Someone worried recently.
A few years back a satellite raced through Earth’s Van Allen belts. Fast. The worry? It might carry a nuclear weapon.
The implications are ugly.
An explosion up there takes out much of global space infrastructure. It isn’t just bad news, it is catastrophic. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says this is banned. Explicitly.
But can we check if anyone obeys?
Technologically impossible. For decades, yes. We lacked the tools to verify or monitor the void. It remains a blind spot.
Until now.
Tom Whipple talks to Prof Areg Danagoulian, Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. He published something new in Nature this month. A clever concept. He wants to spot thermonuclear devices in orbit. To actually see them.
How? That’s the trick.
“We can’t just look and hope. We need physics to guide the search.”
It works like this: nuclear materials leave a trace. Not visual. But measurable. Danagoulian’s method looks for the specific signatures of these devices. It’s subtle but potentially decisive.
Does that stop arms races? Maybe not. It does add a layer of friction.
The rest of the episode pivots. Hard turn.
Professor Gareth Mitchell, a Science Communications expert, joins in. He talks toddlers. Specifically, how they waddle. And then football. Robots playing it, winning.
Yes. Real connection between clumsy babies and agile machines.
Then food. A new global database on food consumption is rolling out. It tackles the hard stuff. Our diets, the environment, the pressure points. Pressing questions about what we eat and how it hurts the planet.
So much for just looking at satellites.
We eat. We play. We launch things into orbit and hope nothing explodes.
Which brings us back to space. And that treaty. Signed decades ago. Ignored in spirit if not in letter? Who knows. We just built a better way to peek into the dark.
Is it enough?
Probably not. But it starts with seeing what is there.
Or at least what should be there.
