Black out coming; Elon Musk says Starlink active in all continents even Antarctica
(www.ndtv.com)
❄️ INCLUDING ANTARCTICA ❄️
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I like Starlink, but I take issue with this statement..
This is what we in the trade call 'bollocks'. Information travels at the speed of light in a vacuum, the same as it does in a fibre optic cable.
Where it benefits is from a reduced number of devices between the endpoints which take a couple of milliseconds each to process and route the traffic - that doesn't actually mean the traffic travels faster, there's just fewer devices to slow it down as it moves across the network.
Light travels slower in glass (fiber optic cable) than it does in a vacuum. Additionally, the light bounces around in the fiber optic cable, rather than traveling perfectly straight. As you know, running zig zags across a road makes you run more distance, and therefore take longer, than running straight. Which represents further slowdown, even if light were traveling at the same speed in both mediums.
This is a well-known physical concept, that is provable at home, so you don't need to take (((their))) word for it.
You gotta love the Reddit style system we have here where openly wrong information that "feels" right is propped up, and a feedback loop of up-votes occurs. It makes you wonder how much patently wrong information you've consumed without verifying because you're not previously familiar with the topic enough to call bullshit.
It's actually very hard to know the truth nowadays. I follow this forum because I view it as the closest thing to achieving truthfulness. Look at so many blowhards on many topics (myself included). Generally, people go by what feels right because there's so much data out there, some right, some wrong, it's hard to know the truth. We dont have time in 1 lifetime to dive down every rabbit hole on literally everything. If we did do that, there would be no time left for anything else. That's supposing you have the best digging skills and find the truth every time.
This has led to a world of "experts" because surely I don't know everything, but I can know a couple things, I can be an "expert" on those topics. Whose to say my expertise is right on the topic I do a huge dig on? Some people do the same job for a lifetime. That does not make them a skilled worker in their field. Some show up and "get it" and they figure out how to do the job better than "seasoned veterans"
I don't necessarily look down upon the methods this board uses. The best way, on this board, is to spit the truth, then back up that claim with valuable resources. Then, you have a win-win situation. No one (with good intentions) will attack you when you have proven your case as factual. The "reddit" like system will support you because this forum, people care more about the TRUTH than supporting a narrative. Plus, your own integrity will be vindicated and proved.
In this case, it's not really a matter of who to trust. You can go out and do some basic experiment to prove this for yourself.
Leftists like to say things like "the science is settled" and "it's not controversial, all scientists agree" when it comes to actually controversial things like climate change and shit. But in a case like this, it's obvious because you can literally measure it for itself. It's as settled as saying "this piece of paper is larger than this piece of paper" because you can just compare them.
I've noticed this phenomenon on Reddit and I see it here. It's a problem with the format, that's not really fixable, besides encouraging people to not assume a commenter on reddit is right just because they have upvotes.
What happens is people who aren't familiar with the topic read it and it reads like someone who knows what they're talking about. They find it interesting, so they upvote it. This props it up, so it gets more upvotes as more people see it, and it gets a bunch of replies commending it.
Then someone reads it and is like "what, this is plainly wrong" and makes a comment. That comment then gets downvoted and buried by people who were convinced by the original comment, and now feel "wronged" by the person saying that they're wrong. It's bizarre how a comment can amass near instant support out of nowhere.
I noticed my Starlink internet was great until spring. Then I cut down a tree and it was made great again. Then a component failed and I was frustrated yet again and dumped them (plus they raised the prices)
At the end of the day, whether we're hard core researchers or newbies we're all speculating. No information is concrete and even if Q posts something we shouldn't take it as gospel.
Let's just say it's less culty here than most places, but still, there's some die hard Q fans who thinks Q is god here, and that's not good.
The refractive index of light in fiber optics makes it almost 50% slower than in the vacuum. However the round trip distance to the satellite is likely longer, also the number of bits you can pump through the connection is dependent roughly on the log of the signal to noise ratio.
This puts the satellite at somewhat of a disadvantage due to propagation losses through space, in terms of total available bandwidth.
You are right. I'm not saying that that satellite is inherently faster than fiber optic cable. But neither is Starlink in that quote in the top comment. They're getting away with "technically the truth" non-sense that leaves out a crucial detail (what you described). Yes, the information travels faster, but it has to go a longer distance, so that point is moot.
But the top comment was still fundamentally wrong in its call-out, even if they sort of, kind of landed on the right conclusion (Starlink isn't faster than fiber).
Yup. Most people would prefer fiber optics directly to the home over starlink. The maximum available bandwidth is quite a bit larger I believe.
In fact just to get 500 Mbps you'd be paying $500 per month plus a pretty hefty install fee.
Most people can get 1Gbps for less than $200 if they have fiber.
Vacuum? What vacuum? If you're hinting space, it ain't going to happen. Most all satellites are balloon suspended. The vast majority of internet traffic is across cables.
Vacuum is just terminology for light traveling with a refractive index of 1.0. Air, for example has a refractive index of 1.0003. In a complete vacuum it's 1.0.
Hope that helps.
Downvoting you for comparing us to reddit. 😤
To be fair, you're right.
On Reddit, my comment would assuredly have received mostly downvotes. Here it received mostly upvotes. And, the top comment went from 100% upvotes, to a significant number of downvotes since I posted my comment.
True
In IT and came here to say this (altho my version wouldve been far less eloquent) so thanks for that!
There is also the delay of traveling up to the sat and back down. Bell System in the '80s used to use satellites for long distance calls but quit because of the lag.
Latency is a problem with geostationary satellites because they orbit 22,000mi away from earth, for a 44,000 mi round trip. Starlink uses low earth orbit, only 500 miles up, so the trips are much shorter.
I live in the Ozarks with no good alternatives for internet. I have Starlink and my latency is hovering at 25-90 ms. Up and down speeds are enough to enjoy this site and stream Rumble no problems.
Name checks out.
I gamed on Starlink. It was actually a really good experience. ... That is, until spring came, and one giant tree blossomed and blocked a small portion of the path, and when I gamed, it was partially obstructed view. I removed the tree, ran into other issues with Starlink (ended up being a ethernet cable adapter) and I already switched back to cable. (also, I cut that pesky tree down). Now, I don't know whether to go back to starlink or stick with cable.
Starlink - more expensive, surprisingly better than the local cable and fiber optic
Cable - cheaper, "faster", supporting Breezeline, Canadian company (with ties to comcast possibly)
Additionally, your "satellite dish" sends and receives signal from another satellite, so there is a duality of losses found. Plus the round trip function as you mentioned. (is 22,000 miles right? That seems a bit high IMO. No sauce from my end, just intuition.)
Indeed. Satellite systems were usually a solution of last resort, but I will admit I don't really know how Starlink is actually put together to remove the lag.
edit: I know they are in low earth orbit, so that reduces the distance dramatically from geo-stationary satellites, just not sure of the details and how much difference it actually makes.
The Starlink satellites are at a height of 340 miles. Round trip of 680 miles. In addition the satellites communicate with one another using lasers.
Compare 680 miles with 44,000 miles and you have your difference in latency. Even at the speed of light you have half a second (500 ms) of latency at 44K miles versus 40 milliseconds for Starlink. This is still not nearly as good a terrestrial internet, fiber/DSL, but significantly better than traditional satellite.
Round trip can be a bit longer depending on the inclination angle. However, I have Starlink and the only drawback is inclement weather and some gaps in the orbit field. Do fully recommend as it is a great option for remote use.
It's high time we start using muons and forget the satellites.
This is false.
There is a physics formula for calculating the speed of light in different mediums:
Speed of light in the medium = Speed of light in a vacuum/Refractive index of the mediumThe refractive index of silica glass (what most fiber optics are made of) is 1.5, and the speed of light in a vacuum is 3x10^8 m/s, therefore
Speed of light in silica = 3x10^8/1.5 = 2x10^8So you can see that information in fiber optic cables will travel at 2x10^8 m/s vs. 3x10^8 m/s in a vacuum, or about 33% slower.
This also does not take into account the fact that there is also a net slow-down effect because the light is bouncing off the sides of the cable as it travels.
The speed of light changes but it's defined as a constant by the egg-heads. It's measured in metres/sec but the definition of the unit of length (metre) is dependent on the speed of light. Nice trick.
Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion
(About 3 mins from the cue point <10:00 to 13:00)
"This is what we in the trade call 'bollocks'. Information travels at the speed of light in a vacuum, the same as it does in a fibre optic cable."
This is so wrong, i'll just go ahead and assume your trade isn't optical physics.
Thank you Sir, the level of misunderstanding of the fundamentals of science in this thread is bordering on full blown retard.