3 ms·
The good thing is that it's easily and nearly instantaneously reversible. From an engineering standpoint, it it blocks 2% of solar radiation as stated by the a
by pmontra 3y ago
The good thing is that it's easily and nearly instantaneously reversible.
From an engineering standpoint, it it blocks 2% of solar radiation as stated by the article (and let's suppose we can send that amount of stuff in space) it will have to reflect that amount of solar radiation, not absorb a significant amount of it (because of heating and dissipation) and direct anything it absorbs away from Earth as much as possible.
- pitaj 3y agoEven if it absorbs and re-emits everything, that would probably be fine. Black body radiation is emitted in practically every direction, and only a miniscule portion of that would hit the Earth. The bigger problem with absorption is potentially heating the material to the point of vaporization. All that said, the most practical form of this would probably be something like a fresnel lense that uses refraction or a structure that uses diffraction to redirect the light rather than reflect or absorb it.
- kardos 3y agoHow about the material that the Webb telescope sunshade uses?
- potsandpans 3y agoFrom my understanding, instantaneous reversability property is problematic because we haven't actually solved the underlying problem. Now we've just got a "sail maintenance" problem: we put the sail up, continue to burn ff now unimpeded by the worst side effects. 1-2 decades later, if the sail were to fail / lose funding / get neglected by temporary geopolitical conflict, earth rapidly accumulates all of carbon debt we accrued.