Noviy Svet- Meaning new light. So Lets have a look at new light
Few days back I was watching something on a History channel, and I happened to see this picture of earth.
White lines indicate the sun light falling on one face of earth illuminating it, and thus other face of earth is not illuminated as there are no light rays falling on that face. But we can see light are rays passing tangentially and also beyond that. So then a thought came to my mind, why cant these lights really illuminate the dark face of the earth, so that there wont be a night at all.
The intent of the picture above is to show the size of the earth compared to sun. So then coming back to the idea that I felt, I tried finding out if it could be done? Well light could very well be reflected, if you have a reflector out there.
Thats right, in the pre-dawn dusk of early 1993 inexplicable spot light of 65 meter diameter wandered around in some parts of Europe for eight to 10 minutes and disappeared leaving intellectuals bewildered and UFO hunters motivated. It was confused for UFO and a falling star, but it was none, it was an ambitious soviet space endeavor.
The Spot light was made to fall by unfurling a giant plastic and aluminum mirror of 65 feet in diameter on third orbit around the planet at an altitude of about 225 miles . The mirror was made to tilt to reflect sunlight on the parts of planet where it was actually night. The light said to have had the intensity of three moons only, and the first test of new space endeavor was successful. Though idea of using mirrors in space to reflect sunlight was earlier said to have proposed by German scientist Herman Oberth in 1920’s, this was the first time it was ever tested.
The objective of space mirror was to replace electricity and thus associated problems like pollution, the cost of electricity too. Proponents also said to have had claimed that extended daylight hours nights cal help farmers for planting and for harvesting seasons and help rescue crews going after a natural disasters. Mostly sub-Arctic population can be befitted with the following project. But it was also speculated that people might not like his change as they have adapted to the natural cycle of the region.
However it was also suggested that Illumination of this type could be hazardous to environment such as extra warming of environment. It was suggested by astronomers that it could cause light pollution thus depreciating the natural glow of stars and celestial particles. many scientists also say that it could be interruption for those animal and plant life pasterns which exhibit photoperiodism (is the physiological reaction of organisms of both plants and animals to the length of day or night). Scientists say that altering of these day-night cycles might upset the cycle of hibernating and mating amongst animals and life process of plants. Though proponents of the the project say that there is no evidence justifying the statement that reflected sunlight could be hazardous to the atmosphere, they suggest for environmental studies following the same.
However most fascinating application of the giant space mirror could have been as suggested by scientiss was using this beam of sunlight produced by space mirror to nudge an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. They say that the ray could be used to vaporize enough of the asteroid’s surface to create a jet of gas and dust and slowly shove it aside over a period.
The project involved using a space shuttle to place a collapsible, aluminum-coated sheet of Mylar in orbit around Earth. Then unfurling into a concave sail-like mirror up to six miles in diameter.
Technical hurdles, like developing a pointing system that can keep a spot of light trained on a specific area of the ground as the reflector travels through space at almost 18,000 miles an hour made it difficult to achieve, scientist proponents hoped to make it work.
However an effort to make this test more successful and next attempt were called off after multiple attempts to unfold a umbrella like mirror by Mir space station was failed later in the decade.
Not many people think it was great idea and need not be tried again, what do you think?
