When it comes to proposing solutions to solve the problem of global warming, you have to get used to oddities. To paraphrase Flaiano, “the situation is serious, but it is not serious”. There geoengineering it seems to be playing to surpass itself with increasingly absurd and speculative proposals. The latest one is perhaps the most original: using lunar dust to protect our planet from the heat of the Sun.
Cool the planet from the moon?
A research team fromUniversity of Utah and the Center for Astrophysics (Harvest & Smithsonian) proposed collecting dust from the lunar surface and launching it into a stable orbit to block some of the sun's light.
The method, they say in the study just published in PLOS Journal (I link it here), it would need less kinetic energy than the idea of launching dust from Earth, and it could count on all the raw material we need. On the Moon the dust is strong.
Moon dust as a sunscreen, the study
The research team performed estimates based on complex simulation models to determine whether lunar dust shielding would actually be feasible.
To me, honestly, the plan seems like a total bizarre thing. Of course, speculative studies of this kind can inspire solutions and technologies even in different fields, but if we stay on track (fighting global warming) we are not.
Two "inconveniences" above all? First: Science currently has no control over the behavior of the lunar dust cloud. Once “launched” it would do more or less as it pleased.
Building a station on the moon and the equipment to “shoot” lunar dust is an even more far-fetched thing, far from being realized.
In short (Italian only)
For the moment, this proposal remains only a suggestive theory, but far from practical implementation. Compared to solar geoengineering with the spraying of the heavens, if nothing else, it has the advantage of clearly showing its unachievability.
I really believe that we need to keep working, in many cases starting to fight climate change using more traditional methods.
