Satellite Constellations Could Harm the Environment, New Watchdog Report Says

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December 01, 2022

Dear Reader, For those of you in the U.S., welcome back after a hopefully restful Thanksgiving holiday. For everyone elsewhere, apologies for last week's intermission in our newsletter-based shared journey through spacetime. This week, we're back up to speed with a fresh crop of news. Our lead story covers the latest front in an ongoing battle over the sanctity of the night sky, with a new U.S. government report urging closer regulatory scrutiny of astronomy-scuttling light pollution from satellite mega constellations. Can science and commerce co-exist in the heavens above? The answer of course is "yes," but the details of exactly how remain unclear. Other stories this week examine whether our universe might be a hologram, a looming lunar photobomb of Mars, how quantum particles get their spin, the ongoing success of NASA's Artemis I moon mission, the demise of the leap second, and much, much more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Astronomy Satellite Constellations Could Harm the Environment, New Watchdog Report Says Elon Musk's Starlink and other satellite sources of light pollution and orbital debris should face an environmental review, the U.S. Government Accountability Office finds By Jonathan O'Callaghan

Astronomy Is Our Universe a Hologram? Physicists Debate Famous Idea on Its 25th Anniversary The Ads/CFT duality conjecture suggests our universe is a hologram, enabling significant discoveries in the 25 years since it was first proposed By Anil Ananthaswamy

Space Exploration NASA's Artemis I Mission Aces Lunar Flyby The Orion spacecraft passed just 130 kilometers above the lunar surface during a mission-critical engine burn By Mike Wall,SPACE.com

Particle Physics Quantum Particles Aren't Spinning. So Where Does Their Spin Come From? A new proposal seeks to solve the paradox of quantum spin By Adam Becker

Aerospace Space Elevators Are Less Sci-Fi Than You Think I've been working on space elevators for almost 20 years, and though we still have issues to solve, we are getting closer to making them reality By Stephen Cohen

Computing The Leap Second's Time Is Up: World Votes to Stop Pausing Clocks How, and whether, to keep atomic time in sync with Earth's rotation is still up for debate By Elizabeth Gibney,Nature magazine

Astronomy On December 7 the Moon Will Photobomb Mars Much of North America can witness a delightful astronomical event on the evening of December 7 as the moon blocks out Mars By Phil Plait

Culture Twitter Is Not Rocket Science--It's Harder Elon Musk wants to run Twitter like SpaceX. But human behavior will make it much more difficult By Joe Bak-Coleman

Mathematics Why 2 Is the Best Number and Other Secrets from a MacArthur-Winning Mathematician Mathematician Melanie Matchett Wood seeks creative ways of solving open math problems By Rachel Crowell

Astronomy NASA Really, Really Won't Rename JWST despite Community Pushback An investigation by agency historian finds no evidence explicitly linking former director James Webb with anti-LGBT+ actions By Alexandra Witze,Nature magazine

Mathematics How Many Yottabytes in a Quettabyte? Extreme Numbers Get New Names Prolific generation of data drove the need for prefixes that denote 1027 and 1030 By Elizabeth Gibney,Nature magazine

Water Poem: 'Uncertain-Sea Principle' Science in meter and verse By Richard Blanco

FROM THE STORE Special Editions Volume 31, Issue 6s

QUOTE OF THE DAY "When you watch the moon cover Mars on the night of December 7, you will see a metaphor for our future in space." Astronomer and science writer Phil Plait, on an upcoming lunar occultation of Mars visible to most of North America

FROM THE ARCHIVE What Is Spacetime Really Made Of? Spacetime may emerge from a more fundamental reality. Figuring out how could unlock the most urgent goal in physics—a quantum theory of gravity By Adam Becker | February 2022

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