Not always on the same side

Even for scientists, the March of Progress is not always a good thing.

It’s a truism that science and technology go hand in hand.  Science reveals new insights into nature, which (handed to talented engineers) in turn become new tools to understand nature.  Examples aren’t hard to find. There’s the development of the cathode-ray tube, which allowed the first steps in quantum mechanics, in turn leading to solid-state electronic devices.

But this textbook picture is inevitably an oversimplification.  The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century had remarkably little effect on contemporary technology.  For all the projectile-motion problems in a beginning Physics textbook, Newton’s Laws were not really useful for aiming cannon (you can’t neglect air resistance).  And the truly impressive improvement in telescope lens quality and size between, say, 1750 and 1850 didn’t lead to any revolution in astronomical insight.  Much progress was made, of course, but the general picture remained the same, and one could make the case that dedicated observers with modest instruments were more important than showy work at the top end.

Still, at least science and technology tend to work together.  But recently we find them at odds.  An initiative to spread the internet to everywhere on Earth envisions thousands of new satellites in orbit, a truly impressive technological achievement; but the satellites will interfere with astronomy.  They are bright enough to ruin observations.  Indeed, at least in some instances they’re visible to the naked eye, millions of times brighter than objects that astronomers routinely study.

In a sense this is not new.  Lighting technology has illuminated the night sky for city-dwellers for a long time, and most people in developed countries have never seen the Milky Way.  For these people the new satellites are personally irrelevant: the streetlight-fogged city night is already too bright for them to be seen. Astronomers cannot expect a great uproar of protest from people deprived of pristine skies.

And street lighting has become more pernicious in character as technology has advanced.  Low-pressure sodium lights, once ubiquitous, shone only in certain wavelengths and so could be filtered out.  But the orange cast they gave to things was thought to be unpleasant.  High-pressure sodium came in, and now LEDs, wide-band emitters that cannot be so filtered.  The empty highway at 3am looks nicer, while the telescopes on the mountain miles away must look through a denser haze.

Well, the astronomers are talking to the satellite people, and maybe things won’t turn out as badly as we fear.  Certainly the city of Tucson, neighbor of several observatories, has shown sensitivity to their concerns.  But we can’t help wondering what could possibly stop a bright red, flashing, “Coca-Cola” sign in orbit once it becomes possible.