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Luxor Sky Beam - Worlds Largest Beam Or Bug Magnet?

- 10:31 PM
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If you are headed to Vegas you do not want to miss the Luxor Sky Beam. Especially if you are a lover of physics!

Luxor Sky Beam


The Luxor Sky Beam is by far the strongest beam of light in the world.  Its so bright strobe lights are turned before the beam is fully powered up to warn aircraft. The beam can temporarily blind pilots if they go near it. Supposedly it can even be seen from space. The beam is rated at 42.3 billion candelas which is the base unit of luminous intensity in the International System. Such a massive construction was only possible to due using computer-designed, curved mirrors. These mirrors manage to collect the light from 39 xenon lamps. Then the magic happens when the design focuses all the light into one narrow beam. Giving us the end result of the most intense light beam the world has ever witnessed. Astonishingly the beam is can be seen as far as 275 miles away at cruising altitude by aircraft on a good clear night. That is as far away as Los Angeles!


Cost To Run The Beam


As you can imagine running such a massive light might run you quite the electric bill. The 39 lamps that are used to power the project are each rated at a very impressive 7,000 watts.  All cost around $1,200 to replace. But what is even more impressive the $20 dollars an hour electric bill they generate in order to power the 315,00 watts needed to power the system. It's estimated that it costs $51 an hour to operate in total! This most of been too much for even the wealthy hotel and casino owners. After 2008 only half of the lamps are now used at a time.


Insanely Hot Lamp Room

You will find the lamp room about 50 feet below the top of the building. This room is serviced by only two workers each day.  The workers have to replace the lamps every 2000 hours. They also have to keep an eye on the lamps to make sure they are not getting too hot.  This hot room gets up to 300 °F while the lights are operating.  The workers even have to use spacecraft insulation wrap to try to minimize the insane heat coming from lamps as much as possible.

Vegas Sky Beam Created Its Own Ecosystem


Have you ever heard about the Luxor sky beam bugs? The creators of the sky beam probably realized when they first turned the massive light on October 15, 1993, they were turning on the world's largest sky beam. However, no one knew they were also turning on the world's largest bug magnet! That's right, very soon after the light was turned on a lot of moths made their way to the Beam. In the future maybe instead of saying like moths to a flame, we should say like moths to a sky bream? But the fun did not end there. Soon after the moths arrived the beam technicians soon found out the huge number of moths were attracting a likewise huge amount of bats hungry for moth dinner. The story does not end there. Soon after the bats arrived a likewise huge number of owls showed up for the bats. Yeah so apparently, owls like some good moth feed bat meat. Now, my friends, we have a little man-made ecosystem going on in Vegas.





Most Difficult Engineering Project In Vegas 

According to many, the project has been the hardest engineering challenge the city had to face to get the construction work going.

The challenge has been huge to get the building going at this time. The building is completely different from every other high-rise building in the world.

The Luxor Sky Beam is one of the tallest in the world and can illuminate just over two football pitches

Towering: The building puts off many times more light than any building in the world

The building is very different from every other building in the world and is arguably the toughest and most difficult building to build and the most unusual light structure ever built.


The builders had to create many different ways to work out the way the glass would be designed to be to meet the demands of the building.'


On top of the structure, a huge array of mirrors can provide a  great view of the entire building when a single beam of light is shone onto one of the mirrors.


The team behind the design also designed an array of LED displays that can be used to light up the interior of the building.

One of the displays can change the number of lights in the room, change the color of the room in varying densities and brightness levels, as well as changing the color of the floor inside the room.

The company behind the design used a 3D 'mapping engine' to design the building.


The concept, built by a consortium of private firms, can provide all of the lighting and other services required inside the building.


The laser lights would also make sure that there was always a safe gap between the building and the sun when the building is at night.

Lights are used at the hotel, to light up an entrance hall and the casino floor, as well as a large area inside the building.


The project is the first time the city has invested in lighting for a hotel.


The city said: 'Las Vegas is becoming a global destination for people wanting to live, work and play out of the high-rise buildings they see every day downtown.


The technology required to light the hotel itself is novel and is a significant addition to the city's downtown skyline, but the sheer
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