Light bouncing off the Moon...
For the high and low tech people reading this post, here is a setup for finding the distance to the Moon:
Although you may laugh at this, the question remains... If you shoot lasers at the Moon, anywhere and nothing happens, then shoot them where Apollo put reflectors and get something back (that takes > 2 seconds - repeatable), how is that possible?
Those Moonshramps know how to use lasers?
Did you know that by the time the laser beam gets to the moon, it is supposedly bigger than the moon? How can you point the laser at the moon without hitting the retroreflectors if they are in deed there? Also, we were allegedly doing laser moon bounce experiments in the early 60's; way before any retroreflectors were supposedly planted on the moon. What was the point of your post? Perhaps you are simply ignorant about science?
Sure
"Perhaps you are simply ignorant about science?"Yes, the first laser pulse reflected from the moon was in 1962, but if you look into it you will find a dramatic improvement in accuracy since the corner reflectors were installed.
You can read a bit about it in:
Reminescenses of Early Work at MIT and ESRIN 1963-1974But these early experiments needed very high power and comparatively long pulse lengths (around 1 ms in the 1962 MIT case), so could not achieve very high accuracy. I could not find much of the accuracy of this one, bit a later one (still without corner reflectors) described in
3 .1. Accuracy of Distance Measurement
This accuracy is limited by several factors:
(a) The duration of the pulse emitted by the laser, that is, about 50 nsec. This time interval corresponds to an uncertainty of 15 m in the distance.
Where did you get this bit from?
"Did you know that by the time the laser beam gets to the moon, it is supposedly bigger than the moon? "
Not even as big as the toy flat earth moon.
Because you're a long way out! Have a look at:
May 9, 1962: Laser beam first used to measure distance to the moon
In 1962, laser technology was a new and exciting science. Lasers produce a light that is intense, coherent, and monochromatic. The beam of light emitted by a laser is also extremely narrow. It would be impossible to bounce a flashlight beam off the moon, as the light disperses too much to travel any distance. But a laser beam is so narrow that it can make the roughly 239,000 mile journey to the moon and still be detected back on Earth. The first time this was done, MIT scientists using a ruby laser to bounce a light beam off the moon in a series of pulses, estimated that its area on the moon's surface was just four miles in diameter. Later they were able to reduce this to under 2 1/2 miles.
From
Cosmeo View Today In History EventsThe measurements with the corner reflectors has achieved millimeter accuracy, enough to determine that the Moon is spiraling away from Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm per year - a figure unexpectedly high.
You should really be careful about who you claim is [/b]"simply ignorant about science"[/b] it might rebound!
Finally how do you reconcile the 239,000 miles or so measured by a number of methods with FE "a bit over 3,000 miles" purely guessed?
<< Swapped a ref, fixed a bit >>