this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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Scientists have speculated about how Archimedes’ death ray purportedly harnessed sunlight to burn ships. Now, a teen may have evidence the device was plausible.

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[–] Lemming421@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Do

Not

Give

Elon

Musk

Ideas

[–] teft@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Didnt mythbusters disprove this like 15 years ago?

[–] ashok36@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

"I'm standing right in it and I'm not dead."

[–] EmptyRadar@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago

That is discussed in the article:

The Discovery Channel series “MythBusters” featured episodes in 2004, 2006 and 2010 testing out scenarios for the purported death ray but ultimately declared the legend to be a myth when each test failed to light a wooden boat on fire. In 2005, a class of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, inspired by the show’s first episode, was able to ignite a wooden boat once with a similar technique to Sener’s on a larger scale, but failed on a second attempt.

Sener said he believes that combining MIT’s findings with his own, the data could suggest the death ray was plausible, and Archimedes likely could have used the sun’s rays with large mirrors to cause combustion. But the technology may not work in cold temperatures or cloudy weather, and the sea’s impact on the ships’ motion affects the practicality of this device, he added in his paper.