Stop Global Warming With a Giant Space Ring

Posted on June 30, 2005

LiveScience reports on another idea to battle global warming using technology. The plan involves building a giant space ring around Earth that could provide shade from some of the Sun's rays. The ring could be built with artificial particles or small spaceships. One major downside is that the ring would be visible to humans on Earth and the costs could be enormous.

A wild idea to combat global warming suggests creating an artificial ring of small particles or spacecrafts around Earth to shade the tropics and moderate climate extremes.

There would be side effects, proponents admit. An effective sunlight-scattering particle ring would illuminate our night sky as much as the full Moon, for example.

And the price tag would knock the socks off even a big-budget agency like NASA: $6 trillion to $200 trillion for the particle approach. Deploying tiny spacecraft would come at a relative bargain: a mere $500 billion tops.

Another idea to halt global warming that was recently mentioned was to place a giant fresnel lens in space.


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