Scientific American

Starlink’s goal is to beam high-speed Internet from space, down to the most remote parts of the world. Even though SpaceX's satellite internet service is still being tested—with mixed reviews—the company is getting a lot of attention in Washington (DC) at a moment when the government is willing to spend taxpayer dollars on infrastructure and take chances on new broadband deployment methods.

Federal agencies are competing with one another over radio waves used to help predict changes in the climate as the sky is increasingly cluttered with noise from billions of smartphones. On one side are NOAA and NASA. They have developed space satellites that passively capture and decode the faint energy signals given off by changes in water vapor, temperatures, rain and wind that determine future weather patterns.

There are no doubt many reasons for the rise of partisanship, but our research, using voting data from across the country over a four year period, recently uncovered an important one: the loss of local newspapers. As local newspapers disappear, citizens increasingly rely on national sources of political information, which emphasizes competition and conflict between the parties.