this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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kawaiiiiiii (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Some rough calculations:

5 leagues ≈ 15 mi ≈ 24.1 km. An average human has hair that's maybe 20 cm wide. Using the small angle approximation we get an angular size of 0.2/24100 ≈ 8.3x10^-6 radians.

At 400 nm wavelength, resolving details of that angular size requires an aperture of 1.22(400 nm / 8.3x10^-6) ≈ 5.88 cm.

So either Legolas has some absolutely massive eyes, has the ability to use both his eyes for optical interferometry (I'm voting for this since it's the coolest), or is just plain magic.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

There's magic in this world, it's possible elf sight is slightly magical.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Adding from someone above. https://old.lemmy.world/comment/16391357

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

didnt know old.lemmy was a thing.

Thanks !

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Dang, that didn't federate to my instance. Their math seems to check out too.