Giant Space Mirrors to Cool Earth & Send SOS
Back in 1993, the Russians had the idea of heating their corner of the planet with a big space mirror. With global warming in mind, it probably doesn’t sound like the best idea and in the end it didn’t work out, but why not set up a large thin metallic umbrella to cool the earth down?
It would be like a giant pair of shades. You know like the ones you used to wear back in the eighties. While we’re at it (cooling the earth with a giant space mirror) why not make a call to E.T.? We could blast a giant burst of sunlight out toward our friendly alien neighbours (if they’re out there). C.E.T.I. eat your heart out, our signal is brighter than yours.
Of course, using a giant mirror to send signals will mean that we’re only sending a signal that will travel at the speed of light so it will take years for anyone to see the signal never mind decipher what we’re saying and respond.
So what should we be shouting out to some distant stranger we’ve never met and aren’t even sure exists? I was thinking we could perhaps just ask a couple of basic questions that a more advanced intelligence would be happy to respond back with suggestions. For instance, we could ask, “How do we save our planet for future use?”
The next question to resolve is where to point the coded beam of light? I’m thinking we could design it in such a way that it could sweep huge areas of our local star clusters within our own galaxy.
Tags: solar, space, mirrors, cool-earth, SOS
I thought it was a joke until I read that they’re actually considering this option. Blocking as little as 1% could offset global warming. Why are we waiting let’s do it!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jan/27/usnews.frontpagenews
If nothing else you’d think it might buy us some extra time to slow down the melting of the ice caps. I hope they don’t go for the idea of spreading particles into the atmosphere to block the sun. That sounds like you’re just creating a new problem to solve. You’d want to be able to turn the mirror on or off. I mean, even if takes weeks to deploy it, at least it’s not like there’s something stuck in the atmosphere for the next x number of years.
The need for this is becoming more evident to the earth people.
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/science/article/756904–earth-needs-sunblock-and-fast-scientist-says