Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Is space filled with junk?

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

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This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want or gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you. I take it all. I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming it? I can't expect what to do.

Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. Hey, Daniel, do you think the planet Earth is getting too crowded? Well, you know, we live in Southern California. do experience a good amount of traffic, even though I get to wear sandals all year long.

Well, does it make you want to move out of Southern California? Well, you know, I'd be hesitant to give up the sandals, but I'd love to live in outer space. Oh, yeah, do you think commuting would be easier in space? Well, it can't be much worse than it is down here in Southern California. Well, I think you better move up there soon because space might be getting more crowded than you think. Are you talking about Elon Musk's Tesla that he launched out there? There's going to be a traffic jam off Tesla's up there pretty soon. Hi, I'm Jorge, I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics.

Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, but I love all things space, even if they don't have aliens in them. And so welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I-Hard Radio. in which we take a mental tour of the universe, zipping from neutron stars to black holes to alien planets, and even talk about tiny things here on Earth, like little particles, electrons, and quantum tunneling. And the key is to share with you the wonders, the mystery, the majesty of this universe

in a way that's explainable and hopefully makes you laugh and maybe cringe once or twice that are bad jokes. But only once or twice. You get two cringes per episode and then you're cut off. Yeah, and then you, that's right, then you have to keep listening in silence. But yeah, it's about all the amazing things we can see from this planet Earth that we're sitting on in traffic, right? We're sort of in the traffic of the solar system, right behind Mars and Venus next to the crowded asteroid belt. Yeah, we're in an unusually dense part of the universe.

You know, if you took like an average cubic kilometer of the universe, it would be pretty empty. likely you just get like a chunk of space in between galaxies. Even inside the galaxies, most of them don't have planets in them. So our neighborhood of the universe is pretty dense. We have a star. We got a bunch of planets. There's a lot of rocks out there. Yeah, I hate it when the asteroids honk behind me. It's so annoying. Well, look, they've been doing it for billions of years, so they hate when like newbies come in and mess up their commute, you know? That's right. It's people who don't signal. Has the Earth signaled lately? Which way it's turning?

I don't know, but we keep launching up stuff into space out there, messing up everybody else's commute. So, yeah, we imagine there are a lot of you out there listening to this podcast, maybe sitting in your cars in traffic, and you're probably wondering where all these people came from. Are there too many people on Earth? And is it too crowded out here? Yeah, maybe you feel like launching all those people out into space

so that you have the 405 to yourself. Yeah, and so we were thinking, are there alternatives? Could you live out in space to get away from it all? But you might be surprised to discover that, space actually has a bunch of stuff in it as well. It's not a pristine territory. It's the final frontier, but it's also filled with traffic. It's getting crowded out there, right? That's right. You probably heard about Elon Musk's plans to launch thousands and thousands of new satellites to improve your download speeds. Yeah, not just the stuff that's going to be launched,

but there are a bunch of stuff out there already floating out there, right? In space. Yeah. So we thought we'd dive into this topic between the Earth's surface in the rest of the universe and talk about how much stuff is there out there. So to the end the program

we'll be tackling the question. Is space crowded? How much stuff is up there? How much room is there? And do you need to get a fast carpool lane pass just to get out to

Mars these days? Well, traffic in space at least would be more complicated because you got another dimension to move in, right? I mean, I don't know how they plan to organize it, but you can always go over the car in front of you. That's like a double nightmare for me. It's like multidimensional traffic.

It sounds like there's a zillion more ways to get into an accident. I feel like at least here on Earth, if I'm stuck in traffic, I can still fantasize about flying upwards or digging down and getting away from it all. But if you're in space, in a space jam, traffic jam, you've got nowhere to go. I think you owe Michael Jordan 10 cents for mentioning his movie. I know. I know. That was, yeah, I'm Buck's buddy. Yeah, but you may have heard the news that Elon Musk is planning to launch a bunch of satellites. They recently deployed 122 satellites into low Earth orbit to test their internet from space idea.

And his plans are to launch a bunch more, not 100 more, not 200 more, not 200 more, not a thousand more, but something like 10,000 in the near future, stretching up to maybe 40,000 in the far future. And it's all part of his plan to create. the space internet. Is that what he's calling it? That isn't, but he should have. That is the best possible name. You know, we got Space Force. Why not Space Internet?

Yeah, and you're probably thinking, hey, look, space is big, right? I mean, the universe is vast. Daniel was just saying how space is mostly empty. How could space ever get crowded? And you're right, there is a lot of space up there. You do a quick calculation up to high Earth orbit, and there's like 200 trillion cubic kilometers of space.

just surrounding our planet. And currently, humans have launched about 2,000 operational satellites. So that doesn't seem like much. I mean, do the math. You get about 90 billion cubic kilometers per operational satellite. That seems like a lot, right? And it seems... That's like the ratio between space and currently how many satellites there are out there?

Yeah, we've got 2,000 satellites that are running, that are doing something, that are helping us, that are like, you know, telling you where your phone are or spying on North Korea. Korea or whatever. You take all the amount of space out there in sort of high Earth orbit and you get 90 billion cubic kilometers per satellite. So it seems like plenty of room. It seems like plenty of room. But I think the problem is that if you run into one of these things in space, it's pretty bad news. Yeah. This is very high speed traffic. So we thought it'd be fun to talk about whether there really is room out there. How dangerous is it to launch a satellite? And how long do you have to

wait after you put on your left turn signal before you know it's clear to pull your Tesla into low Earth orbit. Yeah, because you definitely don't want to have a bumper-to-bumper collision here with a satellite going hundreds or thousands of kilometers per hour, right? No, you certainly don't. I'm pretty sure your insurance doesn't cover it. Definitely not the one you got on your rental car. So there are about 2,000 satellites right now operating out in space, but it's not

just satellites out there, right? There's also space junk. Yeah. So I was wondering if people were aware of this problem. Do people know that space has more than just operational satellites on it? Do people think space is totally empty and there's lots of room out there for frontiers people to go out and claim their chunk? Or do people think that space is mostly crowded and already filled with Elon Musk's garbage? Were you going to say Elon Monk's junk?

I should have said that. That was much better. Musk's junk. Maybe he's planning a business where he's. takes your junk and dumps it in space. Oh, there you go. 1,900 got space junk. 1,900 musk junk.

What must I do with my junk? And if he didn't plan that, he's probably a listener to this podcast because it's awesome. And now he's planning it. So, Elon, we get 1% stakes. So as usual, Daniel went out there into the streets and asked random strangers if they thought that space was getting too crowded. Here's what people had to say. But before you hear their answers, think to yourself, do you think space is overcrowded?

Or is there a lot of room for more stuff? I would say probably filled with satellites and crowded. Yeah? So you think it's like dangerous to be up there? I don't know if it's totally crowded, but it's probably getting there. I would imagine. I would say it was empty. You think mostly empty?

Yeah. So like room for lots more stuff? Yeah. I think it's definitely still mostly empty. So there's lots of room for more satellites? Well, I don't think we should put a lot of room for more stuff. I don't think we should put a lot more satellites, but I bet there is more room if we needed to.

Oh, I think there's already a lot of satellites, and I think more will have a big impact on the light quality that astronomers can collect data from. Mostly empty. Mostly empty? Why is that? Because of the size of space and how you can put the satellites in different layers and different orbits. Do you agree?

Yes. I'm sure there's a lot of junk up there. Oh, it's mostly empty. Oh, no, I think it's filled with satellites. It feels like that's sort of relative, but it probably has room for more. I guess that there's a lot of space junk out there, but there's so much, I know there's a lot of space up there, so I don't think it's too crowded. I know there are collisions, but I don't think they happen that often.

But I'd say in the near future, that probably could be a problem, I bet. Okay, so why do you think it's mostly filled up? Just because the amount of communication that we have and data exchange, there's got to be satellites, old satellites. Disposed satellites. So is there like a danger of satellites bumping into each other and stuff? I'm sure, but I don't know what they'll do anything, but I don't know if they're made of. You know? But I've heard rumors of space trash too, you know.

All right. So people don't seem too concerned about the crowdedness of space. No, but I'm not sure how many of these folks actually had like plans to launch anything. So it's a bit of an abstract question for them, you know? Oh, I see. I see. You think that maybe they're trying not to be alarmists? Or maybe they're thinking, man, I got too many things to worry about here.

I got finals coming up. I got rent to pay. Who cares about space junk? You didn't get a lot of concern here. No, but maybe if I had told them all about space junk and made them worry about the future of those satellites, they'd be worried about the next time they got on an airplane. Whether this satellite that's helping their flight navigate is potentially being exposed to high-speed garbage. All right.

Well, let's talk about it. The idea is that maybe space, we're throwing too many things out there into space. Like, as a species, you know, it was exciting when we sent the first satellite out there. And it was exciting when we sent people out there. But now I think there's sort of a growing concern that are we basically treating our orbital space as the next big junkyard? Yeah, exactly. Not a landfill, but a space fill. A space fill.

Well, I guess technically landfills. our space field. Everything is a space field from that perspective. Well, I was surprised. I did a bit of research, and I was surprised to discover sort of the small number and the large number of stuff that we have in orbit. Really? It's both a lot and little.

Yeah, it is. I mean, the small number is the number of operational satellites. Like, we've been launching satellites for 50 years, and I know it's expensive. It's not just like anybody can launch them, but they're not that rare anymore. And, you know, governments and spy agencies and And armies all have their own satellites and companies do. So I was surprised to discover there are only about 2,218 operational satellites in orbit. That's not really that many.

Really? Do you think that's not a lot? I think it's not a lot. I mean, these days, it's not that expensive to launch a satellite. You know, elementary schools can fund us a microcubesat that ends up in orbit and takes pictures of stuff. So the prices are really coming down. So it's 2,218, not just like the big ones you see. the giant solar panels, but it could be just like little tiny satellites.

Yeah, some of those are pretty small. Some of those are pretty small. But we only got 2,200, you know, like how many cars are on a freeway at any moment? It's much bigger number than that. And so, and space is really big. And so at first you think, wow, there's not that many satellites and space is huge. So there's plenty of room for more traffic. Nothing to worry about.

Nothing to worry about. But the problem is that it's not just operational satellites that are out there, right? It's, first of all, un-operational satellites, and then bits of satellites, junk of satellites, little bits of rockets that blew up, you know, stuff that astronauts dropped while they were on spacewalks. It turns out there's a lot of junk up there. Really? And it's all man-made, or is it also like, you know, asteroids that somehow got caught in our orbit or things like that? This is just man-made space junk. I mean, there are meteors, right, that hit the Earth and burn them in the atmosphere.

and you see that kind of stuff on a nice night when you're seeing meteor showers, et cetera. But this is just man-made stuff that's in orbit. Wow. How many, how much is this stuff do you think is out there? So they did a calculation, and you can't count this stuff because a lot of it is too small.

But, you know, we have 2,000 operational satellites, right? But in terms of space junk, there's at least 20,000 trackable objects. That's just, like, chunks of stuff. That you can see. That you can see that, like, you know, NORAD and the Department of Defense and all those folks are keeping track of. Wow.

Don't they wonder what they are? Could there be spy cameras from aliens is where I'm going with this, Daniel? Man, I would love if there were a spy camera. But if I was an alien and I wanted to build a spy camera, I would just put it in a rock, you know, I'd hide it and make it look like a big asteroid or something. But this is just the stuff they're tracking, you know, because they don't want their $2 billion spy satellite or $10 billion space telescope or whatever to bump. into a piece of junk, so they track this stuff.

But that's only the stuff that they can track. They track it so they can, so they can maneuver around the other space junk. Yeah, it's like air traffic control, right? You want to get this guy to land, so you have to make sure now the other planes are too close by, and so you've got to manage it. And so they keep track of all this stuff. But it's a 10 to 1 ratio, right? Did the 2,000 operational objects include the secret space spy satellites that they don't really want us to know?

Or are those in the unknown category? That doesn't include the things that the government doesn't want us to know, but there are reasonable estimates based on launches and stuff like that because it's pretty hard to hide a launch. So they can track 20,000 objects, and are these small or are these like, you know, a bolt from that slipped out of the space station or are they pretty big? These things are pretty big. You know, they're more than 10 centimeters across.

You know, the largest 1,500 of these things weigh a total of 1,900 tons. And the largest 10,000 of them weigh like 5,500 tons. So it's a pretty big amount of stuff. And again, this is just the stuff that we can track. This stuff falls apart and gets smaller, and then the numbers get crazy. And this is all just human junk in space. Like, we've been that careless in space that we have 20,000 bits of junk out there. You show up to like a national park, and this is like littered with people's picnic garbage.

I guess if you're out in space, what do you do with your junk? Well, actually, what you do is you drop it on Earth. The best thing to do with space junk is to push it down into the atmosphere because the atmosphere will burn it up. Anything from space is moving pretty quickly. And if it hits the atmosphere, it'll just get fried. So the best thing to do is to drop it on the Earth. The worst thing to do is to leave it in orbit around the Earth.

I see. The best thing to do is to burn it in the atmosphere so it rains down in innocent people. Nobody, almost nobody has ever been hurt by falling space junk. The atmosphere is a really good force field against space junk. It's so good that what we should do with our space junk is throw it against the atmosphere to, you know, atomize it. Oh, I see. So this is stuff that has maybe falling off the space station or slipped out of an astronaut's hand, but that stayed in orbit. Yeah, and also the products of other collisions.

And if you look at even smaller stuff, there are 900,000 things that are smaller. than 10 centimeters. It's almost a million pieces of space junk. Little tiny bits. But those they can't track, can they? That's just an estimate. These are not tiny bits. I mean, 10 centimeters, you know,

we're talking something the size of a baseball. Like, that thing going at 10 kilometers per second is not a tiny anything. But you're right, these things are too small for them to track. That's a lot of baseballs. It's a lot of baseballs. And then if you just say like any piece of junk,

no matter what size, then there are more than 100 million bits of space debris. And so where did all this stuff come from? Is it all just from, you know, our astronauts being litter bugs or litter space bugs? Yeah, you know, astronauts like the flaming hot Cheetos and they just crumple up the package and toss it over their shoulder. Those jerks. So irresponsible. No, it comes from like satellites falling apart, you know, bits of paint flaking off of satellites.

Also, we fire a lot of rockets into space and we just sort of like leave those spent rocket stages and little bits of like frozen fuel. that didn't get used up. We just generally haven't been thinking carefully about what kind of stuff will be left from our exploration of space because we thought, hey, space is so big and empty. It doesn't really matter if you create a thousand little shards of ice

that are flying at really high speed. Wow. So it is getting crowded with junk. I mean, there aren't that many satellite, but there's millions of bits of stuff out there. There are millions of bits of stuff out there. You have flakes of paint, little bits of rocket motors,

frozen coolant. And, you know, sometimes it's stuff that was created sort of on, purpose. Like in the 60s, the U.S. and Russia had anti-satellite weapons. We built special missiles we could fire at like the enemy's satellites because, you know, maybe you don't want them flying their spy satellites over Colorado. And so you want to fire a missile to take out their satellite. Interesting. Space wars. Space wars. Star Wars. Yeah. And China got in the game about 10 years ago. They built a system and they tested it and they destroyed one of their

own satellites, but it created a million pieces of space debris that are still up there. They blew something up as a test? Yeah. They fired a missile into space in 2007 and blew up one of their own defunct satellites, and it created a million pieces of space junk. Great. Thank you, China. Wow.

And sometimes it is astronauts. You know, like there was one time an astronaut lost a bag of tools. You know, you're out there on a spacewalk. You forget to clip. it and the oops, it just sort of drifts away from you and it's never. Come on. That was a Sandra Bullock movie. I've seen that movie, Daniel. That's fiction. That's the one part of that movie that was correct. An astronaut was like lost spare glove, you know, so that kind of stuff is floating out there, but it's dwarfed by the sort of like little just pieces of junk from

satellites that are broken or smashed into each other. I wonder how that happens. You're like, you're out in space. You might die, but you take off your glove just to just to like pick it a little something and then whoops you let the glove you got to open your flame and hot chitos package right you can't do those in those really thick gloves yeah those big thick fingers and then you take the cheetos up and you sort of bang them up against your space helmet you know oops they didn't make this thing through the shoot I use velcro for the cheetos no I think there must be an extra glove or something but occasionally astronauts have dropped stuff that's not a big contribution to the space junk most of it is like flakes of paint and little bits of rocket coolant and stuff

like that, but it's still dangerous. And how much of that are space Cheetos? There are no Cheetos in space that I'm aware of. Elon, that's your first for you also. Great. So that's a lot of stuff out there. And so I guess now the question is, is it a problem? Is it going to be a problem?

And what can we do about it? So let's get into that. But first, let's take a quick break. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene.

In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.

Well, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy?

That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professional. and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet.

So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford. And in session 421 of Therapy for Black Girls, I sit down with Dr. Othia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief.

But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstylist play in our hair. our communities, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast. All right, Daniel, so there are millions of pieces of debris out there just in our immediate orbit. And some of them might be space Cheetos. Some of it might not be. We don't know what the Chinese or the Russians have been developing out there or testing. Maybe they have a system to launch Cheetos into space at our satellites. Maybe Cheetos are especially good at taking out spy satellites, you know? I mean, until you do the experiment, you never know the answer.

You've got to keep an open mind in science, right? Yeah, you want that cheesy powder that they have to get into the enemy satellite mechanism. Oh, that's the worst. That's the worst for the gyro mechanisms. Yeah, that's really, especially designed by food scientists to be a space weapon. Gets all over your spy lens and then it's all ruined. Space junk really is a problem. Okay, so it is a problem that scientists are concerned about right now.

It really is, yeah. And it's a problem sort of for two reasons. one is that it's a danger to the stuff that's out there. And the other is that it's likely to make more of itself. So first of all, you worry just like, is the stuff going to bump into something valuable? I mean, you build your complicated space telescope or spy satellite or whatever,

and you shoot it up into space. And then somebody's junk comes along at like 10 to 15 kilometers per second and just trashes it. Wow. 15 kilometers per second? Like, is that if it's in a different orbit? or like, you know, like in, you kind of tend to think in space

that everything being kind of at the same speed that you are, but is it possible for things to be in a different orbit and come at you at that speed? Absolutely. This is not organized self-driving cars in space, right? Where everything is moving along with no relative velocity. There's lots of different orbits that cross, right? And there's no traffic lights.

And so you can- It's a free-for-all. It's a free-for-all, exactly. There's no cops up there whistling to people to stop or anything. And so your orbit path could totally cross. somebody else's orbital path. That's a problem. Even a flake of paint would probably do some harm

to your solar panel or Cheetos bag. For sure, a tiny fleck with paint going at 15 kilometers per second is like getting punched by Mike Tyson, right? And nobody wants their satellite getting punched by Mike Tyson.

Especially in space. That would be extra embarrassing. But maybe NASA should do that. You know, they should have like, last pre-flight check. Mike, please come down and punch the satellite and see how it goes.

but it's a real problem and sometimes you can protect parts of your satellite we'll talk about that later but some parts you just can't like you don't want to build a shield in front of the lens of your space telescope that's why you built it right to look out in the space or you have these big solar panels

you can't really do much to protect them they're supposed to be out there gathering sunlight so you're really vulnerable and even if you put armor on your satellite that just gets more expensive right because every little ounce you send it to space cost like $30,000, right? Yeah, and you can't armor your solar panels

because that blocks them and that they don't work. So it's a real problem. And they try to keep track of this stuff because they don't want their expensive satellites to get hit by space junk. And so they have, you know, as we were saying, tracking on like 20,000 of these things and they observe a lot of close calls.

There's something like 20 close calls every day between a satellite and some piece of trackable junk. Like every day. day, 21 times, there's somebody freaking out in some control room going, turn left, turn left. Watch out for that space debris. Yeah, and they're pretty careful about this stuff. And so they have to, like, contact the owners of the satellite and say, hey, some piece of

junk is coming your way. You might want to move up or down or left or right or just any direction, really, to get out of the way. Oh, wow. Are there, like, traffic controllers or space? Can I study to be a space traffic controller? Yeah, I think it's a pretty stressful job. But the Defense Department does this, you know, because they got a lot of sound.

satellites up there that are pretty valuable and pretty important for national security. And so they keep track of this stuff and they contact satellite owners if their satellite is in the path of some junk. Oh, wow. Imagine getting that call. Yeah, I think it's not too unusual. You know, I think most satellites a few times a year have to maneuver around space junk because it's getting kind of crowded up there. And we've even had collisions. Really? And what happens? You just obliterates a satellite or damages it? Yeah, that's the problem is that when two like defunct satellites hit each other. or when a piece of space junk takes out a satellite, what do you get?

More space junk. More, right. That's the other problem you were saying is that junk begets junk. Yeah, it's like if you litter in the park, somebody else walks by like, oh, looks like this park isn't cleaned up too much. I'll just dump all my trash here. But I'm not sure that analogy works, but the idea is that. I was wondering how that works. It's more like if you find a piece of litter in the park and you go to grab it, it turns into two pieces.

of litter, right? Yeah, I guess so. Or this litter attacks you and breaks you and breaks you into pieces of litter in park, right? It sucks you in. Ryan covers you and Cheetos does. It's terrible. But the idea is that, yeah, that if a piece of space junk hits a satellite, it causes more space junk.

And then the number of pieces of space junk grows. And then you have a higher chances of making more space junk, which, of course, just makes more space junk. And so you can see this sort of cascade effect is possible. Wow. You get enough stuff out there. the chances of collision grow very quickly, and then the chances become almost certain,

and then you just have spaces just totally filled with junk. Right. Dangerous junk, right, that you can't get through? Yeah, and so some sort of space groups, advocacy groups, predict this sort of tipping point where we're going to get too much junk pretty soon that you're going to get this cascade effect, and it might destroy a huge number of things in orbit

and basically make space unusable. You can actually kind of extrapolate and see the point where it's just the junk just multiply beyond making space reachable. Yeah, because you can't fly a rocket with people in it through space if it's totally filled with space junk. You can't launch a satellite into that orbit if it's totally filled with space junk. And if all the satellites that we had out there right now ended up getting hit by space junk and turning into more space junk, you'd have an enormous number of pieces

of junk and it would make space basically unusable. You know what we need? I think, Daniel, we need like a giant space vacuum. That would totally suck. Space already has a vacuum. Why doesn't space just suck it up into outer space? Suck it up space. But it's, you know, it's already sort of a problem. Like, we have people out there in space right now in the space station. And these folks, a few times a year, have to move the whole space station, like, into a higher orbit. Really?

In order to avoid some piece of junk that's coming nearby. They're actively doing, you know, like frogger, just like changing names all the time. Space Frogger. Yeah. And sometimes they have to, like, rubble. the astronauts into one of those escape capsules because the big piece of junk is coming that they didn't spot soon enough

and can't get out of the way and it might like, you know, debilitate the space station and those folks would have to basically fly back down to Earth. I feel like you're quoting that Tender Bullock movie again. I think it might go the other way around.

I think the Sender Bullock movie is based on real events. And I think it also happened with the space shuttle once, right? Like it actually did some damage to the space shuttle. Oh, all the time. every space shuttle that comes back is pitted with space junk.

You'll find, like, holes in the wings, they find scratches in the windshield. It's not unusual when the space shuttle comes back to find, like, you know, bits of stuff embedded in the windshield all the way down to like half the depth of the windshield. Yikes. Yeah, exactly. They're like, what is that? Squeak, squeak, squeak. Is that Cheetos?

What? How did that get in there? Yeah, it's a dirty environment out there. And so you know how when you're driving down the highway, you end up with like a bunch of bugs on your windshield, imagine those bugs were going 10 times the speed of sound or something. Or there were like ball bearings just all over the highway. That would be pretty dangerous. Yeah, it would be pretty dangerous.

And so it's a real problem. We got to make sure there's not too much space junk up there. And we've got to clean it up sort of before it gets too late before it starts to multiply out of control. Okay, I have a new product idea for Elon Musk. You ready? I'm sure I'm not ready. Giant space windshield wipers That's what we mean

Cleanse the atmosphere Well you know we're going to talk about solutions To the space junk problem And that's not the dumbest one that's on the list Oh really? All right It's already taken It was already in a movie with Sandra Bullock So that affects our ability to go out into space

Does it affect actually us here on Earth If space gets filled with junk? Well there's sort of the direct problem and the indirect problem. The direct problem is like, do you have to worry about a piece of junk falling out of space

and conking you on the head, right? Right. Well, there's about one piece of space junk per day that falls out of orbit and into the atmosphere. But those burn up, right? As we were saying before,

it's actually a good thing for space junk to hit the atmosphere because it gets fried. It gets shredded and it's just a nice, you know, another meteor in the night sky. It's pretty rare for this stuff

to actually hit the Earth. There was once in 1997, a woman in Oklahoma was hit by a piece of rocket. But usually you don't worry about it. Like the Air Force, when they launch rockets, they don't even really care where they go because they just mostly burn up. Oh, I see.

Of course it had to be Oklahoma, I feel. Where else would it have home? Are you saying Oklahoma deserves it? Or just like weird stuff happens in Oklahoma? I'm saying if I was writing a Steven Spielberg movie where a piece of junk hits a woman in the head, it would probably be in Oklahoma. All right, that's good to know.

But I think the more direct issue for people out here is that we rely on stuff in space. When your flight is taking off, it's using a navigational system that relies on satellites. When your phone is locating itself because you got lost while going for a hike, it's using GPS. So our society really relies on space technology. And if all that was destroyed or became unusable, you know, hey, listening to Daniel Jorge explained the universe would take longer to download. You would get lost trying to get to some Wi-Fi. or something. Yeah, precisely. So it's important part of our society. We want to maintain it. It's not really a direct danger to you unless you're an astronaut, but it's important that we take care of

space near the Earth. Right. It's not good. It's not good. All right, let's get into what we can actually do to maybe clean up some of this space junk, maybe, or prevent it or work around it. But first, let's take another quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass.

The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just to catch. chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up.

Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. It's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not?

To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community,

the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. All right, Daniel, so space junk is a little bit of a problem. And you're also telling me it's kind of a problem or it might become a problem for astronomers too, right? Like people trying to study space. Yeah, there's been a big uproar recently because of Elon Musk's plans to basically fill space with satellites. He's launched, you know, something like 120 these things so far. And then sort of low Earth orbit and they streak across the sky. And if you have really valuable time on a telescope

because you want to study something super far away and you've been waiting months for your like 10 hours of telescope time and then Musk's satellite just sort of zoom in front of the lens then you get a big streak. You don't want that photo bomb. You don't want that photo bomb.

And he's only launched 100. He's planning to launch thousands and thousands of these things. So astronomers are worried, first of all, like, is he going to be blocking your view? Is ground-based astronomy going to be impossible in the near future, just to improve our internet access. But then also from the space junk point of view, like, you got thousands of things up there. One of them goes wrong, bumps into another one.

Like, it could pretty quickly go bad. I mean, if it was Bill Murray, you'd be like, hey, that's a cool photo bomb on my photo. But Elon Musk, that's just annoying. Yeah, precisely. And remember, you know, you have 10 times as many things up there. It's 100 times more likely to get collisions because you have many more ways to get collisions. Right. And so he's planning to launch.

thousands of these things, and just a few of them have to go wrong for it to sort of cascade and create a disaster. Reach that tipping point where it all just pulverizes everything and it becomes a deadly barrier for space travel. Yeah. He's thought of this, of course, and he has a plan. And, you know, NASA and FAA, whatever, say that his plan is good. And essentially involves making sure that any of these satellites that go wrong basically

just fall and then they get burned up in the atmosphere. And that's not a terrible plan because that's what we want. We want to push all this stuff, all the space junk, down into the atmosphere. So the atmosphere does the job for us. So the friction of the atmosphere basically melts all this stuff. Oh. So how does that work? So that's one way we can kind of avoid the space junk problem is to make sure it comes down.

But how can they do that? If it, like if satellite becomes disabled, what's going to make it actually maneuver into the atmosphere? Well, you can just get lucky and hope that it's the way that it, um, maneuvered or got disabled, makes it fall. But, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there that's in stable orbits. And one thing we can just do is wait, you know, stop launching stuff and just wait. Because eventually all this stuff will fall. Remember, the atmosphere is not just like a turnoff.

There's no perfect space near Earth. There's a very slight atmosphere and it drags on stuff and slows it down. Right. But the problem isn't the problem that it's just one piece per day that falls? So wouldn't that take, you know, 300 years or something? Yeah, it would take a long time. So that's not really a solution. So people have some crazy ideas.

You know, one of them, of course, involves lasers. Of course. Hey, physicists, how should we solve a problem? Lasers. Lasers. No, no, I just really want to comb my hair. Oh, yeah. Do you want to know what the problem is first?

No, just lasers. Lasers. That's right. The solution is always lasers and the answer is always aliens. No, but lasers is not a terrible idea because if you could shoot a laser at this stuff, You could slow it down. You don't even need to blow it up, right? You don't want to blow it up.

What you want to do is slow it down a little bit so it drops and then the atmosphere takes over. So you just got to sort of like ablate it a little bit on the side. Remember we talked about those guys that are also using lasers to maybe save the Earth from incoming asteroids? It's a similar idea. You don't have to blow up the whole asteroid. You just got to sort of shave off a little velocity in one side so it misses. In this case, you want to just sort of like rough it up a little bit so that it falls into

the atmosphere. Wow. Like literally you'd be like, Pugh, pew, pew, pew, pew, taking stuff out of the sky. Are you there for the test? That's exactly what it sounded like. Oh, really? Well, I imagine. I can foresee what physicist would sound effective. But, you know, shooting death rays into the sky,

it would take a lot of death rays. And so this approach, of course, has some problems. So people studied it about 10 years ago, but it doesn't seem like it's really going to solve sort of the larger scale problem. Really? Of having 100 million objects. So my son practicing video games all this time just to get ready for that job of shooting down space degree.

Actually, Tom, there's no career in that. That's right. Yeah, I think, you know, that was very impressive long-range planning. But I'm hoping there are other ways that your son can make money with those skills. Okay, so shooting them down with lasers, not a great, good long-term solution. What are other ways we can have solved this space junk problem? Well, another one is a ship called Clean Space One, which looks, I'm not. I'm not joking, like a big net.

And the idea is to gather space junk together and then again, dump it into the atmosphere, right? It's sort of weird, but we're treating the whole Earth as like a trash can. And the clean space up, what you've got to do is gather the stuff and then dump it into the trash can. And so this is, maybe your son could operate this thing, you know, steer this thing around, gathering space junk. That's what every parent wants for your son to be a space janitor. Thank you, Daniel. Hey, it's pretty glamorous. I mean, space janitors.

Come on. That's the way you work your way up, right? That's how you become an astronaut. You go out to space, you get a job as a janitor, and then, you know, step by step. Eventually, you're piloting the space station. I mean, space janitor is just like, you know, barely a step above podcaster.

At least it's a step up. But that's not a joke. You know, this is an idea. Gather the stuff and then dump it into lower orbit and hope that it eventually decays down to burn up. So this would be, what does it look like, like a giant, like four rocks, holding a giant net in between them?

It looks basically, yeah, like a big net. You know, it's got like four big arms and some lines between them. And it would essentially just like reach out, like it's like a huge claw, grab a piece of space junk, and then drag it down to lower orbit. But this would work for, you know, maybe like the 20,000 defunct large, trackable objects we have, but it wouldn't really help clean up all the other tiny stuff. All right. So then what can we do about those?

Not that much. I mean, one thing we can do is we can stop. not adding more stuff, right? When has it ever worked with humanity? We could start being responsible. I promise starting today, we're going to be good. Really, this time, this time it's going to be, we're going to be good. I'm going to stop eating those Cheetos tomorrow, tomorrow.

But here actually there's a bit of hope because Americans, at least, American space agencies, have tried to design their rockets to produce less space junk. So create like smaller number of larger pieces of debris that are more likely to fall in of the atmosphere that don't like explode bits of coolant into space because earlier we're like oh we don't care whatever it's out in space but now we do care and so our more recent rockets produce less space junk per launch per launch or per like if you lose it no per launch oh per launch yeah every time you launch a rocket there's stages of it that are supposed to burn up and don't always there's bits of coolant that you know that leak or solid rocket fuel that wasn't burnt up

And so our more recent rockets are better at that. They produce less junk per launch. But still, they do produce junk. So, you know, that's not a way to clean it up. It's just a way to, like, be bad less quickly. So I think what I'm getting from me is that to solve the space junk problems, scientists have come up with a couple of solutions. One is, wait a million years.

That solves a lot of problems. Two, convince you manage to stop littering. That'll never happen. Or three shoot lasers at it. Yeah. And so we're all waiting for your son to be good enough at the laser to solve this problem. Doesn't sound like there's a good solution here. No, there's not a great solution to cleaning up space junk.

And so in the interim, what we've done is just trying to protect our satellites. You put a shield around it to try to protect it. And they're pretty clever. There's this really cool design. It's called a whipple shield. And the idea is don't just like make your satellite really heavy with armor, but put a really light, thin shield, but have it be separated from the satellite a little bit. And the idea is that it doesn't destroy.

the space junk is sort of deflects it. It turns it, it breaks it up and changes its direction. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and so you're more likely to survive impact with space junk. And so, you know, we have some technology to protect ourselves, but yeah, we sort of painted ourselves into a corner here.

Space is filled with junk and it's not an easy way to clean it up. Well, hopefully those maybe in the future, Space General will be like the most valuable profession on the planet. Yeah. I think we also just need to find some new way to put the cost of making space junk on the people producing it.

Because right now the cost of space junk is on the people launching a new satellite. Like you have a billion dollar satellite. You have to protect yourself from the space junk. The people who satellite made that, they're free and clear. They don't really care. So somehow we need to make sure that the people who are producing space junk bear the cost of it. And maybe that'll help fund the cleanup somehow. Interesting.

It's like carbon credits, but for space junk. Yeah. Or we need everybody to have like an insurance car. so that when things bump into each other, I say, hey, that was your piece of junk. Now you owe me a billion dollars. Oh, interesting. So more like cars, actually, then, you know,

if we're creating a traffic jam up there, yeah. We need more lawyers to solve this problem. Space lawyers. Space lawyers. All right, maybe I'll try to steer my son towards that profession. Sounds like it might have more. That's right. That'll impress his grandparents also.

All right. Well, it sounds like there are. are a lot of things out there in space that you might run into, and it's going to get crowdedier, crowdeder in the next couple of years. Yeah, and cheesier and cheetaheer. That's right, and spicier. And flaming hot. And flaming hot.

Well, hopefully flaming hot because that means... It's burning up, yeah. What happens if you drop a space Cheeto actually does get flaming hot, right, as it burns up in your re-entry. Yeah. In space, all Cheetos are flaming hot. There we go. How can we ask for a better ending to the process?

So think about that next time you are going to launch your own micro satellite into space. Do you really need that out there or are you just contributing to the problem? So the next time you look out there into space at night, think about that beautiful star you might be looking at, could be a piece of Cheeto. I got nothing after that. That's it. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks, everyone. See you next time. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations,

please drop us a line we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorpe.com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production. of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

to your favorite shows. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas store. toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. Terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order

Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend should be. just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you on take it all!

I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me.

I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No Such thing. This is an IHeart podcast.