A few of the world’s richest billionaires have teamed up to tackle global warming, in a plan that aims to block out the sun with giant balloons.
Climate change is one of the biggest threats that the Earth is facing, as even small effects like the Earth tilting just 31.5 inches can have severe consequences for our future.
Scientists have made their own disturbing predictions about the future, and the harmful behaviors of some billionaires has a significant effect on the future of the Earth, but some of the richest individuals aren’t willing to sit around and wait for the inevitable.
Led by names such as Microsoft‘s Bill Gates and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, venture capital-funded startup ‘Make Sunsets’ has launched giant balloons over Mexico, where sunlight-reflecting aerosols have been released into the Earth‘s atmosphere.
The aim of this is to block and reflect incoming solar radiation, which in an ideal world would lower the Earth’s temperature and act as a positive change against the harmful effects of global warming.
In theory, this is what the work of Make Sunsets will do to combat global warming (Make Sunsets)
The plan has drawn significant criticism from various areas of scientific research, with many pointing to the unintended consequences of Make Sunsets’ ambitious plan.
It is claimed that this project could cause significant crop failures, regional droughts, and even an increase in natural disasters like hurricanes and tropical diseases.
As reported by MIT Technology Review, the project has been criticized by key researchers, who have “condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering at this early stage,” continuing on to argue that the company is “not a serious scientific effort or a credible business but more of an attention grab designed to stir up controversy in the field.”
Others concur this belief, as Adrian Hindes – a PhD candidate at Australian National University – explained to the Daily Mail in an interview that the company’s efforts are: “at least at present, nowhere near at a scale necessary for actually causing global temperatures to decline meaningfully.”
Make Sunsets has even drawn heavy criticism from the Mexican government too, as the country has chastised the conducting of ‘rogue’ experiments “without prior notice and without the consent of the Mexican government and the surrounding communities.”
It seems, then, like Make Sunsets is fighting an uphill battle to legitimize their efforts, facing disapproval from almost everywhere they look.
Many have doubts over the work of Make Sunsets (Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Luke Iseman, the co-founder and CEO of Make Sunsets, isn’t afraid of a little backlash though, and claims that while the actions of the company might make him “look like a Bond villain,” he believes that “it’s morally wrong, in my opinion, for us not to be doing this.”
He hasn’t exactly got the backing of social media either, as the comments of a post on the r/Futurology subreddit are almost unanimously against the company’s actions:
“So sulphur production is legal as long as you write a white paper and [have] a slick website,” says one user.
Another remarks: “Oh cool. So instead of worrying about some country going rogue and deciding to do this with unknown, maybe extreme, consequences, it’s just… whatever random startup decided to move fast and break things today?”
While Make Sunsets definitely has the financial backing of some of the world’s richest individuals, it will have to do a lot more it seems to convince the rest of the world that it’s doing something worthwhile.
Featured Image Credit: Sean Gallup / Staff / DrPixel / Getty
South Korea’s artificial sun set record by reaching 100,000,000 degrees for more than 20 seconds
It’s seven times hotter than the real sun.
South Korea’s artificial sun has set a world record for reaching the highest heat in just 20 seconds.
You heard that right – their artificial sun, which is the nickname for a nuclear fusion reactor, could be the breakthrough they need in the search for unlimited clean energy.
It was back in 2022 when the reactor hit 100 million degrees in 20 seconds – which is unbelievable seven times hotter than the real sun.
This could be the breakthrough needed in the search for unlimited clean energy (ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images)
The hope is that the reactor will be able to produce the same amount of energy as more traditional methods but without the environmental consequences.
Unlike other ways, the artificial sun won’t emit greenhouse gasses or nuclear waste.
Speaking in a statement, Yoo Suk-jae, the president of the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy, said: “We usually say that fusion energy is a dream energy source – it is almost limitless, with low emission of greenhouse gasses and no high-level radioactive waste – [but the latest breakthrough] means fusion is not a dream.”
The plan is that by 2026, they’ll be able to maintain the heat from the reactor for up to 300 seconds, which is the equivalent of five minutes.
The reactor is seven times hotter than the real sun (IngaNielsen/Getty)
KSTAR director Yoon Si-woo added: “This is not the end of the story, we must move on to 300 seconds – 300 is the minimum time frame to demonstrate steady-state operations, then this plasma can work forever. If we can’t achieve that, we have to do something else.”
According to NewScientist, Dominic Power at Imperial College London said: “This team is finding that the density confinement is actually a bit lower than traditional operating modes, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because it’s compensated for by higher temperatures in the core.
“It’s definitely exciting, but there’s a big uncertainty about how well our understanding of the physics scales to larger devices.”
The artificial sun has set a record for reaching the highest temperature in 20 seconds (ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images)
Lee Margetts at the University of Manchester also went on to explain: “It’s not physics, it’s engineering.
“If you just think about this from the point of view of a gas-fired or a coal-fired power station, if you didn’t have anything to take the heat away, then the people operating it would say ‘we have to switch it off because it gets too hot and it will melt the power station’, and that’s exactly the situation here.”
While Brian Appelbe at Imperial College London added: “The magnetic confinement fusion approach has got a pretty long history of evolving to solve the next problem that it comes up against.
“But the thing that makes me kind of nervous, or uncertain, is the engineering challenges of actually building an economical power plant based on this.”
Featured Image Credit: IngaNielsen/ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images
New research reveals chilling glimpse into how Earth will come to an end
We can now see how the Earth will look as it dies
A new research has given us a chilling glimpse into how the Earth will come to an end.
The recent discovery by astronomers has allowed us to look billions of years into the future at how our planet could one day look.
A newly discovered planet likely once orbited a star similar to our sun before it died and the planet drifted off into space, making it uninhabitable.
A new discovery gives us a glimpse into how the Earth will come to an end (fotograzia/Getty Images)
Studies suggest that a similar fate will await our own sun as it will eventually die in around five billion years’ time.
The planet and its host star are located near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which is around 4,000 light years away from us.
The star is now a white dwarf, which is what our sun will become after it dies.
The sun’s death will vaporize the Earth’s oceans as it first becomes a red giant, expanding and consuming Mercury and Venus.
Keming Zhang is a lead author of the study and also an astronomer at University of California San Diego.
Zhang said in a statement: “We do not currently have a consensus whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun.
The sun will transform into a red giant as it starts to die (Pr3t3nd3r/Getty Images)
“In any case, planet Earth will only be habitable for around another billion years, at which point Earth’s oceans would be vaporized by runaway greenhouse effect – long before the risk of getting swallowed by the red giant.”
Unfortunately, the fate of Earth looks similar to this planet, whose rocky terrain might have once supported life.
Co-author Jessica Lu, an associate professor and chair of astronomy at UC Berkeley, said: “This system that Keming’s found is an example of a planet – probably an Earth-like planet originally on a similar orbit to Earth – that survived its host star’s red giant phase.”
However, while this planet shows what Earth will possibly look like in billions of years, that does not necessarily mean the doom of humanity.
Zhang went on to add: “As the sun becomes a red giant, the habitable zone will move to around Jupiter and Saturn’s orbit, and many of these moons will become ocean planets. I think, in that case, humanity could migrate out there.”
If humans have the technology by then, we could make new homes on Europa and Enceladus.
The moons orbit Jupiter and Saturn and their icy environment makes them inhabitable, but that could all change in the future.
Featured Image Credit: Roberto Machado Noa/MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images
Man captures photograph of the Sun flashing green in incredibly rare optical illusion
The green flash is seriously rare, so getting a photo is something special.
As a photographer, there must be the odd occasion when you sit back after taking a shot and just know you got it.
That has to have been something that happened to Craig Hayslip, a research assistant at Oregon State University, when he recently photographed a sunset in Bandon, Oregon.
He uploaded a couple of photos to his Instagram page on April 21, and while the first is a really nice shot, it’s one that you’ve probably seen versions of before – but the second is a far rarer.
It captures an optical illusion known as the green flash. This sometimes occurs at the very start of a sunrise or the very end of a sunset, just as the Sun appears or disappears behind the horizon.
If it does happen, it lasts no more than a couple of seconds, and creates a stunning flash of green light that is a pretty dazzling sight to behold.
This is caused by the way the Sun’s light hits the Earth‘s atmosphere, at just the right angle to be refracted through a prism and come out as this amazing blaze of color.
If that was all it took, though, green flash would happen regularly – but instead, there are more detailed requirements, including the need for atmospheric temperatures where the air higher in the sky actually gets warmer.
This is most often the case above bodies of water, so the green flash has often been sighted on coastlines or over the ocean.
Serge Costa / 500px / Getty
Finally, that green color is explained by the way the electromagnetic spectrum refracts – blue and green tend to refract more strongly than warmer colors like red and yellow.
Hayslip didn’t exactly make a big deal out of his incredible photograph, but it’s a bit of a bucket list event for some meteorologists and skywatchers.
Many people look out for it their whole lives and only see it on a handful of occasions, so if you’re ever watching a nice sunset by the beach or overlooking the sea, it’s worth paying attention to see if you can glimpse a green flash of your own. Of course, always be wary to not look straight at the Sun without proper eye protection.
Until then, though, you can still enjoy Hayslip’s excellent photograph of the event – and unlike the recent total solar eclipse, there aren’t hundreds of thousands of other photos flooding social media to compete with it.
Featured Image Credit: craig.hayslip/Instagram
Astronomers discover a possible ‘future earth’ 8,000,000,000 years into its future
The planet gives us a rare glimpse to what Earth will look like billions of years from now
Astronomers have discovered a possible ‘future earth’ eight billion years into the future.
The uncovering of a far-off planet has given us a glimpse of what Earth could look like billions of years from now.
The planet in question, which is around twice the size of Earth, is called KMT-2020-BLG-0414 and orbits a white dwarf star 4,000 light years away from our planet.
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The world will look very different in the future (Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images)
Earth could one day look very similar to this planet as our sun is predicted to turn into a white dwarf in five billion years.
Beforehand, the sun will turn into a red giant, which is one of the final stages of stellar evolution.
As a red giant, the sun will consume Mercury and Venus, and possibly Earth and Mars too.
However, if our planet survives then it’s likely that it’ll look a lot like the rocky planet in the distance.
In a statement, Keming Zhang, a lead author of the study and an astronomer at University of California San Diego, said: “We do not currently have a consensus whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun in 6 billion years.
“In any case, planet Earth will only be habitable for around another billion years, at which point Earth’s oceans would be vaporized by runaway greenhouse effect — long before the risk of getting swallowed by the red giant.”
The distant planet was first found by astronomers in 2020 near the center of the Milky Way.
It became visible when it moved in front of the light of an even further star 25,000 light years away.
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The sun will one day turn into a red giant (dzika_mrowka/Getty Images)
Zhang went on to add: “As the sun becomes a red giant, the habitable zone will move to around Jupiter and Saturn’s orbit, and many of these moons will become ocean planets. I think, in that case, humanity could migrate out there.”
Scientists are still unsure as to whether humans would survive the red giant stage of the sun.
In fact, we might not even live to see it happen.
It’s thought that humans are likely to go extinct in the next billion years, unable to survive the global warming that will boil the oceans.
But if we somehow find a way to continue as a civilization, there might be hope for survival in other parts of our solar system.
The moons Europa and Enceladus orbit Jupiter and Saturn and their icy environment makes them inhabitable, but that could all change in the future.
When the sun becomes a red giant, they will turn into water worlds so, if we can reach them, humans might be able to turn them into new homes.
Featured Image Credit: Roberto Machado Noa/dzika_mrowka/Getty Images
