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Residents of Lone Pine, California, noticed a pair of mysterious blinding lights coming from nearby Mount Whitney one night in early October. It looked like a scene from one of those iconic alien invasion movies , but it was actually an experiment conducted by a local California tech startup. The company is Reflect Orbital, a group that dreams of putting giant mirrors in space to reflect sunlight to Earth at night. Reflect Orbital says this technology could extend solar generation hours, boost agricultural yields, and aid nighttime search-and-rescue operations.

However, scientists have pushed back against proposals to deploy reflective mirrors in low Earth orbit for several months. Presidents of four international scientific societies representing researchers from more than 30 countries wrote a collaborative letter to the U.S.…