Setback for Bill Gates: Sweden cancels his controversial project to dim the Sun
The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) announced that the flight to test the possibility of dimming the sun’s rays’ incidence on the Earth, planned for June, would not go ahead. “The scientific community is divided regarding geoengineering, including any related technology tests such as the planned technical balloon test flight from Esrange this summer,” the SSC said in a statement, Asia Pacific Daily reported April 2. Bill Gates has funded the controversial project proposed this time by Harvard University as the Controlled Stratospheric Perturbation Experiment, or SCoPEx, which attempts to disperse a calcium carbonate (chalk) cloud into the atmosphere from a high-altitude balloon to study its effects on sunlight reaching Earth. The first attempt scheduled for June would send the first balloon with 600 kg of scientific equipment onboard over the Swedish city of Kiruna located in the Arctic. It would release 2 kg of chalk dust into the stratosphere at 20 km altitude at the...