Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests

hi-tech solutions

Reflective (tin foil) hats anyone? Or umbrellas if it comes to that.

Yay!

Finally, a directed energy weapon that actually and demonstrably works!

I always knew the Americans will eventually do it if they try hard enough.

"...astronomical challenge."

Make stupid plans, blame the Sun.

On the plus side.....

You can make excellent spaghetti in the pool.

Lovely for a poolside barbecue . . . ummm

Mirrors

As a lad, my dad used to love telling me of his calculation that if everyone in a football stadium produced a small mirror and focussed the sunlight onto the referee, they could vapourise him.

Maybe it's a slight exaggeration, but I bet you could really piss him off.

Quality..

I'm still wiping the tears out of my eyes. This must be the funniest cock-up ever, and the beauty of it is that there is little that can be done about it other than marking an area unusable. It's an epic, real live, god-knows-how-many-floors-high monument of a cock-up.

Which dipswitch of an architect hasn't learned about concave and convex?

Hahaha, I would not believed that from a James Bond plot, let alone in real life. LOL...

Thanks for making my day..

Exeter had the same phenomena!

A building in Exeter (Renslade House?) exhibited the same phenomena ....Crossing the Northern bridge across the river Exe one would receive a blast of radiation from the concave office block at certain times........despite best efforts it never melted a plastic bag but it certainly provided a welcome blast of heat on a chilly day......

Large plants?

Of the solar thermal variety I suspect.

Solar collector

Someone already said this, but you'd think that a big high end hotel who knows that have a problem that's a potential liability nightmare, would come up with a way to harness that solar energy with a solar collector of some sort. Epic fail on the part of the architect.

Also a problem with...

...the incredible Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. It's a Gehry building made up of waves and ripples finished in stainless steel. Most of the building was frosted, but some panels were left like mirrors and they were roasting the occupants of nearby buildings. The panels were later frosted to reduce the reflection.

It's not quite worth a trip to LA (frankly, little is); but if you're there, it's well worth a look.

Incentivize the fix

Surely it isn't hard to incentivize the hotel owners to fix the issue? Just build a large parabolic reflector and point it back at the hotel. The entire hotel surface area focussed down to a few mm^2 should get their attention. If you can get line of sight on a disco mirror ball so much the better!

Genius story tho. The only improvement would be to find that the anti reflective coating degrades in sunlight...

Large plants??

""maybe some large plants"" Heat-resistant, like, erm...nope, can't find anything that'll stand up to that.

<joke> Of C4? Think there's some blokes in white robes holidaying in Cuba who'd love to help out. </joke>

Seriously, I can't imagine how they're gonna fix it. Unless, tilting the windows (there must be thousands) upwards a few degrees*, or randomly staggering the angle of each one by a bit. Nightmare. Cheaper, I'd have thought to relocate the pool, and return the 'target area' to the desert from whence it came.

*(Architect - if you do this, checkout the ISS flightpath first).

Cool!

Could it be harnessed as a weapon to be used against other hotels nearby?

Having lived in Las Vegas previously...

I can attest that this particular building is not required if you'd like to feel like you are being cooked; simply remaining outside an air conditioned area for longer than about 15 minutes during a summer day will do. After about that much time the heat from above (the sun) and below (the asphalt) becomes overwhelming.

Easy

Framework of pipes holding pool water (and possibly hotel heating if the effect's that powerful). Grow grapes or figs or something on underside of said pipes to make it look pretty and provide shade.

Change something

Probably easier to move the pool than it would be to move the building (or the sun.)

Probably not a good idea then to put the parking lot where the pool used to be. They'll probably just put up more casino space there and deal with the roof melting.

Pretty standard Vegas stupidity

have a look at Luxor: nobody thought in advance that open walkways running around the inside of a pyramid from the third floor all the way to the top would provide insolvent gamblers an easy way to cut their losses, resulting in diners at the ground floor buffet often finding their meals interrupted. The fix? Move the buffet into the basement. The walkways are still wide open, and, frankly, terrifying.

Anyway, the solution to the current problem is obvious: sue the crap out of everyone involved, find that the hotel's reputation is irrevocably tarnished and then shut and knock it down.

Water wall

Run a big pipe along the top of the hotel and flow water down the front of the building. It'll look absolutely fabulous, a major attraction, and the ripples and turbulence will break up the reflection.

Please send my fee to...

Call in Mr Burns

Wasn't there an episode of The Simpsons where Monty Burns blocked out the sun with a giant umbrella?

Just get one of those hanging from hovering airships during daylight hours.

Semi-crispy dead birds

If this building is melting bags with a 70% reduction in solar power, I can't imagine how bad it would have been stock!

@Lewis Mettler 1, solar panels won't work, unfortunately. This is actually a problem being worked on -- if you concentrate LARGE amounts of solar power onto a solar panel, it melts, just like the plastic bags etc. did for them. The solar collector systems being developed right now actually end up using steam or the like.

@Mike Richards, you beat me to it -- I remember reading about that, the neighbors across the street were wondering why they all of a sudden had to run the A/C full tilt and it was still like 100+ degrees in their apartments. My understanding is even AFTER frosting the building they still have to make payments to the apartment owners to make up for greatly increased cooling bills.

There was also that sculpture somewhere in Britain that had to be reworked because semi-crispy dead birds were dropping out of the sky.

You expect me to get sun-tanned?

No Mr Bond. I expect you to die.

The even more obvious solution

and entirely keeping within the Las Vegas model for solving problems is to not only mark the pavement, but then to also *charge people* to go into the focal space: "ULTRA TANNING AREA $10 for 10 minutes (Tan at your own risk)". The revenues will make up for the cost of moving the cordoned-off areas around.

MGM's grand plan.

MGM distributed Die Another Day.

This is an MGM hotel.

It's obvious where the idea came from.