This paper started with a plot showing the density of satellites in orbit vs. altitude that Aaron Boley (professor at UBC) made. I knew this was probably bad, but what does 10^(-7) objects per cubic km really even mean when everything is flying around at 7km per second? It doesn't sound very scary.
I re-made the plot in a hand-wavy way assuming circular orbits, and looking at it in terms of 1km close-approaches instead, and it was a lot scarier. So scary, it was time to write a paper!
Two incredibly talented students led the project. We figured out a much less hand-wavy analytical way to calculate close approach rates using real data from public catalogues. And then we also ran n-body simulations to double check. They agree very well! And are really scary!!
In the densest part of LEO (Starlink), there are closer than 1km approaches every 15 minutes. 1km sounds like a lot, but remember everything in LEO is moving at 7km PER SECOND
Wooo it's up! New paper alert! I will write a summary thread about this paper tomorrow morning when I'm not quite as mentally exhausted!
"An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions" by Thiele, Heiland, Boley, & Lawler https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09643
Not recommended for reading right before bed. It's real bad up there in Low Earth Orbit, folks.
This paper started with a plot showing the density of satellites in orbit vs. altitude that Aaron Boley (professor at UBC) made. I knew this was probably bad, but what does 10^(-7) objects per cubic km really even mean when everything is flying around at 7km per second? It doesn't sound very scary.
I re-made the plot in a hand-wavy way assuming circular orbits, and looking at it in terms of 1km close-approaches instead, and it was a lot scarier. So scary, it was time to write a paper!
Wooo it's up! New paper alert! I will write a summary thread about this paper tomorrow morning when I'm not quite as mentally exhausted!
"An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions" by Thiele, Heiland, Boley, & Lawler https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09643
Not recommended for reading right before bed. It's real bad up there in Low Earth Orbit, folks.
Crowdsource recommendations please!
I had a lovely science education website hosted on Squarespace, which was very nice to work with, especially as someone who doesn't know a lot about how websites work.
But I'd really like to have this website hosted instead on a server located in Canada, preferably with some nice building interface (wordpress?) and preferably not $$$
(And I am so bad at web stuff that I am probably using the wrong language here... apologies)
I had to count it all up for a stupid university information form thing, so just sharing that I did 61 media interviews this year (more than one a week on average, again, and I probably didn't even write them all down because that's ... a lot of interviews).
I'm guessing that most professors don't do this many interviews?
Hey cool, the Smithsonian Podcast episode interviewing me about space debris is out! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/series/theres-more-to-that/season-2/the-astronomical-problem-of-space-junk/
(disclaimer: I have not yet listened to it!)
Trying to listen to it while I work on other stuff but WOW listening to a podcast that I'm interviewed in is absolutely not relaxing at all.
Hey cool, the Smithsonian Podcast episode interviewing me about space debris is out! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/series/theres-more-to-that/season-2/the-astronomical-problem-of-space-junk/
(disclaimer: I have not yet listened to it!)
Trying to see the bright side:
It was -28C this morning (it was -2C yesterday morning), so at least there were incredibly pretty ice crystals on the heated waterer.
And Starlink trains are a great way to test the Starlink reflection models I built with Aaron Boley and @hannorein@mastodon.social. I have never wanted to be wrong about a scientific prediction before that paper, but it sure looks like we did well. Fucking annoying. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac341b
Relatedly, data centers in orbit are a fucking terrible idea (not the title Scientific American used, but they should have) https://archive.ph/UPkWu
The SA article references a paper that analyses the carbon footprint of orbital data centers, since techbros talk about "unlimited" solar power so they are "green" right? Well, only if you ignore the GIGANTIC carbon footprint of launching them into orbit and burning them up in the atmosphere: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3757892.3757896
Important* paper coming up on the arxiv tonight!! Coincidentally I yelled swear words across the lonely, dark, frozen fields toward a Starlink train that destroyed my sky this morning. (The goats did not care about my yelling, they were too busy eating grain)
*Important = shit-disturbing
It was not a coincidence, there are too fucking many Starlinks
Trying to see the bright side:
It was -28C this morning (it was -2C yesterday morning), so at least there were incredibly pretty ice crystals on the heated waterer.
And Starlink trains are a great way to test the Starlink reflection models I built with Aaron Boley and @hannorein@mastodon.social. I have never wanted to be wrong about a scientific prediction before that paper, but it sure looks like we did well. Fucking annoying. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac341b
Important* paper coming up on the arxiv tonight!! Coincidentally I yelled swear words across the lonely, dark, frozen fields toward a Starlink train that destroyed my sky this morning. (The goats did not care about my yelling, they were too busy eating grain)
*Important = shit-disturbing
It was not a coincidence, there are too fucking many Starlinks
Prof. Sam Lawler