I think lasers are pretty wack when you think about them through this lens. A small, wand-like object in your hand can make light appear from seemingly nowhere. If it’s powerful enough it can set things on fire or blind people. Not to mention larger ones like laser cutters or the LLD, used to destroy missiles midflight. Thats sure to blow some feudal peasant minds

  • @executive_chicken
    86•1 year ago

    I live in the here and now, and I’m still baffled by wireless internet. It’s modern sorcery

      • @[email protected]
        49•1 year ago

        It’s not even sound, because it doesn’t vibrate air molecules. If that were the case, it wouldn’t work in space for communicating with things like GPS satellites.

        They use light. Because wifi/radio/Bluetooth/etc are all just electromagnetic, which can be converted directly into light that is outside of the visible spectrum. The same way that a lightbulb works. And it only works because in higher bands most solid objects just sort of look like they’re made of glass. They don’t block those bandwidths, so the light is able to pass through them like a window. That includes things like your body. They’re just shining light directly through you.

        It’s akin to your phone and router flashing Morse code at each other with invisible flashlights.

        • lwhjp
          2•1 year ago

          It’s even cooler than lightbulbs, though (assuming we’re talking about incandescents) - you send electricity back and forth into a wire that’s just the right length, and (RF) light leaks out without it getting hot!

    • @ritswd
      25•1 year ago

      I remember finding out about wireless internet from an Intel TV ad. There was somebody with a laptop, browsing internet (probably an AOL page or something like that considering the era) sitting on a chair in the middle of a stadium, with no cable to be seen.

      I thought “well that’s stupid, I know you can avoid the power cable for a while if there’s a battery, but if he’s browsing the internet, there has to be a network cable”. But the ad ran over and over on TV, clearly insisting there was no cable, so I was like “hm wait…”.

      Eventually I read about wireless networks somewhere a couple of weeks later, and suddenly it all made sense.