Man declared incompetent in San Francisco pier killing case

President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly pointed to the case as a reason for toughening the country's immigration policies. Garcia-Zarate was living in the country illegally and had been deported five times before the shooting.

Associated Press•February 14, 2020


FILE - This undated file booking photo provided by the San Francisco Police Department shows Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate, a homeless undocumented Mexican immigrant who was acquitted of killing Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier in 2015. Garcia-Zarate was found incompetent to stand trial Friday, Feb. 20, 2020, on federal gun charges. U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria said in a court order that a psychiatric evaluator had concluded Garcia-Zarate was not competent to stand trial “because of mental illness that is not presently being treated." (San Francisco Police Department via AP, File)More


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A Mexican man who was acquitted of killing a woman on a San Francisco pier in a case that became a national flashpoint was found incompetent to stand trial Friday on federal gun charges.

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria said in a court order that a psychiatric evaluator had concluded Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate was not competent to stand trial “because of mental illness that is not presently being treated."
Chhabria said he would meet with lawyers from both sides next week to discuss the next steps. If either side objects to the findings, a hearing would likely be required to examine Garcia-Zarate's competency. If neither side disputes the findings, the court will discuss whether the defendant should be treated locally for mental illness or sent to a federal facility outside California.

Defense attorney Tony Serra said he would contest the finding.

“He is entitled to a hearing," Serra said. “I'm protesting that he is competent enough for this case."

Friday's decision is the latest delay to a case that touched off a national debate over immigration and sanctuary city policies.

Garcia-Zarate was due to stand trial in January for two counts of illegal gun possession. But Chhabria postponed the trial for an evaluation amid concerns about his “apparent mental illness.”

President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly pointed to the case as a reason for toughening the country's immigration policies. Garcia-Zarate was living in the country illegally and had been deported five times before the shooting.

Jurors in California court found him not guilty of killing Kate Steinle in 2015. But they convicted him of being a felon in possession of a gun, leading to a three-year jail sentence.

A state appeals court threw out the conviction last August, finding that jurors received improper instructions from the trial judge. Federal prosecutors then charged him with gun possession in 2017.

Garcia-Zarate acknowledged holding the gun that killed Steinle. But he said it fired accidentally when he found it wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench on the pier, where Steinle was walking with her father. The weapon belonged to a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger who reported it stolen from his parked car.

The case fueled criticism of San Francisco's sanctuary city policy, which limits local officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities on deportations.

The San Francisco sheriff's department released Garcia-Zarate from jail several weeks before the shooting despite a federal request to detain him until immigration authorities could take him into custody.

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SEE Border Patrol Will Deploy Elite Tactical Agents to Sanctuary Cities

Australian soldiers caring for rescued koalas

WHY WE NEED LESS ARMED FORCES AND MORE KOALA FORCES

 CBS News•February 14, 2020

We all have 24 hours in a day, but some people spend their time better than others. Soldiers with the Australian Army have been using their downtime to help rescued koalas.

The soldiers from the Army's 9th brigade have been cuddling koalas during their feeding time at Cleland Wildlife Park, near the city of Adelaide, according to a post on the brigade's Facebook page. The koalas were transported there from Kangaroo Island, which was devastated by the bushfires that ravaged the continent in recent months.

"16 Regiment Emergency Support Force have been using their rest periods to lend a helping hand at the Cleland Wildlife Park," the post said, "supporting our furry friends during feeding time and by building climbing mounts inside the park. A great morale boost for our hard working team in the Adelaide Hills."

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Classmates rally, help release woman from immigration detention

SOLIDARITY FOREVER 

ABOLISH ICE

NBC News•February 14, 2020


High school students at a Chicago suburb welcomed back a classmate who spent four months in an immigrant detention center as she battles possible deportation to Honduras.

            Gang kills four police in operation to free leader

Armed men killed four police officers and wounded another four as they freed a leader of the notorious MS-13 gang from a court in Honduras, authorities said. Around 20 gang members opened fire Thursday outside a court in El Progreso,  [February 14, 2020]

Students and staff from Crystal Lake Central High School raised over $10,000 on GoFundMe to pay for their classmate Meydi Guzman's release and subsequent legal fees to fight her immigration case.

Guzman, 18, a senior, fled Honduras with her father, Fabio Guzman-Reyes, two years ago seeking U.S. asylum after gang members sexually assaulted Guzman, according to her attorneys, Kevin Bruning and Nathan Reyes.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement released Guzman from custody on Thursday after Sara Huser, Guzman's school counselor, posted a $2,000 bond.

“I am really happy and thankful for all the people who helped me,” Guzman told reporters outside a federal building in the Chicago area.

Huser has taken the teen into her home.

"I’m truly, truly blessed and so very happy that she is going to come join my family, come back to Crystal Lake, get back to school, back to her life," Huser said at a press conference.

Both Guzman and her father made it to the U.S.-Mexico border where they were stopped by border patrol agents in 2018. They were released and expected to show up to their immigration court hearings.

The father and daughter missed a Feb. 28, 2019, hearing in Chicago because of a possible mix-up in scheduling paperwork, according to Bruning and Reyes. They appeared in court on Oct. 16, when they were unexpectedly arrested and taken to an immigration detention center in southern Illinois.

“It was very difficult. The truth was I was not prepared for this, I did not think that turning 18 would take me to be in a prison,” Guzman said in Spanish at a press conference .

ICE did not respond to NBC News' request for comment.

Her release means Guzman will return to school and possibly stay on track to graduate with her classmates in May. However, her father is still in ICE custody at the Kankakee County Jail. The county jail has a contract with ICE to house hundreds of detained immigrants.

Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García, D-Ill., conducted a surprise visit to the facility alongside other Latino lawmakers, days before Guzman-Reyes was arrested on Oct. 16, after hearing concerns over the conditions in which detainees were being held, including reports of problems around medical attention.

García told NBC News he was shown "a ‘sanitized’ version of what happens inside." Therefore, it was difficult to "determine if the immigrants had appropriate health care, but we observed that they spent very little time outside and only had access to sunlight by standing under a small skylight in the holding areas."

Concerns over detainees' safety have soared since Dec. 2019 when "ICE weakened safety standards for immigrants in detention, further threatening their health and dignity," said García.

"ICE must be mandated to consult with medical and mental health experts, congressional committees as well as immigrant and health advocates before implementing any new detention standards,” he added.

Reyes and Bruning have filed a petition for asylum on Guzman’s behalf and asked that a judge dismiss the order for Guzman’s deportation, The Associated Press reported.

Both attorneys are handling the case pro bono, NBC's affiliate in Chicago WMAQ reported.

“We took this case on without a second thought. This is about doing what’s right for this young woman,” Reyes said in a statement.

Monkeys Wake From Anaesthetic When Brain Region Linked to Consciousness Is Stimulated

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

(Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab/Cultura/Getty Images)

HEALTH

MIKE MCRAE

14 FEB 2020

Later today I'll lose consciousness for a few hours to rest and repair. There's a good chance you will, too. Yet as ubiquitous as sleep is, we know very little about which parts of the brain are fundamental to staying awake.

Thanks to a recent experiment that stimulated the brains of anaesthetised macaques, we have a clearer idea of just which neurological structures might be primarily responsible for switching us on each day.

The results not only help us to better understand the processes behind anaesthesia; for those trapped in vegetative or comatose states by illness or injury it could mean a pathway out again.

While we can use brain-scanning technologies to watch how different parts of the brain activate as a subject falls unconscious, it's a lot harder to work out how any single area produces a specific response, let alone which are the most crucial.

Studies on sleeping and comatose patients have given researchers a sound idea of the kinds of structures involved, from the brain stem to the prefrontal cortex. Needless to say, many different parts of our nervous system determine our state of awareness.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin in the US and the Israel Institute of Technology noticed one tiny piece of tissue deep inside our forebrain – the central lateral thalamus – had a rather prominent role in directing our neurological affairs.

Based on its connectivity, it seemed to be pivotal in influencing how signals were passed from the higher-order 'thinking' sections such as the cortex to deeper structures such as the thalamus and back again – areas known to be integral to consciousness.

Researchers often focus on different parts of the brain in relative isolation to work out how relevant they might be to any given task.

In this case, the team were interested in the precise way this tiny piece of brain tissue communicated with other areas during different states of activity, requiring a more holistic approach.

"We decided to go beyond the classical approach of recording from one area at a time," says neuroscientist Yuri Saalmann from the University of Wisconsin.

"We recorded from multiple areas at the same time to see how the entire network behaves."

To get past the hurdles of using human subjects for such a task, the researchers used the macaque as their model, imaging the animals' brain structures before inserting specially tailored electrodes.

These electrodes were then used to monitor activity while the monkeys were awake, asleep, and under the effects of a strong anaesthetic.

The variations in electrical activity confirmed suspicions that the central lateral thalamus played a role in maintaining consciousness, at least in macaques. But it's one thing to find activity, and another to prove that a part of the brain is responsible for causing it.

To do this, the team used their remarkably fine electrodes to stimulate the small patch of neurons with incredible precision, tickling them into action while the macaques were knocked out with a good dose of ketamine.

"We found that when we stimulated this tiny little brain area, we could wake the animals up and reinstate all the neural activity that you'd normally see in the cortex during wakefulness," says Saalmann.

"They acted just as they would if they were awake."

Incredibly, once the stimulation stopped, the macaques drifted right back off to sleep within seconds. It was like the central lateral thalamus acted like a consciousness switch, directing mental traffic when active to give rise to awareness, and reinstating unconsciousness when it was quiet.

None of this helps much with the big questions around what consciousness is on a more philosophical level, and of course drawing conclusions about our own species based on non-human models is also problematic.

But this is one more piece of evidence we can use to fine-tune a physical model of how a brain like ours switches between different states of function.

Given we're still unclear on how anaesthesia renders us oblivious – and, shockingly, even if it's always effective – it helps having precise knowledge of how the smallest bundles of nerves affect one another while we're slipping in and out of awareness.

As for people whose brains are permanently locked into a state of consciousness, having avenues for treatment would be a welcome product of studies like this one.

Previous research has already provided strong evidence that stimulating the thalamus could help some comatose patients regain awareness.

In 2007, deep brain stimulation saw a patient who'd been minimally conscious for 6 years following a traumatic brain injury slowly regain movements and control over some body functions, including a small improvement in speech.

"There are many exciting implications for this work," says University of Wisconsin psychologist Michelle Redinbaugh.

"It's possible we may be able to use these kinds of deep-brain stimulating electrodes to bring people out of comas. Our findings may also be useful for developing new ways to monitor patients under clinical anaesthesia, to make sure they are safely unconscious."

This research was published in Neuron.

Growing Evidence Says People on Easter Island 

Were Still Okay When Europeans Landed

(Thomas Griggs/Unsplash)

CARLY CASSELLA 14 FEB 2020


The mystery of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, is often told as a "parable of self-destruction", a cautionary tale of human exploitation and 'ecocide'. When the last tree falls, so does humanity - or so the story goes.

It's a narrative that's been repeated many times and is often treated as fact, but in recent years, evidence has been mounting to suggest the people of Rapa Nui are incorrectly blamed for their own demise.

New research suggests these islanders were building platforms for the iconic Moai statues up until at least 1750, well beyond the society's hypothesised collapse around 1600 and up to and beyond the later arrival of foreign seafarers.

"The general thinking has been that the society that Europeans saw when they first showed up was one that had collapsed," says anthropologist Robert DiNapoli from the University of Orego.

"Our conclusion is that monument-building and investment were still important parts of their lives when these visitors arrived."

Radiocarbon dating on 11 of the island's 150 stone platforms - known locally as 'ahu' - has directly challenged traditional components of the collapse narrative.

Polynesians are thought to have first colonised Easter Island sometime between the late 12th and early 13th centuries; according to the new findings, construction on the stone monuments began roughly fifty years later.

Focusing on the few monuments with good chronological data, the authors claim between the mid 14th and 15th century, there was a rapid period of ahu construction, followed by a relatively slower period of construction through the 18th century.

In fact, one of the stone platforms analysed may have even been built as late as 1825, some 600 years after the island was first colonised.

While this is on the extreme end of the estimate, even if the general outline is right, it means Easter Islanders were putting in the time and effort to build these resource-expensive monuments long after their society is said to have collapsed.

"Easter Island's ancient society was sustainable despite limited resources and isolation," says anthropologist and archaeologist Terry Hunt from the University of Arizona.

"The islanders even continued their astonishing investments in monuments following the devastating impacts of European contact."

Historical records also support this idea. The first Dutch seafarers who arrived on the island in 1722 reported seeing locals carrying out rituals in front of the Moai statues, and in 1770, Spanish explorers witnessed something similar.

But then, a mere four years later, when British explorer James Cook sailed ashore, he and his crew found the monuments overturned.

Today, the true reason for the collapse of the Rapa Nui society is hotly debated, but over the years some have conceded that Europeans may have played a role in the matter, or, at the very least, were responsible for "finishing it off".

As the palm trees disappeared, sustenance dwindled, and warfare broke out on Easter Island, the arrival of Europeans may have been the last straw.

Still, even in the beginning, this was hardly a clean and simple case of 'ecocide'. Recent research suggests the forests on Rapa Nui might have disappeared much quicker than we thought, too rapidly for humans to achieve on their own, and it might have had something to do with an influx of hungry misplaced rats.

And then, of course, there were other humans. Even in a remote corner of the Pacific, Rapa Nui were not safe from rodent stowaways or strangers.

In the 1800s, South American slave raids took away as much as half of the island's native population, and by 1877, following decades of disease, destruction and enforced migration, only 111 Rapa Nui remained.

"Once Europeans arrive on the island, there are many documented tragic events due to disease, murder, slave raiding and other conflicts," says anthropologist Carl Lipo from Binghamton University in New York.

"These events are entirely extrinsic to the islanders and have, undoubtedly, devastating effects."

In other words, the people of Rapa Nui may have been no more responsible for their own demise than any other indigenous society devastated by white settlers and explorers.

In light of accumulating evidence, both historical and physical, archaeologist Catrine Jarman from the University of Bristol claims Easter Island's societal collapse is not so much a mystery as it is a misconception.

"Perhaps, then, the takeaway from Rapa Nui should not be a story of ecocide and a Malthusian population collapse," she wrote for The Conversation in 2017.

"Instead, it should be a lesson in how sparse evidence, a fixation with 'mysteries', and a collective amnesia for historic atrocities caused a sustainable and surprisingly well-adapted population to be falsely blamed for their own demise."

The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION  Fortean Times

The British magazine takes an invitingly agnostic attitude toward the paranormal.

Credit...Illustration by Máximo Tuja

By Molly Fitzpatrick
June 22, 2016

I was 30,000 feet in the air and halfway through the November issue of Fortean Times before I considered what it must look like to the woman sitting to my left. On the cover of the magazine lurked a giant Lizard Man, with a rippling reptilian 14-pack, orange eyes with vertical-­slit pupils, a forked tongue, a jaw lined with needle teeth. He was wading between lily pads in standing water, before a moonlit, misty backdrop. There was a tangle of seaweed draped over his scaly biceps. To the left of his head, in a typeface straight off a B-­movie poster: “Attack of the Lizard Man! The Car-­Chewing Monster of the South Carolina Swamps.” My neighbor and I had exchanged pleasantries at the beginning of the flight, but after the magazine came out, we didn’t speak again.

Let me be clear: I am not, as a rule, a believer. I’ve long since parted ways with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and most everything I learned in Catholic school. But that has only made me more attuned to the tucked-­away part of my brain ruled more by instinct than by logic — the part that lights up at the creak of a footstep from an unoccupied room, the stranger on the train who looks exactly like your mother and just about anything that happens in the nebulous place where your peripheral vision ends and the unknown begins.

It’s these neurons that fire ecstatically when I read Fortean Times, a 43-year-old British magazine that describes its focus as “the world of strange phenomena.” The name refers to Charles Fort, an influential early-20th-­century writer best remembered for his meticulous research into bizarre happenings that resisted, or defied, scientific explanation. He was a real-life Fox Mulder, if you subtract the bone structure of David Duchovny and add the walrus mustache of Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, the “X-­Files” character even claimed to be a fan of Fort’s. Like Mulder, Fort tirelessly sought out evidence of the anomalies that obsessed him. He spent most of his days at the New York Public Library for the better part of a decade, amassing tens of thousands of notes on paper scraps, cataloging uncanny coincidences and improbable oddities. He called this his “data of the damned.”

Flip through the March issue of Fortean Times, and you’ll discover a whirling carousel of curiosities, each passing horse more disfigured than the last: mysterious animal skeletons, a puzzling uptick in false-­widow-­spider sightings around the U.K., Indonesian mummies and a conference on ancient and modern-­day witchcraft. The May issue brought tidings of yeti footprints, portentous deathbed visions, sex with aliens (sex with ghosts was covered back in January) and tiny, mischievous Mexican sprite-­like beings called chaneques. I know what that sounds like — Weekly World News in a bow tie — but Fortean Times is not mere humbug. The magazine strikes a delicate balance between belief and disbelief: Rarely is any subject dismissed outright; rarely is anything accepted at face value

Its editorial sensibility makes room for stories that simply bask in the glow of unusual customs and characters, without seeking to diminish or mock them. “The Eye-Spy Teddies of Albania” in May surveyed the modern phenomenon of Albanians’ hanging plush toys at the thresholds of their homes and businesses to ward off the “evil eye,” a manifestation of envy.

But when it investigates the paranormal, Fortean Times brings painstaking research and analysis to bear on topics that most sensible observers would dismiss immediately. Consider our mutual friend the Lizard Man. The November cover story traced the South Carolina legend’s roots to a 1988 sighting by a Lee County teenager. This young man claimed that he stopped on his way home from work to change a flat tire when he spotted the seven-­foot-tall creature, which jumped atop his car, curling its long green fingers around the roof. Later, deep scratches were found in the paint. It’s a silver-­screen-­ready scene, recounted in seductive detail. But just when you’ve been sold on the legend, the pendulum swings back to skepticism. Yes, it’s cinematic — “suspiciously cinematic,” the writer Benjamin Radford warns, while thoroughly debunking the story. And I mean thoroughly: “Any bipedal creature running and jumping on the roof of a car would land with its head, hands and fingers toward the front of the car and its windscreen,” Radford noted. But “somehow this acrobatic Lizard Man ended up with its fingers on the rear windshield.” Yeah, right.

The magazine’s “It Happened to Me” section, which publishes first-­person retellings of Fortean experiences, makes it clear that the magazine’s readers subscribe not only to the publication but also to its central philosophy. As they relate their tales of spectral hitchhikers and figures in the shadows, many tick off possible explanations as they go, keen to note the limitations of their own evidence and perception.

As a general rule, Fortean Times is more interested in raising questions than supplying explanations. The answers are beside the point — that we’re asking at all is what’s interesting. This agnosticism is what makes Fortean Times irresistible to me. It allows its readers to have their tinfoil hats and wear them too. The very last thing I want to be is gullible, fooled by parlor tricks or sleight of hand. But like Fort (and Mulder), I want to believe. The prospect of an existence utterly devoid of marvels, all fluorescent lighting and beige carpets, is one I’m unwilling to accept. As long as I have Fortean Times, there will always be a distant possibility that somewhere, in some desolate swamp, a Lizard Man is waiting for us to find him.

Molly Fitzpatrick is senior culture editor at Fusion. This is her first article for the magazine.

NYTIMES MAGAZINE

SKEPTICISM
History Channel’s ‘Project Blue Book’ goes completely over the edge — ‘Area 51’ pushes a case that never was

You’d think a murdered airman with mutilation marks would have cemented ET’s presence. Yeah, about that …


By Russ Dobler on February 11, 2020

If you’ve heard about something, anything, in connection with UFOs, chances are History Channel’s Project Blue Book will do an episode on it at some point. Season 2 started out with a two-parter on the Roswell crash, with an Area 51 chaser last week. Hey, at least this one was actually contemporaneous.

Obviously, not all the information about secret aircraft testing at Area 51 is readily available, but it’s thought the Groom Lake facility was established in 1955 for the CIA’s Project AQUATONE, which developed the U-2 spy plane flown over the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cuba during the Cold War. This was followed by Project OXCART, a precursor of sorts to the SR-71 Blackbird. Project Blue Book did eventually end up attributing many UFO sighting reports to tests of those aircraft, once they were allowed to check flight records.

But forget all that. Despite the February 4-airing episode being titled “Area 51,” the whole thing is really about a case with so little evidence of having actually occurred, you’ve probably never heard of it.

As the story goes, when collecting debris from a missile test in 1956 at New Mexico’s Holloman Air Force Base (not even Area 51), Major William Cunningham heard Sergeant Jonathan Lovette scream from behind a sand dune, only to see him being snaked up into a flying saucer by some kind of tether. Cunningham was accused of murder and an unbelievable cover story until Lovette’s corpse turned up three days later, 10 miles from where he disappeared, drained of all blood and with his tongue, anus, and penis precisely removed.


He’s always in the last place you look.

Jesus Christ! You’d think that would be the one to blow the lid off the whole story, but even avowed UFO buffs don’t take it seriously. Kevin Randle, one of the original Roswell popularizers, writes that the incident was supposedly documented in something called “Blue Book Special Report #13,” which no one has ever actually seen. Except apparently for Bill English, the only person to ever tell the tale. Too bad he was never in the Army Special Forces, as he claimed.

It’s clearly bunk, but the “mutilated abductee” story would be additionally suspect since the first reported American UFO abduction wasn’t until that of Betty and Barney Hill in 1961, and the famous “cattle mutilations” didn’t become a known thing until around 1967. And despite people swearing up and down that predators couldn’t be responsible for those, that’s exactly what most farmers, veterinarians, and scientists think is going on, along with dehydration and the behavior of scavengers like flies. Check out the laundry list of normal explanations on Wikipedia.

“Area 51” was topped off with a pair of helicopters chasing off a UFO, reminiscent of the Cash-Landrum encounter of 1980, proving once again that not only is there no evidential threshold something must reach to be included on Project Blue Book, but there aren’t any temporal limits, either. Just throw it all in the blender and drink it down.


Aw hell, let’s throw in some car stoppage for good measure. First reported in Levelland, Texas, in 1957.

Every February, to help celebrate Darwin Day, the Science section of AIPT cranks up the critical thinking for SKEPTICISM MONTH! Skepticism is an approach to evaluating claims that emphasizes evidence and applies the tools of science. All month we’ll be highlighting skepticism in pop culture and skepticism of pop culture.

AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics.

‘Cowboys & Saurians: Dinosaurs in the Old West. REAL accounts?

#CRYPTOZOOLOGY


BOOKS
‘Cowboys & Saurians: Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Beasts as Seen by the Pioneers’ – book review

Dinosaurs in the Old West. REAL accounts?

ByJustin Mullis on February 15, 2020


In his landmark 1998 study of the role played by dinosaurs in American culture, The Last Dinosaur Book (U. of Chicago Press), scholar W.J.T. Mitchell observed that “… Dinosaurs rightly belong in the picture with cowboys – and Indians and buffalo and outlaws and railroads and cavalry – in short, in the world of the American frontier, understood as a blend of fact and fantasy, a real place and a Hollywood invention.”

Though Mitchell’s observation wasn’t concerning alleged real-life accounts of dinosaurs and other similar creatures sighted on the North American frontier during the start of the 20th century, I imagine that author John LeMay would no doubt concur with this sentiment given that his latest book, Cowboys & Saurians: Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Beasts As Seen By The Pioneers (Bicep Books, 2019), is exactly that, a collection of over 27 supposed historical reports of Mesozoic monsters seen just west of the Mississippi between the years 1870 and 1914, accompanied by 85 black and white illustrations.


I’ve known John for a couple years and was a contributor to his book on King Kong, and co-chaired a panel on Hammer and Toho’s unmade Loch Ness Monster movie with him at G-Fest in 2019. John made me promise that despite our friendship I wouldn’t go easy on him in this review, and I won’t. For Cowboys & Saurians, he combed through historical newspaper archives to uncover accounts of supposed encounters with dinosaurs, pterosaurs, various Mesozoic marine reptiles, and other often far stranger scaly beasts on the American frontier. His approach to this subject matter is critical but not “capital-S” skeptical.
LeMay combed through historical newspaper archives to uncover encounters with dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and Mesozoic marine reptiles.

LeMay notes early on that most, if not all, of these stories are likely hoaxes whipped up by bored newspaper men. Such tall-tales, at least when concerning reptilian monsters, were often sold as “snaik” or “snaix” stories – a deliberate misspelling of “snake” – as a way of tipping off readers to their dubious provenance. When an article mentions a specific town or names specific individuals, LeMay has done his best to confirm if these locations and people were real.

Undoubtedly the strongest aspect of Cowboys & Saurians is LeMay’s decision to reprint the original newspaper stories in their entirety. This way readers can examine the original accounts for themselves, rather than being dependent on an author’s retelling of events, a common pitfall in popular cryptozoological books, in which primary source accounts are often refined and/or embellished to make a particular case sound more dramatic or convincing.

The book opens with what may be the greatest “snaik” story of all-time, the Tombstone Pterodactyl. According to an article published in the April 26, 1890 edition of Tombstone, Arizona’s Epitaph newspaper, two anonymous ranchers encountered and killed a “monster, resembling a huge alligator with an extremely long tail,” and a 160-foot wingspan. LeMay is careful to note that no known species of pterosaur had such a massive wingspan, another point in favor of his research. He also posits that the story was likely invented to try and help generate interest in the town of Tombstone, which was in dire economic straits at the time and looking for an influx of tourism dollars.

The Tombstone Pterodactyl story ultimately disappeared, only to be resurrected decades later in letters columns of the popular paranormal periodicals Fate and Strange Magazine, where a new element was added — the claim that a photograph of the dead pterodactyl existed. Noted Fortean researchers Ivan Sanderson and John Keel claimed to have seen the photograph, along with scores of others, but for some reason no one could ever produce a copy.

Here we run into one of LeMay’s two major pitfalls with this book, a willingness to entertain baseless paranormal conjectures as possible answers to cryptozoological mysteries. He ends his otherwise strong chapter on the Tombstone Pterodactyl by asking if the Mandela Effects – a ludicrous conspiracy theory that I have neither the patience nor word count to explain – could be responsible for the missing pterosaur photo.


Saurians‘ other major shortcoming concerns the book’s secondary sources, which are composed almost entirely of literature by popular cryptozoologists. This includes veterans like Loren Coleman, Roy Mackal, Karl Shuker, and Mark Hall, as well as lesser luminaries like Jason Offutt and David Weatherly, and even a few outright frauds, like young-earth creationist Jonathan Whitcomb. The only academic text dealing with the subject repeatedly cited throughout Cowboys & Saurians is Stanford University folklorist Adrienne Mayor’s 2005 book, Fossil Legends of the First Americans.

Had LeMay conducted a more in-depth survey of the existing literature on his subject, he may have discovered such interesting and useful scholarly works as Reeve and Wagenen’s Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore (Utah State University Press, 2011), which would have aided greatly in what was nevertheless one of my favorite entries, on the Bear Lake Monster of Utah, a beast with an interesting connection to that state’s iconic religious denizens.



In addition to these previously documented accounts, some of the book’s more obscure stories are especially interesting given their parallels with some famous cryptid sightings of the 20th century. These include Ohio’s Creature from Crosswicks Creek, seen in May of 1882, which bears an uncanny resemblance to South Carolina’s Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp of the late 1980s, as well as the Van Meter Monster that terrorized a small Iowa town in the fall of 1903, which shares a family resemblance to West Virginia’s Mothman of the 1960s.

Whether skeptics or believers, Cowboys & Saurians should prove a major draw for cryptozoology aficionados, as LeyMay has compiled a veritable treasure trove of information here on what is an otherwise largely unremarked upon phenomena.

Every February, to help celebrate Darwin Day, the Science section of AIPT cranks up the critical thinking for SKEPTICISM MONTH! Skepticism is an approach to evaluating claims that emphasizes evidence and applies the tools of science. All month we’ll be highlighting skepticism in pop culture and skepticism of pop culture.

AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics.
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History Channel’s ‘Project Blue Book’ goes completely over the edge — ‘Area 51’ pushes a case that never was

(Marsset et al., Nature Astronomy, 2020)

SPACE

We Just Got Our Closest Look Yet at a Strange 'Golf Ball Asteroid'

MATT WILLIAMS, UNIVERSE TODAY

15 FEB 2020

In 1802, German astronomer Heinrich Olbers observed what he thought was a planet within the Main Asteroid Belt. In time, astronomers would come to name this body Pallas, an alternate name for the Greek warrior goddess Athena.

The subsequent discovery of many more asteroids in the Main Belt would lead to Pallas being reclassified as a large asteroid, the third-largest in the Belt after Ceres and Vesta.

For centuries, astronomers have sought to get a better look at Pallas to learn more about its size, shape, and composition. As of the turn of the century, astronomers had come to conclude that it was an oblate spheroid (an elongated sphere).

Thanks to a new study by an international team, the first detailed images of Pallas have finally been taken, which reveal that its shape is more akin to a "golf ball" – i.e. heavily dimpled. 

Pierre Vernazza of the Laboratoire d'Astrophyisque de Marseille in France was the principal investigator of the team, which included members from 21 research institutions from around the world.

Michaël Marsset, a postdoctoral associate with MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, was the lead author on the study (which recently appeared in the journal Nature Astronomy).

For centuries, astronomers have known that Pallas orbits along a highly tilted orbit compared to the majority of objects in the Main Asteroid Belt. Whereas most of these objects follow the same roughly elliptical path around the Sun and have orbital inclinations of less than 30°, Pallas orbit is inclined 34.837° relative to the Solar plane (for reasons that have remained a mystery).

For the sake of their study, Vernazza and his team obtained 11 images of Pallas that were acquired by the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) on the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT).

These images were taken in 2017 and 2019 when the team reserved one of the four telescopes that make up the VLT to capture images of Pallas when it was at the closest point in its orbit to Earth.

Thanks to the extreme adaptive optics system of the SPHERE instrument, the team observed a surface that was thoroughly dimpled by craters that it resembled a golf ball.

Addressing the question of why this is, the team considered the possibility that Pallas' inclined orbit causes it to experience numerous impacts during the over four and a half years (1,686 days) it takes to complete a single orbit around the Sun.

These impacts, they calculated, would be four times more damaging than collisions experienced by two asteroids in the same orbit.

As Marsset explained to MIT News, "Pallas' orbit implies very high-velocity impacts. From these images, we can now say that Pallas is the most cratered object that we know of in the asteroid belt. It's like discovering a new world."

Pallas' highly inclined orbit around the Sun. (Osamu Ajiki/AstroArts, Ron Baalke/JPL).

Using the 11 images, which were taken from different angles, the team compiled them to generate a 3D reconstruction of the asteroid's shape, as well as a crater map of its poles and parts of its equatorial region.

From this, they were able to identify 36 craters larger than 30 km (18.64 mi) in diameter – which is about one-fifth the diamter of the impact crater that killed off the dinosaurs (the Chicxulub crater).

While small compared to craters found on Earth and other bodies, Pallas' craters appear to cover at least 10 percent of the asteroid's surface – which would suggest that it has had a rather violent history.

To determine just how violent, the team ran a series of simulations that modeled the interactions between Pallas (as well as Ceres and Vesta) with the rest of the Main Belt since it formed about 4 billion years ago.

These simulations took into account the asteroids' size, mass, and orbital properties, as well as speed and size distributions of objects within the Main Belt. They then recorded all the times a simulated collision with any of the three bodies produced a crater at least 40 km (25 mi) wide (the size of most craters on Pallas).

What they found was that a 40-km crater on Pallas could be created by a much smaller object than on either Ceres of Vesta.

Since small asteroids are much more common the asteroid belt than larger ones, this means that Pallas has a higher likelihood of experiencing high-velocity cratering events than its peers. As Marsset illustrated:

"Pallas experiences two to three times more collisions than Ceres or Vesta, and its tilted orbit is a straightforward explanation for the very weird surface that we don't see on either of the other two asteroids."

Other discoveries that resulted from the latest images of Pallas include a bright spot in its southern hemisphere and a huge impact basin along its equator.

While the team is uncertain as to what the bright spot might be, they theorise that it could be a very large salt deposit on the surface. This is based in part on their 3D reconstruction, which provided updated estimates on Pallas' volume (which they combined with its known mass).

From this, the team calculated that Pallas is quite different in terms of density to Ceres or Vesta and that it likely formed from a combination of water ice and silicates billions of years ago. As the water ice melted over time, it would have hydrated the silicates, forming salt deposits in the interior that could have been exposed by impacts.

Another possible bit of supporting evidence involves the Geminid meteor shower.

This takes place every December as Earth passes through the cloud of fragments from the asteroid Phaethon – a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) that is thought to be a fragment of Pallas that eventually found its way into Earth's orbit.

Given that the Geminids have a range of sodium content, Marsset and his colleagues theorize that these may have originated from salt deposits within Pallas.

As for the impact basin, which measures an estimated 400 km (250 mi) wide, the team simulated various impacts along the equator and tracked the fragments that would have resulted.

From their simulations, the team concluded that the impact basin was likely the result of a collision that took place about 1.7 billion years ago with an object between 20 and 40 km (12.5 to 25 mi) in diameter.

This impact would have ejected fragments into space which fell back to the asteroid, creating a pattern that happens to match a family of fragments that were recently observed trailing Pallas. In other words, this explanation fits with the currently-known "Pallas family" of fragments.

As Marsset indicated, these latest observations and theories also bolster the case for a low-cost mission to Pallas to learn more about it.

"People have proposed missions to Pallas with very small, cheap satellites. I don't know if they would happen, but they could tell us more about the surface of Pallas and the origin of the bright spot."

These findings are the latest in a series of discoveries that have made within the Main Asteroid Belt in recent years. These include the Dawn mission confirming that the building blocks of life exist on Ceres, the discovery of a binary asteroid that behaves like two comets by Hubble, and the fact that Hygeia, (the fourth most-massive object in the Belt) is actually spherical – making it the smallest such object in the Solar System.

And then you have research that indicates that a primordial Asteroid Belt may have been empty until the migration of the larger planets caused it to become filled by objects that were left over from the formation of the Solar System.

It is little wonder then why many scientists want to send a spacecraft there, which could be steamed-powered to ensure cost-effectiveness and longevity.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

SPACE

NASA Captures Rare Photo of a Dust Devil Swirling on The Surface of Mars

(NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA)

15 FEB 2020

While dust devils aren't exactly uncommon on Mars - the Red Planet is, after all, a very dusty and windy place - the whirlwinds often fade almost as quickly as they appear. That makes capturing an image of one in action a rare treat.

But in October 2019, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter managed to snap a photo of a massive active dust devil - and you can now see it for yourself.

The Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photo using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), a powerful camera that's been snapping photos of the Martian surface since 2006.

On Monday, the University of Arizona team that built and manages HiRISE published details on the newly photographed dust devil, which formed on Amazon is Planitia's volcanic plains.

(NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

The core of the dust devil is 50 meters (164 feet) wide, according to the HiRISE team, and based on the length of its shadow, they believe it is probably about 650 meters (2,132 feet) tall.

Though the dust devil is a big one, it's far from the biggest.

In March 2012, HiRISE took a photo of an active dust devil that was a mind-blowing 20 kilometers (12 miles) tall. But despite its impressive height, that dust devil was barely wider than this newly spotted one: just 70 meters (229 feet).

Serpentine dust devil from 2012. (NASA/JPL/UArizona)

In other words, Martian colonists already had a lot to worry about - and now they can add towering swirls of dust and debris to the list.

This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.

Astronomers Have Aired Concerns About Musk's Starlink in a Paper, And It's Intense
EVAN GOUGH, UNIVERSE TODAY 16 FEB 2020

Picture the space around Earth filled with tens of thousands of communications satellites. That scenario is slowly coming into being, and it has astronomers concerned.

Now a group of astronomers have written a paper outlining their detailed concerns, and how all of these satellites could have a severe, negative impact on ground-based astronomy.

SpaceX and other companies are casting their keen capitalist eyes on the space around Earth. SpaceX and OneWeb are the only companies - so far - to launch any portions of their satellite constellations.

But a number of other companies have plans to do the same, and eventually all of those satellites will number in the tens of thousands.

The astronomy community has raised some concerns about these satellite constellations. The Royal Astronomical Society and the American Astronomical Society have both released statements expressing their concern and desire to work with companies in the satellite constellation business.

Those statements are polite, cautious in their criticism, and written in the spirit of cooperation.

But this new paper lays out all of the astronomical community's concerns, backed up with data, and presses their point more insistently.

The first 240 Starlink satellites in Celestrak. (Gallozzi et al., 2020/Celestrak.)

"For centuries ground based astronomical observations have led to exceptional progresses in our scientific understanding of the Laws of Nature."

A satellite constellation is a group of artificial satellites that work together to provide global or near-global communications coverage. They have the potential to make high-speed internet available almost anywhere. Obviously, there are a lot of benefits to that.


But there are criticisms, too, and three astronomers from Italy's INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, have presented these criticisms in detail. The three are Stefano Gallozzi, Marco Scardia, and Michele Maris.

Their paper is titled "Concerns about ground based astronomical observations: A step to Safeguard the Astronomical Sky".

When you add up all the satellites that companies want to launch as part of their constellations, you get somewhere around 50,000 satellites. The question is, what effect will of those satellites have on ground-based astronomy?

The authors of the report claim that all of these satellites will inevitably damage astronomical observing.

A note to readers: English is not the first language of the authors of the paper, so some of the quotes contain small inconsistencies, but the meaning is clear.

"Depending on their altitude and surface reflectivity, their contribution to the sky brightness is not negligible for professional ground based observations," the report says in the introduction.

"With the huge amount of about 50,000 new artificial satellites for telecommunications planned to be launched in Medium and Low Earth Orbit, the mean density of artificial objects will be of >1 satellite for square sky degree; this will inevitably harm professional astronomical images."

 

(Gallozzi et al., 2020)

TABLE: There are only 172 stars in the whole sky exceeding the expected brightness of Starlink satellites. Higher altitude LEO satellites (e.g. over 1000 km-altitude) will be visible all the night reaching approximately the 8th magnitude.

Since SpaceX is the furthest along in deploying their constellation, their name pops up frequently in the paper. SpaceX's Starlink system has already launched almost 250 of their satellites, and they plan to deploy up to 42,000 satellites in total.


According to the paper, these satellites "will shine from the 3rd to the 7th magnitude in sky after sunset and before sun dawn."

The authors say that all of those satellites will inevitably leave trails in astronomical images, and may inhibit the search for Near Earth Objects. There's some degree of risk that we might not spot a potential impact because of all these satellites.

But it's not just images that will be negatively affected, according to the report.

"Serious concerns are common also to other wavelengths eligible for ground based investigation, in particular for radio-astronomy, whose detectors are already saturated by the ubiquitous irradiation of satellites communication from space stations as well as from the ground."

Back in May 2019, Elon Musk tried to dismiss any astronomical concerns about Starlink. Among his rather brusque dismissal of criticisms was his statement that "We need to move telelscopes (sic) to orbit anyway. Atmospheric attenuation is terrible."

Musk has a huge profile in the space community, so his words might have convinced some that there are no problems between Starlink and astronomy. But Musk is an entrepreneur, not a scientist.


There are already 4900 satellites in orbit, which people notice ~0% of the time. Starlink won't be seen by anyone unless looking very carefully & will have ~0% impact on advancements in astronomy. We need to move telelscopes to orbit anyway. Atmospheric attenuation is terrible. pic.twitter.com/OuWYfNmw0D— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2019

For all his accomplishments, Musk is not an expert in astronomy or astronomical observing. Is his statement that Starlink "will have ~0 percent impact on advancements in astronomy," accurate and informed?

The three authors of the new paper don't seem to think so. They outline the risks that satellite constellations pose to astronomy, and it's not all about whether they're visible in optical light.


They point out that there are "dangerous effects arising from such changes in the population of small satellites. A dedicated strategy for urgent intervention to safeguard and protect each astronomical band observable from the ground is outlined."

"Without ground based observations most of current space based astronomy would be useless or impossible."

The authors start at the beginning, by pointing out the enormous advances in understanding made by ground-based observations. "For centuries ground based astronomical observations have led to exceptional progresses in our scientific understanding of the Laws of Nature." That's hard to argue with.

In the paper's first section, they talk about how space-based astronomy, or space telescopes, have contributed to knowledge. But they point out that ground-based and space-based astronomy need each other and produce the best science when they work together.

"Without ground based observations most of current space based astronomy would be useless or impossible."

It's safe to say that the authors don't agree with Musk's glib assertion that "We need to move telelscopes (sic) to orbit anyway. Atmospheric attenuation is terrible."

Maybe Musk has never heard of adaptive optics. Adaptive optics allow modern ground-based telescopes to overcome the effect of the atmosphere on observations. Upcoming telescopes like the European Extremely Large Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope feature adaptive optics at the heart of their designs.

The authors also point out what should be clear to anyone who thinks about it for very long: compared to ground-based astronomy, space-based telescopes are enormously expensive. And risky.

Advances in telescope technology are made here on Earth. Their deployment is the risky part, but the technologies have already been tested and developed here on Earth. As the authors of the paper point out, testing and developing new telescope technologies is not feasible in space.

"A major limitation of space based telescopes is that they can not be maintained, refurbished or repaired after launch." The Hubble is an exception, and other space telescopes have not been maintained. Once they're done, they're done.

The first Hubble servicing mission, the only space telescope to be serviced since launch. (NASA)

"Compared to ground based observatories, the average life-time of space based telescopes is of the order of a couple of decades or less. On the contrary ground based observatories lasts for several decades, with telescopes installed at the beginning of the space era again working in a profitable manner."

In short, space telescopes become technologically obsolete, while their ground-based counterparts keep on working.

We can see this with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT). The VLT is made up of four primary units, and the first one saw first light in 1998.

Over the years its been upgraded multiple times, each time increasing its observing capabilities. Two of its instruments, SPHERE (first light June 2014) and ESPRESSO (first light September 2016), are designed to study exoplanets, something that wasn't important when the VLT was designed. Other instruments, like VISIR (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared) were upgraded to study exoplanets.

Space telescopes are also costly when compared to ground-based telescopes. The James Webb Space Telescope has been in development for 20 years, and it will cost US$10 billion. But the next generation of ground-based telescopes, like the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, will cost about US$1 billion each. And they will likely outlive the JWST by decades.

The nitty-gritty part of the paper deals with the actual problems that ground-based astronomy will face from satellite constellations. In some electromagnetic wavelengths, space telescopes are much more effective than ground-based telescopes. In the far Infrared for example, the atmosphere blocks much of it. But that doesn't tell the whole tale.

In the paper the authors talk about sky degradation. This degradation comes not only from light pollution on the ground, but "it is also due to artificial satellite fleets crossing and scarring observations with bright parallel streaks/trails at all latitudes."

Starlink alone would like to place up to 40,000 satellites into orbit. That's just one company out of several with plans to launch satellite constellations. Nobody knows how many there will eventually be, but it's fair to use a 50,000 satellite figure for discussion.

"Astronomers are extremely concerned by the possibility that sky seen from Earth may be blanketed by tens of thousands of satellites, which will greatly outnumber the approximately 9,000 stars that are visible to the unaided human eye," the authors say. "This is not some distant threat: it is already happening."

(NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory

/NSF/AURA/CTIO/DELVE)

IMAGE: This is what astronomers are concerned about, Starlink satellites visible in a mosaic of an astronomical image.

The three astronomers break down all the numbers for Earth's growing fleet of satellites. Taking into account viewing angles, altitude, and brightness leads them to this conclusion:

"Thus with 50k satellites the "normality" will be a sky crowded with artificial objects: every square degree of the sky will have a satellite crawling in it along the whole observing night accessible and visible by astronomical cameras and not only by professional instrumentation."

According to the authors, all of this light pollution will be a serious detriment to astronomical observing. They acknowledge that SpaceX is experimenting with one "dark" satellite which is painted black to reduce reflectivity.

But they point out that 75 percent of the satellite's surface is solar panels, which obviously cannot be painted. They also point out problems with painting a satellite black:

"If the satellite body will be inhibited to reflect the sun light, it will absorb radiation warming too much with possible failures, thus will probably increase the risk management for the whole fleet and make the dark-coating solution ineffective or even counterproductive."

Apparent magnitude of satellites during an observing night depending on the altitude. (Gallozzi et al., 2020)

Then there's the whole problem of radio-band interference.

"Even with best coating and mitigation procedures to decrease the impact on visual astronomical observations, what it is often omitted or forgotten is that telecommunication constellations will shine in the radio wavelengths bands, observable from the ground."

There are decades old agreements from the beginning of the space age that reserve certain radio frequencies for certain uses. The frequencies of certain atoms and molecules in space are reserved for radio astronomy. These include carbon monoxide and its isotopes, and H2O.

Radio astronomers already have to contend with all kinds of interference. According to the authors, this will get much worse.

"What is not widely acknowledged is that the development of the latest generation telecommunication networks (both from space and from Earth) already has a profound impact on radio-astronomical observations (at all sub-bands): with LEO satellite fleets it is quite sure that the situation could become unbearable."

Then there's the question of legality, and which bodies can authorize the deployment of satellite constellations.

The authors draw our attention to the 1994 statement from UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

That statement says:

"Persons belonging to future generations have the right to an uncontaminated and undamaged Earth, including pure skies; they are entitled to its enjoyment as the ground of human history of culture and social bonds that make each generation and individual a member of one human family."

The number of objects around Earth is growing rapidly. (Gallozzi et al., 2020)

That same statement from UNESCO also says "Here, World Heritage is the property of all humankind, and while there may be protective laws, enforcing this is another matter, as only States can sue other States under this type of international treaty. A State is responsible for the activities that occur within its jurisdiction – whether they are authorized or unauthorized."

The three astronomers point out that since the FCC and other bodies in the United States have given approval to Starlink, they may be able to halt Starlink, too. They may even be obligated to under international law.

They also mention the Outer Space Treaty, and say "And the legal process is that the state government, this time the USA government, is legally responsible for all objects sent into outer space that launch from USA borders. That means, that it is the USA government that is responsible for the harm caused by its corporation, Starlink, sending objects into orbit that cause harm."

The paper draws to a close by pointing out possible legal actions that the international community could take to stop satellite constellations.

They could sue the FCC because in their approval they didn't take light pollution into account, which violates the National Environmental Policy Act. That act requires any federal agency to consider the environmental impact of the projects they approve. The authors claim that the FCC didn't adequately consider the light pollution from Starlink.

The international astronomy community could "sue in court for lack of jurisdiction and jurisprudence of US FCC to authorize private not geostationary satellites over other states and nations." This calls into question the FCC's right to even authorize satellite constellations that travel over other nations.

Then there's the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The three authors say the international community could sue the US government at the ICJ "… to put on hold further Starlink launches to quantify the loss of public finances in damaging national and international astronomical projects."

The international astronomy community started a petition in January 2020. The community wants a hold put on Starlink and others, they want legal protections put in place for astronomical observing, and they want to limit the number of satellite constellations to a minimum.

"All of these requests come from the heartfelt concern of scientists arising from threatens to be barred from accessing the full knowledge of the Cosmos and the loss of an intangible asset of immeasurable value for humanity," the authors say.

Space is becoming more of a legal morass as time goes on. Exactly which types of activities will be allowed is unclear. Decades ago, near the beginning of the space age, laws and agreements were put in place to keep things under control.

But nobody foresaw anything like satellite constellations, and the legal framework governing space is likely going to come under a lot of pressure.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.