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In October, Israel-US startup Stardust Solutions announced it had raised $60 million, the largest-ever fundraising round for tech designed to keep the Earth cool by literally dimming the Sun.
The concept, dubbed solar geoengineering, is deceptively simple: by spraying tiny aerosol particles into our planet’s atmosphere, essentially mimicking the effects of a volcano eruption, we could combat the effects of global warming by subtly shading the surface below.
The idea is also incredibly controversial, with scientists calling it reckless and pointing out that the long-term consequences remain unknown. Then there are glaring questions over governance: who gets to say where the particles are released and by whom? And who’s responsible if something were to go wrong?
Now, as The Atlantic reports, Stardust is gearing up to release two documents seemingly intended to keep the hype train trundling along: its guiding principles and a 14-page framework — neither of which divulge any more information regarding the unique particle it’s been been working on.
As Stardust Solutions CEO and former top Israeli government physicist Yanai Yedvab told Heatmap News last year, the company was developing a “scalable or realistic particle that we know from the start how to produce at scale in the millions of tons” and at a relatively low cost, while also being “as safe as, say, flour.”
The environmental effects of a huge amount of sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere are already well understood, since that’s what occurs when a volcano erupts, triggering acid rain and depleting the Earth’s protective ozone layer.
Stardust aims to find an alternative particle that avoids these harmful consequences. But what this particle actually is remains unclear, as the company doesn’t touch upon the topic in its newly-released documents. Yedvab told The Atlantic that the firm aims to unveil its offering “in the coming months.”
Those gaping questions have environmental researchers uneasy, particularly considering Stardust is a private entity that’s looking to sell its proprietary tech to governments or international bodies.
“None of us knows what they are hoping to put into the stratosphere — for a profit,” Center for Future Generations senior fellow and geoengineering expert Cynthia Scharf told The Atlantic.
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