Correct, astronomy will cease to exist. See how dumb that sounds?

Completely agree, I've actually gotten into arguments with people who legitimately believe that parallel universes are real and supported by scientific evidence, and then they cite a bunch of theoretical articles that are only supported by more theories.

There's an entire pseudoscience subculture built around theories like parallel worlds, time travel, higher dimensions, simulation theory, etc. Literally just things that science fiction writers made up from their imaginations but because of decades of pointless theoretical "research" and theories built upon more theories people are now convinced they are real.

The best way to advanced human knowledge and understanding of the universe is to observe and study the universe, pulling a fantastical theory out of nowhere and then spending decades trying to prove its existence is backwards and futile.

Yes, the Rubin telescope is more sensitive. Nevertheless, in general, the numbers I extracted apply. Meanwhile, regarding that telescope, they go on to say:

> ... depending on the time of year, the time of night, and the simplifying assumptions of the study. Mitigation techniques that could be applied on ESO telescopes would not work for this observatory although other strategies are being actively explored." [Emphasis added]

Regarding other constellations, yes, their higher orbits will be more of an issue. One of the good side effects of Starlink's low orbits is the short period of twilight illumination.

But again, astronomy is in no way experiencing an "existential threat." It's a ridiculous exaggeration. There will be effects. There are and will be workarounds and mitigations. And the sky will be shared.

The vast majority of astronomy research is made using ground-based telescopes. It's completely illusory to think that we could simply launch everything into space.

You are cherry picking data to seem like there is no problem. From the same article 1 you link, it says:

"The study also finds that the greatest impact could be on wide-field surveys, in particular those done with large telescopes. For example, up to 30% to 50% of exposures with the US National Science Foundation's Vera C. Rubin Observatory (not an ESO facility) would be "severely affected”, depending on the time of year, the time of night, and the simplifying assumptions of the study. Mitigation techniques that could be applied on ESO telescopes would not work for this observatory although other strategies are being actively explored."

"The ESO study uses simplifications and assumptions to obtain conservative estimates of the effects, which may be smaller in reality than calculated in the paper."

"Many of the parameters characterising satellite constellations, including the total number of satellites, are changing on a frequent basis. The study assumes 26,000 constellation satellites in total will be orbiting the Earth, but this number could be higher. "

From article 2 you link:

"In the future, the scientists expect that nearly all of the ZTF images taken during twilight will contain at least one streak, especially after the Starlink constellation reaches 10,000 satellites, a goal SpaceX hopes to reach by 2027.

"We don't expect Starlink satellites to affect non-twilight images, but if the satellite constellation of other companies goes into higher orbits, this could cause problems for non-twilight observations," Mróz says. "

"The study authors also note their study is specific to ZTF. Like ZTF, the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory, under construction in Chile, will also survey the sky nightly, but due to its more sensitive imager, astronomers predict that it may be more negatively affected by satellite streaks than ZTF."

Articles 3 and 4 describe mitigation strategies that SpaceX is looking into. But crucially, it ignores that in the future dozens of companies, from all over the world, will want to launch satellites constellations. It's useless if SpaceX follows all mitigation procedures to avoid contaminating astronomical observations, but a random company from China decides that this is not important and launches the satellites anyway. The number of satellites is growing at an exponential rate, and in 10-20 years we will have possibly ten or a hundred times more satellites than SpaceX is currently planing.

It's more like 10 years if the current trend continues. Satellites constellations are growing at an exponential rate. It is an existential threat to astronomy because almost all astronomy observations are made from the ground and they will all be affected by the satellites trails. We will have less effective telescope time available, we will need more exposure times to compensate from the satellites trails (when it is possible to compensate them), which will lead to less astronomical research being done, less career astronomers, basically the stagnation of astronomy.

Can all this stuff interfere on Nasas abillitys to spot near earth objects? Like asteroids ?

People here think that astronomy is just the pretty pictures that NASA releases from Hubble or the JWST. They have no idea how astronomy research works and choose to believe what they think is most comforting instead of listening to the experts who know what they are talking about.

Satellite constellations are a huge issue and can completely kill ground-based astronomy if the number of constellations continues its exponential grow.

"Astronomers (serious ones) have the means to easily deal with this"

So far astronomers have the means to deal with it, but what about in 10-20 years from now when the number of satellites is 100 times greater? You will not be able to take a single long exposure without these satellites appearing. It will make astronomy observation from the ground completely unpractical.

"We arent going to stop LEO traffic forever, not for any reason. Humanity belongs in space."

There is a big difference between typical LEO satellites and these mega constellations. The later are increasing the number of LEO objects at a rate unlike anything seen previously. The problem is specifically satellite constellations, NOT general LEO traffic.

"Starlink pays for Starship which will make space telescopes affordable, and ground astronomy obsolete for science purpose"

Even if the launch cost were zero, it would still be orders of magnitude more expensive to build and operate space telescopes. Astronomy with only space telescopes would only be possible if we had military-level funding for science. And there are still types of telescope which we cannot replicate in space, such as the 30-40 meter ELTs currently under construction. While building giant telescopes on the moon seems like a nice solution, it is still at least 50-100 years away and will always have an extreme cost associated with it.

"Millions of people having internet access is more important than what is realistically a minor short-term inconvenience to astronomers. Really, shame on you."

There are other ways to bring internet to everyone. And satellites constellations are not a "minor inconvenience", they have the potential to completely kill astronomical observation from the ground. It's not an exaggeration when astronomers say this. Astronomers know the observations they deal with. You should listen to what the experts say instead of choosing to believe what you find more comforting. Anyone that cares about the progress of science should be alarmed by the current trends of these mega constellations.

People like you have no idea how much observations are done on the ground. The vast majority of astronomy research depends on ground telescopes. Even the big papers that use data from Hubble or JWST often depend on ground-based auxiliary data. It's completely nonviable to change all of astronomy to space. Even if the launch cost were zero, space telescopes are still orders of magnitude more expensive than ground-based ones. And we are still decades or centuries away from being able to build a 30-meter space telescope that would rival the resolution of the ELTs currently under construction.

Ah, people with no vision. Thanks to low gravity and free real estate, you could build on the moon a bigger and better telescope than anything possible on earth. All you need to low launch costs.

Hello u/Available_Opening_98, your submission "what are your thoughts on parallel universes?" has been removed from r/space because:

• Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.

I'll leave it to the alert reader to actually read the quotes we both provided. The only thing I will say to you about your "in general minor" harms that have no potential for mitigation (and I have provided a source for that statement already):

If observatories are literally unable to carry out part or all the mission objectives for which they are designed (like searching for Atira-type asteroids, which must be searched for at twilight because they orbit the Sun closer than Earth does), you have an interesting definition of the word "minor".

EDITED TO ADD: This comment has been up for hours and stands at a mere minus-2. I'm disappointed in you Musk worshippers, you're off your game here. I suppose I could keep fielding clueless anti-science comments like dern_the_hermit's below all day, but I'm done with this thread. For people that actually want to understand science and the problems that satellite swarms present, please remember that observatories and photometers are not just taking one-off snapshots - they're often taking data over a certain period of time to build up a light curve (a graph of change in brightness versus time), to give just one example. Tearing out gaps in a curve means loss of data that can be irretrievable, especially when an object is doing something unexpected. You can't mathematically reconstruct something that is non-repeatable!

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You speak of misinformation, then misrepresent what I wrote with this:

> You are attempting to create an impression that there is no problem, and that everything has been or will be mitigated. [emphasis added]

In fact I wrote:

> There will be effects, but they are in general minor, or there are mitigating actions being taken now ... [emphasis added]

I neither wrote nor implied "no problem" and "everything has been or will be mitigated." Those are your words. Further, I provide the links for everyone to read the full releases in context, in an explicit attempt to avoid the very sin you seem to imply I'm committing.

Regardless, constellations are here now. Their worth has been proven, Starlink at least and professional observatories are working together to share the sky, and astronomy is not facing an existential threat, per that click-bait headline.

There are two scientific theory that get cited when "almost the same Earth" comes up.

1. Is the multiworld hypothesis where every quantum event splits into two different worlds so you have alternative realities where everything that could happen has happened.

2. The other is that in an infinite Universe there is enough variety for almost the exact Earth to have evolved the exact same except for some tiny variation. Every possible variation exists somewhere out in infinity.

Not quite what some mean by parallel Universes.

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There's one where the USA uses the metric system, and consequently there's world peace.

There's another one where I put on sneakers this morning instead of work boots, and now I have a few missing toes in that universe.

The way I see the parallel universe idea is that there’s ultimately a single universe but an infinite number of different ways to perceive that same universe. The traditional idea of every moment splitting based on every possibility (as is determined after the event has occurred) to be seems absurd and a fantasy of science fiction

Earth Person: “I thought we were meeting at 3pm Lunar time.”

Moon Person: “Nah, meeting is at 4pm Lunar Time.”

Earth Person: “Ahh ok, talk to you tomorrow.”

Its a science fiction trope. It has no physics to back it up. There is an idea of a "Multiverse" based on weird version of Braine theory. But in each of those the laws of physics are so wildly different to our every day that they have no space or time or so on. It has no meaning for us, and I am suspicious this theory has no actual science to support it.

I like the idea that gravity might be affected by the interactions between universes. That got me thinking that the existence of multiple interacting dimensions might provide a workaround for a real life warp engine to warp space/time with much, much less energy than current models suggest.

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This is borderline Misinformation. You are attempting to create an impression that there is no problem, and that everything has been or will be mitigated. Some choice quotes, with sources:

From that totally disreputable, clickbait publication, Science.org:

> The Rubin Observatory, with an 8.4-meter mirror that will take pictures of the sky the size of 40 full Moons in 30-second exposures, "is the perfect machine for running into these satellites," Tyson says.

> He and his team conducted simulations that suggested the track of a satellite image across their camera would saturate each camera pixel as it passes, and cause leakage into neighboring ones. The resulting artifacts "cannot be removed in software. We have failed in doing that," Tyson says. The team looked at altering schedules to avoid satellite trails, but with such a wide field of view, avoiding thousands of satellites would end up as "a wild goose chase," he says.

Speaking of the Rubin Observatory:

> Simulations of the LSST observing cadence and the full 42,000 SpaceX satellite constellation show that as many as 30% of all LSST images would contain at least one satellite streak. With constellations of 400,000 LEOsats, most images will have very bright streaks.

> Due to its rapid cadence, LSST cannot usefully avoid tens of thousands of LEOsats.

> Darkening satellites to 7th magnitude would simplify removal of some artifacts in LSST images, but there is no guarantee most of the satellites will be limited in brightness to fainter than 7th magnitude.

> The bright main satellite trail would still be present, potentially creating bogus alerts and systematics at low surface brightness. This is a challenge for science data analysis, adding significant effort and potentially limiting discovery of the unexpected.

> However there is a larger challenge: because of the unprecedented large samples, LSST science will be limited by systematics rather than sample variance (area incompleteness). Of concern are various systematic effects that do not simply scale with the number of lost pixels—in other words, the residuals from these mitigation strategies on the science cases for which LSST was designed. For example, the LSST ability to detect asteroids approaching from directions interior to the Earth's orbit may be severely impacted because those directions are visible only during twilight when LEO satellites are brightest—nearly every LSST image taken at this time would be affected by at least one satellite trail. [My emphasis added]

TLDR: I could provide further quotes, especially about the harm to radio astronomy, but the point here is that software can't remove the streak when the CCD has been saturated - that would be like dumping thousands of identical lemons into a bin that initially contains only one or two, shaking the bin vigorously, and then trying to identify the original occupants. This isn't about amateur astrophotography - this is about trying to identify transient phenomena that are captured in single exposures. No software in the world can undo the harm if hardware and physics don't allow for it.