According to the team, a sunshield’s overall effectiveness would depend on its ability to sustain an orbit that casts a shadow on Earth.
“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 lead author Ben Bromley, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah.
The paper tested different properties of dust particles, quantities of dust and orbits that would be best suited for shading Earth.
“Because we know the positions and masses of the major celestial bodies in our solar system, we can simply use the laws of gravity to track the position of a simulated sunshield over time for several different orbits,” said study co-author Sameer Khan, Utah undergraduate student.
According to the study, two scenarios were particularly promising—at least in computer simulations.
In the first scenario, the authors positioned a space station platform at the L1 Lagrange point, the closest point between Earth and the sun where the gravitational forces are balanced.
In simulations, the researchers then shot particles from the platform to the L1 orbit, and tracked where the particles scattered. When launched precisely, the dust followed a path between Earth and the sun, effectively creating shade.
In the second scenario, the researchers shot lunar dust from a platform on the surface of the moon toward the sun. They found that the inherent properties of lunar dust were just right to effectively work as a sunshield. The simulations tested how lunar dust scattered along various courses until they found excellent trajectories aimed toward L1 that served as an effective sunshield.
Post a Comment