We may be able to use lunar dust to block sunlight, fight climate change

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'The Sun, Earth, and Moon are in just the right configuration to enable this kind of climate mitigation strategy.'

, the scientists describe different properties of dust they analyzed, the quantities required, and the orbital altitudes that would be suitable for their method.

"It is amazing to contemplate how moon dust — which took over four billion years to generate — might help slow the rise in the Earth’s temperature, a problem that took us less than 300 years to produce," explained study co-author Scott Kenyon of the Center for Astrophysics. “That was the seed of the idea; if we took a small amount of material and put it on a special orbit between the Earth and the sun and broke it up, we could block out a lot of sunlight with a little amount of mass,” said Ben Bromley, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah and lead author for the study.

It is worth noting that they also pointed out their dust cloud could easily be blown off course by solar winds and radiation. This means their method would require a constant supply of dust every few days. Their lunar dust method would, therefore, be ideal, as there is a massive supply of dust sitting on the moon. That method would also be substantially cheaper to run continuously.

 

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Where is the option 'this is wholly unethical'? If even a potential answer to 'what could go wrong' is 'eternal darkness on earth' that's a hard pass from me.

I must finally admit that, in spite of my great tolerance for junk and fake and panic, since you start to post about weapons and about climate 'change', you lost your Engineering credibility and I am very close to unfollowing you.

Bitcoin is the solution to all Fiat driven corrupt agenda strategies 🎯prove me wrong 🧐

leave it the hell alone.

The climate change fanatics are determined to destroy the world! Humans are clever enough to adapt to any change in the climate. And if the climate is changing, there is nothing we can do about it because the sun controls the earth's climate not humans.

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Huge dust cloud launched from Earth's moon could ease global warmingLaunching a million tonnes of moon dust around Earth could dim sunlight across our planet by 1.8 per cent. This would reduce the global temperature, but whether it would be worth the resources, and the risks involved in such a strategy, are unclear Would stop flights as well. Dust would be abrasive, No? Can we like, just adjust our way of living? No? Okay. Someone would cock it up, get the numbers wrong and cause an ice age.
Source: newscientist - 🏆 541. / 51 Read more »

Dust as a solar shieldWe revisit dust placed near the Earth–Sun L1 Lagrange point as a possible climate-change mitigation measure. Our calculations include variations in grain properties and orbit solutions with lunar and planetary perturbations. To achieve sunlight attenuation of 1.8%, equivalent to about 6 days per year of an obscured Sun, the mass of dust in the scenarios we consider must exceed 1010 kg. The more promising approaches include using high-porosity, fluffy grains to increase the extinction efficiency per unit mass, and launching this material in directed jets from a platform orbiting at L1. A simpler approach is to ballistically eject dust grains from the Moon’s surface on a free trajectory toward L1, providing sun shade for several days or more. Advantages compared to an Earth launch include a ready reservoir of dust on the lunar surface and less kinetic energy required to achieve a sun-shielding orbit. PLOSClimate The cooling after WWII is what happened when large amounts of dust and smoke were blown up in the air.
Source: physorg_com - 🏆 388. / 55 Read more »