Telescope tunnel between London and NYC opens today
(Photo from Gothamist, which has a story here.)
SuperCatBarf says: "There is a tunnel beneath the sea, recently completed, that allows citizens of London and New York to see right through the Earth and gaze upon each other, with the help of an optical device called a Telectroscope, one of which has been installed at either end."
It's not totally real, unfortunately, but the setup makes it seems real. Link | CNN report
the latest
latest episodes
I'm going to this, yay!
Someone should organise a transatlantic BB tunnel party :)
Spectacular, we can carve out a porthole for Takuan to be able to join into the festivities. Who's bringing the alcohol?
it would take exactly 42 minutes to get there.
i watched History Channel's The Universe: Gravity.
i know stuff.
This was done about a year ago between Guernsey (where I am currently) and Australia. It was an art project, and used round portholes in the floor with screens in them so that people at both ends could wave to each other. Basically a fancy webcam.
Darn, supercatbarf must have sent this in before me -- I wonder how many other readers recommended the link? It's perfect BoingBoing material, especially considering its fun Victorian (and thus steampunk) aesthetic.
It was extra fun for me because I was gullible enough to think it was based on some olde tecknollogie before I got the end of the CNN story.
It's funny: my first thought was 'hey, I can see all my friends from back home!' and was about to send off a load of emails.
Took a while before it occurred to me I actually own a phone/have a webcam around here somewhere. To be fair, it's not like they make much of an effort either :(
What, this isn't real? Next you're gonna tell me the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel is fake too.
Groonk @3, I actually had to solve that problem in high school physics. It was probably the coolest physics problem I ever had (and I majored in physics).
@#3 groonk: I believe what you are referring to is the Gravity Train, which takes 42 minutes and 12 seconds to get anywhere between two points on the surface of Earth. But that doesn't open for business until April 2009.
This reminds me of the 1935 scifi film "The Tunnel", an Ayn Randian story about an engineer building a transatlantic train tunnel.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0027131/
@#7 JEMMY
That burrito tunnel is the meanest thing on the internet
Just imagine if that really existed!
Unfortunately it was discovered that sunlight on one side of the telectroscope was focused by the lenses and incinerated viewers on the other end.
Ut.. there's photos with a bridge in the background! Terrorists could be using that info!
And they might bomb the tunnel!
hi
i've been tracking this project for a while at http://blog.telectroscope.org/
check it out
timw
it would take exactly 42 minutes to get there
The cool thing is that it takes 42 minutes regardless of where the tube is, so long as it's a straight tube connecting any two points on the surface of (a supposedly spherical) Earth. I had this as a homework problem in Classical Mechanics about 23 years ago.
To be horribly pedantic and go way off topic by correcting the already off-topic gravity train comments (sorry, I have to, physics is my love, I must uphold). The two points on the earth must be diametrically opposed (or within approximation), otherwise it won't work. When considering NY and London for example (whose arc length results in a swept angle much less than 180 degrees) there would not be equal amounts of mass normal to the sides of the tunnel, so the freefall wouldn't be straight down the tunnel, and at some point would curve towards the center of the earth, and thus one side of the tunnel wall.
Now if the carriage was magnetically suspended between the tunnel walls, and in a vacuum so no air resistance was considered, and perfect conversion of potential to kinetic energy occurred, it may be possible, but the travel time approximation would probably need to be revised, the speed would be lower, though the distance would also be lower, so who knows? anyway..... that's a fun website for the imagination.
Nevermind, I'm an idiot, it would still take only 42 mins, the derivation's looking like time length is only dependent upon the density and grav. constant. Rediscovered what everyone already knew.
The best thing about math is rediscovering what everyone already knew.
A Transatlantic Tunnel? Hurrah! Thank you Mr Harrison.
The cool thing is that it takes 42 minutes regardless of where the tube is...
But, but,
On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
So either Donald Fagan doesn't know his physics, or there's a stop in Iceland or whatever.
This is pretty cool...however there was/is an even cooler project that has been floating around for a few years now, just waiting for the right financial backing. Check it out....
http://www.tholos-systems.com/
aw man. and i left london 2 days ago.