Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes wild ideas about how to tinker with the universe, from splitting the moon in half to triggering a gravitational wave apocalypse, and applies them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.please listen apple, spotify or our Podcast page.
A total solar eclipse is one of the most amazing cosmic phenomena we can witness from Earth, but it’s also possible. It’s inconvenient. A solar eclipse occurs only once every few hundred years in a particular location, and a trip to totality isn’t always possible.
On this episode of Dead Planets Society, hosts Leah Crane and Chelsea White are joined by an astronomer bruce mackintosh Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz are trying to solve this problem and conjure up a total solar eclipse that is accessible to everyone.
A natural solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes in front of the sun and casts a shadow on the Earth’s surface. To create an artificial solar eclipse, our host needs to put something else between the Earth and the Sun. Relatively small sunshades may work, but they must be placed fairly close to the earth. It reaches the surface to block the entire sun. And in order to stay close to it, it must orbit at extraordinary speeds. A solar eclipse from such a small, fast-moving shade would last only a few seconds.
Instead, our host takes on the challenge of parking something much larger in front of the sun to block it. Planets might work, but our solar system doesn’t have any of the right size. Additionally, moving the entire world would be difficult and could have disastrous consequences for the planet. In fact, changing the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground can be problematic…
The solution might be to send a series of small panels into space individually, then fly them in formation to block sunlight. They must be very numerous, but by changing direction during flight, Although solar eclipses occur on demand, they do not necessarily have to destroy all life on Earth.
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