Ways to Save the Planet - 16 Trillion Space Lenses

" Welcome to the LBT, Large Binocular Telescope. So you want to offset global warming by putting a big sunshade up in space?"

" Basil Singer is a physicist."

" If Roger Angel's concept makes sense scientifically, then we need to help him devise some experiments so he can progress."

" So professor, you're talking about a lens or a sunshade a million square miles in size?"

" Kevin O'Leary runs a global business empire."

" To make a case for the sunscreen, I need to weigh the costs literally against the future of the planet."

" What I'm hearing is I'm hearing millions square miles and millions of tons, so I'm seeing this giant pair of sunglasses."

" Jennifer Languell is a leading eco-engineer."

" There're still immense engineering challenges that we face if we're going to try and get lenses into space."

" Their first goal is to find out if Dr. Angel's research has led to any practical results."

" Have you manufactured such a lens yet?"

" Some while back, I've manufactured the sort of critical part of the lens, which is the way you shape the surface to make it scatter the light."

" Angel has actually built a glass refractor"

" It should be pretty transparent."

" and filmed it at work. It's a thick piece of glass covered with a pattern of tiny holes held in front of a laser beam. It bends light much like a lens; could deflect the sun's rays in space, but there's a downside; a big one."

" How many would we need to get into space?"

" 16 trillion make up the millions square miles."

" 16 trillion?"

" That's right."

" The cost of sending 16 trillion glass lenses like this one into space would top 1.4 million trillion dollars, far more than the entire world economy."

" So far, we've only made it on a thick piece of glass. The step we need to take now is to see if we can make the same defracting surface, but now on an incredibly thin film."

" Angel's heavy glass has a 5-cm edge. What he needs for a sunshield lens must weigh less than 30 grams and measure 1 micron thick or 1/50 the thickness of a human hair. The team faces 2 major challenges: 1) Make the thinnest, lightest lenses the world has ever seen. 2) Create scale-down experiments to test the best way to get the lenses into space. Even the experts doubt it can be done."

" No, I don't think it's going to work."