SpaceX's Starlink May Be Keeping the Ozone From Healing, Research Finds
SpaceX's Starlink May Be Keeping the Ozone From Healing, Research Finds
SpaceX's growing Starlink megaconstellation could be hindering the Earth's ozone layer from healing itself, researchers find.
Abstract from the paper in the article:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280
Large constellations of small satellites will significantly increase the number of objects orbiting the Earth. Satellites burn up at the end of service life during reentry, generating aluminum oxides as the main byproduct. These are known catalysts for chlorine activation that depletes ozone in the stratosphere. We present the first atomic-scale molecular dynamics simulation study to resolve the oxidation process of the satellite's aluminum structure during mesospheric reentry, and investigate the ozone depletion potential from aluminum oxides. We find that the demise of a typical 250-kg satellite can generate around 30 kg of aluminum oxide nanoparticles, which may endure for decades in the atmosphere. Aluminum oxide compounds generated by the entire population of satellites reentering the atmosphere in 2022 are estimated at around 17 metric tons. Reentry scenarios involving mega-constellations point to over 360 metric tons of aluminum oxide compounds per year, which can lead to significant ozone depletion.
PS: wooden satellites can help mitigate this https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01456-z
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damn, starlink is my only way to access the internet. I wish there were an alternative that's usable. Traditional access providers don't work and cell data is extremely slow and there's no coverage where I live. I pay for Starlink with a bitter taste
Might I enquire as to where this remote location might be?
Like on a general basis, no need for addresses.
As a Finn I'm forever spoiled in terms of wireless coverage. We got tons of solitary forests. But you can get an internet connection in literally all of them.
97% of the country gets 4g. And not of the people. The country.
I live in rural California. We only just this year are able to pick up a faint LTE signal. I think it might get us a very unstable 1-2 Mbps if we hold the phone just right. We have no cable, DSL or other land-based options and because of the topography can't pick up the local wireless provider, which is very expensive anyway - like $175/month for 50/5
So without Starlink our only options are crappy regular satellite providers like Hughesnet which impose very low quotas - 10 GB monthly for day time usage - and have insane latency.
It bugs the shit out of me I have to give money to that fuckwit but without it we live in the dark ages.
We're in Mayotte. Two undersea cables connect us to nearby continents (cf submarinecablemap.com) but they're down most of the time. We haven't had a connection in the last six months so we finally subbed to Starlink. Well, strictly speaking there was a connection but it would take anywhere between 5mn to 15mn to load the text of a static webpage, no images or anything else... forget about sending data, using forums... I had to get out and walk uphill for a minute or two to use my phone's cell data
My family has Starlink, they live in mountainous rural. Cell towers aren't too far away, but mountains get in the way of decent signal. No one is running any cables their way, despite a local telco taking money explicitly for providing internet service.
We Finns don't have any of those pesky mountains.
Rural US most likely. Place is too big, too few people to be worth for comoanies to invest. So many places only have 1-2 providers at best, afaik.
What about the remaining 3%?
Also, to (hopefully) answer your question:
Ignore Finland/Europe for a second and look at North America. The US has many population centers along the coasts and very few in the west inland. People still live there, so they need internet access, but oftentimes there aren't enough people to justify expanding coverage across such a huge area without subsidizing said coverage with government funds or other customers, so there are bound to be coverage gaps if you don't have unlimited money to throw at the problem. If you take a look at Canada, you can see how much worse the problem is as they have even more area to cover, and it reflects in the fact that they have some of the highest wireless prices in the world.
Also remember that these are wealthy countries. Plenty of other regions have the same problems with population density and physical size, and they can't throw money at the problem like we can.
The TL;DR is that these deadzones exist in a ton of places because a lot of low-population areas are physically huge.
I remind you that it's the remaining 3% of the country, physically. It's not 3% of the population. It's just some places in Lapland which don't have the greatest coverage. And the 97% figure is 4g, 3g has better coverage.
The Northern part of Finland is very sparsely populated and people like internet and cables are very labour-intensive compared to setting up mobile network towers.
But yeah, compared to the US, we're not really that sizable. We're like the size of Montana or so, and they've around a fifth of our population.
tldr Yeah, it is about the size, but also, with Nokia and so on, we've sort of quite a lot of good know-how on building wireless networks. We're the most sparsely populated country in the EU, but I think there's quite a lot of Spain where there's much worse coverage.
I love it when ppl from small countries don't get why there isn't wifi / cell coverage literally everywhere...
I think they're aware, given they said they're spoiled?
Finland is not a small country compared to its population density and distribution.
Finland has 18 inhabitants per km².
USA have 35 inhabitants per km².
That’s not a good measurement as populations are not spread evenly. You could have 10 000 people per km^2 in the US then have 0.001 people per km^2 in another
You are absolutely correct that distribution matters. However, Finland has an even more uneven population distribution than the US. 75% of the population lives in the costal cities, with 30% of the entire population living in the capital region( density of 193 persons/km²). The entire rest of the country is not empty dessert ( which would require no services), but very sparsely populated rural woodlands, down to 2 people per km².
Density still is an overall useful quantifier given that extra knowledge, as providing services for a small population of only 5.6mio inhabitants is not easy either. Sure, providing coverage for the 75% in the cities is fairly easy. But that still leaves 1.5mio rural residents, which require huge investments in cable to supply with broadband. And due to the vast distances, you definitely cannot cover them with wireless alone, if you were thinking that.
Compare the diameter of the two countries
If you only look at one line between LA and NYC, that is a lot more cable being laid. Now add something remote like the middle of Alaska vs the middle of Finland. We can assume for this example that they both service 100 people but the cost to do so for the US is a lot higher
That’s why using density makes no sense
Laying even 10 times the cable should not be more difficult when you have 60 times the total population (335mio in US vs 5.6mio in Finland) and hence more resources.
And sure, Alaska definitely it's expensive and inefficient to service, having a pop density of about 0.5 inhabitants per km². But unlike Northern Finland, most of Northern Alaska is in fact entirely void of human life and more akin to a desert. There really mostly are a handful of oil industry clusters and native communities. And still, the extremely low pop density means it's only 730 000 people living in Alaska. That is 0.2% of the entire population of the USA. If you were to completely ignore and not service Alaska, you should have a an even easier time providing service to the vast majority of the US population in all the main states. I think it's pretty clear this is a political failure and not a matter of financial resources or natural obstacles.
Huh. TIL.
But these are sort of not that good indicators, because the US has huge population centers on the coasts, and nothing in the vast center.
estona has cell coverage on it's intire rail network with 5g wifi? i read the Wikipedia page for Elron
At least one hour outside any Midwest city.
lol that's fantastic. Out in the forest with internet. How come, cell towers are closely packed ?
~75% of the country is forest, so it's kinda hard to not be in a forest.
Idk if they're closely packed.
Coverage map.
Majority of Canada is like that