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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question,

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Speaker 1: will space mirrors really be able to cool the planet?

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Speaker 1: Carbon dioxide and methane are two common greenhouse gases. Human

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Speaker 1: consumption of fossil fuels releases billions of pounds of carbon

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Speaker 1: dioxide gas into the atmosphere every day, and a wide

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Speaker 1: variety of natural processes create methane. One of the problems

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Speaker 1: with the rising level of these greenhouse gases in the

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Speaker 1: atmosphere is that it causes the atmosphere to trap more

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Speaker 1: of the heat that arise from the sun, so the

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Speaker 1: Earth is getting warmer. One way to solve this problem

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Speaker 1: might be to put mirrors or sunshades in space that

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Speaker 1: would block some of the sunlight that would normally reach

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Speaker 1: the planet. With less sunlight, the planet would get cooler.

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Speaker 1: Three approaches have been suggested. First, we could loft a

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Speaker 1: single huge mirror. Depending on its design, it might need

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Speaker 1: to be as large as six hundred thousand square miles.

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Speaker 1: This is hard to imagine with current technology. Second, we

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Speaker 1: could use thousands of large satellites, which might come in

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Speaker 1: the form of space solar power satellites to block sunlight

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Speaker 1: and generate electricity. Third, we could use a swarm of

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Speaker 1: millions of smaller mirrors. One approach uses lunar materials to

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Speaker 1: create the mirrors that orbit far from the Earth. In

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Speaker 1: another approach, millions of smaller satellites form a ring in

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Speaker 1: low Earth orbit, much like the rings around Saturns, to

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Speaker 1: shade the tropics. Be sure to check out our new

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Speaker 1: video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work

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Speaker 1: staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities

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Speaker 1: of tomorrow the house Stuff Works. I Find app has

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Speaker 1: a ride down at it to day on iTunes