We Never Would Have Known

The internet is an amazing thing. In case after case of police shooting people, which formerly got little press, video evidence actually proves that the police do shoot people. Innocent people. Deliberately. Damned near casually.
Politician’s dirty deeds are being exposed at a rate never seen before. Some day, it may actually be hard for somebody to hold political office after they’re caught selling children to child molesters. At any rate, they are being exposed.
Which brings us to tonight’s story. A satellite, with the extremely unpoetic name of DMSP-13, exploded.
It’s not really too surprising. With 3,700 satellites floating around the Earth 24/7, one of them’s bound to go kerflooey once in a while.
Maybe an overheated battery. Maybe metal fatigue. Maybe it got hit by an asteroid. We may never know.
The important thing about this is that the U.S. Department of Defense, the owner of this particular satellite, did not inform anybody of this sudden patch of space debris, which happened over a month ago.
No, the news came to us, via a web site of astronomy nerds with big telescopes.
If we ever have evidence of alien intelligence, it’s going to come from these same nerds with telescopes.