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I wonder for how long the satellites in the Earth's orbit would stay in orbit and be detectable as artificial entities.
by regnull 2y ago
I wonder for how long the satellites in the Earth's orbit would stay in orbit and be detectable as artificial entities.
- hollerith 2y agoThe ones in high orbits would probably remain a very long time. I wonder if NORAD would have detected it if a satellite remained from the previous civilization.
- askvictor 2y agoLike, "in the order of a billion years" very long time?
- hollerith 2y agoI don't know.
- margalabargala 2y agoProbably not. The moon was formed in a massive impact 4.5 billion years ago which for a time, gave the Earth a ring. There would have been large, human-satellite-sized rocks at every orbital altitude. None of these remain. We would expect the number remaining in orbit to decrease asymptotically over time, so if it has decreased to zero (or one, technically) then clearly satellites cannot remain in Earth orbit for many billions of years.
- mr_toad 2y agoEven the orbit of the Moon has shifted significantly over billions of years. Aside from orbital changes, things in space erode. A combination of meteoroid impacts, radiation, solar wind, and ablation will eventually obliterate most artefacts in space.
- aa-jv 2y ago>I wonder if NORAD would have detected it if a satellite remained from the previous civilization. We might've come pretty close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_satellite_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Knight_satellite_conspir...
- jjk166 2y agoThe LAGEOS satellites, which are in an extremely stable orbit and made from dense materials that should maximize their stability, are expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in 8.4 million years.