Independent researcher Gabriel Harry proposes a radical plan to use Jupiter as an artificial Sun, potentially extending Earth’s habitability for another 9.1 billion years through massive engineering projects.
As humanity contemplates the distant future, a pressing question arises: what will happen when the Sun can no longer support life on Earth? While scientists widely accept that our planet will eventually become uninhabitable, one researcher believes that humanity may not need to abandon it entirely.
A new concept published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society outlines an ambitious roadmap that envisions keeping Earth habitable for another 9.1 billion years through a series of large-scale engineering projects. This proposal comes from independent researcher Gabriel Harry, who argues that a sufficiently advanced civilization could reshape the Solar System rather than relocate to another world.
Current scientific estimates suggest that the Sun will gradually become brighter over the next billion years, eventually heating Earth to the point where its oceans will evaporate, rendering the planet incapable of supporting life. Much later in its lifecycle, the Sun is expected to expand into a red giant, engulfing the inner planets. Harry’s proposal aims to delay these dire consequences by altering Earth’s environment instead of resigning to its fate.
The first step in this ambitious plan involves shielding Earth from the Sun’s increasing heat. Harry suggests constructing an enormous sunshade approximately 700,000 kilometers wide, positioned just beyond the Moon’s orbit. This massive structure would be anchored near the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point, where gravitational forces between the two bodies are balanced.
Despite the shield’s vast dimensions, Harry’s proposal indicates that it could be built from aluminum just 0.1 millimeters thick, akin to the multilayer sunshield used by the James Webb Space Telescope but on a much larger scale.
However, constructing such a monumental structure would require resources on an equally extraordinary scale. Harry estimates that the project would necessitate aluminum sourced from about 0.01 percent of the Moon’s total mass. Additionally, it would require around two million kilometers of carbon cable, consuming an estimated 40 percent of the material available on the dwarf planet Ceres.
While blocking sunlight could protect Earth from overheating, it would also plunge the planet into darkness and freezing temperatures. To address this challenge, Harry proposes creating an artificial replacement for the Sun.
His innovative idea involves placing fusion reactors deep within Jupiter’s atmosphere, utilizing the planet’s abundant hydrogen and helium to generate energy. This power would then be transmitted to relay stations before being directed toward Earth through high-powered laser systems, effectively providing a new source of light and heat.
The proposal also includes a long-term objective: as the Sun continues to evolve, Earth’s orbit will eventually need to be adjusted to maintain habitability. Harry suggests that future civilizations could employ a powerful particle beam to gradually push Earth into a safer orbit, ensuring that the planet remains within a habitable zone for billions of years.
At present, this proposal remains entirely theoretical and far beyond our current technological capabilities. Nevertheless, it offers a fascinating glimpse into how some researchers envision humanity’s distant future, shifting the focus from whether Earth can be saved to what it would take to keep it alive on cosmic timescales.
For more insights into this groundbreaking proposal, refer to Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.