A reader in an online forum asked the following question: Will shooting at the sun kill its UV rays and prevent sunburns? Well, believe it or not, that has been tried before… by a Greek demigod.
While embarking on his 10th labour to capture the cattle of Geryon, the ever bold and often hubristic Heracles, having been exasperated by the unrelenting Libyan heat, expressed his immense displeasure by firing an arrow at Helios’s chariot: the one he employed to drive the Sun across the sky.
Though such an aggressive action would ordinarily have evoked a thunderous rage in a figure of Helios’ exalted stature, the Sun-transporting Titan instead expressed amusement at the vain attempt to fell the Sun with an arrow. He was also somewhat impressed that Heracles had thought of such an unorthodox solution to the excessive heat problem.
(Yes, there are various versions of this myth: in one, he actually hit Helios; in another, he started to aim the arrow and then thought better of it; and in another, he actually hit the moon by mistake, which caused Artemis to both loathe and fall in love with him simultaneously.)
Presumably walking at night had never occurred to the beleaguered Heracles.
In fact, Helios was so gratified by Heracles’ bold, but futile assassination attempt that he actually equipped him with a golden cup, which Heracles used to sail across the sea in order to reach Erytheia, the island where Geryon and his cattle resided.
Since Heracles’ shooting attempt yielded positive results (for him, not for Geryon), it would be inappropriate of me to discourage any government from trying to solve the climate crisis and sunburn problem with a direct frontal assault on the Sun.
However, since the longest range ICBM, the R-36M (SS-18 Satan), has an estimated maximum range of 16,000 km, and, even at its minimum distance (at perihelion in early January), the Sun’s distance from Earth is about 147 million km, a few logistical details must be resolved before this unorthodox solution is attempted.
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