This is what we have come to. With the Earth at its hottest point in recorded history, and humans not doing enough to stop its overheating, a small but growing number of astronomers and physicists are proposing a possible solution that could have left the pages of the science fiction: the equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating in outer space.
The idea is to create a huge sunshade and send it to a distant point between the Earth and the Sun to block a small but crucial amount of solar radiation, enough to counteract global warming. Scientists say that if just 2 percent of solar radiation is blocked, that would be enough to cool the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius and keep the Earth within manageable climate limits.
The idea has been on the margins of conversations about climate solutions for years. But as the climate crisis worsens, interest in solar shields has been gaining momentum, with more and more researchers offering variations on it.
A recent study led by the University of Utah explored the dispersion of dust in the depths of space, while a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) seeks to create a shield made of “space bubbles.” Last summer, Istvan Szapudi, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii's Institute of Astronomy, published a paper suggesting anchoring a large solar shield to a repurposed asteroid.
Now, scientists led by Yoram Rozen, a professor of physics and director of the Asher Space Research Institute at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, say they are ready to build a prototype sunshade to demonstrate that the idea will work.
To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the umbrella would have to be about 2.6 million square kilometers, about the size of Argentina, Rozen said. An umbrella that size would weigh at least 2.2 million tons, too much to be launched into space, she said. Therefore, the project would have to involve a series of smaller umbrellas. They would not block the Sun's light, but would cast a slightly diffuse shadow on Earth, he said.
Rozen said his team was ready to design a 10-square-meter umbrella prototype and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to do so. His supporters warn that an umbrella would not eliminate the need to stop burning coal, oil and gas, the main drivers of climate change.
The sunshade idea has its critics, including Susanne Baur, a doctoral candidate at the European Center for Advanced Research and Training in Scientific Computing, in France. An umbrella would be astronomically expensive and could not be implemented in time, given the speed of global warming, she said. Additionally, a solar storm or a collision with space rocks could damage the shield, causing sudden, rapid heating with disastrous consequences, she said.
But umbrella supporters say that at this point, reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to alleviate climate chaos, that removing carbon dioxide has proven extremely difficult to achieve, and that every possible solution should be explored. .
Morgan Goodwin, director of the nonprofit Planetary Sunshade Foundation, said the falling costs of space launches and investments in an industrial space economy have expanded the possibilities.
The foundation proposes using raw materials from space and launching solar shield ships from the Moon to Lagrange Point One, a fixed point 1.5 million kilometers away. There, the gravitational forces of the Earth and the Sun cancel each other out. This would allow the cost to be much lower than starting from Earth.
By: CARA BUCKLEY
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7111619, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-02-12 23:18:04
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