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Striking visualization, makes me wonder: can this density of satellite coverage meaningfully change how earth appears to an alien civilization many lightyears away, in a way that coverage by 1% or 10% as many satellites over the last ~50 years would not?

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I know the dots seem large in the visualization, but these satellites are approximately the size of cars. They're specks of dust at this scale.

No. There are over a billion road vehicles on Earth, but they do not change how the Earth appears from space (even accounting for the fact that ~half are blocked by clouds at any given time). A few tens of thousands of Starlink satellites will not change the Earth's visual appearance.

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