8 times brighter than the moon, why did the "artificial moon" project stop?

There is only one moon on the earth, so when night falls, we can only see one moon, which bears the heavy responsibility of "guiding the way" at night. However, due to the inclination of the earth's rotation at a certain angle, not every place can be visited by the moon at night. For example, there will be polar nights at high latitudes and polar regions in a year, and the moon will not be seen half the time.

In order to solve this problem, Russia put forward the idea of using space station to make "artificial moon" in the early 1990s. In the end, they also did it. 1On February 4th, 993, on the Mir space station, the sunlight was successfully reflected to the high latitudes of Russia by using a reflector. It is said that a huge light spot with a diameter of about 4 kilometers appears on the ground at night, which is the first time that human beings have realized the idea of "artificial moon".

There are two ways to realize the artificial moon. One is to make an artificial light source and then hang it high in space. The other is to use a reflecting device to reflect sunlight into space, and then illuminate the reflected light on the ground. The difficulty coefficient of the first method is much higher than that of the second method, because if people want the light source to cover as many places as possible, its size should be as large as possible, and it is a big problem to transport this behemoth into space.

In contrast, it is more feasible to make an "artificial moon" by reflecting sunlight, and the artificial moon realized in Russia in the 1990s also followed this principle. After the success of the project, people living in high latitudes thought they could get rid of the troubles caused by the extreme night, but they didn't expect the project to be suspended due to financial problems. Since then, no country has ever done the same thing, until 20 18, a scientific research conference in Chengdu, Sichuan, China made a sound.

The seminar is called "Tianfu System Science Research Association". In 20 18, they proposed to build an "artificial moon" with independent intellectual property rights, and planned to complete this goal in 2020 and launch two more artificial moons in 2023. According to the original plan, these three artificial moons will be "on duty" at different times at night to ensure that there is moonlight irradiation all night. In addition to increasing lighting, it is understood that the project is more to save electricity.

Scientists in the institute have calculated that if the brightness of each artificial moon is eight times that of the natural moon, then three artificial moons will appear in the dark and take turns to "work" with the natural moon, which can save billions of electricity bills a year. Billions of electricity bills are not a small sum. It is estimated that many friends will think that the artificial moon project is quite reliable, but 2020 is almost over, and we have not seen the artificial moon developed by Tianfu System Science Research Association.

Later, after verification, the author found that the original "artificial moon" was only an idea put forward by the research society in 20 18, but it was not considered because of its low feasibility, and their later proposal of "launching artificial moon in 2020" was only to attract public attention. However, this incident also made many people understand the difference between the natural moon and the artificial moon.

In our opinion, the moon shines not because it is a light source, but because it can reflect sunlight. From the perspective of space, the moon is a sphere. It revolves around the earth, so there is always a period of time between the sun and the earth in a day, so the moon seen on the earth is bright. In fact, this is because sunlight is scattered on the surface of the moon to varying degrees, and the scattered light shines on the earth to form the moonlight we see.

The principle of the artificial moon is similar to that of the natural moon, that is, to build a device large enough and with high reflectivity, and then send it to a designated position in space, and finally use the reflection of light to transport sunlight to places on the earth where moonlight cannot be found. So is the "artificial moon" mentioned above feasible?

First of all, from a technical point of view, it is very difficult to make a device with high reflectivity. We can imitate the spherical surface of the moon to shape the artificial moon, but how to choose the material covering its surface has become a technical difficulty. Because the device needs to undergo complex and intense space radiation in space, and then accurately reflect sunlight to a certain area.

Apart from related technologies, it seems unnecessary to build an artificial moon. Compared with high latitudes, middle and low latitudes can be illuminated by natural moonlight. It can be said that Russian artificial moon was built to provide illumination for high latitudes, but it seems unnecessary to use artificial moon for illumination in middle and low latitudes, because the illumination of artificial moon is limited, and modern China society is not short of illumination. Saving electricity is another way of saying it.

Although the artificial moon proposed by Tianfu System Science Research Association was not realized in the end, some netizens who paid attention to this matter dug up the history of World War II in the last century and found that the solar reflector was actually proposed as early as that period. After World War II, the victorious countries tried the defeated countries, and then found that the German Nazis had made many incredible "black technology" products, some of which were still in the experimental stage.

Some scientists are glad about this, saying that it's a good thing that the German Nazis didn't realize all their inventions, otherwise the result of this war would be unimaginable. Among the many black technologies in Nazi Germany, a device called "solar cannon" has attracted the attention of modern scientists. The so-called solar cannon is to create a giant concave mirror, then use it to gather sunlight, and finally concentrate the gathered light in one place.

The power of solar cannons is related to the size and location of concave mirror. As for its realization effect, according to records, German scientists have made a hypothesis that it can use the reflection of the sun's light to make a city burn after covering the earth. It can be seen that the principle of solar cannon is similar to that of artificial moon, but the difference is that German Nazis want to use it as a weapon, while modern scientists want to use it as a lighting tool.

It can also be seen from this comparison that technology is a double-edged sword. If used well, it will help us through thorns, if not used well, it will stab us in the back.