把垃圾扔到太阳上 有可能但不太可行
On BBC Radio 4, Drs Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry have been answering intriguing scientific questions from listeners and the BBC Future audience.
在BBC广播4频道，广播听众和BBC《未来》栏目的观众就一些有趣的科学问题进行提问，亚当·卢瑟福博士和汉娜·弗莱博士给予相应的回答。
One vexing query the pair have been exploring rocketed in from Elisabeth Hill, via BBC Future's Facebook page, who asked: "Could we shoot garbage into the Sun?"
Fair question. After all, if we can detect gravitational waves, or send a probe to land on a comet, surely we can send some rubbish to our nearest star?
Though as Rutherford and Fry discovered in the radio episode, it's not so simple:
The primary problem is weight. The average person in the UK produces 1.85kg of waste per day; in the US, it's 2.3kg.
As Andrew Pontzen of University College London points out, it costs $200m to get the Ariane V rocket into an orbit ready to travel further into space. With a payload of approximately 7,000kg, that works out at around $41,000 per kilogram. A hefty price to pay for a few plastic wrappers and a bottle or two.
So, theoretically possible? Yes. But realistically desirable? Probably not.