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Will starlink spoil astronomy? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, it's Jorge and Daniel here. And this holiday season,
0:03
Speaker 1: if you're looking for a gift for yourself, for a friend,
0:06
Speaker 1: or for your your family, why not get him the
0:09
Speaker 1: Gift of Answers about the Universe. To check out our
0:11
Speaker 1: new book Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe, you can
0:14
Speaker 1: find details at Universe f a Q dot com. Thanks
0:18
Speaker 1: for supporting the podcast. Happy holidays everyone. Hey Daniel, what's
0:31
Speaker 1: your favorite thing about going camping? Oh? There's so much
0:35
Speaker 1: to love, you know, I really enjoy being out in nature.
0:38
Speaker 1: I like taking a break from our urban routines. But
0:41
Speaker 1: I guess mostly I love being out there under the
0:45
Speaker 1: dark skies. I thought you would say s'mores, because you know,
0:49
Speaker 1: you're smashing two kinds of candy together in your particle
0:53
Speaker 1: physicist the confection collider. Yeah, that's also delicious. No, you're right,
0:57
Speaker 1: I think you know, being out in the night sky
0:59
Speaker 1: is amazing, right, sort of reminds you of all the
1:01
Speaker 1: amazing stuff that's out there. Yeah, and it feels like
1:03
Speaker 1: you kind of have to get further and further away
1:06
Speaker 1: from civilization to find those really good dark skies where
1:10
Speaker 1: you can see thousands and thousands of stars. It's pretty gorgeous.
1:14
Speaker 1: How about you, what's your favorite thing about camping other
1:16
Speaker 1: than some'mores? I like sleeping in my own bed. What
1:20
Speaker 1: you bring your own bed camping now, But when I
1:24
Speaker 1: go camping, it really makes me appreciate sleeping in my
1:26
Speaker 1: own bed, so, you know, overall and improves my quality
1:30
Speaker 1: of life. I guess that puts us to sleep. I
1:47
Speaker 1: am hor handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,
1:50
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor of
1:53
Speaker 1: physics that you see Irvine, and I can no longer
1:56
Speaker 1: sleep comfortably on the ground. You cannot, unlike your other
2:01
Speaker 1: physicist ancestors. Unlike twenty year old Daniel, who's happy to
2:05
Speaker 1: sleep on a concrete floor or the ground anywhere under
2:08
Speaker 1: the stars, I could get a good night's sleep anywhere.
2:10
Speaker 1: These days, I just need my own bed. What do
2:13
Speaker 1: you do when you go camping? Then? I just don't
2:15
Speaker 1: sleep very well, don't sleep at all camping. That's why
2:19
Speaker 1: you stay up all night watching the stars. So it
2:21
Speaker 1: all works out. There's no point going in the tent.
2:23
Speaker 1: We're not getting any sleep anyway, so let's just stay
2:26
Speaker 1: up and eat more. S'mores. It's more of them. But
2:30
Speaker 1: then do you walk to your car and sleep in
2:32
Speaker 1: your car? I just wait and sleep it all back
2:34
Speaker 1: when I get home. But welcome to our podcast. Daniel
2:36
Speaker 1: and Jorge explained the university production of My Heart Radio,
2:39
Speaker 1: in which we feed you the delicious combination of knowledge
2:42
Speaker 1: and confusion smushed together into an intellectual s'more. We dive
2:47
Speaker 1: into the squishy heart of everything that humanity doesn't know
2:51
Speaker 1: about this incredible universe. We find ourselves in how big
2:54
Speaker 1: it is, where it ends, when it might end, how
2:58
Speaker 1: it started, what it's all made out of, and what
3:00
Speaker 1: it all means. We surround that with delicious layers of
3:03
Speaker 1: chocolate and little bits of understanding that we have gleaned
3:07
Speaker 1: in our centuries or millennia of probing this universe, and
3:10
Speaker 1: explain all of it to you and especially hungry today, Daniel,
3:14
Speaker 1: or are you just looking forward to Halloween? I'm thinking
3:16
Speaker 1: about my next camping trip and how that's moore is
3:19
Speaker 1: really going to get me through the night? And which
3:20
Speaker 1: one is the confusion? Is it marshmallow or chocolate? And
3:23
Speaker 1: which one is knowledge? I think confusion is definitely marshmallow,
3:27
Speaker 1: because you know it gets pretty sticky. You can dive
3:29
Speaker 1: into the heart of it and it just sort of
3:30
Speaker 1: covers everything, and once you start asking questions, you feel like, wow,
3:34
Speaker 1: we're maybe confused about everything, the same way that marshmallow
3:37
Speaker 1: never really gets off anything. Once it's sticks to you, right,
3:40
Speaker 1: and once it catches fire, it's all over. Might as
3:42
Speaker 1: well throw the whole thing in the trash. I wish
3:45
Speaker 1: the confusion was as delicious toasted as marshmallows are. And
3:49
Speaker 1: what's the cracker is the cracker of funding? I guess
3:52
Speaker 1: to hold it all together and squeeze things out. That's right,
3:55
Speaker 1: Thank you funding agencies for being the Graham cracker in
3:57
Speaker 1: this terribly, terribly tortured analogy. Let's put that analogy to rest.
4:02
Speaker 1: Let's eat it up. But yeah, it is a big
4:04
Speaker 1: and beautiful universe that's out there. There's a lot for
4:07
Speaker 1: us to see and explore and learn from only if
4:09
Speaker 1: we can see it. And that might be changing soon.
4:12
Speaker 1: That's right. So much about the nature of the universe
4:15
Speaker 1: comes just from information that has arrived here on Earth
4:18
Speaker 1: from the cosmos. Those brave little photons that have been
4:21
Speaker 1: flying through the universe for millions or sometimes billions of years,
4:26
Speaker 1: have revealed to us the nature of things out there,
4:28
Speaker 1: the grand scope of it all, the incredible majesty of
4:32
Speaker 1: galaxies and galactic clusters and even the Big Bang. We
4:36
Speaker 1: could learn none of that if we couldn't see out
4:38
Speaker 1: there in the night sky. As we build better and
4:40
Speaker 1: better telescopes and new kinds of ways to observe the
4:43
Speaker 1: night sky, we learn more and more about this information
4:46
Speaker 1: that's washing over us, but only if we can still
4:49
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, it's pretty amazing to think that we've
4:51
Speaker 1: learned so much just floating in this little rock in
4:53
Speaker 1: one corner of the galaxy, which is in one corner
4:56
Speaker 1: of the universe. You know, it's sort of like, you know,
4:59
Speaker 1: learning about whole world by floating on a little raft
5:02
Speaker 1: in the middle of the ocean, right, Like, how much
5:04
Speaker 1: would you be able to piece together about how the
5:06
Speaker 1: whole world works? Yeah, Or if you like lived in
5:09
Speaker 1: a lighthouse and never left, but you had a bunch
5:11
Speaker 1: of powerful telescopes and all you could do was buying
5:15
Speaker 1: people and look out your windows. It's incredible, You're right,
5:18
Speaker 1: how much we have learned about the nature of things
5:20
Speaker 1: without going anywhere. Really. I mean, we sent a few
5:23
Speaker 1: robots just around our neighborhood. But we have a pretty
5:26
Speaker 1: good sense for the shape of the galaxy and even
5:29
Speaker 1: much much larger objects without ever having been there ourselves,
5:33
Speaker 1: of course, And all of that relies on being able
5:36
Speaker 1: to see the night sky, the fact that the universe
5:38
Speaker 1: is mostly transparent, and that information can travel all the
5:42
Speaker 1: way through the cosmos and get to us. Yeah, you
5:44
Speaker 1: make it sound like science is some kind of stalker,
5:46
Speaker 1: Like we're stalking the universe. Are we going to get
5:49
Speaker 1: arrested by the cosmic police. I don't know how much
5:53
Speaker 1: intellectual privacy rights the universe has, you know. I think
5:56
Speaker 1: it's signed the terms of use, and so it basically
5:58
Speaker 1: gave away all its rights, right, I mean it's it's
6:00
Speaker 1: sitting out there naked basically, right. I mean, it's not
6:03
Speaker 1: our fault that we can't look away, that's right. We're
6:06
Speaker 1: deep inside of it. I mean it's swallowed us, and
6:08
Speaker 1: so what can you expect, you know? Yeah, it's like
6:12
Speaker 1: that movie Inner Space, you know, where they shrink down
6:14
Speaker 1: and they're flying around inside that body. In this case,
6:17
Speaker 1: I am Dennis plays. I guess somebody's got to have
6:20
Speaker 1: a chin. But yeah, it is a pretty big and
6:22
Speaker 1: wonderful universe, and it all depends on our view of it.
6:26
Speaker 1: With without our view of it, we we will be
6:28
Speaker 1: able to tell very little about the universe. Like if
6:30
Speaker 1: our planet was covered in dense clouds, or if we
6:33
Speaker 1: were in a far off corner of the galaxy with
6:35
Speaker 1: nothing around us, we would be pretty ignorant about what's
6:38
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, we are pretty lucky that the universe
6:40
Speaker 1: is mostly transparent, that we're not sitting inside of a
6:43
Speaker 1: huge dust cloud, and that the solar wind, for example,
6:46
Speaker 1: is mostly invisible, that that information mostly gets to us.
6:49
Speaker 1: But you know what if it couldn't. And you know,
6:51
Speaker 1: sometimes when you're standing outside and looking up at the stars,
6:54
Speaker 1: you're excited because you see stars, but sometimes you see
6:57
Speaker 1: something else, like maybe you see a plane go by,
6:59
Speaker 1: or even more exciting, you see the space station go by,
7:02
Speaker 1: or some really high up satellite flowed by. That also
7:05
Speaker 1: feels exciting sometimes, Oh yeah, yeah, because you're seeing like
7:08
Speaker 1: a bit of human technology. You're like, wow, look we
7:11
Speaker 1: are out there in space. That's cool. But also there's
7:14
Speaker 1: another side of that. Yeah, leave it to humans to
7:17
Speaker 1: ruin everything basically as usual, even the night sky. We're
7:20
Speaker 1: going to ruin that soon. That's right, because you know,
7:23
Speaker 1: you look up at the nice sky, you see one
7:24
Speaker 1: satellite go by, No big deal, right, Well, what if
7:28
Speaker 1: there are two satellites, or ten satellites, or tens of
7:31
Speaker 1: thousands of satellites, it might interfere with your ability to
7:36
Speaker 1: see what's out there past our neighborhood, deep deep in
7:39
Speaker 1: the universe to answer some of our basic questions. Yeah,
7:42
Speaker 1: bad for science, but good for some fun nighttime viewing.
7:46
Speaker 1: Then you make it sound pretty exciting to see a
7:48
Speaker 1: whole bunch of shooting stars going on at the same time.
7:50
Speaker 1: Sometimes when I'm out with my kids, they're more excited
7:53
Speaker 1: to see satellites than to see stars, because you know,
7:55
Speaker 1: the stars just sort of sit there, and the satellites
7:57
Speaker 1: so look that one's moving or blinking, are doing something,
8:01
Speaker 1: So I get it why they're more exciting. But you know,
8:03
Speaker 1: the real deep mysteries in the universe, of course, are
8:06
Speaker 1: contained in the light from stars and other crazy things.
8:08
Speaker 1: And secretly you're hoping maybe that is the UFO that
8:11
Speaker 1: we've been waiting for. That's right, I've been signaling them
8:16
Speaker 1: desperately with my campfire. Why can't anybody see that? What
8:20
Speaker 1: are you doing sending smoke? Signals to the aliens. But yeah,
8:24
Speaker 1: it does seem to be an increasing problem, this idea
8:27
Speaker 1: that there are more and more space man made space
8:30
Speaker 1: objects out in the night sky. And so today on
8:32
Speaker 1: the program, we'll be asking the question, how will starlink
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Speaker 1: affect astronomy? Wow, it seems like astronomy can be spoiled.
8:46
Speaker 1: It can be spoiled. It's sort of delicate, and this
8:48
Speaker 1: is something we went through years ago when we had
8:51
Speaker 1: this invention of LED lights, which made lighting much brighter
8:55
Speaker 1: and more efficient and cheaper. And then people started installing
8:59
Speaker 1: LED light everywhere, and all of a sudden, there was
9:02
Speaker 1: a lot more light pollution than there was before. And
9:05
Speaker 1: you know, if there's lights nearby, then it makes it
9:07
Speaker 1: harder to observe the night sky. And astronomers spoke up
9:10
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, could we get some like shielding
9:12
Speaker 1: on those lights or could we limit them to one frequency?
9:16
Speaker 1: And we were able to adjust and to redesign those
9:19
Speaker 1: lights so they mostly pointed down, they were mostly yellow
9:21
Speaker 1: instead of being broadbant and white, and we're able to
9:24
Speaker 1: sort of save astronomy. But this isn't the first time that,
9:27
Speaker 1: you know, consumer technology has sort of stumbled into the
9:31
Speaker 1: otherwise pristine night sky and almost munged it up. Wow,
9:35
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. So as humans are, civilization has
9:38
Speaker 1: gone and brighter and brighter and at night. Oh yes,
9:41
Speaker 1: if you went back to the fifteen hundreds, for example,
9:43
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be that hard to find a dark night sky.
9:45
Speaker 1: Like our cities are much much brighter than they were
9:48
Speaker 1: hundreds of years ago or even a hundred years ago
9:50
Speaker 1: or fifty years ago. And that just has to do
9:53
Speaker 1: with access to power and the cheapness and the brightness
9:55
Speaker 1: of our light sources. So this idea that Starlink might
9:58
Speaker 1: affect astronomy star our link is some some sort of
10:02
Speaker 1: satellite plan. Right when you think of a satellite, you
10:04
Speaker 1: probably think of like a single object, you know, a
10:06
Speaker 1: big piece of technology floating in space. But there's this
10:09
Speaker 1: new idea to launch constellations of satellites that have hundreds,
10:14
Speaker 1: sometimes even thousands of little parts that are floating out
10:18
Speaker 1: there in space. And so this is sort of a
10:20
Speaker 1: brand new idea and people are excited about for all
10:23
Speaker 1: sorts of applications, but it has downsides, and astronomers are
10:27
Speaker 1: very concerned that the night sky might just be filled
10:30
Speaker 1: with satellites in the future, making it maybe impossible to
10:34
Speaker 1: learn secrets of the universe. Oh man, it's like you're
10:36
Speaker 1: blocking the view. Get out of the way exactly. This
10:40
Speaker 1: is something that's for all humanity, that all humans have
10:42
Speaker 1: enjoyed looking up at the night sky, and as we
10:45
Speaker 1: develop our technology, we need to make sure that we're
10:48
Speaker 1: appursing this in a sensible way, that we have like
10:50
Speaker 1: regulations and rules in place so the individuals can't spoil
10:53
Speaker 1: it for the whole species humans. This is why we
10:56
Speaker 1: can't have nice things or no nice things either. But
11:00
Speaker 1: we were wondering how many people out there and new
11:02
Speaker 1: this idea of giant mega satellite constellations otherwise known as
11:06
Speaker 1: starlink is one name for it, and so we're wondering
11:09
Speaker 1: how many people knew about them and how they might
11:11
Speaker 1: affect astronomy. So Daniel went out there into the internet
11:14
Speaker 1: to ask people this question. So thanks to everybody who's
11:18
Speaker 1: willing to participate. For those of you who have been
11:20
Speaker 1: listening to the podcast for years but never phoned in,
11:23
Speaker 1: please feel welcome. No pressure, of course, but we'd like
11:27
Speaker 1: to hear your voice on the podcast, so please write
11:30
Speaker 1: to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot Com.
11:33
Speaker 1: Think about it for a second. What do you think
11:35
Speaker 1: putting thousands of satellites up into this guy will do
11:38
Speaker 1: to astronomy. Here's what people have to say. Most likely,
11:41
Speaker 1: if they will pass in the field of view of
11:44
Speaker 1: a telescope, people have to affect with something. I believe
11:50
Speaker 1: that the Starlink project will affect astronomy by completely changing
11:55
Speaker 1: our visual perspective on space. It's gonna add man made
11:59
Speaker 1: light pollution, and we're going to need to remap what
12:05
Speaker 1: we can visually see from Earth into outer space. Starlink
12:11
Speaker 1: is a program from SpaceX to launch a lot of
12:15
Speaker 1: Internet satellites, which I think we already know that it's
12:19
Speaker 1: going to make it a lot. How it hired her
12:21
Speaker 1: to study stars and stuff very poorly. I saw a
12:26
Speaker 1: train of twenty nine Starling satellites the other night, and
12:29
Speaker 1: I can't imagine if my telescope were aimed directly in
12:33
Speaker 1: that line. I think there's a lot of worry, but
12:36
Speaker 1: how many satellites they want to put up, and how
12:40
Speaker 1: it totally tips of scales and terms of space to
12:43
Speaker 1: breathe maybe a point where he never come back from.
12:47
Speaker 1: Starlink has thousands of small satellites all giving off radio waves,
12:52
Speaker 1: so they might interfere with ground based observations, perhaps creating
12:55
Speaker 1: the need for more space telescopes. All right, not a
12:59
Speaker 1: good outlook or for astronomy, that's right. But this is
13:01
Speaker 1: something people are definitely aware of, right. This is not
13:04
Speaker 1: a situation where people have no idea what we're talking about.
13:07
Speaker 1: This has definitely been in the public conversation. Yeah. Interesting, Yeah,
13:11
Speaker 1: nobody here said what is starlink? Which is honestly what
13:14
Speaker 1: my answer would have been. It's kind of a new idea,
13:19
Speaker 1: and I know it's been in the data a lot
13:21
Speaker 1: because people like Elon Musk are into it or are
13:24
Speaker 1: are applying for it in Amazon as well. So maybe
13:27
Speaker 1: step us through this, Daniel, what is starlink and what
13:29
Speaker 1: is a mega constellation of satellites? Starlink is an example
13:33
Speaker 1: of mega constellations where instead of having one or two
13:37
Speaker 1: or maybe even ten, like a small number of very specialized,
13:41
Speaker 1: very expensive satellites, instead you mass produce a bunch of
13:45
Speaker 1: smaller satellites so that it's cheaper, so you take advantage
13:48
Speaker 1: of the economy of scale, and instead of having just
13:51
Speaker 1: a few up there, you launched thousands or tens of thousands.
13:55
Speaker 1: And one application of this is, for example, to provide
13:57
Speaker 1: internet coverage. There are lots of place is in the world,
14:00
Speaker 1: especially poor areas and rural areas, where it's just not
14:03
Speaker 1: economically feasible or commercially attractive to run fiber optics or
14:08
Speaker 1: even copper cables to all of the homes, and so
14:11
Speaker 1: to get Internet coverage to those folks, it's attractive to
14:14
Speaker 1: build a satellite Internet system where the information gets beam
14:18
Speaker 1: to space and then down to a dish on your house. Wow,
14:21
Speaker 1: so you would be signing up for space Internet, not
14:24
Speaker 1: just Internet, but like space Internet. Yes, space Internet exactly,
14:28
Speaker 1: and just like you get satellite TV. But that's one direction,
14:31
Speaker 1: all right, You're getting information beamed down to you from
14:34
Speaker 1: a satellite. This is too directional. You download a picture
14:37
Speaker 1: on Facebook and it goes to a satellite and down
14:40
Speaker 1: to your house and you're at a comment on that picture.
14:43
Speaker 1: He goes back up to the satellite and then back
14:45
Speaker 1: down to your Internet service provider, and so this is
14:48
Speaker 1: two way communication with a satellite in order to get Internet. Well,
14:51
Speaker 1: so yourselfie would go out into space and back and
14:54
Speaker 1: maybe back again. Right, it would bounce on Earth and space.
14:57
Speaker 1: That's right, And it doesn't only just hit the satellite, right,
14:59
Speaker 1: You're beam is sort of broad, so the satellite picks
15:01
Speaker 1: it up, but it also goes past the satellite out
15:04
Speaker 1: into deep space. So any selfie you said via satellite
15:07
Speaker 1: internet is also going to the aliens. So think about that.
15:11
Speaker 1: And next time you send a you know, racy photo
15:13
Speaker 1: to your friends via satellite internet, you're speaking for the
15:18
Speaker 1: whole human race there people, Yeah, yeah, yeah, please make
15:21
Speaker 1: it look good. But I guess one question is, like,
15:24
Speaker 1: you know, we have cell phone towers. Are you saying
15:26
Speaker 1: like we don't have cellphone coverage everywhere? It sort of
15:29
Speaker 1: seems like we have a lot of cellphone coverage. That's true,
15:32
Speaker 1: We do have pretty good coverage at least in the
15:34
Speaker 1: US in a lot of the Western world for cellphone towers.
15:37
Speaker 1: This is sort of an alternative approach. I think there
15:39
Speaker 1: are lots of places where we don't have coverage, and
15:42
Speaker 1: so this would give you, you you know, internet access rather
15:44
Speaker 1: than just cellular service. All right, So then and you
15:47
Speaker 1: said there are small satellites. How small are we talking about?
15:49
Speaker 1: Is it like LaunchBox size, like palm size? How big
15:53
Speaker 1: are these satellites? I think they're about the size of
15:55
Speaker 1: a bed, for example, like a mattress, but they're pretty small,
15:58
Speaker 1: you know, they're like five pounds or kilos each. And
16:02
Speaker 1: the idea is not just that you could mass produce them,
16:05
Speaker 1: but that they could fly in low earth orbit. You know.
16:09
Speaker 1: One issue with satellite internet is the latency. Most of
16:12
Speaker 1: the satellite Internet systems that we have right now are
16:15
Speaker 1: in geosynchronous orbit, So single satellite is really far up there,
16:19
Speaker 1: but it sort of floats over the same patch of
16:21
Speaker 1: Earth all the time, and so it's sort of like
16:23
Speaker 1: always there in the sky above you. But they're far away.
16:26
Speaker 1: Like geosynchronous orbit means you're like thirty five thousand kilometers
16:29
Speaker 1: up there, and it takes a little while for the
16:31
Speaker 1: light to go all the way up to the satellite
16:33
Speaker 1: and back. If instead you have satellites in low earth orbit,
16:36
Speaker 1: like five dred kilometers, would be much faster. But the
16:40
Speaker 1: problem is that it's very complicated to have them be geosynchronous,
16:44
Speaker 1: and so essentially what you need instead of having a
16:47
Speaker 1: few satellites that are fixed, you need like a big
16:49
Speaker 1: constellation of satellites so they can pass the signals back
16:52
Speaker 1: and forth to each other. You have like a whole
16:54
Speaker 1: network of satellites up there in space. So geosynchronous means
16:58
Speaker 1: like it's always about the same spot on Earth all
17:00
Speaker 1: the time. But with these, because they're lower in orbit,
17:03
Speaker 1: they would be basically flying around all the time, that's right,
17:06
Speaker 1: A single one would be passing over the Earth. They
17:08
Speaker 1: do in orbit in around ninety minutes, and so if
17:10
Speaker 1: you have like a ninety minute Internet session, you're not
17:13
Speaker 1: always talking to the same satellite. You're getting passed from
17:16
Speaker 1: satellite to satellite, And so to have full coverage, you
17:19
Speaker 1: need a lot of these satellites. Also, each one, because
17:22
Speaker 1: it's lower down, can't see as much of the Earth,
17:25
Speaker 1: has like a smaller patch that it covers, so you
17:27
Speaker 1: need more of them in order to cover the whole Earth.
17:29
Speaker 1: And didn't know there was so big as big as mattress.
17:32
Speaker 1: Does that mean that you would have a mattress ready
17:33
Speaker 1: when you go space camping. I don't know how comfortable
17:37
Speaker 1: they are, but they good thing in space is they
17:40
Speaker 1: don't need to be that comfortable. So this is like
17:43
Speaker 1: a real thing, right, Like people are planning to make
17:46
Speaker 1: these matre sized and thousands of these satellites and launched
17:49
Speaker 1: them into space soon, right, Oh, it's a real thing.
17:51
Speaker 1: It's already up there. They launched the first ones in
17:54
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and so currently they have six hundred of
17:58
Speaker 1: these satellites already up there, flying, delivering satellite Internet the
18:03
Speaker 1: beta services available in a bunch of countries. But you know,
18:06
Speaker 1: there are plans for a lot more, and we've already
18:09
Speaker 1: seen some of the sort of negative effects of them,
18:11
Speaker 1: and people are worried about what happens if this goes big,
18:14
Speaker 1: Like we have six satellites now, but Starlink is approved
18:18
Speaker 1: to have twelve thousand satellites up there, and they plan
18:22
Speaker 1: to go for thirty thousand satellites. And that's just one company,
18:26
Speaker 1: right or like one conglomerate that's doing it there. Other
18:28
Speaker 1: companies have other plans, that's right as usual. Jeff Bezos
18:32
Speaker 1: has his own plan for an Amazon based one called
18:35
Speaker 1: one Web. And so you know, people project that we
18:37
Speaker 1: could have like a hundred thousand of these micro satellites
18:41
Speaker 1: up in low Earth orbit by the end of the decade.
18:44
Speaker 1: And people are wondering, like, what will the nights Guy
18:46
Speaker 1: look like if it's filled with these satellites, Well, it
18:49
Speaker 1: could look like a basically like a like a discord
18:52
Speaker 1: like you're in a nightclub with all these lights moving,
18:55
Speaker 1: flashing around everywhere exactly, and if you want to see
18:58
Speaker 1: out past lower orbit, deep into the cosmos to learn
19:02
Speaker 1: the secrets of nature, that could be a problem. Yike
19:05
Speaker 1: might actually block astronomy and our search for answers in
19:09
Speaker 1: the universe. So let's get into that. But first let's
19:12
Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right, we're talking about mega
19:26
Speaker 1: constellations of satellites, so humans as always have to ruin everything.
19:32
Speaker 1: So we're gonna ruin the nights guy now, and we're
19:34
Speaker 1: gonna put up all these thousands and thousands of satellites
19:38
Speaker 1: out in low Earth orbit to give people better access
19:41
Speaker 1: to the Internet. I guess it's it's sort of a
19:43
Speaker 1: trade off here, right, That's right. You know, there are
19:46
Speaker 1: definitely positives and with every technology there are unattended consequences.
19:50
Speaker 1: But it is important to bring Internet access to everybody.
19:54
Speaker 1: You know, there are lots of folks out there that
19:55
Speaker 1: just cannot get reliable Internet, and it's important. It's a
19:59
Speaker 1: part of being part of the modern world. And you know,
20:02
Speaker 1: for safety issues if you're on the wilderness, to get
20:04
Speaker 1: internet for rescue. So there's a lot of advantages to
20:07
Speaker 1: having accessible Internet, Like if you're in the middle of
20:10
Speaker 1: the ocean, that would be hard to have a zoom call,
20:12
Speaker 1: that's right, or you know, order your Amazon Prime. You know,
20:14
Speaker 1: I need some fresh water? Can you deliver it? Peace?
20:18
Speaker 1: And then it gets deployed from a drone in space?
20:21
Speaker 1: Is that the idea? Is that the ultimate goal? I'm
20:23
Speaker 1: sure there's a commediate Amazon working on that exact thing. Yes,
20:26
Speaker 1: So it's a big equity issues to give every human
20:29
Speaker 1: sort of access to all of the knowledge and all
20:31
Speaker 1: of the data and all of the news that's happening
20:34
Speaker 1: in the world right now, so that nobody gets left behind,
20:37
Speaker 1: but unfortunately might have some negative consequences for science, specifically astronomy,
20:42
Speaker 1: because astronomy we depends on looking at the night sky,
20:46
Speaker 1: and so if there's a bunch of satellites flying in
20:48
Speaker 1: front of you, it's going to be hard to do that. Yeah,
20:51
Speaker 1: and we've already seen this happen astronomers seed satellites crossing
20:55
Speaker 1: the path of their telescopes. We've always had satellites up there.
20:58
Speaker 1: But if we're going to rapidly increase the number of satellites,
21:02
Speaker 1: then it's going to become a bigger and bigger problem.
21:04
Speaker 1: And so you see all these examples on the Internet
21:06
Speaker 1: of beautiful satellite pictures of deep space, and then there's
21:09
Speaker 1: just these like streaks of satellites in a straight line
21:12
Speaker 1: going across it, spoiling the view. It's like photo bombing exactly,
21:17
Speaker 1: satellite bombing the pictures. And these things can be much
21:20
Speaker 1: more reflective than the other satellites because they're in lower
21:23
Speaker 1: Earth orbit, right, so they're much closer. Does that make
21:26
Speaker 1: them brighter or just you know, just more annoying. Yeah,
21:29
Speaker 1: it makes them brighter, But mostly it's an issue of
21:31
Speaker 1: the number these things are eventually going to outside all
21:34
Speaker 1: the stars in the sky. Yeah, because I guess these
21:37
Speaker 1: satellites they don't actually glow. It's not like they have
21:39
Speaker 1: a flash light pointed at the Earth. It's just that
21:41
Speaker 1: they don't have any sort of like deacon or anything.
21:43
Speaker 1: But we can see them because they're reflecting the light
21:46
Speaker 1: from the sun. Things out in space. It's a little
21:49
Speaker 1: counterintuitive struggle to stay cool right in space. It's very
21:53
Speaker 1: important that you don't overheat, and like Frier electronics, and
21:56
Speaker 1: you might think, oh, well space is super cold, right,
21:59
Speaker 1: that's true, But also space is a vacuum, and vacuum
22:02
Speaker 1: is an insulator. So it's actually harder sometimes to get
22:05
Speaker 1: rid of your heat in space because you're not surrounded
22:08
Speaker 1: by air that can suck that heat away, right than
22:10
Speaker 1: no like wind in space to steal your heat, and
22:13
Speaker 1: so you need to stay cold. And one way to
22:16
Speaker 1: stay cold, so your electronics work is to be reflective
22:19
Speaker 1: rather than absorptive. So they design these things to reflect
22:23
Speaker 1: sunlight rather than absorb it, and so basically they act
22:26
Speaker 1: almost like mirrors. You know, there's parts of these satellites
22:30
Speaker 1: that are very reflective, and when the sun shines on them,
22:33
Speaker 1: they light up just like the moon does. Interesting, is
22:36
Speaker 1: that why you always see satellites and spacecraft sort of
22:38
Speaker 1: like wrapped them an aluminum foil? Is that the reason?
22:41
Speaker 1: That's one reason? Yeah, there's lots of reasons. You want
22:43
Speaker 1: to protect it also from other kinds of radiation that
22:45
Speaker 1: can be stopped by foil, but in general, you want
22:48
Speaker 1: your stuff to be reflective in order to stay cool,
22:51
Speaker 1: except for the solar panels. The solar panels are black
22:53
Speaker 1: because you want them to absorb all the light. But
22:55
Speaker 1: even like the other side of the solar panels tend
22:57
Speaker 1: to be bright, so that they can reflect away in
23:00
Speaker 1: the unwanted heat. I thought maybe just typer Worth technology
23:02
Speaker 1: hadn't made it to satellites yet. But yeah, So the
23:07
Speaker 1: main palmb is that they have to be reflecting, and
23:08
Speaker 1: they reflect light, and that's going to pollute our view
23:11
Speaker 1: of the universe. Yeah, and it's especially bad it's sort
23:14
Speaker 1: of sunrise and sunset because of the angle of the satellites.
23:19
Speaker 1: When the sun goes down and the satellites are sort
23:21
Speaker 1: of just over the horizon, then the sun hits them
23:24
Speaker 1: and goes right towards your eyes. And so in the deep,
23:27
Speaker 1: deep part of the night, when our part of the
23:29
Speaker 1: Earth is in shadow, it's not as bad a problem.
23:32
Speaker 1: The sort of fewer of these satellites can sort of
23:34
Speaker 1: see the sun and see where you are. But it's
23:37
Speaker 1: very bad at twilight and also at dawn, which is
23:41
Speaker 1: where a lot of really important observing happens. Interesting, but
23:44
Speaker 1: couldn't they like, aren't solar panels dark. Couldn't they just
23:48
Speaker 1: wrap them in solar panels and that would make them
23:50
Speaker 1: both dark and you know, getting more more energy for
23:53
Speaker 1: their operation. Solar panels are dark, absolutely, but you can't
23:57
Speaker 1: have the whole thing wrapped in solar panels. You need
23:59
Speaker 1: part of it have antennas, right, you need to be
24:01
Speaker 1: able to communicate with it. And it's actually those antennas
24:04
Speaker 1: that are the brightest parts of them that are really
24:06
Speaker 1: the most reflective, that have these antenna arrays to communicate
24:10
Speaker 1: with ground stations on Earth. That's the point of the satellite.
24:13
Speaker 1: And then have these other little parabolic antennas so they
24:15
Speaker 1: can talk to each other. And so they're just sort
24:18
Speaker 1: of functional parts of the satellite. You know, we'll talk
24:20
Speaker 1: later about things they can do to mitigate the reflectivity
24:23
Speaker 1: of these satellites, but you can't just have it all
24:25
Speaker 1: be one big solar panel. Well, it sounds pretty serious.
24:28
Speaker 1: I mean, you said, as soon there will be as
24:30
Speaker 1: many satellites are that there are visible stars in the
24:34
Speaker 1: night sky, Like when you look out, most of the
24:36
Speaker 1: things you'll see are satellites. Yeah, And I think people
24:38
Speaker 1: will also be surprised to realize how few stars you
24:41
Speaker 1: can see in the night sky. When you look up
24:43
Speaker 1: in the night sky, even in the darkest, darkest nights,
24:46
Speaker 1: in the depths of the woods, you only really see
24:49
Speaker 1: like five thousand, maybe ten thousand stars. It seems like
24:52
Speaker 1: an overwhelming number it's really not that big. And then
24:55
Speaker 1: when you go into the cities, really it's just down
24:57
Speaker 1: to a few hundreds or even dozens. If you're in
24:59
Speaker 1: a bright city or one in Los Angeles. Yes, yeah,
25:03
Speaker 1: you can see any at all. And so at some point,
25:05
Speaker 1: if we have thousands of satellites up there, then they
25:08
Speaker 1: really are going to arrival the number of stars that
25:10
Speaker 1: you can see. And it's all it's bad for people
25:14
Speaker 1: who enjoy seeing the sky. It's bad for you know,
25:17
Speaker 1: cultures for whom stars are an important part of their
25:20
Speaker 1: storytelling or their history. But it's also really bad for
25:23
Speaker 1: astronomers who are very, very sensitive to small amounts of light.
25:27
Speaker 1: We have, for example, surveys that are scanning the sky
25:30
Speaker 1: constantly looking for changes. What's changing in the night sky,
25:33
Speaker 1: our stars getting brighter and dimmer, our scars disappearing is
25:37
Speaker 1: a very important for understanding the dynamics of the universe,
25:40
Speaker 1: and it's much harder to do if things are changing
25:43
Speaker 1: because satellites are whizzing in front of you all of
25:45
Speaker 1: the time. I guess is that mostly the problem is
25:48
Speaker 1: the photo bombing. It's like the seeing things that you
25:50
Speaker 1: think is the star but is not actually a star.
25:52
Speaker 1: Is that the main problem or does it actually sort
25:55
Speaker 1: of affect the measurement of regular stars. It's both. In
25:59
Speaker 1: one hand, it blocks things, right, if there's a satellite there,
26:02
Speaker 1: you can't see behind it, but also it affects the
26:04
Speaker 1: rest of the image. Satellite imaging is very sensitive and
26:07
Speaker 1: it's adaptive, and so if you have a very bright source,
26:10
Speaker 1: it can sort of saturated. It changes the whole range.
26:13
Speaker 1: It's like when you take a picture with your camera,
26:15
Speaker 1: if something is back a lit if the sun is
26:17
Speaker 1: behind you, then you really can't see the person. And
26:20
Speaker 1: that's because your camera is adjusted because it wants to
26:22
Speaker 1: get all the different range, the brightest and the darkest,
26:25
Speaker 1: and so then the darkest things don't come out very well.
26:28
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like if somebody is shining a
26:29
Speaker 1: flashlight in your face right then you can't see the
26:32
Speaker 1: night sky at all. And so that's a difficulty for
26:35
Speaker 1: astronomical technology. And also astronomical images don't use sea moss
26:41
Speaker 1: technology like in your phone, so I use something else
26:43
Speaker 1: called a c c D, which is much more sensitive
26:46
Speaker 1: to very small amounts of light. But it also has
26:49
Speaker 1: a disadvantage in that you know all the pixels in
26:52
Speaker 1: a row are sort of linked together. CCD stands for
26:55
Speaker 1: charge couple device, and it reads it out by passing
26:58
Speaker 1: the information down the line. The short first in the
27:00
Speaker 1: story is if you overwhelm a single pixel, it can
27:03
Speaker 1: cause blooming, which lights up an entire strip of pixels.
27:07
Speaker 1: And so it doesn't just overwhelm the part of the
27:09
Speaker 1: image you're in, it can also ruin the rest of
27:12
Speaker 1: the image. Yeah, because you know, I was thinking, like,
27:14
Speaker 1: if we know where all the satellites are, even if
27:16
Speaker 1: there are in the thousands, you could still haven't been
27:18
Speaker 1: a database so you can maybe account for them and
27:20
Speaker 1: when you're doing astronomy. But you're saying, it's just like
27:22
Speaker 1: it just causes general light pollution and it oversaturates all
27:26
Speaker 1: of our sensors. Yeah, and they've done some studies, you know,
27:28
Speaker 1: they're not just whining about it. The astronomy community has
27:31
Speaker 1: gotten together a couple of times and put out these
27:33
Speaker 1: careful reports analyzing the impact of these mega constellations, both
27:37
Speaker 1: the ones we have now and the ones that are
27:39
Speaker 1: planned in the future, and they anticipate that it could
27:42
Speaker 1: ruin like thirty of all astronomical exposure. So that's like
27:46
Speaker 1: a huge amount. Oh my God, that's huge. That's a
27:49
Speaker 1: lot of science. That's a lot of science. Imagine that
27:52
Speaker 1: you're some young astronomer and you've just gotten time on
27:55
Speaker 1: a very important ground based telescope and it's ruined. You know,
27:58
Speaker 1: you already have to gamble with the clouds, and now
28:01
Speaker 1: you have to gamble with the clouds. And Elon Musk's
28:04
Speaker 1: space toys and Jeff Bezis space mattresses. Yeah, it's not
28:09
Speaker 1: just science that's being affected. I mean, more concerning is
28:12
Speaker 1: that it might like affect the safety of the human race. Yeah,
28:15
Speaker 1: we're talking about putting a lot of objects up there
28:18
Speaker 1: in orbit, and we already have kind of a lot
28:20
Speaker 1: of stuff out there. I mean, there are already like
28:24
Speaker 1: four thousand or so satellites in low Earth orbit and
28:27
Speaker 1: many more in other orbits. And not all of these
28:30
Speaker 1: things are operational anymore, right, not like everything we build
28:33
Speaker 1: works forever. So we have a whole episode about this.
28:36
Speaker 1: It's called space junk, just like bits of rocket or
28:39
Speaker 1: broken satellites that are just sort of floating out there
28:42
Speaker 1: in space, cluttering things up. And there's a real danger
28:46
Speaker 1: that if you get too many of these things, they
28:48
Speaker 1: could just like crash into each other and fill space
28:52
Speaker 1: with debris, making it like unpassable, right, and it's like
28:56
Speaker 1: debris going at thirty per hour, right, Yeah, it's very
29:00
Speaker 1: fast moving stuff. And because it's very fast moving, it
29:03
Speaker 1: can lead to this sort of cascade effect, like two
29:06
Speaker 1: things collide and they create like thousands or even tens
29:09
Speaker 1: of thousands of high speed bits of debris which collide
29:12
Speaker 1: with other things, and then pretty soon all of space
29:16
Speaker 1: is just filled with garbage. It's like if one person
29:19
Speaker 1: slams on their brakes on the freeway very high speed,
29:22
Speaker 1: that causes an accident and then you can get like
29:24
Speaker 1: a thousand car piloup. Right wow. Yeah. So if you
29:28
Speaker 1: put like tens of thousands of satellites up there and
29:31
Speaker 1: they all crashing into each other in a chain reaction,
29:34
Speaker 1: then we could basically cover the whole earth in like junk, yeah,
29:37
Speaker 1: and not just cover the earth like it's not such
29:39
Speaker 1: a problem if they fall out of or But that's
29:41
Speaker 1: actually okay because when they go into the atmosphere, they
29:44
Speaker 1: tend to burn up and they don't hit the surface,
29:46
Speaker 1: so it's not really a danger to humanity. But if
29:48
Speaker 1: they're still floating up there, that's the real problem, because
29:52
Speaker 1: if low Earth orbit is filled with junk. It makes
29:55
Speaker 1: it impossible to send a rocket up there because it's
29:57
Speaker 1: just gonna get pelted. Right, It's like we have a
29:59
Speaker 1: four field that's the opposite direction that prevents us from leaving.
30:03
Speaker 1: It's like we built a prison and trapped ourselves inside
30:05
Speaker 1: of it. Wow, that would be so tragic and ironic
30:10
Speaker 1: for the human race, it would be. And so you
30:13
Speaker 1: need to be really careful. And currently there's a whole
30:15
Speaker 1: office where people monitor satellite near missus and try to
30:19
Speaker 1: get them to avoid each other, and they like fire
30:21
Speaker 1: their rockets to move higher or lower out of each
30:23
Speaker 1: other's way. But that gets exponentially more complicated as you
30:27
Speaker 1: get more satellites. And so now we're talking about like
30:30
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand more satellites up there. It just seems
30:33
Speaker 1: almost inevitable that something's going to go wrong. Yeah, well,
30:36
Speaker 1: obviously the solution is to make them out of mattresses,
30:40
Speaker 1: and not just the size of mattresses. And so then
30:42
Speaker 1: they'll just bounce off each other. Well, let's just make
30:46
Speaker 1: them out of marshmallows, right, because toasted, then the sun
30:50
Speaker 1: is gonna, yeah, it's gonna start making them catch on fire.
30:53
Speaker 1: Sun toasted space marshmallows. I mean, who doesn't want one
30:56
Speaker 1: of those? Then you're on the camping trip. You just
30:58
Speaker 1: hold out your cracker and marshmall those land right on it. Yeah,
31:01
Speaker 1: there you go. If well, if they make it through
31:03
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, and you know, I was joking about how
31:05
Speaker 1: they burn up when they enter the atmosphere, and that's
31:07
Speaker 1: good because they we don't want them to like hit
31:09
Speaker 1: buildings or smash on people. But there's another factor there,
31:12
Speaker 1: which is that these satellites have a bunch of heavy
31:15
Speaker 1: metals in them. And so if you have a lot
31:17
Speaker 1: of them and they're burning up when they enter the atmosphere,
31:19
Speaker 1: you're sort of polluting the upper atmosphere with a bunch
31:23
Speaker 1: of heavy metals. And we don't really know what that means.
31:27
Speaker 1: Like if you inject a huge amount of aluminum, even
31:30
Speaker 1: in vapor form into the upper atmosphere, what happens. It's
31:34
Speaker 1: like a geoengineering experiment. Well, it's like wrapping the Earth
31:37
Speaker 1: in aluminum foil, yeah, or something else. Right, Like there's
31:41
Speaker 1: this project where they injected the upper atmosphere with all
31:44
Speaker 1: of these copper needles to see if it would change
31:46
Speaker 1: the weather. And you know that didn't go very well,
31:49
Speaker 1: and so who knows what would happen Even if you
31:52
Speaker 1: managed to get like the broken satellites to de orbit,
31:54
Speaker 1: to sort of fall into the atmosphere and burn up.
31:57
Speaker 1: Then who knows what would happen if you pollute the
31:59
Speaker 1: upper atmosphere with all this aluminum and other heavy metals.
32:02
Speaker 1: It is the final frontier space for human pollution. It
32:06
Speaker 1: might not just have our ability to travel into space safely,
32:09
Speaker 1: but it might actually like affect our ability to see
32:12
Speaker 1: things coming at us that might kill us. One of
32:15
Speaker 1: the fields of astronomy that would be most dramatically affected
32:18
Speaker 1: are the people who look for near earth objects. So
32:21
Speaker 1: if you are on the lookout for a rock that's
32:23
Speaker 1: heading towards the Earth that might, for example, kill us all,
32:27
Speaker 1: then you can only spot it when it reflects sunlight. Right,
32:30
Speaker 1: these rocks are not glowing like stars, and so we
32:33
Speaker 1: look for these things and we look for the right
32:35
Speaker 1: moment when they shine their light at us. And sometimes
32:38
Speaker 1: these things, if they're near the sun, are coming from
32:41
Speaker 1: the direction of the sun, they can be very hard
32:43
Speaker 1: to spot because of the sun, And so just after
32:46
Speaker 1: the sun dips over the horizon, it's the best time
32:49
Speaker 1: to see these things. But if space is filled with
32:52
Speaker 1: a bunch of reflective stuff which is also shining back
32:55
Speaker 1: at you at the same moment, these twilight and dawn moments,
32:58
Speaker 1: then we're basically mind in those directions, and it might
33:02
Speaker 1: be impossible to see something coming at us. Wow. Yeah,
33:05
Speaker 1: it'd be like a lot of noise, right, like false
33:07
Speaker 1: nine when one calls or something like everyone called nine
33:10
Speaker 1: and one to prank them, Then you might miss the
33:12
Speaker 1: really important calls, right, yeah, exactly. Or it's like in
33:16
Speaker 1: top Gun, you know, when every fighter jet is looking
33:18
Speaker 1: to like come out of the sun because it's a
33:20
Speaker 1: blind spot for the other pilots. That's our blind spot.
33:24
Speaker 1: And so if we can no longer look near the sun,
33:27
Speaker 1: then it becomes an even bigger blind spot. And that's
33:29
Speaker 1: pretty dangerous, like super dangerous. Right. It might mean the
33:32
Speaker 1: end of the human race if we don't catch that asteroid.
33:35
Speaker 1: And I don't know how you feel about it, but
33:36
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of a big deal. It's a
33:39
Speaker 1: bigger deal, and it's more it's for sure, and it's
33:42
Speaker 1: not just astronomers enjoying the night sky, and you know,
33:45
Speaker 1: other cultures who use it for storytelling and avoiding all
33:48
Speaker 1: of this pollution of the upper atmosphere. It's in general
33:52
Speaker 1: just sort of brightening the night sky, even if you're
33:54
Speaker 1: not like training a telescope on one particular spot to
33:57
Speaker 1: see a galaxy. In general, it's just going to sort
33:59
Speaker 1: of like bright in everything. So like the overall brightness
34:03
Speaker 1: of the sky will go up, and that will make
34:05
Speaker 1: it harder to see anything. You know. The reason that
34:07
Speaker 1: you see stars at night and not during the day.
34:10
Speaker 1: They're there during the day, you just don't see them
34:12
Speaker 1: because the sky is so bright. So imagine making the
34:15
Speaker 1: whole nice guy a little bit brighter. Stars and galaxies
34:19
Speaker 1: will literally disappear. I thought you were going to say
34:21
Speaker 1: it's going to make it harder to sleep at night.
34:23
Speaker 1: Let's mostly just stress and anxiety. You know, we don't
34:27
Speaker 1: need satellites for that exactly. We got that covered already. Yeah,
34:30
Speaker 1: and it's not just Elon Musk you said. Amazon also
34:33
Speaker 1: has one called one Web as well, and there are
34:36
Speaker 1: other folks. And one real problem is that there are
34:39
Speaker 1: very few laws, Like there are no regulations limiting the
34:42
Speaker 1: reflectivity of satellites, so there's nothing preventing anybody from launching
34:47
Speaker 1: a bunch of these satellites and having them up there
34:49
Speaker 1: and being super duper bright. Doesn't the Space Force get
34:52
Speaker 1: involved at that point? You mean the Netflix show or
34:56
Speaker 1: the actual New Branch. I mean, like the actual Space
35:01
Speaker 1: Force people. Yeah, I think they're too busy making the
35:03
Speaker 1: uniforms look less like nazis. All right, well, let's get
35:06
Speaker 1: into what we could do about this light pollution, this
35:10
Speaker 1: magic constellation satellite crowding in the night sky. Is there
35:13
Speaker 1: anything we can do about it to prevent it affecting
35:15
Speaker 1: astronomy and our ability to see asteroids and our our
35:19
Speaker 1: ability to really enjoy the beautiful universe that's out there
35:22
Speaker 1: for us to see. So let's get into that. But
35:24
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. All right, we are
35:41
Speaker 1: putting all the blame on billionaires today Jeff Bezos and
35:45
Speaker 1: Elon Musk that they have plans to fill the sky
35:48
Speaker 1: with thousands and thousands and thousands of mini satellites, which
35:52
Speaker 1: might affect our ability to look out into the universe
35:55
Speaker 1: and learn from it and also appreciate its beauty. That's right,
35:58
Speaker 1: And astronomers have come to other and reached out to
36:01
Speaker 1: these companies and try to describe to them the impact
36:04
Speaker 1: and the importance of astronomy and preserving our dark skies.
36:08
Speaker 1: So there's been a lot of discussions, and it's not
36:10
Speaker 1: like these tech entrepreneurs are totally ignoring it. They understand,
36:13
Speaker 1: they get it. Elon Musk said, quote, I am confident
36:17
Speaker 1: that we will not cause any impact whatsoever in astronomical
36:21
Speaker 1: discoveries zero and will take corrective action if it's above zero.
36:25
Speaker 1: That's not super comforting. Um. First of all, I don't
36:29
Speaker 1: know if I take Elon Musk get this word and
36:32
Speaker 1: say no, well, what if it's too late to take
36:34
Speaker 1: corrective action? You know, like what if we feel space
36:37
Speaker 1: with junk and then we can't do anything about Is
36:38
Speaker 1: he going to personally go up there with a little
36:41
Speaker 1: broom in it clean up his own mess? Yeah? Yeah,
36:44
Speaker 1: clean up his own debris. I don't know, But at
36:47
Speaker 1: least it's better than if you just shrugged it up
36:49
Speaker 1: and ignored them. You know, making the right noises is
36:51
Speaker 1: better than making the wrong noises. I guess, but you're right.
36:54
Speaker 1: It's something we need to discuss now before space gets
36:57
Speaker 1: very very filled with these constellations. Do you think it's
37:00
Speaker 1: in his budget? Like you know, Oops, I was wrong.
37:03
Speaker 1: Let's let's paint it, clean this up. As long as
37:05
Speaker 1: it costs less than two billion, then yeah he can
37:07
Speaker 1: afford it. You know. There you go. But they have
37:10
Speaker 1: done some things. I mean they have been already responsive
37:12
Speaker 1: and they're working to reduce the impact of all their
37:15
Speaker 1: satellites on astronomy. The first thing they did was similar
37:17
Speaker 1: to your idea, which is they just tried to make
37:20
Speaker 1: these things darker. They're like, well, let's try to make
37:22
Speaker 1: each satellite less reflective. So they introduced a new version
37:26
Speaker 1: of their satellite called dark Sat, where they basically painted
37:30
Speaker 1: it with this anti reflective coating. So these phased antenna
37:34
Speaker 1: arraysed and the parts that communicate with the ground, instead
37:38
Speaker 1: of being very reflective, they made them dark and very absorbedive.
37:41
Speaker 1: Does that help? It helps a bit, I mean it
37:43
Speaker 1: makes them about half as bright, which is good. The
37:46
Speaker 1: problem is that then then the satellite doesn't really work
37:48
Speaker 1: because it absorbs too much heat, and then it can't
37:51
Speaker 1: really function as intended, and so it only half solves
37:54
Speaker 1: the problem, but it sort of breaks the satellite from
37:57
Speaker 1: the commercial aspect, so it wasn't really a work solution.
38:01
Speaker 1: What else can they do? Well, then they have another idea,
38:04
Speaker 1: which is instead of painting it directly with an anti
38:06
Speaker 1: reflective coating, they're putting like a visor on it, like
38:09
Speaker 1: a shade, and so this has the same effect. It's
38:12
Speaker 1: like a black shape, but it deploys and it's a
38:14
Speaker 1: little bit distant from the antenna, so it's not actually
38:17
Speaker 1: like heating up the antenna itself, and it just blocks
38:21
Speaker 1: the sunlight at the right moment, so it doesn't reflect
38:23
Speaker 1: back onto the Earth like a little parasol. Yeah, like
38:26
Speaker 1: a little parasol, or like that flap in your car.
38:28
Speaker 1: You know that you can pull down to block the
38:30
Speaker 1: sun and you put it back up when you don't
38:32
Speaker 1: need it. So this is something that can deploy just
38:34
Speaker 1: the right moment to avoid those reflections at dawn and
38:37
Speaker 1: at dusk. Interesting, but would you point out at the
38:40
Speaker 1: sun like to block the sun or would you point
38:42
Speaker 1: it at the Earth so it doesn't you know, the
38:44
Speaker 1: light doesn't go onto Earth. You position it between the
38:47
Speaker 1: sun and the most reflective parts of the satellite, and
38:51
Speaker 1: then at such an angle that any sunlight that does
38:53
Speaker 1: hit it goes off into space rather than down to Earth.
38:56
Speaker 1: So basically redirects the sunlight so it doesn't bounce off
38:59
Speaker 1: the sad light and down to Earth. It goes out
39:01
Speaker 1: into space instead. But I imagine that's kind of expensive, right,
39:04
Speaker 1: because then the satellite has to be actively like moving
39:07
Speaker 1: this visor, this blocker all the time and then cost energy. Yeah,
39:10
Speaker 1: it costs energy, and it costs more money, but that
39:13
Speaker 1: seems to be something they're willing to do. They're also
39:15
Speaker 1: playing lots of games with the positioning of the satellite.
39:18
Speaker 1: Like one of the most reflective parts of the satellite
39:20
Speaker 1: is the solar array. So the satellite itself is like
39:23
Speaker 1: you know, the size of a bed, it's like one
39:25
Speaker 1: m by two ms. But then it has this solar
39:27
Speaker 1: power array which is like ten meters long, and it's
39:30
Speaker 1: very reflective. And so if that solar ray is positioned
39:34
Speaker 1: in such a way that reflects back down to the Earth,
39:36
Speaker 1: it's like incredibly bright. And so they've rearranged the sort
39:39
Speaker 1: of the direction of the solar array so that it's
39:42
Speaker 1: behind the satellite. It catches sun, but it's shielded from
39:45
Speaker 1: the Earth by the satellite chassis itself, so that it
39:49
Speaker 1: also improves the reflectivity. Interesting, and it couldn't be also
39:53
Speaker 1: like maybe angle the satellite in certain times for certain
39:57
Speaker 1: ways so that it's less reflective, or with that inner
40:00
Speaker 1: here with like pointing the intendant stuff, that's a great idea,
40:02
Speaker 1: and that's what they're doing there, sort of trying to
40:04
Speaker 1: angle the satellites so the sun comes on the knife's
40:07
Speaker 1: edge rather than on the flat part of it, sort
40:09
Speaker 1: of like on the narrow edge of the mattress, and
40:11
Speaker 1: that will also reduce the reflectivity, you know, and so
40:14
Speaker 1: they're doing what they can. One issue is that all
40:16
Speaker 1: this so far is voluntary, you know, like regulations and
40:20
Speaker 1: laws don't really keep up with technology, which can move
40:23
Speaker 1: very very fast, especially when Elon Musk is involved. And
40:26
Speaker 1: so the kind of thing that never really was a
40:28
Speaker 1: problem that never really needed to be handled with legislation
40:32
Speaker 1: and regulation, all of a sudden, we're like at the
40:34
Speaker 1: mercy of these billionaires because we don't have sort of
40:37
Speaker 1: rules in place. Well, it's sort of like the open seas, right,
40:41
Speaker 1: like nobody owns it and nobody is regulating it. I
40:45
Speaker 1: don't actually know how that works. I think there are
40:47
Speaker 1: laws about what happens on the international oceans, but I'm
40:49
Speaker 1: definitely not an expert. But you're right, it's a new
40:51
Speaker 1: frontier of technology, and so our existing laws you know,
40:54
Speaker 1: even if they do cover it, they didn't anticipate this,
40:57
Speaker 1: and so they weren't really written for this. In mind,
41:00
Speaker 1: people have built in assumptions. Surely nobody's gonna launch a
41:03
Speaker 1: hundred thousand satellites when they wrote these laws decades ago. Well,
41:07
Speaker 1: obviously we need space rangers or you know, space cowboys
41:10
Speaker 1: to put some order back into town up there. Yeah,
41:13
Speaker 1: and order is important. Another thing we can do is
41:16
Speaker 1: just know where these things are. If you're an astronomer
41:19
Speaker 1: and you know where the satellites are and when they're coming,
41:22
Speaker 1: you can try to plan your observations around it, and
41:25
Speaker 1: you can remove them. You can subtract them from your images.
41:28
Speaker 1: You don't have to play guessing games like well was
41:30
Speaker 1: that a star that did this crazy thing? Or was
41:33
Speaker 1: that star links satellite numbers seven thousand, four hundred forty two. Right.
41:37
Speaker 1: If you can know these things very precisely, like you
41:40
Speaker 1: could program it into your telescope to take pictures when
41:43
Speaker 1: it's when there aren't any satellites passing in that little
41:46
Speaker 1: patches guy you're looking at. Yeah, and then also afterwards
41:49
Speaker 1: to subtract anything that happens to get in the way.
41:51
Speaker 1: But this needs some coordination. You know, somebody has to
41:54
Speaker 1: like write the software and have a database and maintain
41:57
Speaker 1: an updated and have it be accurate, very precise. And
42:00
Speaker 1: who's gonna pay for that, right, So is that starlink
42:03
Speaker 1: is going to do that or the astronomer is going
42:04
Speaker 1: to have to force their grad students to write this software.
42:07
Speaker 1: It just needs some sort of organization. And we're at
42:10
Speaker 1: this moment where like we've dipped our toes in the
42:12
Speaker 1: Mega constellation and we're about to dump thousands and thousands more.
42:16
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing we need to figure out
42:18
Speaker 1: before we make a big mistake. Yeah, I think there
42:21
Speaker 1: should also be like a space tax maybe, you know,
42:23
Speaker 1: like tax all those billionaires for their satellites and then
42:26
Speaker 1: use that money to fund space telescopes, you know, because
42:29
Speaker 1: it seems like that's what astronomy is going towards, which is,
42:33
Speaker 1: you know, as we get more and more light pollution.
42:35
Speaker 1: First we went out to the top of mountains to
42:37
Speaker 1: put telescopes, and now we're putting telescopes up in space
42:40
Speaker 1: to get away from human light. And so maybe we'd
42:43
Speaker 1: just haven't paid for more space telescopes. That sounds good
42:46
Speaker 1: to me. I'm always going to vote for more taxes
42:48
Speaker 1: on billionaires to fund more science. Sign me up. But
42:51
Speaker 1: you know, space telescopes are not always the answer, Like
42:54
Speaker 1: there are advantages to space telescopes you're above the atmosphere,
42:58
Speaker 1: light pollution, this kind of stuff, But there are also
43:00
Speaker 1: a lot of advantages to ground based telescopes, Like you
43:03
Speaker 1: can't build a thirty meter telescope in space because you
43:06
Speaker 1: can't launch something that big, and it's harder to repair
43:09
Speaker 1: and to swap out instruments. So there's always going to
43:12
Speaker 1: be an important role for ground based astronomy, and we
43:15
Speaker 1: should make sure that we don't munge that up. I
43:17
Speaker 1: guess it's all just another sort of reminder of how
43:20
Speaker 1: things change in the universe. You know, it's not just
43:23
Speaker 1: sort of changing at a cosmic scale, but we can
43:25
Speaker 1: very easily change our view of it and our access
43:28
Speaker 1: to all that knowledge in the universe. Like, you know,
43:30
Speaker 1: we have to be careful right when we do these
43:32
Speaker 1: things we do, and as humans, we tend to assume
43:35
Speaker 1: that things are static or infinite, you know, the way
43:38
Speaker 1: we treat the ocean. We used to think the ocean
43:40
Speaker 1: is like an infinite source of water and you could
43:42
Speaker 1: just dump stuff in it. And would just sort of
43:44
Speaker 1: like float away and dilute forever. But now we know
43:47
Speaker 1: that obviously it's not infinite, and you know, we filled
43:49
Speaker 1: it with microplastics and garbage and it's a real problem.
43:52
Speaker 1: Or like the air, we thought there was plenty of
43:54
Speaker 1: air or atmosphere and now we're slowly clogging it up. Yeah,
43:57
Speaker 1: and forests, you know, we have very little like Dean
44:00
Speaker 1: wild nature left for that reason, so we have to
44:02
Speaker 1: be careful not to do the same things to space.
44:05
Speaker 1: While I'm a big believer in technology and space based
44:08
Speaker 1: technology and all that cool stuff, we have to be
44:10
Speaker 1: very careful and do this in a thoughtful way. Save
44:12
Speaker 1: the night sky. Should we start that movement? Daniel here
44:14
Speaker 1: on the podcast, are you going to be the spearhead
44:16
Speaker 1: for that? Keep dark skies dark, keep stars bright, right,
44:23
Speaker 1: keep space weird, keep camping fun, but somehow make it a
44:28
Speaker 1: a little more comfortable. Please. Yeah. Put some of those
44:31
Speaker 1: matches sized satellites, you know, sprinkle them in the forest
44:34
Speaker 1: and then Daniel will always have a place to lay
44:37
Speaker 1: down on. All those smores do make me tired after
44:39
Speaker 1: a long day of camping, all right, Well, the next
44:42
Speaker 1: time you look up at the nice sky and appreciate
44:44
Speaker 1: the view because maybe some day soon what you'll be
44:47
Speaker 1: seeing are faxed stars basically not real, actual exploding stars
44:53
Speaker 1: out there in the universe. And let's hope that we
44:55
Speaker 1: can learn as much as we can about the nature
44:58
Speaker 1: of the universe before we do change age of the
45:00
Speaker 1: night sky forever. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks
45:03
Speaker 1: for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
45:13
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
45:16
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio or more podcast For
45:19
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.