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Comment by nullhole | Hacker News Reader

That'd make for a good story setup: aliens park a shadeship (c) at L1 and wait. They block out most but not all of the sun. After some time (months? years?), conditions on Earth become unbearable, so earthlings have to mount an attack.

Kind of like the movie Sunshine, but with more believable physics.

Edit: as a bonus, it could take place in ~50-100 years, when global warming has gotten worse. The aliens could disguise their motives for a while, claiming to be there to help counteract global warming. Warnings from a lone scientist would be ignored. Then, as things start getting too cold, their true purpose would become clear to all.

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> The aliens could disguise their motives for a while, claiming to be there to help counteract global warming.

Seemingly benevolent aliens just here to help us fix our mess, but ultimately just want to sneakily take our stuff, is fun trope. https://www.gateworld.net/sg1/s4/2010/

"To Serve Man"

> Warnings from a lone scientist would be ignored.

A good movie plot, but I imagine in reality it would be obvious from the start that this would be a possibility and no scientists would be caught off-guard when the shade just didn't get removed. I can be almost certain as well that large factions of humans would "know" (believe, based on no facts) that is was happening all along and there would be incredible conflict across Earth as we figured out how to deal with this gentle attack, even before it was certain that is was an attack.

> even before it was certain that is was an attack.

If it was done without consent, then it is an attack, and it doesn't fu*cking matter whether it ends up causing physical harm (or even if the invaders genuinely thought they meant well).

Regardless of whether it ends up taking away somebody's sunlight forever, it's still robbing people of all their agency. That decision was never theirs to make.

That sounds like a great idea for a sci-fi novel, but before I steal and write it I thought I'd ask ChatGPT if it already exists, and it seems it does.

"The Forge of God" by Greg Bear The Makers deploy a vast, self-replicating robotic spacecraft called the "Doomsday Rock" near Earth's sun. The purpose of this massive construct is to absorb energy from the sun, causing it to dim and ultimately leading to the freezing of Earth, thus rendering it uninhabitable.

That’s not the plot of The Forge of God. Maybe it’s some other novel, but definitely not the Forge of God.

Spoiler alert: in The Forge of God the Earth gets literally blown to pieces.

Or maybe they showed up 200 years ago and thought: this is a very nice planet, except it's a bit too cold. What can we (compel the natives to) do to make it some 6 degrees warmer on average so that it is perfect for us? And the rest is history.

This is kind of the plot of Pacific Rim. The aliens originally invaded in prehistoric times, but then the Earth cooled and they had to retreat to their dimension. Humans then warmed it back up so they could restart the Kaiju invasion plans.

Who would like to do the math on how big the shade would need to be and how long it would take to reach a tipping point?

Love this idea for a story.

As an alternative - it could be the oil producing countries, not aliens - seeking shade earth to disrupt solar and wind energy, and return to oil dominance.

Well, if Exxon builds a space ship…

Nah, you just need a simple Bond Villain Plot.

Step One: build a machine that can cool the Earth, solving global warming Once and For All.

Step Two: demand the governments of the Earth pay you $1 trillion to turn it off at the appropriate time.

Also sharks, with friggin lasers attached to their heads.

I mean, a trillion dollars to solve global warming sounds like a pretty good deal to me?

That would be a good ending. The villain suddenly becomes the hero, but his evil purpose disappears and he gets depressed. :)

and then he proceeds to train ChatGPT5 with given money, even though it wasn't $7T he was hoping for.

It's not solving if they can turn it back on, it's a subscription. The elite want renters, 'you will own nothing and be happy'.

It should give people pause that with all the push for more renewables in California and Germany, they now have among the most expensive electricity on Earth.

You're conveniently leaving out that, at least for Germany, this was already the case before.

Shit, I think the US spent several times that per year, without even a good plan to pay it back. Does that mean the United States is irresponsible, or the amount is just so trivial they can't be bothered? Who cares, it's some other administration's problem.

Solving global warming, turning off the earth iceball machine when it's time? Easily worth $100 trillion. OP just has no supervillain potential.

"I demand the sum of... $1 million dollars!" -- Dr. Evil

Slow down there, Mr. Burns.

And countries which use reliable sources of energy like nuclear would be unaffected. How curious...

Perhaps building unreliable energy infrastructure dependent on favorable climatic conditions is not the greatest idea. Especially if there's going to be major climate change. How's Germany doing again with all its solar lol.

This sounds more like something out of a Mad Max type universe rather than sci-fi. A world living off fossil fuels because daylight has been reduced to 10% of the normal duration or something like that.

Or the "water company" from Tank Girl - blocking the sun to drive up revenues for the oil/coal companies.

> They block out most but not all of the sun.

Interesting to think about:

  * How much mass could be positioned at L1 before changing the gravitational proposition of L1?
  * How large an object could be positioned at L1 before it exceeded the practical bounds of L1?
  * Presumably the object would reflect rather than absorb solar radiation. How would it deal with other solar ejecta?

This reminds me of the game "SPORE" in the last stage, you flew around in a spaceship conquering planets. The game had a balance problem, but while the space combat was difficult - it was rather easy to fly around a planet really quick "Terraforming". Remove the entire atmosphere, then add the atmosphere back and plant a colony.

As a bonus, the other aliens in the game didn't view destructive terraforming as equivalent to WMDs - you could do this without even declaring war.

The most unbelievable part of this would be that earth cooperates enough to organize an attack. Seems more likely countries will use the opportunity to attack each other. In the end, the aliens should win. A few straggling survivors might see the ships land on Earth to survey the conditions.

Alternative, more physically feasible attack—-aliens take over the moon and begin pushing it closer, messing up tides/weather etc. Humans are forced to fight to take back the moon

Shifting the orbit of the moon is more believable? Than placing a mega structure at L1 (which despite being mega, would be orders of magnitude less mass than the moon)?

So. That sounds like an idea for a sequel to Iron Sky. But with Space Aryans™! and not space aliens.

>The aliens could disguise their motives for a while, claiming to be there to help counteract global warming. Warnings from a lone scientist would be ignored.

It's a cookbook!

Humans are so suspicious. The title is actually "How to Cook for Humans".

Another good story setup involving aliens: aliens pop by, tell us we have 25 years to "get our shit together, and the ambiguity here is deliberate, humans" on this planet, or we will be garbage collected.

Then they come back a year later: "I have bad news: the timeline has been accelerated, you now have 10 years".

What to do? To whom shall we turn for a plan?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Stil...

An embargo on light.

this is such a good idea for a movie

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