Even worse waste of mirrors than concentrated solar..
August 18th, 2010
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What can you do with a huge array of mirrors mounted on a precise optical-tracking platform? You could make a telescope for one thing. That would sure be useful.
This, however, is not…
Moonlight, by the way, is almost entirely composed of sunlight that is reflected from the moon, with negligible amounts coming from starlight or lights from the earth. It’s not a perfect reflection like a mirror, but rather it’s a diffuse reflection, like you get when you illuminate something that is opaque but not shiny. Because the moon is basically devoid of color, the light it reflects back is also basically white. The fact that the moon sometimes appears red or orange is entirely due to the earth’s atmosphere.
It has no health benefits. Sorry. In fact, your body can’t tell the difference between moonlight, sunlight and the light from a good full-spectrum source of artificial light. Moonlight does not in any way dictate your body’s rhythms. Your daily cycle is largely governed by light, but what tells your body it’s time to sleep is not the presence of moonlight but rather the lack of sunlight. Of course, artificial light can interfere with this. If this is the case, the best advice is to stop staying up late and keeping large electric lights on late at night. Moonlight will do nothing to help.
Moonlight has long been given mystical powers by various folk tales and religions. This includes such things as stories of werewolves or claims that the moon has some kind of astrological significance. The fact is moonlight is just like any other light. There’s nothing special about it.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Quackery, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 19th, 2010 at 2:41 am
If you try aiming it at the sun and not the moon you will get an effect.
You could not make a telescope of it as it requires multiple magnitudes more accurate mirrors.
The mirror assembly and column pretty expensive. It Looks like some has gotten their hand on a part from an experimental solar thermal plant and found a way to make money off it.
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August 19th, 2010 at 7:31 am
Lunacy!
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August 19th, 2010 at 8:16 am
Why do I have a feeling someone has just discovered a new way to cash in on gullible “Twilight” fans?
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August 19th, 2010 at 9:08 am
magne said:
Yeah, you’re right. Although I suppose you could save the money spent on 50+ general purpose mirrors of limited precision and spend it on one smaller high quality mirror for a telescope. Or you could suppose that this is more a waste of mirror material which could have been made into telescope mirrors or something…
Or hell, you could just hang them in bathrooms and use the to make sure you don’t miss a spot shaving. That’s useful, right?
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August 19th, 2010 at 9:26 am
MrNiceguy said:
Moonlight work on werewolf’s not vampires. No using this mirror in sunlight is not a good way to detect vampires, even if you manage to cause radiation damage on somebody.
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August 19th, 2010 at 10:47 am
What a bunch of lunatics.
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August 19th, 2010 at 10:52 am
So sad that there are Western educated people in the 21st century that will buy into this rubbish.
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August 19th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Intuitive Counselor…LOL!! OMG!! My sides are starting to hurt!
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August 20th, 2010 at 12:44 am
Wait, what?
Interstellar Moonlight. Can we just go back over that: Interstellar. Moonlight.
You what? Seriously?
Also:
Soylent said:
Matthew said:
Nice work.
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August 20th, 2010 at 3:12 am
I’mnotreallyhere said:
Obviously the only parts of moonlight which are effective are the parts which have come from the stars, which is why the mirrors are needed – to concentrate the magic starlight rather than just getting a reflected dose of common sunlight.
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August 20th, 2010 at 4:53 am
[Other] Matthew said:
Well it’s a bit of a grey area isn’t it? Are we talking light from far off stars bouncing off our moon? Surely “interstellar moonlight” would be light from moons in other star systems?
Also: That’s no moon…
Someone had to say it and never let it be said that I shirk my duties to take one for the team.
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August 20th, 2010 at 6:33 am
I’mnotreallyhere said:
They’re not that big on accuracy.
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August 20th, 2010 at 8:02 am
I’mnotreallyhere said:
Good catch, it managed to avoid me. So if you use this device during the full moon as shown it would not be very effective because the light would be reflected sunlight and you can demand a refund?
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August 21st, 2010 at 10:05 am
This sounds a lot like complete bull to me, but it actually made me think of something. I am sorry if this is going off topic. I have heard a lot about the use of artificial lights that mimic sunlight for therapeutic purposes. These supposedly help people who spend a lot of time indoors with their circadian rhythms which they say are impacted by the body being confused over day and night. Also, I have seen claims that it is a good way to pre-condition yourself to time zone changes to lessen the impacts of jetlag.
It seems like it makes sense in some regard, but in another I wonder if it is just a lot of bologna. Do you believe that exposing onesself to light on a timetable in this manner is actually useful or another quack scam?
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August 21st, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Mister Anybody said:
Light therapy has merits. There’s no doubt about that. However, it’s possible it has been overstated in one circumstance or another. In extreme northern and southern latitudes there’s very little daylight in the winter and this has been shown to be associated with problems with circadian rhythms leading to insomnia and also to SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)
Light therapy can definitely help in these circumstances.
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August 23rd, 2010 at 10:22 am
Another thing to point out might be that the Moon, bright as the full Moon seems to our eyes when they’ve adjusted to darkness, is not actually all that reflective, comparatively speaking. The average albedo of the Moon is 0.12 (12% of sunlight which reaches it is reflected back). A good mirror is as close to 1 as possible. Since the Moon is not a flat disk but is instead a sphere, much of the reflected light isn’t even aimed at us, so the effective albedo is more like 0.08 or less. This is comparable to many blacktop pavements (which range from 0.04 to 0.12, depending on composition and weathering). Earth, by contrast, has an average albedo of about 0.37, because of all the water and water-vapor clouds. Snow is 0.8. Enceladus, the shiniest object in the solar system, is .99 (about as shiny as a natural object can actually be).
So they’re going for a solar reflector which is only at peak efficiency for a couple of nights a month and even then is wasting about 93% of the light that hits it. It does have the advantage of being already present, unlike the orbiting mirror concepts one occasionally hears about. But in my opinion, that’s just about the only thing going for it.
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August 23rd, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Calli Arcale said:
Yeah, a light does not need to be that bright to look fairly bright when seen in otherwise full darkness. The sun is extremely bright, so even a fraction of a percent of the sunlight will look reasonably bright at night.
For a good comparison of the true brightness of the moon, look at the moon during the daytime. Yes, many people don’t realize it because it usually goes unnoticed, but you can see the moon during the day (assuming it’s on your side of the earth). It does not look bright at all. In fact, it doesn’t really appear to “glow” but rather looks like a non-radiating object (which is really what it is), not unlike a high altitude cloud or something.
http://www.farmersalmanac.com/astronomy/2010/07/12/a-daytime-moon/
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