This is specifically in reference to Starlink satellites. I have no idea how they could possibly work. How can thousands of videos, pictures, text, and music, be sent optically through space? I feel like it’s an impossible amount of data to transmit, other than the use of magic.
In: Physics
I have no specific knowledge about starlink sattelites, but I’m an electrical engineer and fiberoptic cables are not really complicated.
You basically just put a Diode on both ends, one that can be used to create light (LED) and turn light back into electric current (Photodiode). Diodes are semiconductor technology, so they are really really fast, you can change it’s state in nanoseconds, so billions of state changes are possible in one second. The limitation on data capacity comes from the cable itself, if bits are too fast they will “smear” into each other because glass has a property that different wavelength of light have a different speed of light. So length of the cable has a maximum for a specific dataspeed and you need to plan for repeater stations.
As a general note light is just another form of electromagnetic radiation, so transmitting works just like a radio signal (but with other materials blocking it)
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