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2025-10-04 06:18:57 UTC
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Greg Egan on Nostr: What if we use mirrors to bounce a pulse of light back and forth between the ends of ...

What if we use mirrors to bounce a pulse of light back and forth between the ends of the borehole?

For large values of R/M, the light will cycle much faster than an object in a grazing orbit. The two cycles become identical only at R/M=3, when the orbital velocity itself equals the speed of light.

For smaller values of R/M, the time measured at the top of the borehole for the light to cycle increases without bound, but by then no grazing orbit is possible.