Tag: xkcd

Lasers for Space Broadband

Posted on by in Cartoons, Technology

Speeds of 622 Mbps from the moon: Wireless broadband service went cosmic in a demo conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory and NASA, in which a laser-based communication uplink between the moon and earth beat the previous record transmission speed by a factor of 4,800. … The team’s Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) transmitted data over the 384,633 kilometers between the moon and earth at a download rate of 622 Mbps. In addition, data was transmitted from the earth to the moon at 19.44 Mbps, a factor 4,800 times faster than the best radio-frequency uplink ever used, MIT said. Other moon-laser applications here:

Alert the Queen!

Posted on by in Cartoons

Via What-If xkcd: When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire? —Kurt Amundson It hasn’t. Yet. But only because of a few dozen people living in an area smaller than Disney World. The world’s largest empire The British Empire spanned the globe. This led to the saying that the Sun never set on it, since it was always daytime somewhere in the Empire. It’s hard to figure out exactly when this long daylight began.  The whole process of claiming a colony (on land already occupied by other people) is awfully arbitrary in the first place. Essentially, the British built their empire by sailing around and sticking flags on random beaches.[1] This makes it hard to decide when

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