As France prepares to experience a new episode of heat wave and facing to the alarming conclusions of the IPCC, it is difficult to question global warming. Thus, faced with this situation, many scientists are trying to find a solution to reduce the temperatures on our planet. Today, a group of scientists from MIT has just unveiled a project that is promising.
Exit spaceships, place space bubbles
To do this, scientists were interested in the concept proposed by astronomer Roger Angel. The latter had imagined a cloud of small spacecraft sent into space to help protect the Earth from the Sun’s radiation. Using this principle, the goal was tomitigate or reverse climate change. With the discovery of a new hole in the ozone layer, MIT scientists therefore took up this idea by improving it. For it, instead of spaceships, they replaced them with silicon bubbles.
The project called Space Bubbles is quite simply a huge sun visor made up of many small bubbles connected to each other made of molten silicon. This shield, whose size is close to the size of Brazil, will be sent 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Why at this distance? Simply because it is from point Lagrange L1, the place between the Earth and the Sun where the gravity of our star and that of our planet cancel. In fact, the shield could, in theory, float without being attracted by one of the two stars.
A 2% discount to save the planet
According to researchers who conducted laboratory tests, if 1.8% of solar radiation could be deflected, it would be enough to completely reverse the curve of global warming.
Unfortunately, it is not tomorrow the day before that such an anti-global warming shield will be sent into space. MIT researchers say this project is still just a concept. Moreover, they still have to find solutions to overcome many obstacles For example inflate bubbles from spaceensure that the shield is resistant to meteorite impacts and that he remains fine enough to filter a large part rays of the sun. On this last point, the scientists announce that they could adjust or destroy the shield remotely by bursting certain bubbles.