• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Scientists Investigate Whether Moondust Could Save The Earth From Global Warming

February 8, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

In the desperate quest to find a way to avoid cooking the planet, scientists have run the numbers on using dust as a sunshade. They found it might just work, but only if the dust came from the Moon.

The idea of blocking sunlight to offset the effects of human activity on the global climate has been around almost as long as awareness of the dangers those effects pose. Most assessments have found the idea prohibitively expensive, or at risk of dangerous side effects.

Advertisement

In a new paper, scientists provide a fresh tweak to the idea by exploring how a large quantity of dust at Lagrange Point 1 (L1) would affect the Earth’s thermal balance. 

Like L2, where JWST is located, L1 is a point where the gravitational fields of the Earth, Sun and Moon are in equilibrium, allowing objects to stay there for extended periods. Various imperfections mean dust at L1 won’t last indefinitely, but it could last for several days. 

Previous proposals have usually considered placing some sort of parasol made out of very thin artificial material at L1, but observations of other star systems have demonstrated how effective dust can be as an astronomical dimming device.

Unfortunately, even with the falling price of rocket launches, sending the 10 million tonnes of dust annually required to reduce sunlight by 1.8 percent remains immensely costly. The authors calculate it would require the equivalent of 20,000 Saturn V launches. If only we had a source of dust that wasn’t located at the bottom of such a deep gravity well.

Advertisement

In fact, we have many. Asteroids might work, but are seldom conveniently close to L1. The Moon, on the other hand, is nearby and, as the Apollo missions revealed, very dusty. In addition to its much lower gravity, the lack of an atmosphere means launches from the lunar surface don’t need to worry about weighty heat shields.

The dust launched from the Moon wouldn't block the entire Sun, but it only needs to stop 1.8 percent of sunlight. Image Credit: Ben Bromley

The dust launched from the Moon wouldn’t block the entire Sun, but it only needs to stop 1.8 percent of sunlight. Image credit: Ben Bromley

Conveniently, the most common size for lunar dust particles is around 0.2 micrometers, the size the authors find provides the best balance of shading for weight and staying power at the desired location.

“It is amazing to contemplate how moon dust – which took over four billion years to generate – might help slow the rise in the Earth’s temperature, a problem that took us less than 300 years to produce,” said Dr Scott Kenyon of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in a statement. 

The authors’ expertise lies in planet formation, making them highly familiar with dusty astronomical environments. They realized: “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,” Professor Ben Bromley of the University of Utah said. 

A simulation of dust launched from the moon’s surface as seen from Earth. Image Credit: Ben Bromley

A simulation of dust launched from the moon’s surface as seen from Earth. Image credit: Ben Bromley

The paper acknowledges considerable uncertainties. Along with gravitational forces, the dust is affected by the pressure of sunlight and the solar wind. The latter varies with events such as coronal mass ejections, making it impossible to predict precisely how long shading would last.

“It was rather difficult to get the shield to stay at L1 long enough to cast a meaningful shadow. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, since L1 is an unstable equilibrium point,” said University of Utah undergraduate student Sameer Khan. “Even the slightest deviation in the sunshield’s orbit can cause it to rapidly drift out of place, so our simulations had to be extremely precise.”

However, the team concluded a stream of dust shot off the lunar surface towards L1 would work without being permanent enough to create a Snowpiercer-style Ice Age.

Building a machine on the Moon capable of digging up, sorting, and launching the dust would be expensive, but the force required is a small fraction of what it would take from Earth. Moreover, the volume of dust required is on the scale of what is displaced by some of the larger mines on Earth, so we wouldn’t need to despoil most of our companion.

Advertisement

The authors are not claiming they have found the solution to a problem they call “existential”. Bromley said, “We aren’t experts in climate change, or the rocket science needed to move mass from one place to the other.” They do, however, hope that by using the skills they have, they will get others with relevant knowledge to join the discussion.

The paper is published open access in PLOS Climate.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer: Canada hold U.S. to 1-1 draw in 2022 qualifier
  2. Biden convenes world leaders to discuss climate change ahead of Glasgow summit
  3. Stitches represent scars in Beirut blast survivor’s art show
  4. Foot Binding: The Extreme Fashion That Caused 1,000 Years Of Broken Bones

Source Link: Scientists Investigate Whether Moondust Could Save The Earth From Global Warming

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • An “Unknown Biogeographic Barrier” Stops Deep-Sea Jellyfish Crossing The Atlantic
  • Some Giant Predatory Dinosaurs Had Barks (Or At Least Slashes) Worse Than Their Bite
  • World-First Gene Therapy Improves Vision For Man With Rare, Previously Untreatable Form Of Blindness
  • Exceptional 183-Million-Year-Old Fossil With Soft Tissues Intact Is New Species Of Giant Marine Reptile
  • White Raven: This Normally Black Bird Can Be Surprisingly Pale
  • Solar Systems 100 Times Smaller Than Ours Are Possible – Thanks To Rogue Planets
  • North Sea “Sinkites” Appear To Defy Rules Of Geology On Never-Before-Seen Scale
  • The Iberian Ribbed Newt Might Just Have The World’s Most Metal Defense Mechanism
  • There’s Only One Black Moon In 2025 And It’s Happening This Month
  • For First Time In Decades, Winter-Run Chinook Salmon Spotted In Upstream Californian River
  • JWST Shines New Light On 2500 Sources In Iconic Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image
  • Humans And Neanderthals Hooked Up Three Times. Here’s Where It Happened
  • What Happened To Percy Fawcett? The Explorer Who Went In Search “The Lost City Of Z”
  • COVID-19 And Flu Could “Reignite” Dormant Cancer Cells And Bring On New Tumors
  • Do Hair And Nails Really Grow Faster In Summer?
  • Wondrous And Worrying Sights: What Explorers Discovered At The Bottom Of The Great Blue Hole
  • What’s The Biggest Volcano In The World? It Depends How You’re Measuring
  • “Every Species On The Planet Self-Medicates In Some Way”: How Wild Animals Use Medicine
  • Deepest Complex Ecosystem Ever Discovered 10 Kilometers Below The Sea, 892-Kilometer “Megaflash” Lightning Sets New World Record, And Much More This Week
  • The Life And Death Of David Vetter, The Boy Who Lived His Whole Life In A Bubble
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version