View Full Version here: : for petra: the speed of dark!
or should that be the speed of dork?
can dark have a speed? if so what would it be?
makes sense to me.
give this site a read, its both amusing and enlightening (pun intended) and tells you about dark suckers too!
http://www.freakface.com/speedofdark/
on further reading the answer to petras question is quite obvious...
-300,000 km/h
spacezebra
25-08-2006, 06:39 PM
Thank you Vingo for clearing this up for me.
You have answered my question and won the prize.;)
Cheers Petra
Astroman
27-08-2006, 07:52 PM
Congrats on the new 12" lightbridge Ving! :D
Gargoyle_Steve
28-08-2006, 01:43 AM
Great link there ..... and it was wonderful to see the theory of Dark Suckers revisited too (cutting edge stuff, follow that link and have a read if you haven't done so yet).
;)
I first read about Dark Suckers many many years ago, back when I was a Tech in training with Telecom. I have tried to educate people about dark suckers for years .... sadly, with little success.
I have always tried hard to explain to people that elecrical circuits, especially high end elecronic componentry, works on the little known "smoke principle" too. Any tech worth his salt knows this to be true, but like much of the REAL knowledge in the world it's kept out of the common press.
For those of you unfamiliar: electricity is basically the property of "charge" that is created by numerous electrons all moving in the same direction. What is basically unknown by many is that once you harness elecricity in most modern electronic devices the flow of electricity is also matched with a flow of tiny, but powerful, smoke particles too.
:eyepop:
The proof of this is simple, easy to understand, and irrefutable: it does not matter what you do, once your electronic device has developed a fault that has let the essential smoke out, it will NOT work again until it is repaired.
Why are computer CPU chips so much more expensive than smaller integrated circuit chips, which are more expensive than capacitors, which are more expensive than resistors, etc??
Smoke!!! The more smoke a component holds, the dearer it is!
;)
It's very very complicated pumping all that smoke into such tiny devices you know!
Even vehicle engines suffer from this problem, to a smaller extent as there is little electricity used under the bonnet compared to the amount of petrol consumed (electric cars however!!!) but consider: even a healthy car is always releasing very small amounts of smoke constantly while running. Manufacturers know this, governments know this - thats why it is accepted that ANY car engine has a limited lifespan - even slowly losing smoke meas that one day they will run out.
As a car engine gets more and more worn it loses it's smoke quicker and quicker, and should it develope one of those catastrophic smoke leaks whereby it all comes out in a huge cloud at once - forget it! Modern cars, more electronics - more expensive to repair!
:thumbsup:
Dujon
28-08-2006, 10:25 AM
Yes, Steve, most of the world is ignorant of the smoke phenomenon. My customers usually fail to understand how time consuming and expensive it is to get the smoke back in when their equipment fails.
Let's be honest though, dark suckers can be a real problem. Manufacturers for some unknown reason always mount them in the most inaccessible parts of their equipment and, even though relatively cheap to replace/repair, the effort involved in effecting such a replacement is dreadful. Many of these devices don't break their smoke circuit, it's just that the smoke conduit has failed (but not leaked); a repair is usually a matter of a mere minute or two once you have accessed the darned thing.
Reflecting telescopes are a basic form of dark sucker as most on here would be well aware - but the general population is not. So when something baffles you it's why the term "It's all smoke and mirrors" comes to mind.
g__day
28-08-2006, 02:48 PM
300,000km / sec I think you mean ving, not per hour!
:doh: oops yeah per second i mean!
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