8 ms·

Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

130 points by altacc 3y ago

altacc 3y ago
Link to paper: https://arxiv.org/html/2312.09329v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2312.09329v1
ejb999 3y ago
[flagged]
- adrian_b 3y ago
  I do not agree that this study can be dismissed so easily. The arguments about the possible influence of the satellite remains are plausible. This is something that nobody has thought about before, so it is normal that it cannot be known yet whether this will ever be a serious problem or not. Nonetheless, like for any other potential source of pollution, future studies are needed to monitor the effects of end-of-life satellites and determine whether they are important enough to warrant some regulatory action, or not.
  - mnw21cam 3y ago
    Agreed. It's absolutely appropriate for all of those tentative words to be used in this paper. It's raising a very interesting and potentially very important notion, and that is the merit of the paper. Sometimes the merit of a paper can be the evidence that is presented, but it doesn't need to be the case. This one is a very clear call for investigation. It's also an important part of academic publishing to be very clear when evidence is lacking - part of the point of doctoral training is to train the student to not claim something is true where there isn't sufficient evidence. If you're in your final examination for your doctorate and you are asked a question that you don't know the answer to, it's absolutely appropriate to respond with "I don't know". In fact, some examiners will deliberately ask such a question to check that you will respond like that.
- boxed 3y ago
  Svante Arrhenius calculated the problem with CO2 in the atmosphere in 1896. I hope we don't wait that long to take modelling seriously the next time we screw something up.
- TomSwirly 3y ago
  Sarcasm is never a good look. The article presents a serious argument as to why this is a possible danger. You don't try to engage with the article, or present a counter-argument. Given the terrible consequences of weakening the Earth's magnetic field, "We don't know for sure it will happen so we simply shouldn't worry about it," seems unwise.
- orbital-decay 3y ago
  > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. This line is in the site guidelines for a reason. The concern is valid, and the paper just calls for additional research.
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  > Wake me up when there is real evidence. Real evidence would only be there after it already happened. Which would be too late to do anything about it.
lolc 3y ago
I for one would like to see the satellites modified with a heat shield so they could punch through and hit a designated deorbit zone. I would even offer my backyard, but I fear it's too small. Wouldn't that be the ultimate tourist attraction? "Witness the next deorbit round tomorrow at Crater Park Observatory!"
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Disney corp could even pay to have regularly scheduled "shooting stars" over their parks.
  - phkahler 3y ago
    I've thought about the idea of launching a whole payload full of sand and marbles in a way that produces a show like that over a wide area. But now it's getting nearly impossible with so many satellites up there.
- ploynog 3y ago
  Wouldn't that be some form of kinetic orbital bombardment. Not sure that you want to have this in your backyard.
  - lucioperca 3y ago
    Why not use this energy for mining? What is the terminal velocity anyhow?
  - Anarch157a 3y ago
    It wouldn't. Small objects, like satellites, decelerate to terminal velocity. The impact of one of those would be the same as if they fell from an aeroplane.
  - lolc 3y ago
    I'm sure I want it. Unfortunately my house is too close to the center of my backyard. My neighbours are too close too. Any stray parts would cut into the proceeds of ticket sales to the bunker at the center where you can watch live streams of the parcels hitting on top of you.
thesnide 3y ago
That it is true or not is irrelevant. Fact is that it will a endless quarrel between scientists, until enough time has passed, where it is either: * forgotten as the problem was not real * too late as the problem was real History will repeat itself subtly, that's the only certainty
- Retric 3y ago
  Humanity has actually solved many issues brought up by scientists before they caused drastic harm. A few that come to mind are acid rain, smog, DDT, and CFC’s. Catalytic converters in aggregate costs something like 1/2 a trillion dollars for clean air. We don’t hear about Acid rain because sulfur dioxide emissions are down well over 90% thus dealing with the actual problem. Even CO2 emissions are well below the “do nothing” projections. Instead of being hopeless humanity has a long track record of some basic cost benefit analysis and then mitigating issues.
  - goku12 3y ago
    That depends on the profits. The problem is solved only if the cost of fighting regulations (misinformation, lobbying, discrediting, defaming, bribing and sabotage) is less than the profits people make by causing the problem in the first place. There are several examples of this - but none more obvious than the climate catastrophe.
    - Retric 3y ago
      The worlds CO2 PPM would be significantly higher if nobody had done anything to mitigate the issue. America’s per capita CO2 emissions are down 6.6 tons (31%) per person just from 2000. Last year that saved ~2.2 Billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. People look at China’s growing emissions and get concerned, but just imagine if they still got 81% of their electricity from coal instead of already getting ~2.2 TWh of electricity per year from renewables. Battery electric cars already make up 26% of new cars sales in China and those cars are powered by an increasingly green grid. Clearly climate change is still a major issue, but it’s a major issue being actively addressed.
lupusreal 3y ago
Sometimes it seems like some people have a pathological need to be a doomer about any human activity. See also: "Kessler syndrome" doomerism about LEO satellites, the debris of which would only be a concern for a few years.
- bilsbie 3y ago
  Almost every technology gets assigned its own existential crisis. I’m not sure what that’s about. (I trace it all back to Jurassic park. It trained an entire generation to be afraid of technology.)
  - palata 3y ago
    > It trained an entire generation to be afraid of technology. Apparently not enough, given where we're headed.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      It's still weird to me how quickly and completely discourse around privacy on the internet shifted from "who are these scary anonymous internet people in chat rooms and why you shouldn't tell them anything" to "routinely publicly post just about everything about your life"
  - geerlingguy 3y ago
    I grew up watching Jurassic Park, and the main takeaway was technology is amazing, but many people will abuse it to get what they want without any regard for potential devastating consequences, often ignoring any logical argument against it if they've already found a path towards profitability.
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      I think the book is better, it stresses the gap between innovation (particularly driven by startup capitalism) and government regulation. Per the book, when scientists are driven by a profit motive they have an incentive to be secretive to keep their competitors in the dark, and naturally, also keep government regulators in the dark. This mirrors a common observation on HN, that American tech startups profit by finding ways around traditional regulation (Amazon getting around local sales tax, Uber getting around taxi medallion systems, electric scooter rental deploying into cities faster than their sidewalk clutter can be regulated, etc.)
mhandley 3y ago
The paper from this article says that only 450kg of charged material from meteorites enters the relevant part of the atmosphere each year. Yet the total amount of meteorites entering is somewhere in the range of 10^7 to 10^9kg per year [0]. I know the really small stuff slows down too quickly to burn up completely, but does anyone know why such a small fraction of the meteorites burns up in this region compared to satellites? Or is that 450kg number just wrong? [0] https://www2.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm https://www2.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts....
- mlindner 3y ago
  The number sounds wrong. Most meteorites are made of conductive material. And I've never heard of small meteors not burning up. The energy still has to go somewhere.
- soco 3y ago
  But burning up doesn't make them disappear - the resulted compounds will still be in the atmosphere. Doesn't that matter?
  - Kerbonut 3y ago
    That’s tomorrow’s problem! /s
  - simne 3y ago
    > the resulted compounds will still be in the atmosphere Why you think so?
- martinclayton 3y ago
  Bottom end of the range: 10^7Kg per year would be about 27.5 tonnes per day. The article references another piece[1] where they quote 54t per day, a similar number. There's then an estimate made of how much of that is Aluminium - 1%. I guess the author ran the 54t / 100 calc and came up with 0.45 instead of 0.54 ... a simple typo. The key point is most of the natural stuff doesn't hang around up there. Top end (10^9 Kg) of the range we get about 2750t per day natural origin. And at 1% for Aluminium that's 27.5t per day. That number is not far off the 29t estimated daily burn for the full Starlink v2 constellation they quote. Also: I notice that the Lodders article focussed specifically on Aluminium as it had been proposed as a method for geoengineering albedo. There are other metals in the natural origin material, and I don't see why we should exclude those from affecting the Van Allen belts - is it only Aluminium that's bad? Comparing the Starlink burn to the Van Allen material mass seems irrelevant when there's perhaps a few hundred tonnes per day of naturally arriving metals around too. It's not obvious to me this topic can be waved away as not an issue though. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8137964/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8137964/
mlindner 3y ago
The study in question HAS NOT been peer reviewed. https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09329 https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09329 Edit: And I'll add arxiv doesn't really vet the content beyond minimal moderation. If it sounds scientific then you can get on arxiv. https://info.arxiv.org/help/submit/index.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/submit/index.html I don't think people should pay much attention until that happens. This person has never published a paper before and she's the CEO of a company selling "solar flare insurance". https://www.f6s.com/company/astroplane https://www.f6s.com/company/astroplane With a company name that sounds like "astral plane"... http://astroplane.org/ http://astroplane.org/ > From an astrophysics perspective, “Space Katrina” may be the only thing any of us should be working on. Even a small solar event could dismantle the satellites and electronics that now determine our entire lives. If we do not work to mitigate such a catastrophic event, we risk returning to a pre-technological era or worse. Exoplanet research commonly shows that solar flare events often blow off planetary atmospheres, evaporate oceans, and sterilize lithospheres. The immediate threat is a 2nd Carrington event that demolishes a large array of satellites and power grids. Uhhhh what? I'm quite sure we don't have any evidence of exoplanets having their atmosphers blown off, their oceans evaporated (we haven't even really found oceans), nor have we found any life to sterilize. And the thought of a Carrington event putting us back to a "pre-technological era" is the junk I see out of clickbait stuff off youtube, not what I'd expect to hear from a scientist.
- b800h 3y ago
  Thank you! Important context!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- simne 3y ago
  > The study in question HAS NOT been peer reviewed You first seen this!
h2odragon 3y ago
Earth's magnetic field != ionosphere > Here it will be shown that the mass of the conductive particles left behind from worldwide distribution of re-entry satellites is already billions of times greater than the mass of the Van Allen Belts. made me say "really?" so i went and found this: https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/RBSP7.pdf https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/RBSP7.pdf That estimates the mass of the Van Allen belts at 11 grams Which makes me wonder about the disparity in energy levels between the classes of particles and if its a case of talking about icebergs vs superheated steam. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  And conductive particles != charged particles. It seems they're using different kinds of particle counts for the mass of the Van Allen belts and the mass of the satellites and meteors. The high-energy dissociated subatomic particles in the Van Allen belts do not form from decaying meteorites or satellites unless you put those meteorites and satellites in a particle accelerator. And further, the 'textbook undergraduate physics problem' of finding the magnetic field outside a conductive shell assumes that infinitesimal concentrations of aerosolized conductive particles form a fully conductive shield. Yes, I understand that when heated to a plasma these concentrations matter, but it's disingenuous to compare them in the way the article does.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
First thought that struck me was the Star Trek Episode where the scientist found out Warp Drive was weakening space-time, so that it could 'rip open'. The scientist were shunned, but eventually did prove it. But even then, the Federation could not "stop" using warp drive. It was one of first instances I saw that even in Star Trek, with all the high ideals, once confronted with something that would shut down progress and travel, they also just kept on going. They didn't do anything about it. We can't even fantasize about humans coming together to solve a civilization ending threat. Stories where we do come together, we reject, they seem un-natural, they are deemed un-realistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_of_Nature_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)#:~:text=%22Force%20of%20Nature%22%20is%20the,episode%20of%20the%20seventh%20season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_of_Nature_(Star_Trek:_Th....
- vmfunction 3y ago
  Yeah humans are not too good at gracefully paradigm shifting. That is why in academia people usually wait for the old ones to die off before something truly new can be introduced. I'm not singling out academia, this is pretty much all over the the place. This Star Trek just to show no matter how technologically advanced we are, we are still don't like go out side of our world view. Kind makes one thing should we all be focusing on technological advances, or how we can more gracefully shifting our paradigm, instead of waiting for old guys to die off.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > can't even fantasize about humans coming together to solve a civilization ending threat You'll enjoy the Three Body Problem trilogy.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Man. I did read it. And it was super depressing and scary. The first book was really calm compared to how dark they got later.
- ta1243 3y ago
  It was a realistic response, and an episode years ahead of its time in its climate change allegory (several years ahead of an inconvienent truth for example) Alas aside from a couple of references later in S7 of TNG, trek then decided to handwave a technical solution in the background and we never heard of the problem again. Indeed Trek in later years (Picard season 2) also said that climate change in the Trek universe was solved by magical microbes from Europa.
JohnCClarke 3y ago
If metallic dust from burnt up satellites can affect the magnetosphere on earth, could we do the same to create a magnetosphere on mars?
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  NASA has a rough plan for that. Apparently it's surprisingly "simple", if one can say that about doing industrial construction on another planet.
- okokwhatever 3y ago
  mmm... interesting. But wouldn't be a problem for rockets to land there if metallic dust is used to generate the shield?
- wongarsu 3y ago
  In principle it might do something if they mostly turn into charged particles, but it's unlikely to amount to much. It only takes a bit of conductive metal to influence a magnetic field. Creating one of significant scale is much more difficult, and requires more specific circumstances than the metal being merely conductive.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Not really. Mars doesn't have an active magnetic core. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  Aiui, you don't actually need a magnetosphere to get many of the beneficial effects on atmospheric retention, you just need the bit that's directly between you and the sun. Apparently that's a lot easier.
_obviously 3y ago
[flagged]
znlfl2 3y ago
[flagged]
- Retr0id 3y ago
  Thanks, ChatGPT
vmfunction 3y ago
Hmm, maybe this is what is cauing this problem with north pole? https://www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-north-pole-follows-unusual-path-races-towards-siberia-1789823 https://www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-north-pole-follows-u...
- phkahler 3y ago
  No, that's because Putin is a super-villain and is stealing the north pole.
  - dr-detroit 3y ago
    [dead]
insane_dreamer 3y ago
Whether this researcher is correct or not, it certainly seems like the potential side effects of putting such large quantities of electronics and conductive particles into orbit is something that we should be seriously studying sooner rather than later. Are there inter-governmental agencies working on this problem? The other thing that came to me is maybe companies like Starlink should be required to retrieve their satellites when they reach EOL rather than let them disintegrate.
OrvalWintermute 3y ago
I think this is less likely to be a problem than we think, because of space refurbishment programs that include the capability of gathering satellites, repurposing/refueling, or aggregating them for future use. Here is an example of one of those missions: OSAM-1 https://www.nasa.gov/mission/on-orbit-servicing-assembly-and-manufacturing-1/ https://www.nasa.gov/mission/on-orbit-servicing-assembly-and...
pfdietz 3y ago
Reducing the charged particles in the magnetosphere != weakening the Earth's magnetic field. The energy in the Earth's magnetic field (above the surface) is about the same as the yield of a 200 megaton bomb. It is produced by currents deep in the Earth, in the core; there is no way satellites could have any effect on that. Now, getting rid of energetic particles trapped in the magnetosphere is a different question. And that would be a very useful and positive thing to do, as it would make space safer for both satellites and astronauts. Also, ionosphere != magnetosphere.
- throwaway11460 3y ago
  What a megaproject! Has anyone tried to make a formal plan of this (like there are for other speculative projects)?
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Yes, people have looked into this, but I don't have many details. One proposal was to put charged tethers into orbit in the magnetosphere. Particles would be deflected by them, some into the loss cone where they'd enter the atmosphere and be removed.
hobscoop 3y ago
Plasma physicist here. While this is an idea worthy of study, the answer to the (spaceweatherarchive.com) title question is "no". The researcher's article makes simple errors in what they call " undergraduate physics" (electricity and magnetism), in basic plasma physics, and in basic algebra. As one straightforward example, their estimate of the (change in) Debye length ignores that their equations (2 and 3) are in terms of the square of the Debye length, so the purported change should be only sqrt as large. As another example, it's not clear why the author focuses on aluminium in the upper atmosphere, or worries about small particles of aluminium shielding the earth's magnetic field from space. While a conductive shell can shield a changing magnetic field, it needs to have long-range conductive paths. A mesh has this property, but a mesh is not the same as a suspended dispersed powder, even if the individual powder particles are conductive on the nano-scale.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Natsu 3y ago
  That said, we're supposedly overdue for a field reversal, which may make the whole field go out on its own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal So satellites or no, something might happen to it anyway.
- simne 3y ago
  You first plasma physicist in this topic. I'm electronics engineer, but learn plasma physics also, so I also see very obvious mistakes. But I also have ballistics knowledge and know about Sun wind and light pressure on particles, and I bet, just light pressure is enough to clear space from powder in very short time. Even if threat is real, will need just few months to clear space from dust. Simple physics suggests, macroobjects, like satellites of classic size (kilograms and tens centimeters) could for long time be on orbits, because high ratio of mass to square, but microparticles (micrometer scale or less), have much less mass to square ratio, so light just blow them away.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
people seem to vastly overestimate the size of satellite swarms relative to the available space around the earth... imagine asking a similar question about radio towers of wifi routers, which are much more numerous
simne 3y ago
Question to all here: anybody (except me) learn plasma physics and understand what author write about? Only I see so obvious mistakes in physics? 1. Debye length DECREASE is harmful, but he talks about INCREASE. 2. When aluminium vapor become conductor? Why aluminium should be vapor there? And why author think, all these THOUSAND tons of vapor should lift to 400km from 60-70km where satellites really burning?

130 points by altacc 3y ago

altacc 3y ago

Link to paper: https://arxiv.org/html/2312.09329v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2312.09329v1

ejb999 3y ago

[flagged]

adrian_b 3y ago
I do not agree that this study can be dismissed so easily. The arguments about the possible influence of the satellite remains are plausible. This is something that nobody has thought about before, so it is normal that it cannot be known yet whether this will ever be a serious problem or not. Nonetheless, like for any other potential source of pollution, future studies are needed to monitor the effects of end-of-life satellites and determine whether they are important enough to warrant some regulatory action, or not.
- mnw21cam 3y ago
  Agreed. It's absolutely appropriate for all of those tentative words to be used in this paper. It's raising a very interesting and potentially very important notion, and that is the merit of the paper. Sometimes the merit of a paper can be the evidence that is presented, but it doesn't need to be the case. This one is a very clear call for investigation. It's also an important part of academic publishing to be very clear when evidence is lacking - part of the point of doctoral training is to train the student to not claim something is true where there isn't sufficient evidence. If you're in your final examination for your doctorate and you are asked a question that you don't know the answer to, it's absolutely appropriate to respond with "I don't know". In fact, some examiners will deliberately ask such a question to check that you will respond like that.
boxed 3y ago
Svante Arrhenius calculated the problem with CO2 in the atmosphere in 1896. I hope we don't wait that long to take modelling seriously the next time we screw something up.
TomSwirly 3y ago
Sarcasm is never a good look. The article presents a serious argument as to why this is a possible danger. You don't try to engage with the article, or present a counter-argument. Given the terrible consequences of weakening the Earth's magnetic field, "We don't know for sure it will happen so we simply shouldn't worry about it," seems unwise.
orbital-decay 3y ago
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. This line is in the site guidelines for a reason. The concern is valid, and the paper just calls for additional research.
empath-nirvana 3y ago
> Wake me up when there is real evidence. Real evidence would only be there after it already happened. Which would be too late to do anything about it.

lolc 3y ago

I for one would like to see the satellites modified with a heat shield so they could punch through and hit a designated deorbit zone. I would even offer my backyard, but I fear it's too small. Wouldn't that be the ultimate tourist attraction? "Witness the next deorbit round tomorrow at Crater Park Observatory!"

lupusreal 3y ago
Disney corp could even pay to have regularly scheduled "shooting stars" over their parks.
- phkahler 3y ago
  I've thought about the idea of launching a whole payload full of sand and marbles in a way that produces a show like that over a wide area. But now it's getting nearly impossible with so many satellites up there.
ploynog 3y ago
Wouldn't that be some form of kinetic orbital bombardment. Not sure that you want to have this in your backyard.
- lucioperca 3y ago
  Why not use this energy for mining? What is the terminal velocity anyhow?
- Anarch157a 3y ago
  It wouldn't. Small objects, like satellites, decelerate to terminal velocity. The impact of one of those would be the same as if they fell from an aeroplane.
- lolc 3y ago
  I'm sure I want it. Unfortunately my house is too close to the center of my backyard. My neighbours are too close too. Any stray parts would cut into the proceeds of ticket sales to the bunker at the center where you can watch live streams of the parcels hitting on top of you.

thesnide 3y ago

That it is true or not is irrelevant. Fact is that it will a endless quarrel between scientists, until enough time has passed, where it is either: * forgotten as the problem was not real * too late as the problem was real History will repeat itself subtly, that's the only certainty

Retric 3y ago
Humanity has actually solved many issues brought up by scientists before they caused drastic harm. A few that come to mind are acid rain, smog, DDT, and CFC’s. Catalytic converters in aggregate costs something like 1/2 a trillion dollars for clean air. We don’t hear about Acid rain because sulfur dioxide emissions are down well over 90% thus dealing with the actual problem. Even CO2 emissions are well below the “do nothing” projections. Instead of being hopeless humanity has a long track record of some basic cost benefit analysis and then mitigating issues.
- goku12 3y ago
  That depends on the profits. The problem is solved only if the cost of fighting regulations (misinformation, lobbying, discrediting, defaming, bribing and sabotage) is less than the profits people make by causing the problem in the first place. There are several examples of this - but none more obvious than the climate catastrophe.
  - Retric 3y ago
    The worlds CO2 PPM would be significantly higher if nobody had done anything to mitigate the issue. America’s per capita CO2 emissions are down 6.6 tons (31%) per person just from 2000. Last year that saved ~2.2 Billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. People look at China’s growing emissions and get concerned, but just imagine if they still got 81% of their electricity from coal instead of already getting ~2.2 TWh of electricity per year from renewables. Battery electric cars already make up 26% of new cars sales in China and those cars are powered by an increasingly green grid. Clearly climate change is still a major issue, but it’s a major issue being actively addressed.

lupusreal 3y ago

Sometimes it seems like some people have a pathological need to be a doomer about any human activity. See also: "Kessler syndrome" doomerism about LEO satellites, the debris of which would only be a concern for a few years.

bilsbie 3y ago
Almost every technology gets assigned its own existential crisis. I’m not sure what that’s about. (I trace it all back to Jurassic park. It trained an entire generation to be afraid of technology.)
- palata 3y ago
  > It trained an entire generation to be afraid of technology. Apparently not enough, given where we're headed.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    It's still weird to me how quickly and completely discourse around privacy on the internet shifted from "who are these scary anonymous internet people in chat rooms and why you shouldn't tell them anything" to "routinely publicly post just about everything about your life"
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  I grew up watching Jurassic Park, and the main takeaway was technology is amazing, but many people will abuse it to get what they want without any regard for potential devastating consequences, often ignoring any logical argument against it if they've already found a path towards profitability.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    I think the book is better, it stresses the gap between innovation (particularly driven by startup capitalism) and government regulation. Per the book, when scientists are driven by a profit motive they have an incentive to be secretive to keep their competitors in the dark, and naturally, also keep government regulators in the dark. This mirrors a common observation on HN, that American tech startups profit by finding ways around traditional regulation (Amazon getting around local sales tax, Uber getting around taxi medallion systems, electric scooter rental deploying into cities faster than their sidewalk clutter can be regulated, etc.)

mhandley 3y ago

The paper from this article says that only 450kg of charged material from meteorites enters the relevant part of the atmosphere each year. Yet the total amount of meteorites entering is somewhere in the range of 10^7 to 10^9kg per year [0]. I know the really small stuff slows down too quickly to burn up completely, but does anyone know why such a small fraction of the meteorites burns up in this region compared to satellites? Or is that 450kg number just wrong? [0] https://www2.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts.htm https://www2.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/impacts....

mlindner 3y ago
The number sounds wrong. Most meteorites are made of conductive material. And I've never heard of small meteors not burning up. The energy still has to go somewhere.
soco 3y ago
But burning up doesn't make them disappear - the resulted compounds will still be in the atmosphere. Doesn't that matter?
- Kerbonut 3y ago
  That’s tomorrow’s problem! /s
- simne 3y ago
  > the resulted compounds will still be in the atmosphere Why you think so?
martinclayton 3y ago
Bottom end of the range: 10^7Kg per year would be about 27.5 tonnes per day. The article references another piece[1] where they quote 54t per day, a similar number. There's then an estimate made of how much of that is Aluminium - 1%. I guess the author ran the 54t / 100 calc and came up with 0.45 instead of 0.54 ... a simple typo. The key point is most of the natural stuff doesn't hang around up there. Top end (10^9 Kg) of the range we get about 2750t per day natural origin. And at 1% for Aluminium that's 27.5t per day. That number is not far off the 29t estimated daily burn for the full Starlink v2 constellation they quote. Also: I notice that the Lodders article focussed specifically on Aluminium as it had been proposed as a method for geoengineering albedo. There are other metals in the natural origin material, and I don't see why we should exclude those from affecting the Van Allen belts - is it only Aluminium that's bad? Comparing the Starlink burn to the Van Allen material mass seems irrelevant when there's perhaps a few hundred tonnes per day of naturally arriving metals around too. It's not obvious to me this topic can be waved away as not an issue though. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8137964/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8137964/

mlindner 3y ago

The study in question HAS NOT been peer reviewed. https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09329 https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09329 Edit: And I'll add arxiv doesn't really vet the content beyond minimal moderation. If it sounds scientific then you can get on arxiv. https://info.arxiv.org/help/submit/index.html https://info.arxiv.org/help/submit/index.html I don't think people should pay much attention until that happens. This person has never published a paper before and she's the CEO of a company selling "solar flare insurance". https://www.f6s.com/company/astroplane https://www.f6s.com/company/astroplane With a company name that sounds like "astral plane"... http://astroplane.org/ http://astroplane.org/ > From an astrophysics perspective, “Space Katrina” may be the only thing any of us should be working on. Even a small solar event could dismantle the satellites and electronics that now determine our entire lives. If we do not work to mitigate such a catastrophic event, we risk returning to a pre-technological era or worse. Exoplanet research commonly shows that solar flare events often blow off planetary atmospheres, evaporate oceans, and sterilize lithospheres. The immediate threat is a 2nd Carrington event that demolishes a large array of satellites and power grids. Uhhhh what? I'm quite sure we don't have any evidence of exoplanets having their atmosphers blown off, their oceans evaporated (we haven't even really found oceans), nor have we found any life to sterilize. And the thought of a Carrington event putting us back to a "pre-technological era" is the junk I see out of clickbait stuff off youtube, not what I'd expect to hear from a scientist.

b800h 3y ago
Thank you! Important context!
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simne 3y ago
> The study in question HAS NOT been peer reviewed You first seen this!

h2odragon 3y ago

Earth's magnetic field != ionosphere > Here it will be shown that the mass of the conductive particles left behind from worldwide distribution of re-entry satellites is already billions of times greater than the mass of the Van Allen Belts. made me say "really?" so i went and found this: https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/RBSP7.pdf https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/RBSP7.pdf That estimates the mass of the Van Allen belts at 11 grams Which makes me wonder about the disparity in energy levels between the classes of particles and if its a case of talking about icebergs vs superheated steam. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford

LeifCarrotson 3y ago
And conductive particles != charged particles. It seems they're using different kinds of particle counts for the mass of the Van Allen belts and the mass of the satellites and meteors. The high-energy dissociated subatomic particles in the Van Allen belts do not form from decaying meteorites or satellites unless you put those meteorites and satellites in a particle accelerator. And further, the 'textbook undergraduate physics problem' of finding the magnetic field outside a conductive shell assumes that infinitesimal concentrations of aerosolized conductive particles form a fully conductive shield. Yes, I understand that when heated to a plasma these concentrations matter, but it's disingenuous to compare them in the way the article does.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

First thought that struck me was the Star Trek Episode where the scientist found out Warp Drive was weakening space-time, so that it could 'rip open'. The scientist were shunned, but eventually did prove it. But even then, the Federation could not "stop" using warp drive. It was one of first instances I saw that even in Star Trek, with all the high ideals, once confronted with something that would shut down progress and travel, they also just kept on going. They didn't do anything about it. We can't even fantasize about humans coming together to solve a civilization ending threat. Stories where we do come together, we reject, they seem un-natural, they are deemed un-realistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_of_Nature_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)#:~:text=%22Force%20of%20Nature%22%20is%20the,episode%20of%20the%20seventh%20season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_of_Nature_(Star_Trek:_Th....

vmfunction 3y ago
Yeah humans are not too good at gracefully paradigm shifting. That is why in academia people usually wait for the old ones to die off before something truly new can be introduced. I'm not singling out academia, this is pretty much all over the the place. This Star Trek just to show no matter how technologically advanced we are, we are still don't like go out side of our world view. Kind makes one thing should we all be focusing on technological advances, or how we can more gracefully shifting our paradigm, instead of waiting for old guys to die off.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> can't even fantasize about humans coming together to solve a civilization ending threat You'll enjoy the Three Body Problem trilogy.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Man. I did read it. And it was super depressing and scary. The first book was really calm compared to how dark they got later.
ta1243 3y ago
It was a realistic response, and an episode years ahead of its time in its climate change allegory (several years ahead of an inconvienent truth for example) Alas aside from a couple of references later in S7 of TNG, trek then decided to handwave a technical solution in the background and we never heard of the problem again. Indeed Trek in later years (Picard season 2) also said that climate change in the Trek universe was solved by magical microbes from Europa.

JohnCClarke 3y ago

If metallic dust from burnt up satellites can affect the magnetosphere on earth, could we do the same to create a magnetosphere on mars?

actionfromafar 3y ago
NASA has a rough plan for that. Apparently it's surprisingly "simple", if one can say that about doing industrial construction on another planet.
okokwhatever 3y ago
mmm... interesting. But wouldn't be a problem for rockets to land there if metallic dust is used to generate the shield?
wongarsu 3y ago
In principle it might do something if they mostly turn into charged particles, but it's unlikely to amount to much. It only takes a bit of conductive metal to influence a magnetic field. Creating one of significant scale is much more difficult, and requires more specific circumstances than the metal being merely conductive.
kwhitefoot 3y ago
Not really. Mars doesn't have an active magnetic core. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_Mars
FeepingCreature 3y ago
Aiui, you don't actually need a magnetosphere to get many of the beneficial effects on atmospheric retention, you just need the bit that's directly between you and the sun. Apparently that's a lot easier.

_obviously 3y ago

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znlfl2 3y ago

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Retr0id 3y ago
Thanks, ChatGPT

vmfunction 3y ago

Hmm, maybe this is what is cauing this problem with north pole? https://www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-north-pole-follows-unusual-path-races-towards-siberia-1789823 https://www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-north-pole-follows-u...

phkahler 3y ago
No, that's because Putin is a super-villain and is stealing the north pole.
- dr-detroit 3y ago
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insane_dreamer 3y ago

Whether this researcher is correct or not, it certainly seems like the potential side effects of putting such large quantities of electronics and conductive particles into orbit is something that we should be seriously studying sooner rather than later. Are there inter-governmental agencies working on this problem? The other thing that came to me is maybe companies like Starlink should be required to retrieve their satellites when they reach EOL rather than let them disintegrate.

OrvalWintermute 3y ago

I think this is less likely to be a problem than we think, because of space refurbishment programs that include the capability of gathering satellites, repurposing/refueling, or aggregating them for future use. Here is an example of one of those missions: OSAM-1 https://www.nasa.gov/mission/on-orbit-servicing-assembly-and-manufacturing-1/ https://www.nasa.gov/mission/on-orbit-servicing-assembly-and...

pfdietz 3y ago

Reducing the charged particles in the magnetosphere != weakening the Earth's magnetic field. The energy in the Earth's magnetic field (above the surface) is about the same as the yield of a 200 megaton bomb. It is produced by currents deep in the Earth, in the core; there is no way satellites could have any effect on that. Now, getting rid of energetic particles trapped in the magnetosphere is a different question. And that would be a very useful and positive thing to do, as it would make space safer for both satellites and astronauts. Also, ionosphere != magnetosphere.

throwaway11460 3y ago
What a megaproject! Has anyone tried to make a formal plan of this (like there are for other speculative projects)?
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Yes, people have looked into this, but I don't have many details. One proposal was to put charged tethers into orbit in the magnetosphere. Particles would be deflected by them, some into the loss cone where they'd enter the atmosphere and be removed.

hobscoop 3y ago

Plasma physicist here. While this is an idea worthy of study, the answer to the (spaceweatherarchive.com) title question is "no". The researcher's article makes simple errors in what they call " undergraduate physics" (electricity and magnetism), in basic plasma physics, and in basic algebra. As one straightforward example, their estimate of the (change in) Debye length ignores that their equations (2 and 3) are in terms of the square of the Debye length, so the purported change should be only sqrt as large. As another example, it's not clear why the author focuses on aluminium in the upper atmosphere, or worries about small particles of aluminium shielding the earth's magnetic field from space. While a conductive shell can shield a changing magnetic field, it needs to have long-range conductive paths. A mesh has this property, but a mesh is not the same as a suspended dispersed powder, even if the individual powder particles are conductive on the nano-scale.

deleted 3y ago
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Natsu 3y ago
That said, we're supposedly overdue for a field reversal, which may make the whole field go out on its own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal So satellites or no, something might happen to it anyway.
simne 3y ago
You first plasma physicist in this topic. I'm electronics engineer, but learn plasma physics also, so I also see very obvious mistakes. But I also have ballistics knowledge and know about Sun wind and light pressure on particles, and I bet, just light pressure is enough to clear space from powder in very short time. Even if threat is real, will need just few months to clear space from dust. Simple physics suggests, macroobjects, like satellites of classic size (kilograms and tens centimeters) could for long time be on orbits, because high ratio of mass to square, but microparticles (micrometer scale or less), have much less mass to square ratio, so light just blow them away.

micromacrofoot 3y ago

people seem to vastly overestimate the size of satellite swarms relative to the available space around the earth... imagine asking a similar question about radio towers of wifi routers, which are much more numerous

simne 3y ago

Question to all here: anybody (except me) learn plasma physics and understand what author write about? Only I see so obvious mistakes in physics? 1. Debye length DECREASE is harmful, but he talks about INCREASE. 2. When aluminium vapor become conductor? Why aluminium should be vapor there? And why author think, all these THOUSAND tons of vapor should lift to 400km from 60-70km where satellites really burning?