Ask Slashdot: Could Climate Change Be Solved By Manipulating Photons in Space

Slashdot reader dryriver writes:Most "solutions" to climate change center on reducing greenhouse gas emissions on Earth and using renewable energy where possible. What if you could work a bit closer to the root of the problem, by thinking about the problem as an excess number of photons traveling from the Sun to the Earth' Would it be completely physically impossible to place or project some kind of electrical or other field into space that alters the flight paths of photons -- which are energy packets -- that pass through it' What if you could make say 2% of photons that would normally hit the Earth miss the Earth, or at the very least enter Earth's atmosphere at an altered angle' Given that the fight against climate change will likely swallow hundreds of billions of dollars over the next years, is it completely unfeasible to spend a few billion dollars on figuring out how to manipulate the flight paths of photons out in Space' Here's a recent news report along those lines:A group of Swedish researchers believe that a cataclysmic asteroid collision from hundreds of millions of years ago could have the answers to solving climate change... Researchers have been discussing different artificial methods of recreating post-collision asteroid dust, such as placing asteroids in orbits around Earth like satellites and having them "liberate fine dust" to block warming sunlight, thus hypothetically cooling our warming planet. "Our results show for the first time that such dust at times has cooled Earth dramatically," said Birger Schmitz, professor of geology at Lund University and the leader of the study. "Our studies can give a more detailed, empirical based understanding of how this works, and this in turn can be used to evaluate if model simulations are realistic." The research is still a ways out from practical use, however. Scientists are understandably wary about recreating a prehistoric dust storm. Speaking to Science Magazine, Seth Finnegan, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley said that the results of the study "shows that the consequences of messing around in that way could be pretty severe." The university's press release does say their research "could be relevant for tackling global warming if we fail to reduce carbon dioxide emissions." But what do Slashdot's readers think of these ideas' Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Could climate change be solved by manipulating photons in space'Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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