To avoid a dilemma for choosing one of two scientists from Washington State University decided to combine both.
Using a giant solar sail, width 8400 km, to collect energy from the solar wind, the team hopes will be able to produce 1 billion billion gigawatts of energy, energy that is significantly greater than that needed for humanity - if they can bring the energy this Earth.
"It's amazing how much energy it can produce," says Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a scientist at Washington State University and an author of the study. "Overall, we hope that will work well enough, but there are some practical issues to be resolved."
The solar wind does not act the same way as the normal wind in the Earth, the satellite can generate electricity such as wind turbines. Rather than physically rotating blades, which are connected to a turbine, the satellite will have a charged copper conductor cable, which binds electrons, which are removed from the sun with several hundred kilometers per second.
Estimates of the group, a copper cable and 300 meters, connected to a receiver, a width of 2 m and a sail 10 meters, we can produce enough energy for 1,000 households.
A satellite is a 1,000 meter cable and a sail 8400 km, located in the same orbit, we can produce one billion billion gigawatts of energy. This translates to approximately 100 billion times the energy used at the moment the Earth.
And then?
Of course, all this energy should be able to reach the Earth. A portion of energy to produce the satellite will be channeled back to the copper wire and creates magnetic field for the capture of electrons. The remaining energy will be channeled into an infrared laser beam, which can fully cover the energy needs on Earth, regardless of weather conditions.
The main problem of this approach is that, because of the million miles between the satellite and the Earth, even the most powerful laser beam will spread and will lose much of its original energy. Although most of the technology for the creation of satellite already exists, should devise a more focused beam, as adds Schulze-Makuch.
Greg Howes, a scientist at the University of Iowa, agrees that "the action is definitely" in the solar wind and how to generate a practical amount of energy from the solar wind have a very large moon, "but the practical obstacles are significant.