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With each bounce, the photon loses a little more energy and adds another 2P to the sail’s momentum. The photon can keep this up for thousands of bounces — in their paper, Meyer et. al. found that with reasonable assumptions about available materials and a lot of precision, you could extract 1,000 times the momentum from a photon before diffraction and Dopper shifts killed you. This means you only need 1/1,000th the energy to levitate the squirrel — a mere megawatt.
posted 7 months ago in physics, xkcd, science48 views | 9 jaas | 1 save | reply )

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