Sometimes the flight of engineering thought never ceases to amaze. We have already seen holograms of long-dead singers performing their hits, virtual reality helmets showing incredibly realistic worlds. Automakers are even building special cameras to simulate weather conditions from the scorching desert sun to snowy northern latitudes. But Japanese experts have swung at something more ambitious: to create an artificial meteor shower, which will be absolutely safe for observers.
Ale is responsible for such an ambitious idea. In 2019, a group of researchers plans to launch their own satellite into Earth's orbit. It will be "charged" with special balls that will be ejected from the spacecraft. These balls are filled with a special substance that, when entering the atmosphere and interacting with it, begins to glow. Moreover, different concentrations of substances in the balls will allow you to achieve different colors when glowing. According to representatives of the Ale company, from the surface of our planet, the entry of balloons into the atmosphere will look like a meteor shower.
This "light" show will be staged in the skies over Hiroshima, but will also be visible to those within a 100-kilometer radius of the city. The process itself will be short-lived: only 10 seconds. During an artificial meteor shower, the balloons almost completely burn up in the atmosphere and do not pose a danger to people. It is worth noting that the goal of the project is not at all to entertain the audience, but to conduct an experiment, if successful, it is planned to create a whole network of such satellites, which could thus notify people in the event of emergencies or man-made disasters.
Vladimir Kuznetsov