Re: Questions (Space)

On Thu, 6 Sep 2007 00:26:00 GMT+1, Tina Hall wrote:

[...]

How are signals transported through space? I know radio bounces around
in the atmosphere (another one of those vague snippets), and there's
nothing to bounce in space. The folks that went to the moon had contact
with earth, so how did the data get from there to here? (Link to simple
information also welcome.)

I'm sorry, I don't have any links.

Light and radio are the same thing; the general term is "electromagnetic
radiation". Radio gets here from the moon the same way light does -- in
straight lines, through spacetime. You only need to "bounce" radio, or
light, when there's something in the way (perhaps a planet, such as the
one you're standing on) and you need to get it around the corner.

You can't see the moon from everywhere on Earth at once, so the space
guys have radio receivers scattered around that are connected to
telephone lines. Whichever receiving station can see the moon can also
receive radio from there, so it receives the signals and converts them
to a telephone call back to HQ. Sometimes the receiving stations are
satellites, but the concept is the same.

And radio waves don't really "bounce" off the atmosphere. That's a
simplification sometimes used as jargon; people also say "hop" for the
same concept. The reality is much more complicated. I can try to explain
if you like, but it may be too much information.

Regards,
Ric

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

.

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