Scientists have come up with a potential solution to deal with dust on the moon which makes conducting research tricky. Dust erodes space suits, clogs machinery, interferes with scientific instruments and makes moving around on the surface difficult. But they reckon moon dust could be melted using a giant lens developed by the European Space Agency to create solid roads and landing areas. Using a fine-grained material called EAC-1A, developed as a substitute for lunar soil, scientists used a 50mm diameter laser beam to heat the dust to about 1,600C and melt it. Then they traced out bendy triangle shapes, which could be interlocked to create solid surfaces across large areas of lunar soil to be used as road. However it would take about 100 days to create a 10 x 10m landing spot so it is not a quick fix. To make matters worse, the lens needed for the laser to work would be difficult to transport from Earth and could also get dust in it which may reduce its functionality. “You might think: ‘Streets on the moon, who needs that?’” said Prof Jens Günster, of the Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing in Berlin and co-author of a report on the possible solution. “But in fact it’s a kind of depressing demand [even] early on. It’s very loose material, there’s no atmosphere, gravity is weak, so the dust gets everywhere. It contaminates not only your equipment but other nations’. No one would be happy to be covered in dust from another rocket." Dust has blighted previous missions, such as the Surveyor 3 spacecraft (damaged by dust kicked up by the Apollo 12 landing), and overcoming this challenge is a priority for Nasa, which aims to establish a permanent lunar outpost. Transporting building materials to the moon would be too expensive, so there is a need for unconventional solutions. “You need to use what’s there and that’s simply loose dust,” said Günster. The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Is Taylor Swift more powerful than Google?

How to Earn Free VC in NBA 2K23

Chris Evert will receive the Serving Up Dreams Award on the first day of this year’s U.S. Open for her efforts to help the U.S. Tennis Association’s charitable arm

Aaron Wan-Bissaka could miss two months of action for Man Utd after suffering a hamstring injury.

Shohei Ohtani homered in the first inning and hit a tiebreaking infield single in the eighth to help the Los Angeles Angels hold on for a 6-5 victory over the Baltimore Orioles

SAVE 48%: As of June 20, the Beats Studio3 headphones are on sale at Walmart

FIFA 23's release date was allegedly leaked.

A Florida sheriff says detectives must investigate self-defense claims before any criminal charges can be brought against a white woman who fatally shot her Black neighbor last week in the violent culmination of what the sheriff described as a 2½-year feud

(Corrects to paragraph 9 to show Rep. Tlaib is from Michigan, not Minnesota) By Andrea Shalal and Andrew Hay WASHINGTON

If we learned one thing from Thursday's press conference by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, it's that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has not been seen in public since June 24, appears to be in a decidedly perilous limbo.

While coping with a number of physical issues, the former Olympian claimed that she 'definitely did not' have a hot girl summer