JAKARTA – Astronomers are developing various ways to reduce the impact of climate change, one of which is by tethering an umbrella to an asteroid.
Astronomer István Szapudi, from the Astronomical Institute of the University of Hawaii, United States (US), thinks asteroids can be captured, parked in front of Earth and tethered to it with an umbrella to block some of the Sun’s light.
Indeed, one of the simplest ways to reduce global temperature is to protect the Earth from a fraction of the Sun’s rays.
The idea, called a solar shield, has been proposed before, but the weight required to manufacture the shield is difficult, as astronomers must balance the force of gravity and prevent the sun’s radiation pressure.
But the hurdles, solar shields need enough mass as ballast to prevent it from being blown away by solar wind, radiation pressure, gravitational stability and while making even the lightest materials can be very expensive, also expensive.
“In Hawaii, many use umbrellas to block the sun when walking around during the day. I was thinking, can we do the same for the Earth and thereby mitigate the coming catastrophic climate change?” said Szapudi.
Studies using this approach, according to Szapudi, can start now by making designs that are applied first to reduce climate change in a few decades.
To begin with, Szapudi aims to reduce solar radiation by 1.7 percent, an estimate of the amount needed to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures.
He calculated that placing the moored counterweight towards the Sun would reduce the weight of the shield to about 3.5 million tons, about a hundred times lighter than previous estimates.
While that number still far exceeds current launch capabilities, just 1 percent of its weight, some 35,000 tons, will be the shield itself, and that’s the only part that will need to be launched from Earth.
With newer, lighter materials, the mass of the shield can be reduced even further. The remaining 99 percent of the total mass will be asteroids or moon dust used as a counterweight.
Such a moored structure would be quicker and cheaper to build and deploy than other shielding designs. However, reducing the weight of the shield, with lighter materials such as graphene, would still be very difficult to achieve.
Because today’s largest rockets can only lift about 50 tonnes into low Earth orbit, this approach to solar radiation management will be more challenging. Szapudi’s approach takes ideas one step closer to being achievable, even with the latest technology.
“Depending on the development of parallel and interlocking graphene, tether, and orbital technologies, tethered shields may initially be faster and cheaper to realize than heavier structures,” explained Szapudi.
“Nevertheless, the latter may eventually serve as a source of solar energy for exploration of Earth or the Solar System.”
This research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and quoted from the University of Hawaii’s official website, Thursday, August 3.
Tags: astronomy climate change technology
2023-08-03 13:30:00
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