reply to post by _Del_
As you might have noted had you checked out my posts in said thread it's called interferometry and largely deals with the objections you raised!
Waves traveling through a solid medium can be either transverse waves or longitudinal waves. Yet waves traveling through the bulk of a fluid (such
as a liquid or a gas) are always longitudinal waves. Transverse waves require a relatively rigid medium in order to transmit their energy. As one
particle begins to move it must be able to exert a pull on its nearest neighbor. If the medium is not rigid as is the case with fluids, the particles
will slide past each other. This sliding action which is characteristic of liquids and gases prevents one particle from displacing its neighbor in a
direction perpendicular to the energy transport. It is for this reason that only longitudinal waves are observed moving through the bulk of liquids
such as our oceans. Earthquakes are capable of producing both transverse and longitudinal waves which travel through the solid structures of the
Earth. When seismologists began to study earthquake waves they noticed that only longitudinal waves were capable of traveling through the core of the
Earth. For this reason, geologists believe that the Earth's core consists of a liquid - most likely molten iron.
www.glenbrook.k12.il.us...Of two rays of light match each other perfectly in color, they can interact in a surprising way. Because all the crests of one wave have the same
wavelength as the second ray the crests of the two waves can be lined up with each other. As each wave crest of one ray coincides with the crest of
the other ray, the two amplitudes of the waves add up to twice the amplitude and the result is a single, much brighter light ray. This is called
constructive interference. (Probably the only time when it is considered constructive to interfere!)
planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov...Interferometry is the science and technique of superposing (interfering) two or more waves, which creates an output wave different from the input
waves; this in turn can be used to explore the differences between the input waves. Because interference is a very general phenomenon with waves,
interferometry can be applied to a wide variety of fields, including astronomy, fiber optics, optical metrology, oceanography, seismology and various
studies of quantum mechanics. Interferometry can be applied to both one-dimensional waves such as time varying signals, or to multi-dimensional waves
such as coherent images produced by laser illumination.
en.wikipedia.org...
So interferometry certainly provides the means and a more likely objection would probably involve the tremendous amounts of energy that might be
involved.
Stellar
