Watch Discovery Project Earth online: Episode 7 Space Sunshield

Astronomer and professor Roger Angel thinks he can diffract the power of the sun by placing trillions of lenses in space and creating a 100,000-square-mile sunshade. He intends to use electromagnetic propulsion to get the lenses into space. Professor Angel has produced a diffraction pattern that will be etched onto each lens. The pattern will cause the sun's rays to change direction. The task force tests this pattern by etching it onto a lens. A scale model is built in a giant hanger with a model of Earth, a single lens representing the sunshade and a laser representing the sun. When the laser is turned on, it should hit the lens as a single beam and then split into a number of smaller beams that are diffracted away from the model.

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