Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content, check out

go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

One of the non-intuitive aspects of space is that things in it don't really have locations,

they are constantly shifting where they are relative to Earth, and usually at very high speed.

Lagrange points are the rare racists, stationary islands in space.

As a result, they are in valuable real estate.

Space is huge, but only a couple places are static in relation to Earth.

One is any object in geostationary orbit, a ring of space 22,000 miles above the equator, where the orbital

period is exactly once every 24 hours.

Objects they orbit at the same rate our planet spins, thus appearing as if they hang right

overhead.

This is a tiny little ring around our planet compared to Earth's total orbital space.

It's currently pretty full and getting

fuller of geostationary satellites, so that space is very valuable. But there's another

region of interest to us today, indeed ten of them, called our Lagrange points, and these

points are unique for being stable places that don't move relative to the bodies they are connected

to. Today we'll be discussing them, how they function, and what value they have. They've already

proven themselves useful. The James Webb telescope is that the Earth Sun, L2 Lagrange Point,

or in orbit of it to be more precise, because that keeps the Earth between the

telescope and the overwhelming glare and noise of the Sun. The Lagrange points of any two-body

...