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Scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution and that advancement is a driving force behind your modern life. So you have (or will) suffer indir

• loeg 1y ago
  I think your attempted connection between astronomy and modern technological conveniences is pretty thin.
  • ggoo 1y ago
    Does your phone have a camera on it?
• JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution Has it? Destroying the Amazon destroys information. Light pollution simply raises the cost of our accessing it. I suppose one could model this out to some effect on deep-space astronomy's productivity. But if that effect is real--and I've seen zero evidence it is--the solution is a tax on satellite launches to fund more observatories.
  • ggoo 1y ago
    Your response is not in good faith - this is very easy to google.
    • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > this is very easy to google Then it should be easy to cite. Astronomers have complained. But I haven't seen anyone link that to output, including the complaining astronomers.
      • runarberg 1y ago
        Search term: "low earth orbit satellite effects on astronomy" first result: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01904-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01904-2
        • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
          OP said "scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution," past tense. Your source explores a "potentially large rise in global sky brightness," and an "expected...rapid rise in night sky brightness." These are not risks to be ignored. But we haven't even observed or quantified them, which is the first step to weighing mitigation options. (Which could be physical, e.g. lowering satellite reflectivity. Or geographic, putting more observatories are higher latitudes. Or even statistical, by launching space-based calibration telescopes, or building more array-based observatories.)
          • runarberg 1y ago
            This paper shows how in 2023 scientists were already annoyed by this, that they had to accommodate this into their observations, and adjust their measurements accordingly. Suffered (past tense) may be hyperbolic, but it isn’t untrue either. This 2023 paper is also issuing a warning, that if this continues without mitigation, ground based astronomy will be affected. They have the calculations to prove that. What they are particularly concerned about is detecting faint objects inside the radio wave spectrum will be impossible because it will be lost in noise. Now 2 years have passed since this paper was published, and we still don’t have mitigations for ground based radio astronomy. I seriously doubt we will ever have one. And that the predictions of worse astronomy will become true, externalized into a type of internet you could have gotten with traditional cable, fiber optics, or a 5G radio tower. EDIT: > But we haven't even observed or quantified them, which is the first step to weighing mitigation options. The paper I cited does that. In the abstract they say: > We present calculations of the potentially large rise in global sky brightness from space objects in low Earth orbit, including qualitative and quantitative assessments of how professional astronomy may be affected. and inside the paper they devote a whole chapter (chapter 5) to possible mitigations which is titled: > Mitigations: potential gains and risks