Radio Waves Employed in Space Construction 195
CDeity writes "Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology claim that radio waves could be used to shape and fuse debris in space to form massive structures according to this article. Scientists have in the past employed sound and light waves to position small particles, and every expectation indicates these techniques could work on a large scale. One engineer estimates " it would take approximately one hour to form a rubble cloud into a 50-meter long enclosed structure.""
Perhaps (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Perhaps (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Perhaps (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps (Score:1)
I've seen this done on a smaller scale (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I've seen this done on a smaller scale (Score:1)
Food for thought...
If someone farts in space, does it make a noise???
~Loren
Re:I've seen this done on a smaller scale (Score:2, Funny)
Yes. But the only person who would hear it is the guy in the suit it was released in. Unless he has his transmitter on...
Once the sound wave leaves the suit, it would be silent, but deadly. To the guy in the suit anyway...
Re:I've seen this done on a smaller scale (Score:2)
It is 2002 you know. In all the movies set in the 21st century they use "sonic shapers" for construction.
just make sure you get the right channel (Score:5, Funny)
classical for the smooth solar sails...
and talkback for all the crap that has to be cleared off the building site.
Neat-o (Score:2, Funny)
In Space no one can hear you build (Score:5, Funny)
Lets just hope the engineers aren't big Star Trek fans or they'll try building these structures with sound in outer space.
Re:In Space no one can hear you build (Score:1)
Re:In Space no one can hear you build (Score:2)
Snippet from article: "Scientists have in the past employed sound and light waves to position small particles, and every expectation indicates these techniques could work on a large scale."
You do of course understand that the parent poster was well aware of that, which is why the joke was funny. Don't you? It's called a joke.
Re:In Space no one can hear you build (Score:4, Funny)
Heh perhaps he didn't watch that episode where Data learned the human value known as 'humor'.
Re:In Space no one can hear you build (Score:2, Funny)
I probably wouldn't make the bridge chair shake however.
Regards,
Ross
Re:In Space no one can hear you build (Score:2)
You should join the airforce. Or take out a patent.
Re:In Space no one can hear you build (Score:2)
Some poster on
The UI innovation *I* want is for this guy [chordite.com] to start talking to these guys [sighted.com] and get me a complete computer interface that fits in my hand. It'd beat the hell out of a blackberry...
1 Hour Eh? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:1 Hour Eh? (Score:3, Informative)
Binary to Text converter [sitinthecorner.com]
Re:1 Hour Eh? (Score:2)
energy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:energy? (Score:1)
Duuuunnnn...dunnnn..... DUN DUNNNNNNNN! (Score:1)
Thusly ACC would be a part of the space exploration movement that he himself helped to bring about. I'm sure everyone by now has heard about the Jupiter slingshot effect that he devised and was then used by NASA.
Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)
Seasoned AStronaught: Thats no moon....
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:5, Interesting)
So I haven't quite read the article but it occured to me.
Is it possible to demolish such a structure with radio waves? Or do the laws that lets you do things one way, prevent you form doing things the other way?
if you can't demolish the structures with radio waves, then what changes once you have built the structure that prevents you from doing so?
Re:Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:1)
Re:Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:5, Funny)
This theory also has medical applications: you can fashion a similar device to keep certain extraterrestrial radio signals from interfering from your neurotransmitters. There isn't much medical literature about this yet, but it's a growing field and doctors are beginning to appreciate the dangers of these radio waves.
I wear such a device myself.
Mod +1 (Score:1)
Tim
Re:Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:2)
Hilarious. I remove my own Sn cranium covering in deference to your wit.
I'd mod you up again, but drat, I'm out of points now.
Re:Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:2)
Re:Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:1)
Re:Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:1)
Of course it does. It's called the DMCA.
Oh, you mean the laws of physics? nevermind...
Re:Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:2)
Entropy increases. Therefore, I would assume that you could easily do the opposite if your structure was not robust enough.
Re:Can the opposite be done as well? (Score:2)
moon manipulation (Score:3, Insightful)
What if his smiling face was looking down at us from orbit? Imagine how many astronomers we could scare!
Re:moon manipulation (Score:2)
There are other ways to do stationkeeping if you have this technology down. Mostly I would be thinking of putting them on a frame, and using any materials you wouldn't want to include in your structure along the frame to add mass. You can also throw it away to give yourself a push to keep balance.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
could be exploited for explosions (Score:2)
I bet some malicious devices could be created with this technology.
What about weapon uses? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can form structures out of crap floating in space, why couldn't it just be compressed into a large enough object to survive re-entry, and sent on its merry way, aimed at what the aggressor wants to obliterate here on Earth?
Imagine if GWB suddenly backed down on all his we-gotta-git-Saddam rhetoric because it was getting hom nowhere and the American people were firmly against attacking Iraq, and then two or three months later Baghdad was mysteriously leveled by an nearby meteor strike one morning.
~Philly
Re:What about weapon uses? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why we have society. And culture. And laws. And morale. Preventing the technology use/discovery or whatever is pointless. You have to acknowledge that you are living in a big spaceship with 6 000 000 000 other living being. Jettison is not an option.
The solution is a social one, not a technological one. I do not claim to know it. I just claim that it is not by saying this XYZthingy could be a weapon that anyone's gonna solve anything.
If you want to solve problems, just take away the reason that LeaderXYZ has to kill others/invade country/destroy environment.
Re:What about weapon uses? (Score:2)
Re:What about weapon uses? (Score:2)
I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
The problem is, there's no known way of raising the global IQ of a planet.
Re:What about weapon uses? (Score:2)
Re:What about weapon uses? (Score:1)
Yes, there is! [darwinawards.com]
Re:What about weapon uses? (Score:2)
Weapons Research (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Weapons Research (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh, and why hurtle debris when you could simply destroy the orbit of your target and make it feel the burn like Steve Balmer.
Re:Weapons Research (Score:2, Funny)
I used one of these once... (Score:5, Funny)
My friend and I were sitting there in the station, and were getting real tired of the annoying noise being picked up by our stereo. We were getting really bored bored, and as you know these things take hours, so we decided to see what would happen when we broadcast some hard rock via the device.
And it worked... mostly. All was going well until the end. All of a sudden, about 3/4 of the way through Jimmy Hendrix playing "All along the Watchtowner", the craft started spinning around wildly, and smashed itself to the moon where it shattered into a million pieces, and then it set itself on fire.
I can't figure it out...
And then my sister put in some Michael Jackson, but I don't even want to talk about that...
Clean up the space junk (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Clean up the space junk (Score:1)
Of course a massive orbiting wall of space junk would protect us from aliens, which is nice.
Buy space junk (Score:3, Insightful)
From the link above: The oldest debris still on orbit is the second US satellite, the Vanguard I, launched on 1958, March, the 17th, which worked only for 6 years.
NASA should take it down with one of the shuttles and sell it on Ebay... I bet some billionaire would buy it.
My neighbor is an expert at this (Score:1)
what about? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) how do you keep the satelites around after they start generating their waves?
2) how do you keep them symmetrical? (the requirement is that they set up a resonator, I think, in which case, spacing is VERY important).
Re:what about? (Score:1)
you manuver the junk, not the satelites...like driving cattle.
Re:what about? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I have a rather large satelite using waves to push rather small objects, the satelite won't move, much.
It would be very simple to counteract the marginal amount of force generated by pushing the particles around.
Re:what about? (Score:2)
Re:what about? (Score:2)
Re:what about? (Score:2)
Hah! (Score:1)
Since when do radio waves move things around? (Score:1)
How can it be that just flashing a light wave at something will cause it to move?
The article just assumes that we all knew about radio waves having force, whereas I was laboring under the impression that they had none.
Re:Since when do radio waves move things around? (Score:1)
He talks about the same type of a principal, but explains a bit more about the radio waves. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ufophysics/twinwave.h tm [ntlworld.com]
Re:Since when do radio waves move things around? (Score:2)
E=hf=mc^2 -> m=hf/c^2
v=c, p=mv=hf/c
Re:Since when do radio waves move things around? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Since when do radio waves move things around? (Score:2)
The article just assumes that we all knew about radio waves having force, whereas I was laboring under the impression that they had none.
Photons do have force. In fact, probably the most viable concept for intersteller travel at close to the speed of light is a laser or microwave sail. (You shoot lasers or microwaves at a gossamer sail. This is actually better than antimatter for intersteller travel)
Re:Since when do radio waves move things around? (Score:2, Informative)
Looking at it classically, though, electromagnetic waves are made up of electric fields and magnetic fields. Electric fields exert a force on charged particles. So if you point a radio wave at an object that reflects waves, then the wave's electric field will push the electrons in the object back and forth. The moving charged particles then interact with the wave's magnetic field, pushing them in the direction the wave was traveling.. Which is the same thing we could have predicted from conservation of momentum. (Warning: IANAP.)
Heh (Score:1)
No matter how much they shout at the roaches on the table, they won't combine to form another blunt.
Sadly.
What about on earth, in water? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course neutrally boyant requires no gasses in the objects that can be compressed, though I could imagine you might have metal building blocks with a gas bladder inside that can be filled by computer controlled pump to make it neutrally boyant to some degree.
Imagine building the frame of a house in a big
tank.
Anybody done this?
Re:What about on earth, in water? (Score:2)
And being able to design buildings in CAD, and then just push a button and have the building rise out of your tank with no labour would be a revolutionary principle.
Or any other structure. No labour, just software turned into structure.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Asteroids (Score:2)
Yes I do realize that they are attempting to create a more useful structure with the debris, but this just reminds of the innate human drive (of which I fully admit guilt) of breaking things in order to put them back together- only better!
Maybe there is a use for that satellite radio service now...
sound waves? (Score:1, Redundant)
Maybe there is sound in space on tv but it's not so in the real world.
Re:sound waves? (Score:2)
Re:sound waves? (Score:2, Redundant)
This has been a fallacy that has urked me for a while.... now tell me how the hell do we use RADIO telescopes to do research on extraterrestrial phenomenae?
No sound in space huh?! Well, maybe nothing you or I could hear, WHILE in the VACUUM of space.
The only reason we can't hear in a vacuum is that OUR ears need a media such as air or water to carry the sound waves to them. Radio waves which BTW != "sound waves" can travel though space or a vacuum just fine. Again this is why we can 'listen' to natural events like supernovas via our radio telescopes.
Re:sound waves? (Score:1)
Are you implying that a sound wave can be created in air, travel through a vacuum, enter another body of air and be heard? My understanding of sound is that it travels as compressed air. This to me implys that once a sound wave hits a vacuum, it can no longer travel.
I'm not trying to troll or flame, I'm just wondering if there is something more to sound waves than what I understand.
Re:sound waves? (Score:3, Informative)
Radio waves (Score:5, Funny)
Technician: Actually I'm sending out the construction sequence for the storage module for the ISS.
Dude: Woaw.... Rock on.
Re:Radio waves (Score:2)
Quality Control (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Break Rocks
2. Compress with radio wave "force field" (now how cool is that?)
3. ???
4. Profit
I know it's an overused joke but, in this case, it seems to me to be exactly what they're talking about.
I don't get it... (Score:1)
The moral... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The moral... (Score:2)
Re:The moral... (Score:2)
"When Earth is threatened by a large asteroid, everyone should turn their radios on and play loud, annoying music until the rock explodes."
That, more or less, worked against Manuel Noriega [gwu.edu]...
Wattage? Chicken & Egg? (Score:2)
The only way I can imagine gathering this much energy would be with a massive solar array, one of incredibly large porportions...
...so massive that it would be best built using directed radio energy.
PS - I leave issues of inertia of the transmitting station and also the subtantial risks of a misfire/hijack of one of these transmitters into an inhabited settlement as exercises for the astute reader...
Re:Wattage? Chicken & Egg? (Score:2, Informative)
And don't forget - NASA is funding research into an anti-gravity machine too, so the fact that they may be taking this seriously is no sign that it makes any sense....
Is this the terrible secret of space??? (Score:1)
Re:Is this the terrible secret of space??? (Score:1)
Tailored Force Fields (Score:1)
-m
Douglas Adams lives on..... (Score:1)
Sigh. No new ideas.
-FC
Re:Douglas Adams lives on..... (Score:2)
It was Hactor, built by the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax.
Crumbs! (Score:2)
Quick Q. (Score:4, Funny)
I like the sound of that.
Supergun Materials Into Space And Then... (Score:2)
This is the best news I've heard all day.
Completely Different Idea (Score:2)
Remembering an earlier
Re:Obligatory Post (Score:1)
1. Patent garbage
2. Put garbage in space
3. Use radio waves to melt garbage into a beowulf cluster
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
Re:This looks fairly interesting (Score:2)