Illustration by Arina Kokoreva
A bit late considering the special issue was published one month ago, but here is another article in a recent series featuring unusual ideas about how to address climate change:
A Heat Shield for the Most Important Ice on Earth
Engineers might be able to protect Arctic ice by coating it with tiny glass bubbles. Should they?
An aerial view of the glass-bubble-covered ice, at left, and the bare ice. Photograph by Doug Johnson
On a clear morning in late March, in rural Lake Elmo, Minnesota, I followed two materials scientists, Tony Manzara and Doug Johnson, as they tromped down a wintry hill behind Manzara’s house. The temperature was in the high thirties; a foot of snow covered the ground and sparkled almost unbearably in the sunlight. Both men wore dark shades. “You don’t need a parka,” Johnson told me. “But you need sunglasses—snow blindness, you know?” At the bottom of the hill, after passing some turkey tracks, we reached a round, frozen pond, about a hundred feet across. Manzara, a gregarious man with bushy eyebrows, and Johnson, a wiry cross-country skier with a quiet voice, stepped confidently onto the ice. Continue reading
Organikos 