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Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

spaceweatherarchive.com

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Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#21

Post by mlindner »

The study in question HAS NOT been peer reviewed. 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

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 With a company name that sounds like "astral plane"...

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.

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#22

Post by mlindner »

mhandley wrote: post #20

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 sa…

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.

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#23

Post by mnw21cam »

adrian_b wrote: post #6
ejb999 wrote: post #3

[flagged]

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…

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.

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#24

Post by mlindner »

zeristor wrote: post #18
lolc wrote: post #4

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!"

Nifty idea. But don’t satellites have toxic components? While most of it will be burnt up some bits get to the ground. Satellites are made from material, and can’t be safely disassembled. Rentry is uncontrolled incineration, depending on a large part of the pollutants being diluted across the sky, and the ground and water on which they fall. Background levels would rise.

> But don’t satellites have toxic components?

That depends on how you define "toxic". If you mean toxic fuels, most do not.

However the idea is just terribly impracticable. Heat shields are heavy and more than that you would need to design your satellite around the heat shield. It would need to be able to fold up like origami into the heat shield. You also need to add extra fuel to perform the targed re-entry. This whole idea is bad.

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#25

Post by b800h »

mlindner wrote: post #21

The study in question HAS NOT been peer reviewed. 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 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 "sol…

Thank you! Important context!

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#26

Post by Retric »

goku12 wrote: post #17
Retric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

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.

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.

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#27

Post by h2odragon »

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

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

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#28

Post by FrustratedMonky »

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:_Th....

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#29

Post by TomSwirly »

lupusreal wrote: post #10

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Do you have some specific refutation to the arguments made in this article? Otherwise, it's unclear what the value of your comment is - you could literally make it about any claim of any side effect of any technology!

Re: Will satellite megaconstellations weaken earth's magnetic field?

#30

Post by mlindner »

lupusreal wrote: post #10

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.

Indeed. Problems are things to be solved, not a reason to put up blockers preventing things from happening.

Kessler syndrome is even greatly misunderstood because of movies like Gravity. People think of it as one satellite getting kicked over and then there's a sudden chain reaction of satellite after satellite being destroyed in the time span of hours/days. When in fact it's likely that Kessler syndrome is probably already happening, but it's hard to tell.

The solution is to pass new laws on satellite disposal so the problem doesn't get worse and over time figure out methods to dispose of what's up there. The most important things to get rid of are the very large debris as those can act as nexuses for further debris generation as they're "worn away" by other particulate dust debris and micrometeorites.

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