Along with @astrokiwi.bsky.social and Laura Revell, we wrote "Cow-culation: Reentry Impact Risk to Livestock in the Satellite Megaconstellation Era" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.29324

This all started because the three of us were writing about pollution from satellites and bemoaning the fact that there is basically no funding for this serious, rapidly growing issue. But you know what does get a lot of funding in NZ? Cows! And the joke began...

"Using a global bovine density dataset, previously published satellite casualty probability code, and a complete lack of funding to do this calculation carefully enough for submission to a peer-reviewed journal, we calculate a ≃ 0.3–1% chance of a cow-sualty in NZ from reentering Starlink Gen2 debris over the next 5 years."

This is NOT peer-reviewed, though we wish it was! Maybe this silly cow-culation will be enough to get some government agency to fund us to do this better!

This is the highest footnote count and highest pun density of anything I've ever written. And it was WAY more fun than writing a research paper or a scicomm article!

Please enjoy reading, laugh at our puns, and then talk to your government representatives about better regulation of satellites in orbit, and accountability for their pollution!

It'll take me several days to actually get home, but I'm about to start the first leg of the #ProfSamLectureTour return trip.

I'd like to point out that while I was here, the 3 of us friends who wrote the cow-culation paper also wrote a scicomm article https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366 and an obituary. (While I also travelled around and gave talks about satellite pollution and helped with teaching).

What a year these last 6 weeks have been! Thanks for all the flat whites, Christchurch!