For generations, astronomers spent lonely evenings at distant mountaintop observatories watching the stars and planets as they whirled through the air. Today, however, astronomy is being conducted on a larger scale: Huge arrays of receivers continuously feed signals into power-hungry supercomputers, and billion-dollar spacecraft must takes years to build and tons of rocket fuel to launch. The next generation ground-based observatories will be huge, such as Extra large telescopewill eclipse the size of the Colosseum in Rome when it is completed in 2024.
Now, some researchers are thinking about the carbon footprint of modern astronomy and realizing that they, like others, may have to consider alternative business ways to control emissions. waste heats up. That could include switching to solar power, which makes sense for observatories in Australia or Chile, where there are clear skies and plenty of sunshine. Or it could mean finding other ways to save energy.
Adriaan Schutte, program director of Square Kilometer Array, a linked system of two radio telescopes under construction in South Africa and Australia, will together include several thousand individual receivers. “If you want to explore something, you wouldn’t do it with just a telescope in your backyard,” says Schutte. “We are using energy on an industrial scale, and you need to plan ahead for CO increases2 emissions. ”
Today in the magazine Natural Astronomy, a team of European astronomers has produced estimates of the global carbon emissions of all branches of modern astronomy, including ground- and space-based observatories. They calculate that the energy used to build and maintain existing infrastructure equates to 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, and the overall lifetime footprint is 20.3 million tons. That larger number is equivalent to the annual emissions of five coal-fired power plants, according to Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalence Calculator.
Example: NASA’s New $9.8 Billion James Webb . Space Telescopecoming out in December and will return the first image of it to Earth this summer, there will be a carbon footprint of 300,000 tons of CO2, according to new research. That’s the equivalent of burning 1,655 train cars with coal, using the same EPA computer. The Very Large Telescope, based in Paranal, Chile, has an estimated carbon footprint of 540,000 tons of CO2 during its 21 years of existence, the study reported.
Some might ask why astronomers are so worried about the scale of their carbon emissions when other industries are much worse off. Annie Hughes, co-author of the paper and an astronomy officer at France’s Institut de Recherche de Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), says it’s important for scientists to set examples. “Humanity is facing a climate emergency,” Hughes said at a teleconference on March 17. “Scientific evidence is clear that human activities are responsible for regulating climate adjustment of the Earth. And the scientific evidence is equally clear that we must profoundly change our practices over the next decade. So, faced with such urgency, I and the authors of this paper believe that everyone needs to act now to reduce their personal and professional carbon emissions. This includes astronomers, like everyone else. “
