Space and astronomy news
A new study shows how Solar Gravitational Lenses could be used to beam power from one system to another.. Credit: NASA/ESA, a geometric theory for how gravity alters the curvature of spacetime. The revolutionary theory remains foundational to our models of how the Universe formed and evolved. One of the many things GR predicted was what is known as gravitational lenses, where objects with massive gravitational fields will distort and magnify light coming from more distant objects.
For this study, Turyshev used analytical tools from his previous work with SGLs to consider how light can be amplified in multi-lense systems. He then applied these same methods to three free space laser power transmission scenarios that involve lensing with either a single lens or double lenses. In all cases, a point-source transmitter is positioned in the focal region of the lens, which amplifies the power picked up by the receiver.
“We show the feasibility and provide the tools that may be used to deal with all these nuances. And we have pretty good SNRs already, so including these extra modeling terms will not significantly reduce the sensitivity. So, this is the first paper that addresses all the topics in a non-speculative manner, focusing only on the physics involved.