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atomfullerene t1_j26ej5d wrote

Reply to comment by StrawberryEiri in Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology by AutoModerator

Radar astronomy is the closest equivalent I'm aware of...you basically send out a radio pulse and get the reflection back. I don't think you could make it work effectively with visible light, the amount of illumination (and therefore energy) you would need would be huge.

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StrawberryEiri t1_j26mlwp wrote

I thought it could be just for a moment, or a few seconds, like a camera flash, but is the large energy consumption because you'd need a long exposure, and thus, you'd need to run the laser for a super long time, to get an image?

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