Space Lasers
Let’s make clear that this article is about actual space lasers, currently used in the GRACE follow on (FO) satellite to detect the earth’s gravity field and study sea level rise and water depletion in aquifers. It will also mention the future space LISA experiment to detect gravitational waves from astrophysical objects. These lasers only point to other satellites in the experiment.
Now for debunking: the strength of the GRACE-FO satellite laser is equivalent to only four laser pointers, or 20 milliWatts. The two satellites making up the experiment are around 137 miles apart, and separate a little more as the front one is accelerated by a mass in front of it. A short time later, the second satellite is also accelerated, and restores its distance from the front one. The laser distance measure is 40 times more accurate than the microwave beam used between the original GRACE satellites. The GRACE project has demonstrated and measured sea-level rise, and the depletion of underground water resources, to an accuracy of a centimeter.
To my knowledge, no classroom has ever been burned down by a laser pointer. Such lasers are also used in stores to scan product codes, and to my knowledge, no store has ever been burned down by a scanner.
Warning: don’t look into a laser beam, or ever point one at anybody, since they can harm retinas. Also, don’t ever point one at a driver or a pilot.
Just like stars twinkle because the atmosphere is always moving and disturbing light beams, laser beams cannot be concentrated on an earth object from space.
People who do not live in California or the West, do not know that the mass outbreaks of fires here last summer, came from storms, one of which had 10,000 lightning bolts. A lighting bolt can have 1 million volts, and light up the night sky with 140 kiloWatt hours of electrical energy. That’s the same as 5 million 100 Watt bulbs turning on for a one second flash. We have high winds and droughts here, that blow up any sparks into massive, fast moving infernos. The forests and chaparral are parts of a fire ecosystem that has existed forever, and the fires initiate new trees.
The laser idea was invented by Charles H. Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow, and built by Theodore H. Maiman in 1960 at Hughes Research Labs. Maiman was Jewish, and Schawlow had a Jewish father, but was raised as a Protestant. So, in a way, all lasers are indeed partly of Jewish descent (tongue in cheek). On the other hand, the space lasers which I am describing, are funded by NASA, and/or the European Space Agency, not bankers of any denomination.
I attended a physics class by Prof. Schawlow at Stanford, who told us that the first application of the laser was to point it at a typed letter, and watch it erase the ink. It did not set the paper on fire.
The GRACE and GRACE-FO experiments are described on the Jet Propulsion Lab website for GRACE-FO, and on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRACE_and_GRACE-FO.
The LISA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna was preceded by a test experiment LISA Pathfinder, with a laser of strength 35 milliWatt. LISA itself will be deployed a million miles from earth, and its laser will have a strength of 1 Watt, hardly enough for a night light. The LISA satellites will detect a strain of the space between them of 1 part in 10^20, caused by a gravity wave. LISA is described on the NASA website https://lisa.nasa.gov/.
By the way, speaking of space and weapons, we celebrate President Biden extending the New Start Treaty with Russia for another five years. This limits the number of almost instant launch missiles and nuclear warheads.
FREE NAVALNY!
We are also happy that the US will deny weapons that continue the disastrous war in Yemen.
