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Climate change of human origin is an immediate concern, which means that an apocalypse of global warming appears more and more likely. However, the long-term prognosis of the planet is even darker, because the sun will one day run out of fuel and spread, probably destroying Earth in five billion years. Moving the Earth to a wider orbit to escape this burning forgetfulness may seem like a much-needed solution, but an engineer has now presented several theories to escape this fate.
Scientists know that the sun will one day pass from its current state to a white dwarf, a star much larger than its present size.
And this expansion will eventually reach Earth's orbit, making it totally uninhabitable within five billion years.
However, in an extreme case of future planning, Dr. Matteo Ceriotti, a space engineer at the University of Glasgow, has proposed radical solutions to help the Earth change its orbit.
The proposals must be extreme because, for example, the mass of the Earth is so large that we do not have enough power to move it with conventional rocket propulsion.
Radical ideas are loosely based on current technologies, though it's safe to assume that any surviving human will have a science considerably advanced at that time.
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Dr. Ceriotti said: "I have come up with a thought experiment on what we could do with our current technology in order to move the Earth's father's orbit away, for example towards the Orbit of Mars. "
This is about 1.5 times the radius of Earth's current orbit to make it habitable in the future.
One of these ideas is to target the asteroids that pass near the Earth, then use the gravitational pull of the space rocks to move Earth's orbit away from its current location.
Dr. Ceriotti told Express.co.uk: "With this idea, we would need a very large number of spaceships to fly to the asteroids and then to divert them into an orbit passing close to the Earth.
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"Another solution would be to shoot the asteroid with a beam of ions and the beam of ions would move the asteroid away from its orbit.
"Other methods simply involve landing on the asteroid, then rotating a rocket to its surface in order to eject material – that 's what I'm doing. we call mass training.
"Or we could deploy a constellation of mirrors around the asteroid and the mirrors would reflect sunlight on its surface.
"The surface of the asteroid would sublime or turn into gas and this gas would provide the force needed to drive the asteroid away.
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"But the simplest is simply to hit the asteroid with a spaceship, what is called a kinetic impactor."
But asteroids are not the only option available, although they are involved in the construction of a solar sail, a large reflective sheet that captures the momentum of sunlight and uses that momentum to advance the planet.
However, says Dr. Ceriotti, its required size would be enormous – several times the diameter of the earth.
He said: "At the moment, we can not even imagine how we could build a solar sail of this size on the ground, and then send it to the space where it would be deployed.
"But in the future, we could develop technologies to build structures directly in space.
"And some of that research is being done right here at the University of Glasgow.
"For example, we could be able to move an asteroid close to the Earth and then extract its material.
"And then using the automated 3D printing in the space, you can use the material obtained to create a solar sail in the space."
And the last project proposed is the construction of huge solar power plants capable of converting sunlight into electrical energy. This energy could then be converted into lasers, which would then be projected into space to move the Earth.
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