Why are you misquoting the article that is not what it says
Why are you accusing me of something I didn’t do?
From the bottom of the article:
Updated to correct an error in describing how radar works.
I quoted it correctly at the time. They just edited it after I commented.
It sounds like you’re conflating different concepts. A stochastic process like absorption/reemission would blur the light, so that’s not it. And the linked explanation is basically correct (in classical physics at least), but it doesn’t corroborate what you originally claimed as that’s not necessarily requiring absorbing anything. Photons can jiggle the charged particles in glass and get them to make new phase shifted light despite not being absorbed.
“Environmental damage” isn’t something that’s reducible to a single number on a graph. There’s no way to convert cancer incidents into carbon emissions or increased soil nutrient mobility, etc.
And reserves aren’t necessarily a fixed number. What exists underground isn’t the same as what’s economically recoverable. And as the price of a mineral goes up, it may become more economically recoverable and worthwhile to dig up more.
What’s happening in a medium is the rapid absorption and readmission of photons. […]
You can think of it as the photons having to jump between platforms before the can continue running at c.
That’s an intuitive model, but unfortunately it doesn’t have the advantage of actually being correct. Photons are not being absorbed and reemitted. See here for why: https://lemmy.world/comment/5444224
Space bending is a general relativity thing, which isn’t really related much to how mirrors work.
Regarding the medium bit, photons being absorbed and remitted can’t explain how light moves slower in glass. This is just an extremely popular myth. Photons are only absorbed by atoms at very specific frequencies. Also, the entire reason glass is transparent to begin with is that it’s not absorbing the photons (requires too much energy to bump the electron’s energy level so the photon isn’t absorbed and it keeps on trucking). Also photon absorption and remission is stochastic so there’s no way to control the direction it happens in or how quickly it happens. Random directions of remitted light would make glass translucent, not transparent. So for a few reasons, that’s not how it works.
As a rule, it’s probably best to avoid “random” internet sources on matters of how light works because there’s so much confidently parroted misinformation out there. For example, this is completely wrong: https://youtu.be/FAivtXJOsiI See here for correct answers to that issue: https://youtu.be/CiHN0ZWE5bk
For how mirrors work see this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-physical-proc/ https://youtu.be/rYLzxcU6ROM
Acceleration and Velocity are vectors. Changes in a velocity vector are an acceleration. Therefore when photons change direction technically it’s a form of acceleration.
LiDAR is essentially radar that uses light instead of sound
Radar doesn’t use sound. It sounds like the author doesn’t know the difference between sonar and radar.
Wasn’t she a resident of Australia? They have some pretty strict gun laws, so there’s almost no chance she’d have been able to get one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_of_Australia
(emphasis mine)