[ELI5] How far can you magnify radiant energy such as sunlight?

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It is my understanding that you can only heat something up to the temerpature the source of heat is. so if i have 10 1 sqft lenses focussing on 1 1sqft lens i would get 10x the energy [roughly] the 1sqft lens would focus. but if i did this in several levels making a million 1sqft of mirrors focussing to a thousand, focussing to 1 I would not get a million times the energy [roughly]

Is this correct?

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-i want to justify a high atmosphere magnifier rendering the Land below into dust. id rather it was a passive effect than needs a solar array and emitters of some kind.

In: Physics

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Technically you could use something called Dyson sphere and get 100% of the sun’s output. You could then redirect this energy any way you see fit. If you want a planet killer, you could do that.

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