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Mysterious Googly Eyes Go Viral after Appearing on Public Art in Oregon

This image provided by the City of Bend, Oregon, shows a pair of googly eyes placed on a public art sculpture in Bend, Ore. (City of Bend, Oregon, via AP)
This image provided by the City of Bend, Oregon, shows a pair of googly eyes placed on a public art sculpture in Bend, Ore. (City of Bend, Oregon, via AP)
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Mysterious Googly Eyes Go Viral after Appearing on Public Art in Oregon

This image provided by the City of Bend, Oregon, shows a pair of googly eyes placed on a public art sculpture in Bend, Ore. (City of Bend, Oregon, via AP)
This image provided by the City of Bend, Oregon, shows a pair of googly eyes placed on a public art sculpture in Bend, Ore. (City of Bend, Oregon, via AP)

Googly eyes have been appearing on sculptures around the central Oregon city of Bend, delighting many residents and sparking a viral sensation covered widely by news outlets and featured on a popular late-night talk show.

On social media, the city shared photos of googly eyes on installations in the middle of roundabouts that make up its so-called "Roundabout Art Route." One photo shows googly eyes placed on a sculpture of two deer, while another shows them attached to a sphere. It's not yet known who has been putting them on the sculptures.

"While the googly eyes placed on the various art pieces around town might give you a chuckle, it costs money to remove them with care to not damage the art," the city said in its posts.

The Facebook post received hundreds of comments, with many users saying they liked the googly eyes. "My daughter and I went past the flaming chicken today and shared the biggest laugh," one user said, using a nickname for the "Phoenix Rising" sculpture. "We love the googly eyes. This town is getting to be so stuffy. Let’s have fun!"

Another Facebook user wrote: "I think the googly eyes on the deer specifically are a great look, and they should stay that way."

Others said the city should focus on addressing more important issues, such as homelessness, instead of spending time and money on removing the googly eyes.

Over the years, the city’s sculptures have been adorned with other seasonal decorations, including Santa hats, wreaths, and leis. The city doesn’t remove those, and views the googly eyes differently because of the adhesive, Bend's communications director, Rene Mitchell, told The Associated Press.

"We really encourage our community to engage with the art and have fun. We just need to make sure that we can protect it and that it doesn’t get damaged," she said.

The post and its comments were covered by news outlets, and even made it on a segment of CBS's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." The city regrets that its post was misunderstood, Mitchell said.

"There was no intent to be heavy-handed, and we certainly understand maybe how that was taken," she said. "We own this large collection of public art and really want to bring awareness to the community that applying adhesives does harm the art. So as stewards of the collection, we wanted to share that on social media."

The city has so far spent $1,500 on removing googly eyes from seven of the eight sculptures impacted, Mitchell said, and has started treating some of the art pieces, which are made of different types of metal such as bronze and steel. The "Phoenix Rising" sculpture might need to be repainted entirely, she said.

For some, the googly eyes — like the other holiday objects — provide a welcome boost of seasonal cheer.

"I look forward to seeing the creativity of whoever it is that decorates the roundabouts during the holidays," one social media commenter said. "Brings a smile to everyone to see silliness."

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Study Says Climate Change Will Even Make Earth’s Orbit a Mess

In this satellite image provided by CSU/CIRA & NOAA taken 1:10 GMT on Feb. 25, 2025, shows three cyclones, from left, Alfred, Seru and Rae east of Australia in the South Pacific. (CSU/CIRA & NOAA via AP, File)
In this satellite image provided by CSU/CIRA & NOAA taken 1:10 GMT on Feb. 25, 2025, shows three cyclones, from left, Alfred, Seru and Rae east of Australia in the South Pacific. (CSU/CIRA & NOAA via AP, File)
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Study Says Climate Change Will Even Make Earth’s Orbit a Mess

In this satellite image provided by CSU/CIRA & NOAA taken 1:10 GMT on Feb. 25, 2025, shows three cyclones, from left, Alfred, Seru and Rae east of Australia in the South Pacific. (CSU/CIRA & NOAA via AP, File)
In this satellite image provided by CSU/CIRA & NOAA taken 1:10 GMT on Feb. 25, 2025, shows three cyclones, from left, Alfred, Seru and Rae east of Australia in the South Pacific. (CSU/CIRA & NOAA via AP, File)

Climate change is already causing all sorts of problems on Earth, but soon it will be making a mess in orbit around the planet too, a new study finds.

MIT researchers calculated that as global warming caused by burning of coal, oil, gas continues it may reduce the available space for satellites in low Earth orbit by anywhere from one-third to 82% by the end of the century, depending on how much carbon pollution is spewed. That's because space will become more littered with debris as climate change lessens nature's way of cleaning it up.

Part of the greenhouse effect that warms the air near Earth's surface also cools the upper parts of the atmosphere where space starts and satellites zip around in low orbit. That cooling also makes the upper atmosphere less dense, which reduces the drag on the millions of pieces of human-made debris and satellites.

That drag pulls space junk down to Earth, burning up on the way. But a cooler and less dense upper atmosphere means less space cleaning itself. That means that space gets more crowded, according to a study in Monday's journal Nature Sustainability.

“We rely on the atmosphere to clean up our debris. There’s no other way to remove debris,” said study lead author Will Parker, an astrodynamics researcher at MIT. “It’s trash. It’s garbage. And there are millions of pieces of it.”

Circling Earth are millions of pieces of debris about one-ninth of an inch (3 millimeters) and larger — the width of two stacked pennies — and those collide with the energy of a bullet. There are tens of thousands of plum-sized pieces of space junk that hit with the power of a crashing bus, according to The Aerospace Corporation, which monitors orbital debris. That junk includes results of old space crashes and parts of rockets with most of it too small to be tracked.

There are 11,905 satellites circling Earth — 7,356 in low orbit — according to the tracking website Orbiting Now. Satellites are critical for communications, navigation, weather forecasting and monitoring environmental and national security issues.

“There used to be this mantra that space is big. And so we can we can sort of not necessarily be good stewards of the environment because the environment is basically unlimited,” Parker said.

But a 2009 crash of two satellites created thousands of pieces of space junk. Also NASA measurements are showing measurable the reduction of drag, so scientists now realize that that “the climate change component is really important,” Parker said.

The density at 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth is decreasing by about 2% a decade and is likely to get intensify as society pumps more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, said Ingrid Cnossen, a space weather scientist at the British Antarctic Survey who was not part of the research.

Cnossen said in an email that the new study makes “perfect sense” and is why scientists have to be aware of climate change's orbital effects “so that appropriate measures can be taken to ensure its long-term sustainability.”