The sky is our window to the Universe. By looking upwards, we can gain information about our cosmic roots. A lot has happened in the last 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang.
In the beginning there was an almost uniform soup of elementary particles. But sometimes it's the inconspicuous kid at the back of the class who dominates the future. To the cosmos, this inconspicuous ingredient was the slight density inhomogeneities in the primordial soup. This culminated in a gravitational collapse of the galaxies, within which the gas disintegrated into stars like the Sun, and planets like Earth formed from the disks of debris around these stars.
The chemistry of life as we know it was set in motion as soon as the first massive stars appeared exploded as a supernova and enriched their environment with oxygen. Shortly thereafter, when oxygen combined with the original hydrogen, water molecules appeared as shown in wa paper I was a co-author ten years ago.
This sequence of events ultimately led to the origin of life on Earth, culminating in our state-of-the-art technological civilization. Given the sextillion Earth-Sun systems in the observable volume of the Universe, it is most reasonable to assume that we are not alone. This assumption requires a sense of humility that most people lack. So this modest notion remains controversial because less than a percent of our science funding goes to the search for other technological civilizations. This fact alone shows how unintelligent we are sometimes.
Over the past 66 years, since the first Luna 1 spacecraft left Earth's orbit in 1959, the space around Earth has been filled with man-made satellites. Some people do Defense Support Program operated by the United States Space Force (DSP) satellites that serve as early warning systems. These geosynchronous satellites identify missile launches, launches into space, and nuclear detonations meteorite fireballs using infrared sensors to detect heat from scorching, transient plumes in the Earth's background. Other clusters of satellites improve the United States' ability to conduct other missions relevant to national security, including communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, climate monitoring, and crisis response. There are many more energetic satellites today than ever before, even a few years ago.
The space near the Earth becomes increasingly questionedwith competitors and adversaries developing systems to counter those used by the US Department of Defense. In November 2021, Russia fired a direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon that destroyed one of its satellites, creating approximately 1,500 pieces of debris, many of which are still in orbit. Small satellites were delivered during the war in Ukraine high-speed Internet access and backup connectivity but also high-quality photos and geospatial data collection. China uses hundreds of satellites equipped with surveillance and combat capabilities designed to disrupt satellite communications, PNT, GPS, surveillance and reconnaissance. Near-Earth space is currently overflowing with military resources.
In other words, the sky – our only window to space – is currently littered with our war gadgets. Not only do they cloud our view, but they also create tension between our innocent interest in learning more about the universe and our mundane conflicts. This tension is yet another testament to how unintelligent we are.
Given this tension, it is not surprising that all-sky astronomical telescopes, such as Pan STARRS and the future Rubin Observatory, are at risk of revealing the inventory of satellites used by the U.S. government for national security purposes. For this reason, the United States government wishes to remove sensitive information about its space assets from the public database of these survey telescopes so that related information is not available to hostile nations.
IN recent article in The Atlantic, Ross Andersen reported on the experiences of LSST project scientist Željko Iveciska at the upcoming Rubin Observatory:
“After several exchanges, Ivezic said, he and his colleagues came up with a less intrusive way to remove classified U.S. assets from the observatory's instant alerts. A government agency – no one told him which one – would contribute $5 million to build a dedicated network for transmitting sensitive data. Each time the telescope took one of the 30-second photos of the sky, the file was immediately encrypted so that no one would ever view it and then sent to a secure facility in California.
Should we worry that the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater? That is, that valuable scientific data about our cosmic neighborhood will be lost as a result of the government deleting some of the data available to scientists? I received the following follow-up questions in an email from Arjan Singh.
In particular, there is concern that unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), potentially associated with extraterrestrial technological gadgets that arrive near Earth, may be removed from the LSST data. I responded to Arjan that as long as the UAP has flight characteristics significantly superior to man-made technologies, they may not be removed from the data. In the search for extraterrestrial artifacts, members of my Project Galileo research team will search publicly available LSST data for UAPs and interstellar objects.
Arjan replied: “This situation highlights how much hope and trust many of us have in your work on the Galileo project, which remains free from such restrictions. The project's independence provides an critical avenue for unbiased research, and I look forward to seeing the results of its groundbreaking research.
I'm leaving my case alone.
Image Source: Pixabay.com
