2991: Beamsplitters
| Beamsplitters |
 Title text: Under quantum tax law, photons sent through a beamsplitter don't actually choose which path they took, or incur a tax burden, until their wavefunction collapses when the power is sold. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a SOLAR PANEL HIDDEN DEEP IN MEDIAWIKI'S HQ - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
A beamsplitter is a device, usually made from a pair of prisms or a half-silvered mirror, that splits a beam of light into two beams going in different directions. In the diagram in the comic, a beamsplitter has been inserted into the path of light in a reflecting telescope so that some of the light going to the detector is redirected to a solar panel. The electricity generated there is then sold to a power grid supplier.
The joke in the title text is based on using beamsplitters in experiments related to quantum mechanics.
A beam splitter is an optical device, used in numerous scientific instruments such as microscopes and (here) telescopes, to direct an incoming beam of light to multiple paths; the most usual number of paths for any individual beam splitter is two. In a microscope, a beam splitter may be used to direct the imaging beam to the user's eyes, or to a recording device such as a camera, or to both at once.
In this comic, a beam splitter is being used in a large-scale telescope to "steal" part of the incident light beam and direct it to an electricity-generating solar panel. The power generated is then sold on the local grid. The situation may be taken as a darkly humorous comment on the state of funding for scientific research, at least in the USA, implying that surreptitious, and legally/ethically questionable, strategies are needed to fund scientists and their projects. The comic pushes the point by supposing that the practice had become so commonplace that the IAU got wind of it, and, presumably to minimize the fallout from legal actions and negative publicity, has acted to ban the practice. That most optical instruments, even large telescopes, are unlikely to capture enough light during regular operations to make the "banned" strategy feasible is ignored for the sake of the joke.
The title text humorously conflates financial tax laws, applicable to the sale of the "stolen" electricity, with the laws of quantum physics, governing the behavior of the photons that are generating the electricity.
Transcript
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