illustration moon. ©OldakQuill / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Reporter: Hari Ariyanti
Merdeka.com – To prevent further damage to the Earth, humanity needs to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In the new research, researchers are exploring a new way to help reduce global warming: launching dust into space from the moon’s surface to cool Earth.
In a paper published last week in the journal PLOS Climate, researchers used computer modeling to explore how the new strategy might work. One of the most promising techniques uncovered involves launching large amounts of dust from the lunar surface toward the first Lagrange point, one of five areas in space where Earth’s and the sun’s gravity cancel each other out.
At that point, things (like a huge cloud of moon dust) basically stay in place. The spots can block about 1.8 percent of sunlight — the equivalent of about six days of sunshine per year — but it takes 10 billion kilograms of dust each year to do so, the researchers said in the paper. 15/2).
But according to scientist Chad M Baum of Denmark’s Aarhus University, blocking sunlight from space is the “most unfeasible engineering project” to combat climate change due to financial, technical and political challenges. Baum was not involved in this study.
Over the years, scientists have proposed a number of strategies for how to cool the Earth by keeping it out of the sun’s rays. Proposed strategies include deploying clouds of small spacecraft to build sun visors that can span thousands of miles, wrote Rahul Rao of Popular Science.
Researchers are also considering releasing aerosols into the atmosphere to aid cloud formation, but doing so could have unintended consequences, including affecting precipitation patterns and damaging the ozone layer.
Using dust from the moon to block the sun has been suggested before. Theoretically, launching dust from the moon is easier than sending it from Earth because of the moon’s weaker gravity, said Benjamin Bromley, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Utah.
He added that moon dust is also an effective protector.
“Firstly, it can be very efficient at reducing solar exposure, secondly, it turns out that the most efficient grain sizes are those that are most abundant on the lunar surface,” Bromley explained to CNET.
But as academic Aaron Tang of the Australian National University (ANU) writing in The Conversation, it could take decades to build a dust mining infrastructure and set up a lunar launch system.
And expelling the dust would require an enormous amount of energy — more than the energy used in 20,000 launches of the Saturn V rocket. Beyond the technological challenges, there are questions about how mining of moon dust will be regulated — and whether it will be legal.
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Using dust from the moon to block the sun has been suggested before. Theoretically, launching dust from the moon is easier than sending it from Earth because of the moon’s weaker gravity, said Benjamin Bromley, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Utah.
He added that moon dust is also an effective protector.
“Firstly, it can be very efficient at reducing solar exposure, secondly, it turns out that the most efficient grain sizes are those that are most abundant on the lunar surface,” Bromley explained to CNET.
But as academic Aaron Tang of the Australian National University (ANU) writing in The Conversation, it could take decades to build a dust mining infrastructure and set up a lunar launch system.
And expelling the dust would require an enormous amount of energy — more than the energy used in 20,000 launches of the Saturn V rocket. Beyond the technological challenges, there are questions about how mining of moon dust will be regulated — and whether it will be legal.
Also read:
What Happens If the Earth Stops Spinning? This is Science’s Answer
What Would Happen If All Humans on Earth Jumped Together?
The Earth’s Ozone Layer Is Said to Be Starting to Recover, Here Are Various Reasons
This is the prediction of when the sun and earth will die
The Number of Humans on Earth Will Reach 8 Billion in November
This Is What Will Happen to Earth in 300 Million Years
(mdk/sir)
