Stargazers and scientists looking for alien life are finding it ever more difficult to see into space due to the vast number of satellites that are now orbiting the Earth, experts claim.
Some 8,000 satellites are currently cluttering the sky, with numbers dramatically increasing in the last few years, making astronomy difficult as the sky is "crawling with moving satellites".
This comes as The Mirror reports another 400,000 satellites have been given the go ahead for Low Earth Orbit.
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Satellites also make it more difficult for astronomers as they reflect sunlight back to Earth and prevent telescopes peering deep into space.
On top of this ever increasing artificial light on Earth makes it more difficult with studies showing that the night sky is getting about 10% brighter each year.
Tony Tyson, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, reportedly said: “If you just went out in a dark place somewhere and looked at the sky in 2030 it would be a very macabre scene. The sky will be crawling with moving satellites and the number of stars that you would see are minimum, even in a very dark sky. It’s a major issue.”
The worry over the increasing number of satellites in the sky led to the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the UK Space Agency and the Department for Business arranging a Dark and Quiet Skies conference where they have called for regulation.
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Robert Massey, deputy executive director of the RAS, said that dramatic changes are taking place in the way that humans are using space.
“There is the real prospect that we could see hundreds of thousands of satellites in orbit by the end of the decade,” he said, reported the Independent.
“Frankly, searching for the origin of life may be a long shot but detecting signals from other civilizations becomes harder if you have an incredibly powerful and noisy sky."
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