Sights Sun on the

Bill Gates knows a lot about climate change. In his most recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, he shares what he believes the world needs to do to reach net zero greenhouse-gas emissions. But there’s also something else the tech billionaire is focused on – the Sun.

Gates is supporting research into a controversial technology that’s called solar geoengineering, the intention of which is to block sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface. While there are different types of solar engineering, Gates is backing a Harvard project labelled the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) which plans to do small-scale aerosol solar geoengineering. In simple terms, high-altitude balloons will release calcium carbonate, a common mineral dust, into the sky to dim the Sun’s radiation.

Could spraying sunlight-reflecting particles into the stratosphere lower the planet’s temperature? For now, the answer isn’t clear.

While solar radiation is key to all life on Earth, controlling it (to some degree at least)), could be a way to lowering the planet’s temperature.