As you read these words and listen to our podcast, we’re all riding on a ball about 8000 miles (13,000 km) across. Our rotating disco ball in space is dancing around the sun at about 67,000 mph (107,000 km/h).
Our sun is about 93 million miles (150 million km away), shooting us with subatomic particles. Probably not maliciously, but who knows? The sun might be a trickster. It’s also filling our solar system with light so we can see all the other planets, comets, asteroids, dwarf planets, and moons in orbit.
As humans, it’s nearly impossible to not put ourselves at the center of the world — we all have main-character energy. For millions of years, we puny humans have looked up at the sky and tried to understand just what the devil is going on and where we belong in the whole situation.
In this episode, we try to unpack many of the mind-blowing facts we know about space and our expanding universe — and we get real about the emotional impact of embracing our stardust origins. We talk about the condition called the Overview Effect and whether or not space smells funny. Then we recommend great books that took us there on the page, including a hopepunk story set on an orbiting space fleet, a thrilling novel about a lady astronaut, a sci-fi love story set on Mars, the autobiography of the Milky Way, and a gorgeous book about what aliens can reveal about our humanity.
Read the full transcript of Outer Space: We Are All Made of Stars.
The Boy Whose Head Was Filled with Stars by Isabelle Marinov, Deborah Marcero (illustrator) — This is a really nice write-up from The Marginalia.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowell
The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowell
The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowell
The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley
2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino
Perhaps you’d like to listen to John Williams’ incredible Star Wars soundtrack while you dig into these links.
And some photos to set the scene. All of these photos are from the amazing resource NASA Image of the Day.
Crash Course did a brilliant series on astronomy. Get all the videos here.
As you know from the show, Mel got a little distracted by the legends of Tycho Brahe. Here’s Pee, Poison, and Prosthetic Noses: The Story of Astronomer Tycho Brahe’s Suspicious Death from Mental Floss; The Sadness of Tycho Brahe’s Moose, and The Death of Tycho Brahe.
Adler Planetarium in Chicago invited employees to write poems about space. They are really lovely.
Statement 1: As far as we can tell, the scarcity of water in space limits the likelihood of finding life. Space.com has articles about water on Venus, Saturn’s moon, and Mars.
Statement 2: Space smells funny. What does space smell like?
Statement 3: According to doctors who have studied them, people who return from space frequently come back with a profound psychological effect. Here’s the Overview Effect on Wikipedia, plus How the view from space might be key to saving the planet and Profound Things Happen When Astronauts First See Earth From Space.
Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowell
The Mars House by Natasha Pulley
The Milky Way by Moiya McTier
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertolino
What are the contents of the golden record on Voyager?
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