This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Earth’s orbit is filling up with junk. Greenhouse gases are making the problem worse. on Mar 10, 2025. Advertisement.

A modern evolutionary myth may have been dispelled. Some 470 million years ago, a wealth of meteorites started falling to Earth, filling the sky with shooting stars. Around the same time, life on ...

Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t suddenly give way to the vacuum of space, but gets dramatically thinner at a point known as the Kármán line, roughly 100 kilometers up.

Earth’s orbit is filling up with junk. Greenhouse gases are making the problem worse. By the end of the century, a shrinking atmosphere could create a minefield for satellites.

At any given moment, more than 10,000 satellites are whizzing around the planet at roughly 17,000 miles per hour. This constellation of machinery is the technological backbone of modern life ...