Spider Star

The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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Praise for Star Dragon

"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin

"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine

"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review

"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly

"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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Light Is Pollution

April 24th, 2008

Today there’s an interesting but sad CNN science blog entry titled ‘The Brightest Spots on Earth,” about night time shuttle photos from space of different parts of the Earth. Now, they’re gorgeous photos in their own way, the same way that oil floating on water with the right lighting can be mesmerizing.

But they’re pictures of pollution.

I’ll be stronger than CNN Blogger Peter Dykstra who writes simply that “Light Pollution is an aesthetic problem.“ For me, personally, it makes my job harder. Some of our biggest telescopes have become unusable for some work because of light pollution, and more are threatened every day. We reguarly try to observe objects fainter than the glow of the sky at night with a new moon. A nearby city gives moonlight a run for its money.

I agree strongly with his other points. People have lost sight of the sky, of the stars. So many live in cities and never see what the sky really looks like. I had a summer student some years past. She was from New Jersey, and had never before seen the Milky Way in her life. She was blown away. For too many people, astronomy, and the universe, are abstract concepts. It used to be the case that civilizations lived or died by their understanding of the sky, knowing when to plant their crops, being able to navigate across open seas. Today people go into the grocery store and buy strawberries year round (of varying quality), or go to sleep on the red eye flight without worrying about how the pilots will find their way.

We’re more and more divorced from the natural world. Our technology is becoming less well understood by the public, and more like magic. At least to too many.

And I appreciate Dykstra’s other main point: light pollution is wasteful and energy-losing. Light that goes into the sky, into space to make these photos possible, is energy wasted. Imagine having a light with half the energy output but relfectors above it to send that light back down. There’s a big, easy energy savings. San Francisco is starting to fine office buildings that leave lights on after hours, not to cut down on the light pollution for us astronomers and asthetics, but for the sake of energy conservation.

This is similar to what should be the easiest part of the global warming debate: even if you don’t worry about global warming it still makes sense to improve energy efficiency from political and economic standpoints. No one, logically, should be against such a point.

The gorgeous dark skies of Wyoming are one reason I’ve chosen to live here. I often vacation in large cities (which offer things that Wyoming does not), and usually during my stays realize I haven’t seen the stars the entire time. I mean, just from my driveway I see a clearer and more brilliant sky than I did growing up.

Light pollutes our sense of being part of a greater universe, and that’s a shame.

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