#physics question

Basically, on a scale of “negligible” to “everything is beyond fucked” how disastrous for the solar system would it be if the gravitational pull of the sun completely disappeared for ~10 minutes

would it be a good idea to use sequences of photons as a way of transmitting messages throughout large distances?

Since photons are massless, they can reach the speed of light (duh), which is the current highest possible speed that can be achieved by something

Of course, we already have something like that in the form of optical fibers, but would it be possible to water it down so much, that we would not need cables?

Maybe via special machines, that'd fire these photons in certain ways to little transmitters that'd absorb and resend the photons for the lowest chances of the message getting lost or corrupted that'd remove the need for long and convoluted cables

And while on Earth, it wouldn't be that much of a problem nor would there be a strong need for something like this, but I mean it in an inter-planetary sense (maybe between telescopes located far from Earth or even outside of our solar star system

I'm not sure if it'd be possible, maybe with the right technology, but would it be a good idea or would there be a more efficient way of doing this using something else?

Being hyperextensive now apparently includes no longer knowing what positions are physically possible for normal people, because I can twist myself into eleven kinds of pretzel

(And shouldn’t, it’s extremely bad for me and related to the chronic pain)

But. Uh.

What would it take to convert a radio telescope into a radar telescope?

For context: I’m writing, and what I’m writing involves radio telescopes. I had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that most radio telescopes could be used as both receivers and transmitters, believing due to the parabolic-dish nature of many of both such devices, there’d be a relative ease of conversion. But thinking about it, the circuits required to transmit and receive radio waves are quite different from one another. So that nixes my initial thoughts.

However, I just found out about the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, aka the Goldstone Observatory, which not only uses parabolic radio antennae as radio telescopes, but also (and mainly) as a communications array for NASA to keep in touch and transfer data to/from its satellites and deep-space probes. Structurally, the Goldstone radio antennae look not so different from those at, say, the Green Bank Observatory, but I know there’s some sort of equipment that sets them apart.

What I’d like to know is, what equipment is it that sets these dual-function dishes apart, exactly, and what would it take to convert a radio telescope for that function?

Thanks!

While I can’t give you an exact graph, because I’m in the midst of finals and don’t have enough to time to graph it right now, I can tell you that the period will increase as your angle gets closer to 180 degrees, because you’re dropping the pendulum from a greater height, so it’ll swing for a longer period of time.

Alternatively, if the angle it’s dropped from is closer to zero (in relation to where the pendulum rests on its own), the period should intuitively be smaller. Physics isn’t necessarily intuitive though, so I will turn you over to khanacademy as a more precise source than us.