By now, "Here Are Some Stupid Things on the Internet of Things" has become a full-on article genre. There's even a Tumblr dedicated to the idea: "We Put a Chip in It," it's called.

In some visions of the future, smart devices capture, quantify, and control most aspects of daily life. The oven knows you forgot about your cookies and cools them off for you at peak crisped-edginess. The fan knows you have entered the room and desire a breeze. The pillow knows when you start snoring and vibrates so you shift in your sleep. Alexa can order you one! OK, Google?

Here's the thing, though: For those chips in those devices to do any good, they have to communicate with the outside world, and the outside world has to talk back. And—like most communications magic—that often happens via radio waves.

The increasing number of smart objects on Earth (in addition to WiFi-beaming satellites and car radars and ubiquitous cell coverage) is causing problems for scientists who want to look beyond our planet: Astronomers are finding it harder and harder to detect faint radio signals from space, which sometimes come in on the same frequencies as human technology. Scientists, industry, and the government are trying to share a spectrum so crowded many call it a crisis.

Right now, the FCC regulates the use of the radio spectrum. And it saves some "bands", or ranges of frequencies, mostly for radio astronomy. Around 1,400 megahertz, for example, astronomers can fairly safely look for neutral hydrogen. A bit higher, near 1,600 megahertz, the FCC has protections for hydroxyl observations. In fully protected bands, like hydrogen's, no one else—not a smart toothbrush maker or a cell phone provider—can broadcast at those frequencies.

The rest of the spectrum is split among 29 other services, like "broadcasting," "amateur," "mobile," and "meteorological aids." Within some of those slices, companies vie for specific sections. Cell providers, for instance, paid $19 billion earlier this year for 84 gigahertz of bandwidth that television broadcasters used to use.