2.b The absolutely most depressing option: there are other civilizations, but technologically advanced civilizations just don't last very long, so the chances that we'd overlap with another civilization nearby and notice their presence is super unlikely.
4. The only civilizations that survive long-term are the ones that realize that exponential growth is unsustainable, and completely reorient to a lower-energy state. This would make them undetectable to us.
3. A galactic civilization exists! But they are avoiding us, either because we're morally reprehensible, or because we're in a kind of "wildlife preserve" (though I find these ideas pretty weirdly human-centric...)
COOL! The spicy article I wrote about satellite pollution is FINALLY published! "Bright satellites are disrupting astronomy research worldwide" in Nature News & Views.
This article required weeks of back-and-forth with the editor, the editor-in-chief, and Nature's lawyers, so I hope that means it's a good one.
During this process, I learned that satellite companies are so powerful and litigious that even giant publishers like Nature are terrified of getting sued. Which is...rather worrying.
I'm talking about gravitational waves and black holes in today's lecture and I just watched a bunch of the simulations here and now I'm feeling slightly anxious about getting swallowed by a black hole.
I just had to update my numbers for a lecture, so here's your periodic reminder: Starlink is now 55% of ALL active satellites in orbit.
And given the recent news about that awful billionaire unilaterally deciding to cut of Starlink internet access to parts of the world whenever he wants to, this is extra important to share. Why did our governments effectively gift Low Earth Orbit to one awful dude? This is so bad.
Once again, I'm reminded of how much the billionaire space race has absolutely destroyed my love of rockets.
10 years ago, I definitely would have been paying close attention to the current giant SpaceX launch. But because I know it's going to be used to launch hundreds of unregulated, unsafe, polluting, for-profit Starlink satellites at once, I just can't look.
Instead of being excited and awestruck by a new gigantic rocket launch, it just makes me want to puke.
Lots of comments on this thread, I'm not going to be able to respond to all of them, sorry. Stuff you can do:
Tell others what is happening! Most people have no idea how terrible the consequences of unregulated development of orbit will be in the very near future.
Don't buy satellite internet! Or if you have to, tell your provider that you care about safety and dark skies
Go enjoy the beautiful night sky! And bring a friend!
And yes, there are about 50-60 tons of meteorite material that gets added to the Earth's atmosphere every day (shooting stars), but that's mostly silicates. This is going to be WAY more than the natural amount of metal added to the upper atmosphere.
But please, FCC, tell me again how Low Earth Orbit is not subject to environmental regulations.
The first thing I have to do every time I give this talk is update the number of Starlink satellites, which always hurts, but it's going to be worse since it's been 3 months...
I'm giving my first colloquium talk on satellite pollution since November tomorrow (online for St Mary's University in Halifax) and I am SO tired of giving this super depressing talk.
So I'm going to to restructure it from "Satellites are ruining the night sky" to "Here are guidelines for sat companies to not destroy the sky, the atmosphere, and orbit." I started this process last time I gave this talk and it definitely felt a lot more positive.
The Starlink Gen2 sats are apparently each 7m x 3m and 1250 kg, the size and almost the same weight as a Ford F-150, in case you were wondering.
But of course, this isn't actually public information that you can find officially anywhere, because private companies are awful, so I'm just gathering this from press releases.
I was searching to find out how much bigger the Starlink Gen2 sats are and found a quote from a letter I wrote to the FCC in 2 different articles that I didn't get interviewed for. Which is...weird. But I guess nice that somebody actually read my letter?
3,633 Starlinks in orbit out of 3,930 launched (failure rate still ~10%, gross)
7,312 total sats in orbit. Well fuck, Starlink is finally about to pass the 50% OF ALL SATELLITES mark.
Think about that: 50% of all satellites are owned by the same ego-maniac billionaire who most of us here on Mastodon are now extremely familiar with. This is so bad.
Just over 3 years ago, I moved to a farm where I can see the Milky Way from my back door. Despite being an astronomer, I've never had that kind of personal access to a dark sky before, and it totally changed my relationship with the sky.
I have always loved looking at the stars, but now I also feel a shared ownership of this natural resource with all of humanity, past, present, and future. This is my sky! Our sky! Our human history!
I moved here in 2019, just as the night sky started to change thanks to Starlink and other satellite companies scrambling to launch as many satellites as possible as quickly as possible.
The number of satellites in orbit has tripled since I moved here, and now almost exactly half of all satellites in orbit are owned and operated by one American private company: SpaceX's Starlink.