Fancy a
meteor shower racing across the night sky to mark your birthday? One
Japanese
start-up is hoping to deliver shooting stars on demand and choreograph the
cosmos.
And, say
scientists, it's not just about painting huge pictures on the night-sky that
would be visible to millions of people; artificial meteors could help us to
understand a lot more about Earth's atmosphere.
Lena
Okajima, who holds a doctorate in astronomy, says her company -ALE -is
intending to launch a micro satellite that can eject shooting stars at exactly
the right time and place to put on a celestial show.
“I'm
thinking of streams of meteors that are rare in nature,“ Okajima said.
“It is
artificial but I want to make really beautiful ones that can impress viewers,“
she said.
In
collaboration with scientists and engineers at Japanese universities, the ALE
team is developing a satellite that will orbit the Earth and eject dozens of
balls, a few centimetres in diameter, at a time.
These
balls -whose chemical formula is a closely-guarded secret -will race through
the atmosphere at around 7-8 kilometres a second, glowing brightly from the
friction created by smashing into the air.
Although
it sounds fast, that is considerably slower than naturally-occurring meteors,
which can hurtle through the atmosphere at up to 80 kilometres a second.
Tinkering
with the ingredients should mean that it is possible to change the colour of
each bright streak, says Okajima, offering the possibility of a multi-coloured
flotilla of shooting stars.
Oh this would be awesome on a special occasion. Really awesome.
ReplyDeleteHave a fabulous day. ☺