Welcome to the home of Noah Brier. I'm the co-founder of Variance and general internet tinkerer. Most of my writing these days is happening over at Why is this interesting?, a daily email full of interesting stuff. This site has been around since 2004. Feel free to get in touch. Good places to get started are my Framework of the Day posts or my favorite books and podcasts. Get in touch.

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More Debris Makes More Debris

There’s a pretty awesome entry at the Long Now blog about the Kessler Syndrome, defined by Wikipedia as “a scenario, proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in a 1978 publication, where the volume of space debris in Low Earth orbit is so high that objects in orbit are frequently struck by debris, creating even more debris and a greater risk of further impacts.”

Apparently there’s a lot of trash floating around in space, crashing into other trash, creating more trash. Here’s a video model of what happens and photos of hyper velocity impacts.

February 27, 2009