Wednesday, October 7, 2026
They Buried
We Dug It Up
⌕ Search
PX-2053
COMMISSIONED CALCULATION
INVENTED FOR A FICTIONAL NEWSPAPER

Scaling arithmetic: from one sodium guide star to a sky image

Origin
Dr. C. Ferreira-Amankwah, at our request
Dated
July 2026
Extent
9 pages
Status
accepted
Redactions
None.

Chain of custody

Worked on a whiteboard over two nights at the observatory and written up at our request. Published as arithmetic rather than as a conclusion, so a reader can disagree with a step rather than with a verdict.

Held by: They Buried; published in full

Excerpt

STEP 4 · PARALLAX
  The excited volume is at ~90km, fixed in space.
  Observers separated by baseline B see it displaced against the
  background by ~B/90km in angle. At B = 200km the displacement
  exceeds the object's own angular size by orders of magnitude.

  For an identical image at two separated observers, the image must be
  local to each. That is a screen. The sky is not a screen.

  NOTE: steps 1-3 are engineering. Step 4 is geometry.

Transcribed by the data desk. Line breaks follow the original. Bracketed matter is ours.

Editor's note

Steps one to three are hard. Step four is not hard; it is a different kind of statement, and it is the one the story turns on.

Cited in