Re: Laser Cooling

From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.inka.de)
Date: Sun Jul 30 2000 - 05:44:04 MDT


[Non-member submission]

Everitt Mickey <evmick@pnv.net> wrote:

> I was dreaming of a laser beam to space offloading excess Btu's into the
> void....

David Brin, "Sundiver" (1980).
This has been discussed in rec.arts.sf.science, and the consensus
was that it is thermodynamically impossible. A laser beam has low
entropy, so you can't use it to get rid of waste heat.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de 



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