January 19, 2016 • 36 mins
What can you accomplish with a space mirror? Quite a lot, actually. You can use them to gaze far into the cosmos, to propel exploration craft and even cast patches of light back down on night-cloaked regions of the planet. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian discuss the power of space mirrors.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From how Stop
Works by Carlo ground Control to Major Tom Ground Control
(00:27):
to Major Tom, take your protein pills and put your
helmet on ground control to Major Tom five commencing count
of engines on three three check ignitions, Who to make
God's Love people one lift off. Hey, welcome to stuff
(00:57):
to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I am Christians. Say so you may have gotten the
idea from our little intro there that that was our
homage to David Bowie. We're recording this two days after
he passed away, so we thought it would be fun
to do a little space oddity routine since we're gonna
be talking about space mirrors. So how how do these work?
(01:17):
Why are we putting mirrors in outer space? It's not
to look at ourselves, is not to look at planet Earth? Right,
There's many reasons behind this. Yeah, though I will say
that I did run across at least one scenario in
which they were talking about using mirrors and space as
a means to to to better analyze conditions on the Earth.
Is that right? Yeah? But for the most part, yeah,
we're not putting them up there, but they're not putting
(01:39):
haunted mirrors up in space, right, not like the mirror
from Oculus. Not yet. That's the sequel. I just came
up with it, right there, Oculus to space mirror. The
Oculus mirror, as you is used in a telescope. It
gets put in the Hubble Yeah, Hubble space telescope or
the James Webb Yeah, exactly. And it's worth mentioning the
haunted mirrors because haunted mirrors, I feel, capture a lot
(02:02):
of the mystique of the mirror itself. Even if you
sort of know how a mirror works, uh, there's still
something kind of magical and uncanny about it. And therefore
the idea of putting them in space, putting them out there,
uh in orbit, uh, is inherently kind of weird and
mystical feeling. Yeah, potential event horizons scenario. Ye. So before
(02:25):
we dive into the mirror stuff, I just want to
remind everybody you know, Stuff to Blow your Mind is
a podcast, and most of you know us from listening
to the show, and thank you for doing so. But
we do a bunch of other stuff too, and we
love if you check that out. So we've got videos
that we produce uh and star in. We've got articles
that we write, and the best way that you can
find most of that stuff is by visiting us at
(02:47):
stuff to blow your Mind dot com. That is the
landing site for everything that Joe, Robert and I are producing. Indeed,
and hey, we don't we don't care how you listen
to us. There are various different ways to listen to
a podcast these days. But if you want to help
us out, whatever system you use, be it iTunes or Google, Spotify,
you name it, uh, give us a little love there.
(03:09):
If they have a way to review us, give us
some stars. Do that. It helps us out, helps out
the algorithm, help support the show, and we loved here.
Not just if you've done those, but we love to
hear your reactions to the episodes or maybe some ideas
that you've had, or or facts that we maybe didn't
find in our research. So you can always reach out
to us on social media and let us know about
(03:29):
those things. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumblr.
We are blow the Mind on those platforms. We also
do periscopes every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time, So
if you want to hang out with us for twenty
minutes or so and talk about what's going on with
the show this week, what we're working on for articles
or whatever. Uh, that's that's the best way to do that,
to talk to us directly, throw us those hearts on periscope,
(03:52):
all right, you know. But as we get going here, Uh,
this is not an episode that deals exclusively with telescope. Uh.
That is a topic that deserves its own episode or
a couple of episodes to explore some of this amazing
terrestrial and orbital observatories that we've rolled out over the years.
But in discussing the role of mirrors in space, we
(04:15):
have to talk at least briefly about their role in
the telescope. Yeah. So, the basic gist of reflector telescopes,
which is the kind of telescope that uses mirrors instead
of lenses, is that the mirrors collect light within them
from a distant object, bring that light to a point
(04:35):
or to a focus, and then through an I P
S lens, take that focus and magnify it for our
human retina, right, so we can see through. Its ability
to collect light is directly related to the diameter of
the mirror being used to gather the light. Okay, and
Isaac Newton was the first one to develop this idea
for the reflector telescope back in sixteen eighty. He used
(04:58):
a curved metal mirror to collect the light and reflect
it into focus. Then in seventy two, John Hadley developed
a design using parabolic mirrors, and these are relatively still
in popular use today. The disadvantage of reflector telescopes, though,
is that you have to clean and realign these mirrors,
and that actually comes into play with the Hubble telescope.
(05:21):
Oh yeah, because there's some some flaw to it. But
reflectors are also subject to some light loss as well.
So Hubble we mentioned it before. We thought we joked
about putting the oculus mirror inside of it. Uh, it's
a cassa grain, that's the title of it. Reflector telescope
where the light enters through a small opening and bounces
(05:41):
off primary and secondary mirrors inside of it. It's sort
of in like a w formation, is how the light
is bouncing around in there, and there's other smaller mirrors
inside to distribute the light to the eventual instruments that
then broadcast them back to us. The mirrors are made,
you know, different from how Newton made his with just
a sheet of metal. Uh. They are glass coated with
(06:03):
layers of pure aluminum and magnesium fluoride. But the hubble
has a couple of flaws. It had a flaw in
in its mirrors UM, and so what they used to
do is they had several small mirrors inside of it
that were called co star UH. And the idea was
that they would intercept the beam from the primary mirror
(06:24):
that had a flaw, refocus it, and then make it
so that you know, is able to be uh parsed out.
But today the instruments that are built into it have
corrective optics that compensate for that flaw, so they don't
need the co Star mirrors anymore. And then the big
one that I'm sure a lot of you have heard
about is James Webb Telescope, which is coming up. It
(06:45):
is an even bigger mirror that is twenty ft in diameter.
In fact, we just sent a team here uh from
How Stuff Works up to the NASA Observatory there where
they're working on the James Web telescope, and a couple
of videos were produced by our team, primarily led by
all Fry from the History podcast. But I'm looking forward
to seeing that stuff because they've they apparently got real
(07:06):
up close and personal with the James Webb telescope and
the production and maybe even the Haunted mirror. That's you
gotta ask Hollie if that Oculus mirror made its way
in there. Um. There's also some considerations for something that's
called a liquid mirror telescope that could potentially be mounted
on the Moon. It would be between sixties six and
three hundred and twenty eight feet long, which would collect
(07:26):
a thousand and seven hundred and thirty six times more
light than the Hubble telescope does. Now, so that's just
my brief primer here on telescopes and their role. And yes,
we have space we have mirrors in space four telescopes,
but we're going to talk a little bit beyond using
them to see far and look into other ways that
(07:47):
you could use them potentially as weapons or just to
make people happier. Apparently. Yeah, and you know it's also
worth noting that, um, you know, especially with terrestrial observatories,
you have mirrors that are solid one piece, and then
you also have mirrors that are composed of of of
of various segments that all come together. Um, you mentioned
(08:10):
the liquid mirror, and I have to to throw in
about a new proposition. This just came out. This made
a made the rounds from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, good
old JPL. Yeah, two thousand fifteen orbiting rainbows. So and
you already know it's gonna be good at the title
like that. But this would be a reflective cloud. This
(08:31):
is theoretical. This would be a reflective cloud of glitter
light grains that are just floating there in space, and
they're trapped and manipulated by multiple laser beans. So you
don't have to worry about structure or backing material. You
have to worry about, you know, unfurling the sails, et cetera.
The pressure of the laser light coming in from different
(08:52):
directions ship would shape the cloud and push the small
grains to a line in the same direction. So kind
of a nano mirror cloud. Yeah, that sounds interesting, curious.
I mean, it sounds like it would be a long
way off, given given how long the work on James
Webb has been going on. Yeah, but it's there's certainly
an innovation that is worth thinking about in terms of
(09:15):
these various applications that we're going to discuss here, some
of which you know, are a little more feasible than others. Um,
we should also mention solar sales because that that's an
important aspect of the use of mirrors in space as well,
or at least mirrord surfaces. So the concept itself goes
back to the sixteenth century UH astronomer mathematician Johannes Kepler
(09:39):
UH noticed that comet tails always point away from the sun,
implying that sunlight itself was pushing them around like they
were little wind solar breeze. Yeah, and there is there
is a solar win We know that now. Um. We
we know now that sunlight is a little more than
a stream of photons, tiny particles of light, and they
don't possess mass, but they do boast a linear momentum,
(10:02):
and when they bounce off a reflective surface, they push
against that surface. And UH, and then this has been
demonstrated because of the solar sales. UH. The Mariner Tin
probe successfully demonstrated the technology in seventy four when Nassy
used the probe solar arrays UH as an impromptu solar sale. UH.
Subsequent American, Russian, Indian, and Japanese missions have also uh
(10:25):
further proven the technology's feasibility. But we really haven't taken
the solar sale concept and uh and and fleshed it
out in a more uh you know, remarkable way. We
haven't created like full full on solar sale vessels. Yeah.
The idea is that like, eventually, the continuous force of
all those sunlight particles would propel a spacecraft potentially five
(10:48):
times faster than traditional rockets. Yeah, and then if you
could also throw in varying uh theoretical means of boosting
them with lasers, so you point the laser beams at
the sale and add a little bit of artificial win
to those solar sales. So this sounds good, right. We're
using mirrors in space as a as a as a
(11:09):
real means and as a and as a near future
means to gaze at the cosmos, and propulsion as a
means to move through it. But what else can we do? Well,
apparently we can hurt each other, which is one of
our favorite ways to examine space. Right. We love talking
about space weapons here and stuff to blow your mind. Yeah,
and we've seen time and time again that if you want,
(11:30):
you want any kind of a science program funded. If
it has a weapon aspect to it, then all the better.
That's that's how human civilization gets excited about science. And
that's exactly the case with something called the sun gun. Uh.
And this comes from a Life magazine article. Basically, there
were U. S. Army technical experts that were in Germany
(11:54):
and they came across notes for the sun gun. And
the concept was by a German rocket scientists named Herman
O Berth, and he pitched this idea in ninete. Now,
his idea for this was totally peaceful, right. He wanted
to use it to do things like illuminate ports or
thaw out frozen rivers. Uh. He also thought that you
(12:17):
could potentially use this as a I mean he was
thinking way ahead as a refueling station for spaceships. So
there were some sort of sci fi ash ideas here. Yeah. Oh,
Berth is one of those names you see thrown around
at times with Verna von Braun. He was very much
involved with the German rocket program in the creation of
the V two. Yeah exactly. But you know, in this situation,
(12:39):
ober comes up with this idea and the nazis going,
you know, what, what if we could use that to
take the rays and burn our enemy cities and boil
the ocean. Yeah. I mean it comes down again to
this case where you have you have scientists who who
have this in their areas of expertise, they have their
research they cared dearly about, but you're ultimately you're you're
(13:03):
you're ultimately having to deal with a warlike and dogmatic
force at the top of the chain, and you have
to appeal to those masters. And it's like that nowadays.
Like you know, a lot of the scientists that I
know who get funding for their work get it from
the d O D. I mean, one of my closest
friends used to do work out of M I T.
And he always reminds me that the GPS was first
(13:25):
developed with do O D money. And I'm talking about
the Department of Defense in the United States for international listeners. Yeah,
So the scenario more or less remains the same. It's
easier to uh to cast a nefarious I obviously on
on a scientific experiments going on in scientific endeavors going
on during the Third Reich and under the Third Reich.
(13:46):
But it has always been the case. And if you
have a big project, war is the way it gets green. Well,
there don't seem to be any surviving schematics to actually
show how they're going to build this mirror sun gun.
But the Life magazine article has like drawings and illustrations
in it, which I'm assuming that they came with the
notes that were uncovered by these technical experts unless they
(14:08):
were drawn for the article. And those illustrations are are available,
you can find them, i think, on on Google and
and they're wonderful. They're just fabulous retro futurist visions of
what life space could consist of. Um, they didn't really
have a plan either on how they were going to
have a rocket actually get the get the sun gun
up into space, but the idea here was that it
(14:31):
would be pre assembled before it even got up there. Uh.
And in the same article that hypothesized that at the
distance that the Germans were planning to set up the mirror,
which was five thousand, one hundred miles up, the image
it would cast on Earth once they actually crunched the
math would be forty miles in diameter and it would
not be hot enough to do any damage, so there
(14:52):
would be like a forty mile uh sunburst that I
don't know, maybe it would give you a bit of
a tan. Yeah, that's uh, And that's one of the
um the cool things about that Life article is they
just immediately tear down the idea. Um. Of course, it's
also worth noting that that the German scientists themselves, they
were saying that this thing, this would be like years anyway,
(15:12):
so they weren't saying we can do this next year, guys. Um.
But yeah, it seems like if you try to extrapolate
over it's work into a weapon, as as some of
the Nazi individuals may have seemed to have done, it's
not gonna work, but as a means to slightly heat areas, right, Yeah, yeah,
And I'm curious, like, especially given what we're going to
(15:34):
talk about Russian applications for this as well. But you know,
maybe they could thaw or ever, but at the very
least they could literally shed some light on the situation. So, Okay,
here's the basic breakdown of ober'st thing. Even if we
don't have access to as sschematics. The idea is that
the mirror would be a concave disk that's one mile
(15:54):
in diameter. So we keep coming back to this, the
importance of how big the diameter is mirror. The crew
would live inside the mirror and they would breathe air
produced by thousands of pumpkin plants. I loved that. And
even in some of the drawings they sort of show
where these pumpkin plants would be placed that they would
be generating oxygen for the car. Wonder why, I guess
(16:15):
because of the buyer, if they feel like that would
be a good support structure for us. Yeah, it wasn't clear.
It wasn't clear, and you know, unfortunately, oh Birth's actual
reasoning for it was kind of lost to time. There
was also some weird stuff because they the design was
pitched to have centrifugial rotation and mimic gravity, kind of
(16:36):
like we're familiar with now from two thousand one of
Space that classic scene. Yeah. Um, but they also would
wear magnet shoes that would allow them to stick to
the floors and walls at the same time to compensate
for the gravity loss. So maybe it's sort of like
I'm I'm thinking of that scene in Star Trek the
Next Generation where they put on those like magnet boots
and walk along in the hull of the Star Trek
(16:58):
Enterprise to the star Reck enterprise, the spaceship enterprise. Uh.
And so the idea here is that there would be
tiny little rocket motors that are attached to the mirror
and they would fire those off to control where it
was turned, so they could aim the light at Earth.
But after World War Two, you know, the Nazis were
done for in terms of the weapon building business, and
(17:19):
oh Berth went to other nations to see if they
would pick up his idea for the peacetime applications. He
originally came up with him for he thought the US
could build a mirror that's three hundred miles in diameter.
That's huge, uh, to terraform the Earth. So he had
some big ideas, o Berth did. He even suggested, well,
(17:41):
you know it would be expensive, Yes, but why don't
we just mind all the materials from the Moon to
keep the costs down. I keep in mind, we hadn't
even been to the moon. He doesn't know what's on
the moon. But sure enough, we're gonna he pitches, Yeah,
don't worry about it. We'll just we'll make this mirror
from moonbits. See he's very much thinking a few steps
ahead of hurrent science. Yeah, I mean this concept is,
(18:03):
as far as I can tell, more sci fi than science.
But it was, you know, initially pitched to be developed.
You know. It's it's interesting that he was already at
this point talking about it's use for terraforming, because in
recent decades you've you've see space mirrors occasionally pop up
as a means to terraform Mars. The red planets too cold,
(18:27):
so you know, you just deploy fleets of orbiting reflective
balloons to collect sunlight and reflect it down on the
chili surfaces. Um that that in particular was it was
a scheme that was proposed by University of Arizona's rogol Waida,
who theorizes that such a scheme could raise the Martian
temperature in a one fifty acre patch to Earth like
(18:49):
levels of interesting. And likewise, you you see various theories
about how you could you could use space mirrors as
a geo engineering or plan at hacking measure here on
Earth to counteract global warming. Yeah, I've heard that as well.
But Overth already had all that uh teaming around in
that brain age. Yeah, back in the twenties, he had
(19:12):
the whole thing figured out. He just didn't have the
means to achieve it. I'm gonna go back to the
sun gun one more time though. Um that edition of
Life magazine in busting It, these are some of the
particulars that they laid out. They said that the German
plan for building may be proved physically impossible by a
simple axiom of optics. Uh. This is that light cannot
(19:34):
be brought to a sharp pointed focus with lenses or
mirrors unless it comes from a sharp pointed source. Uh.
It goes on to say that since the Sun appears
in the sky as a disk and not as a point,
the best any optical system could do would be to
produce an image of that disc. So at very short
focal length, the image is small and hot, but the
(19:56):
focus length is increased the image becomes progressively bigger and cooler.
So at the distances that the Germans what we're dealing with,
as you mentioned, they wouldn't be able to cast that
laser like beam of heated intensity on anything. They would
just be able to warm things up like ha ha.
Enemies enjoy slightly warmer temperatures in this general vicinity, which
(20:19):
actually would work out pretty well for the next next
space mirror. We're gonna talk about projects, Zin Maya. That's right.
When we come back, we're gonna discuss Soviet attempts to
cast a little light on the on the world using
space mirrors. Hey, everybody having a professional looking website. It's
(20:39):
just an important part of doing business or just representing
yourself in today's world. But it can be a real pain, right,
You're trying to build this professional looking thing and you
feel like you don't. You don't have the right coding
tools at your disposal, you don't have the right skill
set to make it happen. But that's where square space
comes into play. They offer you intuitive and easy to
use tools to give you that professional design look regardless
(21:02):
of your individual skill level. You don't have to be
a coding wizard at all, and you get a free
domain if you sign up for a year. You can
start your free trial today at square space dot com.
And when you decide to sign up for squarespace, make
sure to use the offer code mind blown to get
ten percent off your first purchase. Again, the promo code
is mind blown, the product is square Space. Go try
(21:23):
it out and build that website you've been dreaming off.
All right, we're back and we're talking about Project Znamia.
Znamia is Russian for banner, because essentially we're talking about
a big reflective banner in space. And this is that
this was the brainchild of the Space Regathera Consortium or
(21:45):
s r C, a partnership of seven Russian aerospace management
and engineering companies who proposed and ultimately got off the ground. Uh,
two different variations of this space mirror technology. And the
interesting and maybe confusing thing about this too was the
first one that went up was the Jennaia too, not
(22:06):
Jean Maya one. So I wonder whatever happened to the
first one, or maybe they just jumped right to two
after a prototype. Yeah, And then the second one is
Namia two point five, right, and the third proposed one
that never actually happened was going to be Namia three. Yeah.
It's sort of like an iOS operating systems that they
(22:26):
just kind of jumped around with the numbers there. So
the idea here is that it's a spinning space reflector,
apparently sort of similar to the sun gun. I guess
in the idea was that it would reflect a three
mile wide patch or a five kilometer wide patch of
light across a swath of pre dawn Europe. Uh. And now,
(22:47):
unfortunately when they tested it, the clouds obscured much of this.
But there were some observers who reported seeing a one
second flash that was as bright as a full moon,
and they were able to see this on top of
the Alps. Apparently there were astronomers knew that it was
being tested, so they were looking for it. Yeah, full
moon shows up a lot as a descriptor for how
bright this thing actually was. Yeah, which is you know, granted,
(23:11):
full moon level of luminosity is pretty significantly sent right,
especially for the purposes that they came up with. At
least so the scientists at the Space Regatican Sortium. Their
hope was that Zimaya two would lead to a constellation
of space mirrors that would be an orbit around Earth
(23:31):
and they would use these to light up cities with
up to a hundred times the full moon's brightness. So
you have multiple mirrors operating at the same time, um
combining their efforts to illuminate an area. Yeah, and they
thought that this would improve morale during the winter, and
they would they would use it just after sun set
or just before sunrise. And my first thought was that
(23:54):
is so Russian like that is the coming from New England,
which is is nowhere year as harshest a Russian winter.
I can understand wanting to dispel the grayness of winter.
Uh So, And I also thought about this, I wonder
what they would do to human circadian rhythms, given how
light interacts with the human eye and brain. Well, that
(24:15):
was I think one of the the criticisms that that
you saw is that people were saying, well, what was it?
What is this due to the human circadian rhythm, essentially
rolling out light pollution, more light pollution than uh the
urban areas are already produced producing. So how's that gonna
mess with the surrounding wildlife? Yeah. In fact, astronomers, other astronomers,
not the ones that we're working on this, we're a
(24:36):
little bit upset about it because they thought that it
was going to obscure their view of the universe. But
if they're looking up with the telescopes we're talking about earlier,
they're gonna be getting all kinds of reflections and problems
from the constellation of space mirrors. Um. But the other
idea that they had, and this seems like a good
one to me, is is that they could provide emergency
lighting during disasters. So if a city loses its power,
(24:58):
they you know, rotate the mirror is in boom, you've
got light for an evening if you have to clear out.
You know, probably given during a natural disaster. And I
guess you could imagine it being used to in a
scenario where all right, this area doesn't have power now,
or for some reason there's an energy shortage. Instead of
lighting up all the streets, you just cast the mirror
(25:18):
and you down and then you can provide the at
least the level of illumination necessary for driving around town. Yeah. Yeah,
uh so this was fairly successful. They thought, okay, the
one second of full moon light, that's enough for us
to call this a success. So let's try it again
with Zemmaya two point five in. Yeah, this is six
(25:40):
years later that set out to try it again. This
one was U and they were hoping to cast a
seven kilometer diameter bright spot. Uh that was expected to
have five to ten moon luminosity. So it's gonna be bigger, better,
And this was gonna gonna be again a first step
(26:01):
in establishing that constellation that we're talking about earlier constellation
of reflectors that would allow us to really dose south
the illumination. Um. The problem is that when they began
to deploy this thing, um, the the the Z two's
membrane caught on one of space station mirrors antenna and
(26:25):
ripped it up. So that was not a success. And
they didn't even get there their one second of full
moon brightness apparently. Yeah, and eventually they just have to
jettison in and it burns up on reentry. So that's
so despite that, they still had you know, I guess
it was already on the books, but they had proposed
in MAYA three and the idea for this was that
it would have been even larger, and its goal was
(26:46):
to test a new reflector concept using something called film photovoltaics.
And it was proposed to go up somewhere around two
thousand or two thousand one. As far as I can tell,
that never happened. Uh, but there's very little formation on
it actually when you go to look it up. Uh.
There is a BBC article that came out right after
two point five failed that's basically like Nan and Nan,
(27:09):
You're never gonna get three up. It's kind of fascinating
little piece. It read a lot more like an editorial
than it did like a science article. They're basically, uh,
speculating that you know, this thing was way too expensive,
it was beyond the resources that Russia had at the time,
and that it was a leftover from when the Soviets
had really big space aspirations. So they said, it's probably
(27:32):
gonna stop, and as far as I can tell, it
seems like it did. Um. But there's an interesting article
that's out there after the antenna problem happened with I'm
gonna call it Z two point five by a guy
named n. Chapawkowski, and he comes up with five different
proposals that they could have used to fix two point five,
(27:54):
so that three would have been more operational. And I'll
just go over these real quick. I mean, his papers
very long and academic in nature. But he talks about
using something called rational membrane unfolding technology that would leave
some of the folds free, so peripherals like the antennas
would stretch together with the rest of the mirrors to
make it so that it is less likely to rip
(28:15):
apart upon first deployment. Yep. Uh. The other idea he
had was to increase the spin so that the membrane
needed would have to be heavy enough to withstand the
centrifugeal forces, but light enough to unfold quickly. And his
idea was they use compressed air to rapidly unfold the memorane.
They have little bursts of compressed air cheot out uh.
And then building off of that, he adds the idea, well,
(28:39):
why don't we put pipes into the membrane and run
the compressed air through those. So three is really just
kind of a two point five if we're sticking with
the right of the note numbering uh. And then this
fourth idea was you would have a compact packing of
the membrane. It would unpack like an accordion in outer space,
So it would go up all folded together, and then
(28:59):
it would come out like an accordion. And this this
led to his fifth idea, which is another similar thing,
but the bands of the membrane would unfold in a
concertina fashion. Okay, so I'm imagining essentially a big, vaguely
accordion shaped reflective space balloon. Yeah, I mean, I think
you know the conclusion of his article is basically like,
maybe we could combine a little bit of idea number
(29:22):
three with idea number one and idea number five and
we can make this thing work out. But and never
and never never went up. So with this and uh
and some of these other applications of space mirrors, I mean, ultimately,
what you're getting down to is the manipulation of light. Uh,
not only in terms of illumination, but also as as
far as energy is concerned. And so really the applications
(29:44):
apply to any situation in which you would want to
redirect solar energy for propulsion, as we've mentioned, for observation,
as we've mentioned also just for the energy usage. You
could potentially use these mirrors to to refocus solar energy
onto some sort of a solar up into onto a
(30:04):
solar energy collector. And that's what I was thinking about,
is it if you wanted to get really serious about
solar panels. Again, the State of the Union was last
night and President Obama was talking a lot about solar energy.
Build something like this and have it just beamed down
the energy right at it. But I don't know that
if that's practical or not. Yeah, that's always the challenge
(30:26):
with with solar energy, whether you're talking something with space
meters or just say passive solar home design. How do
you best design the system so that you maximize uh,
the benefits of the solar energy harvesting? Uh, and that
it's not just some sort of you know, expensive plus
one right exactly. Yeah, I would assume that given the
(30:49):
costs involved. We've talked about how much it costs to
fly things up and out or space before, especially we
talked about space weapons and our rods from God episode.
Uh that I don't know if would if the cost
benefit analysis works out. Yeah, indeed. And now when you
start getting into that far future area, yeah, you know,
(31:09):
kind of like over it was discussing, you know, where
we already have the Moon base in place, and then
you can dream outward from that you get into a
lot of really far fetched and and and really remarkable
ideas about how you could use a space mirror. So,
what if you had a space mirror large enough to
reflect the Sun's rays back on itself in a in
(31:33):
a meaningful amount, say you know, a giant space mirror
position on the other side of the Sun perhaps uh,
from Earth. Could you essentially make the Sun into its
own solar sale and then you utilize this effect to
propel the solar system in the direction of your choice. Wait,
so the Solar system itself becomes a spaceship. Yeah, yeah,
(31:55):
that's kind of the idea here. And now it's definitely
a type to Cardassian civilization, uh concept. But yeah, the
idea is that if you had a basically a megastructure
in space, this big reflective megastructure, you would have what
is referred to as a class A stellar engine that
would use the impulse of the radiation emitted by a
(32:16):
star to produce thrust. And this is also called a
Shakadov thruster. I imagine navigating spaceship Milky Way or sorry,
not Milky Way, but spaceship Solar System would be extremely difficult.
The calculations involved, uh, would be mind blowing. Yeah. It
would definitely be the domain of a of a type too,
(32:38):
sumplation as opposed to us um And I think I've
seen this rolled out occasionally in sci fi. There's any
n Ebanks book where the the the Earth becomes threatened
by an orc cloud that is going to block out
most of the Sun's rays and so therefore it becomes
necessary to move the Solar system to to a different
(32:59):
location um or perhaps they merely move the Earth in
that in that's in that particular novel. I'm having trouble
remembering off the top of my head. But yeah, when
you start talking about capturing all of the energy in
the solar system and the utilizing that, you're in this uh,
this type two level of far future technology, and I'm
just it's only just now dawning on me. I didn't
(33:21):
even write down a note about this. And I don't
want to spoil the spoil the movie for anybody who
hasn't seen it yet. But there is something like this
in the new Star Wars movie. Okay, yeah, you haven't
seen I have not seen it yet. Plans keep falling apart.
I don't know that it's mirrors necessarily, but they harness
the power of the sun. Okay, some sort of some
sort of solar super weapon. Then yeah, I'm the last
(33:43):
person on Earth too that that has not seen I
don't know about that. I'm sure that some of you
out there haven't seen it yet either. That's why I
don't want to go too far into it. But yeah,
but hey, that's one more thing I have to look
forward to when I see the new Star Wars film.
So there you have it. We've We've rolled through just
a number of the key key points in the history
of space mirrors and some of their their actual and
(34:05):
theoretical uses. But we're curious, you know, what else is
out there, what's popping around your your head when it
comes to either sci fi visions of space mirrors or
just sort of possible UH uses for them, Like, for instance,
what about the possibility of using solar UH mirrors in
space to illuminate a particular growing area for crops. Yeah, yeah, right,
(34:29):
that seems like it would be a natural one. And
I didn't get the impression from either the German or
Russian designs that they were thinking along those lines. Yeah,
but you could essentially have your own It's like having
your own hydroponic growing area, except you could have just
an enormous field somewhere. All you need isn't is the
oribital mite of a It's like you just gotta have
this multi billion dollar steaking up there. So yeah, if
(34:52):
you if you have ideas about this or or more
resources for us to follow up on, please let us know.
And you know, like I said at the top, we
are always of llable on social media Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler.
We don't just post our own stuff on there either.
We like to uh curate a lot of the weird science,
the information that we find or across the web that
we don't have time to put into our episodes. Yeah,
(35:13):
so follow us on those accounts, uh if you use them,
and you can keep up keep up with us that way.
And hey, if you want to reach out to us directly,
you can always hit us up on email. That blow
the mind at how stuff works dot com. Well more
(35:36):
on this and thousands of other topics How stuff works
dot com. Bla bla fine nine nine nine nine
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From how Stop
Works by Carlo ground Control to Major Tom Ground Control
(00:27):
to Major Tom, take your protein pills and put your
helmet on ground control to Major Tom five commencing count
of engines on three three check ignitions, Who to make
God's Love people one lift off. Hey, welcome to stuff
(00:57):
to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I am Christians. Say so you may have gotten the
idea from our little intro there that that was our
homage to David Bowie. We're recording this two days after
he passed away, so we thought it would be fun
to do a little space oddity routine since we're gonna
be talking about space mirrors. So how how do these work?
(01:17):
Why are we putting mirrors in outer space? It's not
to look at ourselves, is not to look at planet Earth? Right,
There's many reasons behind this. Yeah, though I will say
that I did run across at least one scenario in
which they were talking about using mirrors and space as
a means to to to better analyze conditions on the Earth.
Is that right? Yeah? But for the most part, yeah,
we're not putting them up there, but they're not putting
(01:39):
haunted mirrors up in space, right, not like the mirror
from Oculus. Not yet. That's the sequel. I just came
up with it, right there, Oculus to space mirror. The
Oculus mirror, as you is used in a telescope. It
gets put in the Hubble Yeah, Hubble space telescope or
the James Webb Yeah, exactly. And it's worth mentioning the
haunted mirrors because haunted mirrors, I feel, capture a lot
(02:02):
of the mystique of the mirror itself. Even if you
sort of know how a mirror works, uh, there's still
something kind of magical and uncanny about it. And therefore
the idea of putting them in space, putting them out there,
uh in orbit, uh, is inherently kind of weird and
mystical feeling. Yeah, potential event horizons scenario. Ye. So before
(02:25):
we dive into the mirror stuff, I just want to
remind everybody you know, Stuff to Blow your Mind is
a podcast, and most of you know us from listening
to the show, and thank you for doing so. But
we do a bunch of other stuff too, and we
love if you check that out. So we've got videos
that we produce uh and star in. We've got articles
that we write, and the best way that you can
find most of that stuff is by visiting us at
(02:47):
stuff to blow your Mind dot com. That is the
landing site for everything that Joe, Robert and I are producing. Indeed,
and hey, we don't we don't care how you listen
to us. There are various different ways to listen to
a podcast these days. But if you want to help
us out, whatever system you use, be it iTunes or Google, Spotify,
you name it, uh, give us a little love there.
(03:09):
If they have a way to review us, give us
some stars. Do that. It helps us out, helps out
the algorithm, help support the show, and we loved here.
Not just if you've done those, but we love to
hear your reactions to the episodes or maybe some ideas
that you've had, or or facts that we maybe didn't
find in our research. So you can always reach out
to us on social media and let us know about
(03:29):
those things. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumblr.
We are blow the Mind on those platforms. We also
do periscopes every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time, So
if you want to hang out with us for twenty
minutes or so and talk about what's going on with
the show this week, what we're working on for articles
or whatever. Uh, that's that's the best way to do that,
to talk to us directly, throw us those hearts on periscope,
(03:52):
all right, you know. But as we get going here, Uh,
this is not an episode that deals exclusively with telescope. Uh.
That is a topic that deserves its own episode or
a couple of episodes to explore some of this amazing
terrestrial and orbital observatories that we've rolled out over the years.
But in discussing the role of mirrors in space, we
(04:15):
have to talk at least briefly about their role in
the telescope. Yeah. So, the basic gist of reflector telescopes,
which is the kind of telescope that uses mirrors instead
of lenses, is that the mirrors collect light within them
from a distant object, bring that light to a point
(04:35):
or to a focus, and then through an I P
S lens, take that focus and magnify it for our
human retina, right, so we can see through. Its ability
to collect light is directly related to the diameter of
the mirror being used to gather the light. Okay, and
Isaac Newton was the first one to develop this idea
for the reflector telescope back in sixteen eighty. He used
(04:58):
a curved metal mirror to collect the light and reflect
it into focus. Then in seventy two, John Hadley developed
a design using parabolic mirrors, and these are relatively still
in popular use today. The disadvantage of reflector telescopes, though,
is that you have to clean and realign these mirrors,
and that actually comes into play with the Hubble telescope.
(05:21):
Oh yeah, because there's some some flaw to it. But
reflectors are also subject to some light loss as well.
So Hubble we mentioned it before. We thought we joked
about putting the oculus mirror inside of it. Uh, it's
a cassa grain, that's the title of it. Reflector telescope
where the light enters through a small opening and bounces
(05:41):
off primary and secondary mirrors inside of it. It's sort
of in like a w formation, is how the light
is bouncing around in there, and there's other smaller mirrors
inside to distribute the light to the eventual instruments that
then broadcast them back to us. The mirrors are made,
you know, different from how Newton made his with just
a sheet of metal. Uh. They are glass coated with
(06:03):
layers of pure aluminum and magnesium fluoride. But the hubble
has a couple of flaws. It had a flaw in
in its mirrors UM, and so what they used to
do is they had several small mirrors inside of it
that were called co star UH. And the idea was
that they would intercept the beam from the primary mirror
(06:24):
that had a flaw, refocus it, and then make it
so that you know, is able to be uh parsed out.
But today the instruments that are built into it have
corrective optics that compensate for that flaw, so they don't
need the co Star mirrors anymore. And then the big
one that I'm sure a lot of you have heard
about is James Webb Telescope, which is coming up. It
(06:45):
is an even bigger mirror that is twenty ft in diameter.
In fact, we just sent a team here uh from
How Stuff Works up to the NASA Observatory there where
they're working on the James Web telescope, and a couple
of videos were produced by our team, primarily led by
all Fry from the History podcast. But I'm looking forward
to seeing that stuff because they've they apparently got real
(07:06):
up close and personal with the James Webb telescope and
the production and maybe even the Haunted mirror. That's you
gotta ask Hollie if that Oculus mirror made its way
in there. Um. There's also some considerations for something that's
called a liquid mirror telescope that could potentially be mounted
on the Moon. It would be between sixties six and
three hundred and twenty eight feet long, which would collect
(07:26):
a thousand and seven hundred and thirty six times more
light than the Hubble telescope does. Now, so that's just
my brief primer here on telescopes and their role. And yes,
we have space we have mirrors in space four telescopes,
but we're going to talk a little bit beyond using
them to see far and look into other ways that
(07:47):
you could use them potentially as weapons or just to
make people happier. Apparently. Yeah, and you know it's also
worth noting that, um, you know, especially with terrestrial observatories,
you have mirrors that are solid one piece, and then
you also have mirrors that are composed of of of
of various segments that all come together. Um, you mentioned
(08:10):
the liquid mirror, and I have to to throw in
about a new proposition. This just came out. This made
a made the rounds from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, good
old JPL. Yeah, two thousand fifteen orbiting rainbows. So and
you already know it's gonna be good at the title
like that. But this would be a reflective cloud. This
(08:31):
is theoretical. This would be a reflective cloud of glitter
light grains that are just floating there in space, and
they're trapped and manipulated by multiple laser beans. So you
don't have to worry about structure or backing material. You
have to worry about, you know, unfurling the sails, et cetera.
The pressure of the laser light coming in from different
(08:52):
directions ship would shape the cloud and push the small
grains to a line in the same direction. So kind
of a nano mirror cloud. Yeah, that sounds interesting, curious.
I mean, it sounds like it would be a long
way off, given given how long the work on James
Webb has been going on. Yeah, but it's there's certainly
an innovation that is worth thinking about in terms of
(09:15):
these various applications that we're going to discuss here, some
of which you know, are a little more feasible than others. Um,
we should also mention solar sales because that that's an
important aspect of the use of mirrors in space as well,
or at least mirrord surfaces. So the concept itself goes
back to the sixteenth century UH astronomer mathematician Johannes Kepler
(09:39):
UH noticed that comet tails always point away from the sun,
implying that sunlight itself was pushing them around like they
were little wind solar breeze. Yeah, and there is there
is a solar win We know that now. Um. We
we know now that sunlight is a little more than
a stream of photons, tiny particles of light, and they
don't possess mass, but they do boast a linear momentum,
(10:02):
and when they bounce off a reflective surface, they push
against that surface. And UH, and then this has been
demonstrated because of the solar sales. UH. The Mariner Tin
probe successfully demonstrated the technology in seventy four when Nassy
used the probe solar arrays UH as an impromptu solar sale. UH.
Subsequent American, Russian, Indian, and Japanese missions have also uh
(10:25):
further proven the technology's feasibility. But we really haven't taken
the solar sale concept and uh and and fleshed it
out in a more uh you know, remarkable way. We
haven't created like full full on solar sale vessels. Yeah.
The idea is that like, eventually, the continuous force of
all those sunlight particles would propel a spacecraft potentially five
(10:48):
times faster than traditional rockets. Yeah, and then if you
could also throw in varying uh theoretical means of boosting
them with lasers, so you point the laser beams at
the sale and add a little bit of artificial win
to those solar sales. So this sounds good, right. We're
using mirrors in space as a as a as a
(11:09):
real means and as a and as a near future
means to gaze at the cosmos, and propulsion as a
means to move through it. But what else can we do? Well,
apparently we can hurt each other, which is one of
our favorite ways to examine space. Right. We love talking
about space weapons here and stuff to blow your mind. Yeah,
and we've seen time and time again that if you want,
(11:30):
you want any kind of a science program funded. If
it has a weapon aspect to it, then all the better.
That's that's how human civilization gets excited about science. And
that's exactly the case with something called the sun gun. Uh.
And this comes from a Life magazine article. Basically, there
were U. S. Army technical experts that were in Germany
(11:54):
and they came across notes for the sun gun. And
the concept was by a German rocket scientists named Herman
O Berth, and he pitched this idea in ninete. Now,
his idea for this was totally peaceful, right. He wanted
to use it to do things like illuminate ports or
thaw out frozen rivers. Uh. He also thought that you
(12:17):
could potentially use this as a I mean he was
thinking way ahead as a refueling station for spaceships. So
there were some sort of sci fi ash ideas here. Yeah. Oh,
Berth is one of those names you see thrown around
at times with Verna von Braun. He was very much
involved with the German rocket program in the creation of
the V two. Yeah exactly. But you know, in this situation,
(12:39):
ober comes up with this idea and the nazis going,
you know, what, what if we could use that to
take the rays and burn our enemy cities and boil
the ocean. Yeah. I mean it comes down again to
this case where you have you have scientists who who
have this in their areas of expertise, they have their
research they cared dearly about, but you're ultimately you're you're
(13:03):
you're ultimately having to deal with a warlike and dogmatic
force at the top of the chain, and you have
to appeal to those masters. And it's like that nowadays.
Like you know, a lot of the scientists that I
know who get funding for their work get it from
the d O D. I mean, one of my closest
friends used to do work out of M I T.
And he always reminds me that the GPS was first
(13:25):
developed with do O D money. And I'm talking about
the Department of Defense in the United States for international listeners. Yeah,
So the scenario more or less remains the same. It's
easier to uh to cast a nefarious I obviously on
on a scientific experiments going on in scientific endeavors going
on during the Third Reich and under the Third Reich.
(13:46):
But it has always been the case. And if you
have a big project, war is the way it gets green. Well,
there don't seem to be any surviving schematics to actually
show how they're going to build this mirror sun gun.
But the Life magazine article has like drawings and illustrations
in it, which I'm assuming that they came with the
notes that were uncovered by these technical experts unless they
(14:08):
were drawn for the article. And those illustrations are are available,
you can find them, i think, on on Google and
and they're wonderful. They're just fabulous retro futurist visions of
what life space could consist of. Um, they didn't really
have a plan either on how they were going to
have a rocket actually get the get the sun gun
up into space, but the idea here was that it
(14:31):
would be pre assembled before it even got up there. Uh.
And in the same article that hypothesized that at the
distance that the Germans were planning to set up the mirror,
which was five thousand, one hundred miles up, the image
it would cast on Earth once they actually crunched the
math would be forty miles in diameter and it would
not be hot enough to do any damage, so there
(14:52):
would be like a forty mile uh sunburst that I
don't know, maybe it would give you a bit of
a tan. Yeah, that's uh, And that's one of the
um the cool things about that Life article is they
just immediately tear down the idea. Um. Of course, it's
also worth noting that that the German scientists themselves, they
were saying that this thing, this would be like years anyway,
(15:12):
so they weren't saying we can do this next year, guys. Um.
But yeah, it seems like if you try to extrapolate
over it's work into a weapon, as as some of
the Nazi individuals may have seemed to have done, it's
not gonna work, but as a means to slightly heat areas, right, Yeah, yeah,
And I'm curious, like, especially given what we're going to
(15:34):
talk about Russian applications for this as well. But you know,
maybe they could thaw or ever, but at the very
least they could literally shed some light on the situation. So, Okay,
here's the basic breakdown of ober'st thing. Even if we
don't have access to as sschematics. The idea is that
the mirror would be a concave disk that's one mile
(15:54):
in diameter. So we keep coming back to this, the
importance of how big the diameter is mirror. The crew
would live inside the mirror and they would breathe air
produced by thousands of pumpkin plants. I loved that. And
even in some of the drawings they sort of show
where these pumpkin plants would be placed that they would
be generating oxygen for the car. Wonder why, I guess
(16:15):
because of the buyer, if they feel like that would
be a good support structure for us. Yeah, it wasn't clear.
It wasn't clear, and you know, unfortunately, oh Birth's actual
reasoning for it was kind of lost to time. There
was also some weird stuff because they the design was
pitched to have centrifugial rotation and mimic gravity, kind of
(16:36):
like we're familiar with now from two thousand one of
Space that classic scene. Yeah. Um, but they also would
wear magnet shoes that would allow them to stick to
the floors and walls at the same time to compensate
for the gravity loss. So maybe it's sort of like
I'm I'm thinking of that scene in Star Trek the
Next Generation where they put on those like magnet boots
and walk along in the hull of the Star Trek
(16:58):
Enterprise to the star Reck enterprise, the spaceship enterprise. Uh.
And so the idea here is that there would be
tiny little rocket motors that are attached to the mirror
and they would fire those off to control where it
was turned, so they could aim the light at Earth.
But after World War Two, you know, the Nazis were
done for in terms of the weapon building business, and
(17:19):
oh Berth went to other nations to see if they
would pick up his idea for the peacetime applications. He
originally came up with him for he thought the US
could build a mirror that's three hundred miles in diameter.
That's huge, uh, to terraform the Earth. So he had
some big ideas, o Berth did. He even suggested, well,
(17:41):
you know it would be expensive, Yes, but why don't
we just mind all the materials from the Moon to
keep the costs down. I keep in mind, we hadn't
even been to the moon. He doesn't know what's on
the moon. But sure enough, we're gonna he pitches, Yeah,
don't worry about it. We'll just we'll make this mirror
from moonbits. See he's very much thinking a few steps
ahead of hurrent science. Yeah, I mean this concept is,
(18:03):
as far as I can tell, more sci fi than science.
But it was, you know, initially pitched to be developed.
You know. It's it's interesting that he was already at
this point talking about it's use for terraforming, because in
recent decades you've you've see space mirrors occasionally pop up
as a means to terraform Mars. The red planets too cold,
(18:27):
so you know, you just deploy fleets of orbiting reflective
balloons to collect sunlight and reflect it down on the
chili surfaces. Um that that in particular was it was
a scheme that was proposed by University of Arizona's rogol Waida,
who theorizes that such a scheme could raise the Martian
temperature in a one fifty acre patch to Earth like
(18:49):
levels of interesting. And likewise, you you see various theories
about how you could you could use space mirrors as
a geo engineering or plan at hacking measure here on
Earth to counteract global warming. Yeah, I've heard that as well.
But Overth already had all that uh teaming around in
that brain age. Yeah, back in the twenties, he had
(19:12):
the whole thing figured out. He just didn't have the
means to achieve it. I'm gonna go back to the
sun gun one more time though. Um that edition of
Life magazine in busting It, these are some of the
particulars that they laid out. They said that the German
plan for building may be proved physically impossible by a
simple axiom of optics. Uh. This is that light cannot
(19:34):
be brought to a sharp pointed focus with lenses or
mirrors unless it comes from a sharp pointed source. Uh.
It goes on to say that since the Sun appears
in the sky as a disk and not as a point,
the best any optical system could do would be to
produce an image of that disc. So at very short
focal length, the image is small and hot, but the
(19:56):
focus length is increased the image becomes progressively bigger and cooler.
So at the distances that the Germans what we're dealing with,
as you mentioned, they wouldn't be able to cast that
laser like beam of heated intensity on anything. They would
just be able to warm things up like ha ha.
Enemies enjoy slightly warmer temperatures in this general vicinity, which
(20:19):
actually would work out pretty well for the next next
space mirror. We're gonna talk about projects, Zin Maya. That's right.
When we come back, we're gonna discuss Soviet attempts to
cast a little light on the on the world using
space mirrors. Hey, everybody having a professional looking website. It's
(20:39):
just an important part of doing business or just representing
yourself in today's world. But it can be a real pain, right,
You're trying to build this professional looking thing and you
feel like you don't. You don't have the right coding
tools at your disposal, you don't have the right skill
set to make it happen. But that's where square space
comes into play. They offer you intuitive and easy to
use tools to give you that professional design look regardless
(21:02):
of your individual skill level. You don't have to be
a coding wizard at all, and you get a free
domain if you sign up for a year. You can
start your free trial today at square space dot com.
And when you decide to sign up for squarespace, make
sure to use the offer code mind blown to get
ten percent off your first purchase. Again, the promo code
is mind blown, the product is square Space. Go try
(21:23):
it out and build that website you've been dreaming off.
All right, we're back and we're talking about Project Znamia.
Znamia is Russian for banner, because essentially we're talking about
a big reflective banner in space. And this is that
this was the brainchild of the Space Regathera Consortium or
(21:45):
s r C, a partnership of seven Russian aerospace management
and engineering companies who proposed and ultimately got off the ground. Uh,
two different variations of this space mirror technology. And the
interesting and maybe confusing thing about this too was the
first one that went up was the Jennaia too, not
(22:06):
Jean Maya one. So I wonder whatever happened to the
first one, or maybe they just jumped right to two
after a prototype. Yeah, And then the second one is
Namia two point five, right, and the third proposed one
that never actually happened was going to be Namia three. Yeah.
It's sort of like an iOS operating systems that they
(22:26):
just kind of jumped around with the numbers there. So
the idea here is that it's a spinning space reflector,
apparently sort of similar to the sun gun. I guess
in the idea was that it would reflect a three
mile wide patch or a five kilometer wide patch of
light across a swath of pre dawn Europe. Uh. And now,
(22:47):
unfortunately when they tested it, the clouds obscured much of this.
But there were some observers who reported seeing a one
second flash that was as bright as a full moon,
and they were able to see this on top of
the Alps. Apparently there were astronomers knew that it was
being tested, so they were looking for it. Yeah, full
moon shows up a lot as a descriptor for how
bright this thing actually was. Yeah, which is you know, granted,
(23:11):
full moon level of luminosity is pretty significantly sent right,
especially for the purposes that they came up with. At
least so the scientists at the Space Regatican Sortium. Their
hope was that Zimaya two would lead to a constellation
of space mirrors that would be an orbit around Earth
(23:31):
and they would use these to light up cities with
up to a hundred times the full moon's brightness. So
you have multiple mirrors operating at the same time, um
combining their efforts to illuminate an area. Yeah, and they
thought that this would improve morale during the winter, and
they would they would use it just after sun set
or just before sunrise. And my first thought was that
(23:54):
is so Russian like that is the coming from New England,
which is is nowhere year as harshest a Russian winter.
I can understand wanting to dispel the grayness of winter.
Uh So, And I also thought about this, I wonder
what they would do to human circadian rhythms, given how
light interacts with the human eye and brain. Well, that
(24:15):
was I think one of the the criticisms that that
you saw is that people were saying, well, what was it?
What is this due to the human circadian rhythm, essentially
rolling out light pollution, more light pollution than uh the
urban areas are already produced producing. So how's that gonna
mess with the surrounding wildlife? Yeah. In fact, astronomers, other astronomers,
not the ones that we're working on this, we're a
(24:36):
little bit upset about it because they thought that it
was going to obscure their view of the universe. But
if they're looking up with the telescopes we're talking about earlier,
they're gonna be getting all kinds of reflections and problems
from the constellation of space mirrors. Um. But the other
idea that they had, and this seems like a good
one to me, is is that they could provide emergency
lighting during disasters. So if a city loses its power,
(24:58):
they you know, rotate the mirror is in boom, you've
got light for an evening if you have to clear out.
You know, probably given during a natural disaster. And I
guess you could imagine it being used to in a
scenario where all right, this area doesn't have power now,
or for some reason there's an energy shortage. Instead of
lighting up all the streets, you just cast the mirror
(25:18):
and you down and then you can provide the at
least the level of illumination necessary for driving around town. Yeah. Yeah,
uh so this was fairly successful. They thought, okay, the
one second of full moon light, that's enough for us
to call this a success. So let's try it again
with Zemmaya two point five in. Yeah, this is six
(25:40):
years later that set out to try it again. This
one was U and they were hoping to cast a
seven kilometer diameter bright spot. Uh that was expected to
have five to ten moon luminosity. So it's gonna be bigger, better,
And this was gonna gonna be again a first step
(26:01):
in establishing that constellation that we're talking about earlier constellation
of reflectors that would allow us to really dose south
the illumination. Um. The problem is that when they began
to deploy this thing, um, the the the Z two's
membrane caught on one of space station mirrors antenna and
(26:25):
ripped it up. So that was not a success. And
they didn't even get there their one second of full
moon brightness apparently. Yeah, and eventually they just have to
jettison in and it burns up on reentry. So that's
so despite that, they still had you know, I guess
it was already on the books, but they had proposed
in MAYA three and the idea for this was that
it would have been even larger, and its goal was
(26:46):
to test a new reflector concept using something called film photovoltaics.
And it was proposed to go up somewhere around two
thousand or two thousand one. As far as I can tell,
that never happened. Uh, but there's very little formation on
it actually when you go to look it up. Uh.
There is a BBC article that came out right after
two point five failed that's basically like Nan and Nan,
(27:09):
You're never gonna get three up. It's kind of fascinating
little piece. It read a lot more like an editorial
than it did like a science article. They're basically, uh,
speculating that you know, this thing was way too expensive,
it was beyond the resources that Russia had at the time,
and that it was a leftover from when the Soviets
had really big space aspirations. So they said, it's probably
(27:32):
gonna stop, and as far as I can tell, it
seems like it did. Um. But there's an interesting article
that's out there after the antenna problem happened with I'm
gonna call it Z two point five by a guy
named n. Chapawkowski, and he comes up with five different
proposals that they could have used to fix two point five,
(27:54):
so that three would have been more operational. And I'll
just go over these real quick. I mean, his papers
very long and academic in nature. But he talks about
using something called rational membrane unfolding technology that would leave
some of the folds free, so peripherals like the antennas
would stretch together with the rest of the mirrors to
make it so that it is less likely to rip
(28:15):
apart upon first deployment. Yep. Uh. The other idea he
had was to increase the spin so that the membrane
needed would have to be heavy enough to withstand the
centrifugeal forces, but light enough to unfold quickly. And his
idea was they use compressed air to rapidly unfold the memorane.
They have little bursts of compressed air cheot out uh.
And then building off of that, he adds the idea, well,
(28:39):
why don't we put pipes into the membrane and run
the compressed air through those. So three is really just
kind of a two point five if we're sticking with
the right of the note numbering uh. And then this
fourth idea was you would have a compact packing of
the membrane. It would unpack like an accordion in outer space,
So it would go up all folded together, and then
(28:59):
it would come out like an accordion. And this this
led to his fifth idea, which is another similar thing,
but the bands of the membrane would unfold in a
concertina fashion. Okay, so I'm imagining essentially a big, vaguely
accordion shaped reflective space balloon. Yeah, I mean, I think
you know the conclusion of his article is basically like,
maybe we could combine a little bit of idea number
(29:22):
three with idea number one and idea number five and
we can make this thing work out. But and never
and never never went up. So with this and uh
and some of these other applications of space mirrors, I mean, ultimately,
what you're getting down to is the manipulation of light. Uh,
not only in terms of illumination, but also as as
far as energy is concerned. And so really the applications
(29:44):
apply to any situation in which you would want to
redirect solar energy for propulsion, as we've mentioned, for observation,
as we've mentioned also just for the energy usage. You
could potentially use these mirrors to to refocus solar energy
onto some sort of a solar up into onto a
(30:04):
solar energy collector. And that's what I was thinking about,
is it if you wanted to get really serious about
solar panels. Again, the State of the Union was last
night and President Obama was talking a lot about solar energy.
Build something like this and have it just beamed down
the energy right at it. But I don't know that
if that's practical or not. Yeah, that's always the challenge
(30:26):
with with solar energy, whether you're talking something with space
meters or just say passive solar home design. How do
you best design the system so that you maximize uh,
the benefits of the solar energy harvesting? Uh, and that
it's not just some sort of you know, expensive plus
one right exactly. Yeah, I would assume that given the
(30:49):
costs involved. We've talked about how much it costs to
fly things up and out or space before, especially we
talked about space weapons and our rods from God episode.
Uh that I don't know if would if the cost
benefit analysis works out. Yeah, indeed. And now when you
start getting into that far future area, yeah, you know,
(31:09):
kind of like over it was discussing, you know, where
we already have the Moon base in place, and then
you can dream outward from that you get into a
lot of really far fetched and and and really remarkable
ideas about how you could use a space mirror. So,
what if you had a space mirror large enough to
reflect the Sun's rays back on itself in a in
(31:33):
a meaningful amount, say you know, a giant space mirror
position on the other side of the Sun perhaps uh,
from Earth. Could you essentially make the Sun into its
own solar sale and then you utilize this effect to
propel the solar system in the direction of your choice. Wait,
so the Solar system itself becomes a spaceship. Yeah, yeah,
(31:55):
that's kind of the idea here. And now it's definitely
a type to Cardassian civilization, uh concept. But yeah, the
idea is that if you had a basically a megastructure
in space, this big reflective megastructure, you would have what
is referred to as a class A stellar engine that
would use the impulse of the radiation emitted by a
(32:16):
star to produce thrust. And this is also called a
Shakadov thruster. I imagine navigating spaceship Milky Way or sorry,
not Milky Way, but spaceship Solar System would be extremely difficult.
The calculations involved, uh, would be mind blowing. Yeah. It
would definitely be the domain of a of a type too,
(32:38):
sumplation as opposed to us um And I think I've
seen this rolled out occasionally in sci fi. There's any
n Ebanks book where the the the Earth becomes threatened
by an orc cloud that is going to block out
most of the Sun's rays and so therefore it becomes
necessary to move the Solar system to to a different
(32:59):
location um or perhaps they merely move the Earth in
that in that's in that particular novel. I'm having trouble
remembering off the top of my head. But yeah, when
you start talking about capturing all of the energy in
the solar system and the utilizing that, you're in this uh,
this type two level of far future technology, and I'm
just it's only just now dawning on me. I didn't
(33:21):
even write down a note about this. And I don't
want to spoil the spoil the movie for anybody who
hasn't seen it yet. But there is something like this
in the new Star Wars movie. Okay, yeah, you haven't
seen I have not seen it yet. Plans keep falling apart.
I don't know that it's mirrors necessarily, but they harness
the power of the sun. Okay, some sort of some
sort of solar super weapon. Then yeah, I'm the last
(33:43):
person on Earth too that that has not seen I
don't know about that. I'm sure that some of you
out there haven't seen it yet either. That's why I
don't want to go too far into it. But yeah,
but hey, that's one more thing I have to look
forward to when I see the new Star Wars film.
So there you have it. We've We've rolled through just
a number of the key key points in the history
of space mirrors and some of their their actual and
(34:05):
theoretical uses. But we're curious, you know, what else is
out there, what's popping around your your head when it
comes to either sci fi visions of space mirrors or
just sort of possible UH uses for them, Like, for instance,
what about the possibility of using solar UH mirrors in
space to illuminate a particular growing area for crops. Yeah, yeah, right,
(34:29):
that seems like it would be a natural one. And
I didn't get the impression from either the German or
Russian designs that they were thinking along those lines. Yeah,
but you could essentially have your own It's like having
your own hydroponic growing area, except you could have just
an enormous field somewhere. All you need isn't is the
oribital mite of a It's like you just gotta have
this multi billion dollar steaking up there. So yeah, if
(34:52):
you if you have ideas about this or or more
resources for us to follow up on, please let us know.
And you know, like I said at the top, we
are always of llable on social media Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler.
We don't just post our own stuff on there either.
We like to uh curate a lot of the weird science,
the information that we find or across the web that
we don't have time to put into our episodes. Yeah,
(35:13):
so follow us on those accounts, uh if you use them,
and you can keep up keep up with us that way.
And hey, if you want to reach out to us directly,
you can always hit us up on email. That blow
the mind at how stuff works dot com. Well more
(35:36):
on this and thousands of other topics How stuff works
dot com. Bla bla fine nine nine nine nine
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.