The level of warming was proposed to be reduced by a giant umbrella tied to an asteroid

Mitigation climate change on Earth is such a difficult task that scientists are seriously studying every option that they can theoretically implement.

The last idea is pretty wild, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. Scientist Istvan Sapudi of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii thinksthat we could catch an asteroid, "park" it in front of the Earth, and tie an umbrella to it to block out some of the sunlight.

A solar shield is far from a new idea. But Sapudi's solution can significantly reduce the cost and complexity of implementation, writes science alert.

The solar shield concept is not without merit. Even if it blocked only a small percentage of the light that constantly falls on the Earth, this would be enough to counteract the increase in temperature. But it is important to understand that this is not an absolute solution, but only a temporary one, which will give humanity a head start in solving this problem on the planet.

The main problem with such a sail is that it needs a fair amount of mass as ballast to keep it from blowing off. solar wind and radiation pressure, as well as for gravitational stability - and delivering such a mass into space would be very difficult and expensive.

But what if the required mass is already there, in space? This is where the need arises to catch a heavy asteroid and attach our umbrella to it.

Sapudi calculated that placing the counterweight towards the Sun at Lagrange point L1 will reduce the total mass of the shield and counterweight to only 3.5 million tons. The figure is impressive, but it is about 100 times less than the mass declared in previous projects of the solar shield. And only 1% of this mass will be a real shield, about 35,000 tons. The remaining mass is the asteroid itself.

The weight of the shield could be further reduced by using lighter materials such as graphene. But it will still be quite difficult to achieve what you want - the current maximum payload of modern missiles is far from 35,000 tons.

Today, the largest carriers can only lift about 50 tons into low Earth orbit, so this way of controlling solar radiation looks very difficult. But Sapudi's approach makes the idea itself possible, at least in theory, while previous concepts were completely unattainable.