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From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana,

this is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan Cal-Alla.

Here's Cal.

You've heard of space lasers, but what do you know about space mirrors?

Texas listener Maureen Frank wrote in to tell me about what she says is a major threat to the dark.

Starry skies we love to look at while we're out in the field.

An outfit called Reflectile Orbital is selling a solution to one of the major flaws in the

green energy ecosystem. Because the sun only shines during the day, solar panels only generate

energy about 10 hours of that time. If my calculations are correct, that's 14 hours every day when no

electricity is flowing, and some of those hours are during peak energy usage. To solve this problem,

reflectal orbital has invented a giant mirror that when launched into space, along with other giant

mirrors, reflect sunlight back down to earth.

This would theoretically allow solar panels to generate energy 24 hours a day and could also be used to grow crops more quickly or provide space age streetlights for cities.

Might sound great, but Marine is concerned how a bunch of space mirrors flying around will deteriorate the natural light of the stars and moon.

She sent me an email from an astronomer from the Donald Observatory who says these mirrors would be three to four times as bright as the full moon

and directly illuminate a swath of ground about five kilometers across.

However, thousands of these satellites would be needed

to generate useful amounts of solar power and scattered light would cause sky glow visible for hundreds

of kilometers. The impact on wildlife is tough to predict, but you can imagine how it might throw

off the neutral rhythms they've established over millions of years, and I don't know about you.

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