4 ms·
Space
by ginko 4y ago
Space
- onion2k 4y agoThe thermal capacity of space is quite low, what with it being a vacuum and everything.
- karmakurtisaani 4y agoThe original idea seems a bit out there, but technically you could use space as a heat sink. This is what happens on deserts at nights when the sky is clear for example.
- rob74 4y agoOk, then you just have to stop that obnoxious sun from heating it all up again during the day. Which leads us straight to the various geoengineering proposals for limiting the amount of energy absorbed from the sun. The problem (or rather, one of the problems) is to avoid falling into the opposite extreme...
- karmakurtisaani 4y agoWell, technically no (I don't know why I'm arguing for this idea, as it's clearly infeasible). You could run a cooling system at night on the desert, where the heat would be radiated to space. The net effect would cool the planet. Obviously it would not be feasible for any significant cooling, but in theory it would work. I mean clearly the sun would keep heating up the planet, but this would be a different infeasible idea from the other infeasible ideas of shading the sun light and whatnot. But you know, anything but limiting consumption, touching our diets etc.
- ginko 4y agoYou don't need thermal capacity to transfer heat into space. Pump all the heat into one big black body radiator until it glows red hot, then divert the emanating radiation out into space.
- yrro 4y ago> Pump all the heat Is this feasible given how the unwanted heat is spread throughout the atmosphere and ocean? > into one big black body radiator until it glows red hot, then divert the emanating radiation out into space. The atmosphere being in the way would seem to be a problem... I'm not a physicist though. I'd love to see some back of the envelope calculations exploring whether this is theoretically feasible.