Could Moon-Dust Sunscreen Be Used to Shield the Earth From The Sun?

It might be out of this world, but they say the math works out.

Transcript

00:00The planet is getting warmer, there's no doubt about that, but what can we do about

00:07it?

00:08Well, a recently released paper suggests that humanity might use lunar regolith, mined from

00:12the moon, to build a sun shield around Earth.

00:14If it sounds a bit wild, well it is, but the paper was published by three real astrophysicists

00:19who posit that a dust shield situated 1 million miles from Earth could help cool the planet

00:23just a bit, but it wouldn't block out the sun entirely.

00:26In fact, they say by their calculations, only 1.8% of sunlight would be obfuscated

00:31by the shield, or the equivalent of 6 days of sunlight per year.

00:34So why moon dust?

00:36And how much would we need?

00:37The paper outlines that lunar dust is the perfect shape to scatter the sun's rays just

00:41so, and that we would likely need around 11 million tons of it to produce a shield wide

00:45enough and thick enough to give us the sunscreen we need.

00:48But luckily we don't need to get it back to Earth, as their plan involves ejecting

00:51it from the surface of the moon itself.

00:53Still, the team say we need to focus on stopping emissions first and foremost, saying about

00:58their own plan, quote,