Lead
"8 times brighter than the moon!"
The artificial moon originally scheduled to be launched in 2020, why is there no follow-up?
Today, with the rapid development of science and technology, human exploration in the field of space has never stopped, especially the cycle of night and day produced by the earth under the radiation of the sun, which makes many places have a considerable period of darkness.
Especially in winter, the dark nights are longer, which seriously affects the production and life of residents in some remote areas.
Chengdu, for example, is the last city to come down on the mainland's summer solstice.
And if you want to make the night and day on the summer solstice equal, you have to wait until August 7, while in Chengdu, the winter night can be as long as 15 hours.
As a result, the idea of deploying artificial reflective light sources in space to illuminate high-latitude regions around the world was born.
But does this idea really fit?
What technical bottlenecks have you encountered?
1. The origin of the moon.
Since Noah's Ark met the flood, since the changes in Kyushu in the Yao Shun era, or since the Yu Yu ruled the water, there are many stories in ancient Chinese books, and people at that time always thought that it was a miracle of heaven whenever they met the incredible phenomena of nature.
This continued until the 5th century B.C., when Greek philosophers put forward the theory that everything in the universe can be composed of finite atoms, which form various substances in the infinite space of the universe and synthesize all things.
This is the famous "atomic theory".
So before the atomic theory was proposed, did the ancients have any scientific explanation for the creation of the moon?
In ancient times, people had a great understanding of the movement of the sun, moon and stars, and even many people had insight into the equatorial rotation of celestial bodies.
But in the eyes of the ancients, the sun, moon, and stars were all huge light bulbs, the light of the sun during the day and the light of the moon and stars at night.
But in the eyes of the ancients, why was the sun brighter than the moon, and the moon brighter than the stars?
In fact, the simple understanding of the ancients can be summed up as the truth that "rare things are precious".
The ancients believed that the sun was brighter than the moon, and this was because there was nothing but the sun, so it was rare, so the sun was particularly bright.
And the moon is brighter than the stars, because there are too many stars, so it is not as rare as the moon, so it is rare.
The ancients also used the explanation that "the chaos of the universe is because there are too many stars, and they constantly want to rob each other of the light of the sun and the moon" to explain the constant movement of the stars.
Cheng Yi wrote another ancient view of understanding in the "Notes on the Four Books", he said: "Although the sun and the moon are light, I think that the earth is so dim, and the yin is so that it does not exist.
In the harsh winter, the cold land is in the extreme north, and the sun is very cloudy, and the sun is in the south pole, the yang is not perfect, and the scorching is not born. ”
In the history of the development of science and technology in ancient China, the formation of the moon is recorded in part of the "Classic of Mountains and Seas".
In the "Hainai Nanjing", it is written: "Beyond the East China Sea, there are lions in wheat fields, and white raccoon dogs are born in the middle, and their taste is very beautiful.
It is like the moon, the day of midsummer, the light in the night, so the name is called the moon. ”
It is recorded in the "Oriental Shuo Xuan Strange Record": "The general struck the east outside the territory, to the west pole of the sea, there were 12 huge stones, one zhang thick, covered with bronze mirrors.
Its sound was like thunder, the wind and water surged, and when it rained, the general led the army and more than 100 people, all of whom were submerged in the sea.
There are four in the depth of the water, and there are two giant fish, two zhang long, as big as the Qin Dharma drum, and the general does not dare to go back in the middle of the night. ”
"The Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty" also said: "This barbarian city is not like this, but there is a city, with soil as it, and waves near the sea."
There are three stone cracks in the city, and there seems to be a city in the middle, there are sun, moon and stars, and there are many people, or say: "Here the sky is also" - "Zanliu Yiba".
"This city is real, there is the sun and the moon, it is the old people who dare not go out of the city, the night line is to cover the door, there is light all day long, the name is Zhong Zhiguo, the hometown of Yanfu country also.
2. Russian experiments with an "artificial moon".
It is not until modern times that people have come to reasonable conclusions from a series of scientific experiments in the process of various scrutiny.
According to modern astronomers, the Moon was born about 4.52 billion years ago, and the Moon was formed by a collision between the Earth and a Mars-sized celestial body.
And trillions of debris continued to attract each other, and finally condensed to form the current moon.
The collision of "Mars hitting the earth" caused the seven wonders of the solar system, and also made the products of the moon different from the natural substances of other celestial bodies, resulting in a unique scene of the moon.
When the earth is obscured by the moon, a bright light appears in the moon's night sky, called "light of the earth".
This light has a very high brightness on the moon, and its light can even illuminate the darkness of the moon at night, and even allow people to distinguish different colors in the dark.
This is not an unusual thing in the history of the moon, because some volcanoes on the moon also erupt some molten and cool into glassy material from time to time.
On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft successfully entered the lunar orbit and successfully landed on the surface of the moon on July 21, which was also the first time that mankind achieved the great feat of landing on the moon.
In the process of landing on the moon, human beings also measured the "light of the earth" on the moon, and finally obtained the data of 35 watts per square kilometer, that is, the average reflected light per square kilometer of the moon is also 35 watts.
This led Russian scientists to the idea of deploying artificial reflective light sources in space.
In 1993, a domestic article in Russia gave a long explanation of this.
It believes that the deployment of artificial reflective light sources is a good way to save money on electricity bills for those high latitudes where daylight hours are very short.
For example, in the Arctic winter, there are 12 hours a day, which means that 12 hours of the day need to be manually lit to get the job done.
After the daylight saving time adjustment, this time will be even longer.
But in 1976, a father and daughter almost crashed into a driving vehicle on a motorcycle running a red light, resulting in the tragic death of the father and the serious injury of the daughter, which is the "Chen Junyi incident" that everyone is very familiar with.
This attracted the attention of the people of the whole country to traffic lights at that time, so the State Council at that time decided to change the traffic lights in all places to electronic traffic lights with timer switches.
However, with the continuous progress of electronic technology, these signal lights are gradually equipped with electronic monitors, which leads to the fact that the signal lights not only need to be lit for hundreds of hours, but also need to carry out complex electronic displays.
In this case, the cost of traffic lights will gradually increase, and this cost will have to be passed on to local residents.
Especially in the north, the long daylight hours in the summer make the traffic lights come on a lot, which makes people feel at a loss.
Therefore, when Russian scientists proposed in 1993 that artificial reflective light sources could be deployed in space, many countries began to follow suit.
The advantage of an artificial reflective light source is that it not only allows for ample daylight hours to recharge, but also avoids energy savings.
The economy of an artificial reflective light source is also its most significant advantage.
In China, there is also a person in charge of an astronomical institution in Chengdu who conceives so.
The person in charge pointed out: "Even if the artificial moon is placed on the night of Chengdu, it can also illuminate the night of Chengdu, and the people of Chengdu will no longer feel the darkness of the night, which can also save electricity bills!"
3. Artificial Moon Project - "Save Electricity Bills" or "Waste Electricity Bills"?
The head of the Chengdu Tianfu System Science Research Association also envisioned: "We can deploy an artificial moon on the roof of an office building, which can reduce a lot of electricity bills."
However, there may be technical implications for the deployment of an artificial moon in space.
The first question is, "How do you make an artificial moon?"
In fact, the manufacture of artificial moons is very difficult, and the biggest difficulty is the problem of materials.
Not only does it need to be quite hard, but it also needs to have a high degree of light reflection and, in order to absorb enough sunlight, it must also be able to illuminate the ground in the dark.
This kind of material, which needs to have all three conditions at the same time, may make people look for it for a long time.
At present, it seems that silicon carbide may be able to meet these three conditions at the same time, but it is very difficult for people to study this area at present.
An artificial moon can not only illuminate the earth, but also protect the right amount of crops that survive the winter, and it will be a project with huge economic benefits.
In addition to this, the artificial moon can also help the shuttle in other space explorations at night.
However, there are some downsides.
The artificial moon is related to the use of space, which may lead to the use and competition of human beings in the field of space, and the more artificial moons there are, the higher and higher the utilization of space resources, which may gradually evolve into a military project of human beings.
In addition to the need for new materials, artificial moons are extremely difficult to deploy.
How to return an artificial moon to Earth?
This will require further improvements in the capabilities of the rocket, which is currently beyond the capabilities of humans.
And how to raise an artificial moon into orbit?
This technology is also very difficult, although it has been done for the transfer of small orbiters in orbit, but the transfer of very large artificial moon orbits cannot be done at present.
epilogue
The artificial moon is an extremely forward-looking project, which is not only technically difficult, but also may trigger a scramble for space resources.
The implementation of the artificial moon project awaits a breakthrough in subsequent technologies.
And breakthroughs in this area require us to have some major technological discoveries in new materials.
At the same time, the idea of an artificial moon can also remind people of the solar cannon program proposed by Germany in the early 20th century, and the "space-based kinetic energy weapon" in the late 25th century.
Both of these weapons were extreme German weapons.
A solar cannon is a weapon that uses a solar heat source to heat iron ingots to melt and then shoot them at Earth.
This weapon appeared already in the time of the First World War, but due to the limitations of the level of science and technology of the First World War, this weapon did not appear.
By the time of the Second World War, there were hardly any countries to study.
After the end of World War II, a German physicist planned to launch a solar cannon using an artificial satellite, but nothing came of it.
The impact of this plan can almost be ignored, but the "space-based kinetic energy weapon" is different.
In the 90s of the last century, the United States also conducted research on space-based kinetic weapons, but due to the development of the sanctions program by the United States at that time, it had to abandon the program.
This weapon enables the real-time launch of a nuclear warhead by placing a kinetic weapon into orbit, thereby attacking targets on Earth in orbit.
At that time, there were concerns about the "space leakage" of space-based kinetic weapons.
In the past, tiny debris pairs in space