Monday, November 9, 2009

Output energy into space

How about this:

We take energy from the sun, use whatever we need of it, and send the leftovers back into space, to prevent our planet from becoming too hot.

Since our planet is continuusly heated by the sun and isolated by its atmosphere, the temperature will level out somewhere around 20 degrees Celcius on average. If this becomes 21 or 22 we are in trouble (climate chance), if it becomes 19 or 18 degrees, same trouble, but the other way around. How to maintain an agreable temprature?

Well, by matching the heat input and output, taking into account the changes in entropy on our earth and in the rest of the universe. The entropy in the sun decreases through nuclear fusion, therefore it has to rise outside of it, which it does, as the sun produces energy-containing particles named photons. Some of these photons hit our planet, which has the structure of a crusted stone/metal ball that also has some water molecules and other larger molecules on top of it. We humans are of the latter sort. For ease of speech, let's call it 'life'.

So, energy comes into earth, on earth there is life, and there is an amount of energy that has go get out. Fortunately the balance of input and output can be a bit off once in a while, but overall it should be approximately balanced, and taking into account that the process of life increases order, thus lowers entropy on earth, there should be a little bit more of energy put out than there is put in from the sun.

Currently, the input seems of energy into the system earth seems to be higher than the output. This has to be very thoroughly monitored. I believe one good way to do it is using the already existing energy-output mearsuring satellites and energy-input measuring satellites. Now the only thing we need more is a way to control the input and/or ouput levels.

Suggustions for controlling the input/output levels from the past decades include modifying the isolating properties of the atmosphere, as well as putting a mirroring shield in front of the earth, as to reflect energy into another place in space. I would like to add one more idea, which is the reverse of catching solar energy in space and then sending it to earth in the form of micro-wave radiation.

The idea is simple: Energy coming from the sun is collected and sent into space in micro-wave form, such that it is bypassing the isolating effect of the atmosphere to a large extent. In fact it is like the idea of the solar sheet, but the advantage of the micro-wave method is that the beam can be turned on and off sufficiently fast and it can be directed into space nicely where it does not hurt anything too much (I hope).

Mind you this is a very coarse idea and I have no idea what scale it has to take to be feasable. What I surely think is more important now is to try and manage the consitency of our atmosphere properly by managing the output of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gasses in relation to their uptake.

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