Nature.

In a experiment, I don't know yet.

Why is Blight so far?

Like, it sounds so simple.

They had no idea.

But now the data's people.

I find this not only refreshing, but at some level astounding.

Nature.

Welcome back to the nature podcast. This week, keeping track of the trash floating around our planet.

Plus the legacy of a physicist perspective on life.

I'm Adam Levy.

And I'm Shamney Bundell.

Our planet is surrounded by human-made objects.

Ever since the very first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 in 1957, humans have been launching various things into orbit.

These days we rely on satellites for GPS, television, weather forecasts, credit card payments,

and of course a lot of the environmental and astronomical science that we report on in this

very podcast.

But things aren't as easy for modern satellites as they were when Sputnik went up. There are now nearly 2,000 active satellites in orbit, and they have a major problem to contend with.

Space junk. Earth's orbit is full of artificial debris. There's defunct satellites, abandoned

launch vehicle stages, fragments from explosions, and things that have just gotten lost,

including a toolkit that an astronaut from the International Space Station misplaced,

and which ended up floating off by itself

...