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Could Moon-Dust Sunscreen Be Used to Shield the Earth From The Sun?
Amaze Lab
Follow
11/11/2024
It might be out of this world, but they say the math works out.
Category
📚
Learning
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
The planet is getting warmer, there's no doubt about that, but what can we do about
00:07
it?
00:08
Well, a recently released paper suggests that humanity might use lunar regolith, mined from
00:12
the moon, to build a sun shield around Earth.
00:14
If it sounds a bit wild, well it is, but the paper was published by three real astrophysicists
00:19
who posit that a dust shield situated 1 million miles from Earth could help cool the planet
00:23
just a bit, but it wouldn't block out the sun entirely.
00:26
In fact, they say by their calculations, only 1.8% of sunlight would be obfuscated
00:31
by the shield, or the equivalent of 6 days of sunlight per year.
00:34
So why moon dust?
00:36
And how much would we need?
00:37
The paper outlines that lunar dust is the perfect shape to scatter the sun's rays just
00:41
so, and that we would likely need around 11 million tons of it to produce a shield wide
00:45
enough and thick enough to give us the sunscreen we need.
00:48
But luckily we don't need to get it back to Earth, as their plan involves ejecting
00:51
it from the surface of the moon itself.
00:53
Still, the team say we need to focus on stopping emissions first and foremost, saying about
00:58
their own plan, quote,
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