Sun is cooling down and what that means for us

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/23/sun-cooling-down-space-climate

by nickb • 17 years ago

10 5 17 years ago

guardian.co.uk

nopinsight• 17 years ago

Is there anyway we can affect the sun's cooling down process? Maybe it can help offset the effect of global warming somewhat.

I know it's a crazy idea. But many great inventions are borne out of crazy ideas.

Someone to take on this?

tudorachim• 17 years ago

Oh, come on. There's the good kind of can-do attitude, which is useful, and then this kind, where if you think you want something enough, anything can happen.

Consider how much effort had to go into just putting a man on the moon, and compare that to the effort required to affect the fundamental energy processes of a body in which one million Earths can fit. The two problems are many, many orders of magnitude apart. Affecting the Sun in a noticeable way is well out of our reach now, and with high probability will be for the next millennium.

EDIT: I'm full of shit, it's 1 million

randomwalker• 17 years ago

Another fun fact: the power output of the sun is 4 * 10^26 Watts.

fhars• 17 years ago

The good thing is that this might mean that the civilization destroying solar magnetic storm to hit us in 2012 may not be quite that bad, giving us a few more decades to fix our high voltage power nets to be more resilient.

But then, predictions are difficult, especially if they are about the future.

danbmil99• 17 years ago

I thought it meant because of the Oracle takeover. My bad.

Sun is cooling down and what that means for us

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