Satellite Swarms Versus the Night Sky, and other stories
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from WIRED space writer Ramin Skibba. You can read more about the newsletter here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post.
The social isolation of the COVID pandemic sure worked a number on us. There’s something intangible, ineffable, about interacting with old friends after not seeing them—or almost anyone—for a while. I’m writing from the annual Science Writers conference, held this year in Boulder, Colorado, not far from where I grew up. It’s my first such in-person meeting in years. It’s good to catch up with people and to return to the majestic Rockies, too.
Astronomers Decry Bright Satellite Constellations while Amazon Launches A New One
Soon we’ll have tens of thousands of satellites in orbit from SpaceX and Amazon, with their reflected light and radio signals interfering with telescopes, threatening astronomy and transforming the night sky for everyone. What can be done about it? Here’s my take on the current situation. Glad I had the opportunity to write about this.
We’re Looking for Alien Civilizations All Wrong
Long before Jodie Foster listened for alien signals in the movie Contact, astronomers have been searching for E.T.’s call with radio telescopes. But what if aliens didn’t send signals or didn’t use radio? In this piece, I wrote about new approaches worth exploring. I also wrote this month about how alien life on exoplanets may often be simply plants—but nothing like we’ve seen before.
And just to be clear, we haven’t found aliens on Earth yet. NASA’s big UFO report says there’s no evidence of anything of extraterrestrial origin, but it’s important to keep collecting data.
SpaceX Must Fix 63 Issues Before Its Starship Can Fly Again
SpaceX Starship/FAA story (and mention water deluge system too)
The FAA grounds SpaceX’s Starship launches at its Texas site, for now. plus ongoing lawsuit. I believe Musk rushed the damn thing, created a rock tornado, and now all the hard workers at the company, and NASA people who inked contracts with them, are paying the price.
In other writing…
Can we use AI to talk to whales?
That’s a good question, and one we get the answer to soon. The intelligence of whales (and other creatures) raises other questions too: What does it mean to communicate with them, if they use something that doesn’t resemble a “language”? And what should we say to the leviathans? What might they want from us humans? This is a fascinating piece by my WIRED colleague, Camille Bromley. I also recommend Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker piece on the same issues.
On light pollution and the way we talk about the natural world
It turns out that we need both the light and the dark for our health, just as is the case for many animals. But most of our cities and towns illuminate far more spaces than they need to, undermining our relationship with the sky. “Saving the night” isn’t as easy as it might seem though; it’s not as simple as flicking a switch. Interesting essay by Lauren Collee in the LA Review of Books.
In defense of the rat
I admit this headline immediately spurred skepticism in me, but give this story a chance. Apparently we should do the same for the much-maligned rodent. They’re smarter and less pestilent than you might think. I like this piece by J. B. MacKinnon in Hakai magazine, with excellent illustrations by Sarah Gilman.
Uncertain contact
”Discoveries almost never arrive as we think they will, as lightning bolt eurekas,” writes Jaime Green in this essay for Aeon magazine. We might not receive a clear signal from aliens one day, like Elle Arroway does in the movie Contact. Instead, the search for extraterrestrial life might just yield intriguing data about two or three worlds with signatures likely only explainable by aliens, but it will take time to figure out for sure.
Conducting lessons
This is totally different, but I thought it’s an interesting piece about Bradley Cooper learning to conduct like Leonard Bernstein. By Javier C. Hernández in the New York Times.
What I’m reading: Bark, a book of short stories by Lorrie Moore.
Looking back: Five years ago, I wrote this piece in Quanta magazine about Oumuamua, the rare interstellar visitor that careened through our solar system. A few people speculated that it was an extraterrestrial spacecraft, but it turned out to be a weird comet. Still interesting, but no aliens yet.
More about me: I’m the space writer at WIRED magazine, and in 2022 I moved from San Diego to the Bay Area. I used to be a freelance journalist, and before that, an astrophysicist. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net, and on Twitter @raminskibba. I’m also former president of the San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) and on the board of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), though the opinions I express are mine alone. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you’re welcome to subscribe too.