clear until it reaches insane temperatures so it’s a poor absorber/emitter of thermal radiation at those volumes/distances meaning it had to be direct thermal transfer for a good chunk of the heat transfer. All in all it’s not much different from tying someone to a cannon and firing, you might find some slight evidence of singeing but only after you find enough pieces.

Should we blame the government?
Or blame society?
Or should we blame the images on TV?
No, blame Canada, blame Canada
With all their beady little eyes
And flappin heads so full of lies
Blame Canada, blame Canada
We need to form a full assault
It's Canada's fault