2023-08-04 10:28:16
Updated Friday, August 4, 2023 – 12:37
The plan, which involves connecting a solar shield to a counterweight, could allow moderating the amount of sunlight reaching Earth.
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To reduce global warming, an astronomer has proposed build a sun shield to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, this being combined with a tethered and captured asteroid as a counterweight.
Engineering studies using this approach could begin now to create a viable design that could mitigate climate change within decades, explains the proponent, Istvn Szapudi, an astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. His work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
One of the simplest approaches to reduce global temperature is to shield the Earth from a fraction of the sunlight. This idea, called sun shieldhas been previously proposed, but the sheer amount of weight needed to make a shield massive enough to balance the gravitational forces and keep it from being blown away by solar radiation pressure, makes even the lightest materials prohibitively expensive.
Szapudi’s creative solution consists of two innovations: a tethered counterweight instead of just a massive shield, making the total mass more than 100 times less, and the use of a captured asteroid as a counterweight to avoid throwing most of it. of the mass from the Earth.
“In Hawaii, many use an umbrella to block the sunlight as they walk during the day. I was thinking, we could do the same for Earth and thus mitigate the impending catastrophe of climate change?” said Szapudi.
Szapudi started with the goal of reduce solar radiation by 1.7%, an estimate of the amount needed to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. He found that placing a counterweight tethered toward the sun could reduce the weight of the shield and counterweight to approximately 3.5 million tons, about hundred times lighter than previous estimates for an untethered shield.
The shield would only occupy 1% of the weight of the sun umbrella
While this number is still well above current launch capabilities, only 1% of the weight, about 35,000 tons, would be the shield itself, and that is the only part that would have to be launched from Earth. With newer, lighter materials, the mass of the shield could be further reduced. The remaining 99% of the total mass will be asteroids or lunar dust used as a counterweight. Such a tethered structure would be faster and cheaper to build and deploy than other shield designs.
Today’s largest rockets can only lift about 50 tons to low-Earth orbit, so this approach to managing solar radiation would be challenging. Szapudi’s approach takes the idea into the realm of possibility, even with today’s technology, whereas earlier concepts were completely unachievable. In addition, it is crucial develop a lightweight graphene strap but strong that connects the shield with the counterweight.
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