#8: Space junk in a bookstore
TRANSCRIPT
Moiya McTier 0:28
Welcome to episode eight of Pale Blue Pod, the astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend, huh?
Corinne Caputo 0:38
I'm Corinne Caputo. I'm a comedian and a writer, and I am a friend to the universe.
Moiya McTier 0:45
And I am Dr. Moiya McTier. I'm an astrophysicist and folklorist. And yes, I'm also a friend to the universe.
Corinne Caputo 0:51
It's true. And especially here, I am really excited to invite the universe into the space we're recording today. Which is we're on the top floor of a bookstore where it's more like seats and coffee than it is like people here for like the latest release. There's like some curated Vintage Books by us and just like cozy old carpets stuff. It's a really, it's really cozy up here. And you can see everyone down below. Yeah, it's
Moiya McTier 1:18
great people watching up here.
Corinne Caputo 1:20
Definitely.
Moiya McTier 1:22
So while we are in this bookstore, we're going to be talking about space junk. All the space junk, all the space debris, the space trash. That's stuff that is out there in orbit around
Corinne Caputo 1:36
Earth. Yeah. And I think there's a ton of it, right?
Moiya McTier 1:39
Oh my God, there's so much. There's so much it's kind of really
Corinne Caputo 1:43
trying to pollute anything we get our hands on. We're polluting oh
Moiya McTier 1:46
my god, we So dude, this is like the, you know how they talk about if aliens were observing Earth, they would think that the whole point of the human experience is to like create is to create garbage, or to take care of the care of animals. I think that they might say the point of the human experience is to create garbage in as many areas as we can. And
Corinne Caputo 2:08
that and that's what capitalism is all about. Isn't it?
Moiya McTier 2:11
sad? So sad. I just love thinking about anti capitalist aliens out there in the universe. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 2:18
like they are familiar with capitalism. And they're strongly against it.
Moiya McTier 2:22
Right? You know, because they're, if they are traveling around in space, they've advanced enough. They've gone through some experiences, they probably had a capitalist phase. But just like many people go through phases early in their life. They're like, No, that's not for me.
Corinne Caputo 2:37
Yeah, this is actually shouldn't be for anyone.
Moiya McTier 2:40
Oh, maybe maybe there is this band of traveling anti capitalist aliens out there in the universe going around and teaching planets that they come across the dangers of capitalism.
Corinne Caputo 2:51
Oh, that would be I would watch that show.
Moiya McTier 2:55
Yeah, what's a Star Trek for the people? The
Corinne Caputo 2:59
people Star Trek. Exactly, exactly.
Moiya McTier 3:03
So let's get into it. Let's talk about some space junk. There are you know, as broad as you can go, there are two types of space junk. There is natural space junk that was made by the universe. And there is human made space junk that we created and then sent out to pollute the low Earth orbit. Because we suck. I'll talk about natural space junk first, and then we'll get to all the human made debris in the later part of the episode. Okay, cool. Cool. So natural space junk comes to us mostly in the forms of comets and asteroids. Corinne, do you have any feelings reactions to comets and asteroids? Well,
Corinne Caputo 3:43
I love a comment, huh? I think they're pretty. And I know a lot about them. Because at the Space Center I used to work at we are my favorite mission was our comment mission, where a comment was headed straight for Earth. And the kids discover that halfway through their mission. And they spend the second half of their mission. We like did a group brainstorm of how we can like solve this. And then in the second half of the mission, they land a probe on the comment and
Moiya McTier 4:10
push it away. Oh, nice. That's so cute. We'll talk more about this later. But NASA has something very similar recently.
Corinne Caputo 4:18
I saw every time that's in the news where there's like some kind of exciting piece of like a comment is headed straight for Earth or something or like not the NASA version but like the National Enquirer version.
Moiya McTier 4:30
I'm like shitty tabloid versus Exactly.
Corinne Caputo 4:32
I'm like, don't worry. I've trained 20,000 New York City public school students for this exact moment.
Moiya McTier 4:39
Thank you so much for your service. Karan? Yeah. Do you have do you have a favorite comment or like a favorite meteor shower?
Corinne Caputo 4:47
Boo. I don't want you know, I always want to watch them and I haven't. I'm in Portland, Maine right now. So there is like some great sky views that I never had in New York City because it's just like way less light pollution and being slightly further north. We've like just seen really cool stuff. But I don't think I have a favorite. Because
Moiya McTier 5:08
you know, I've actually I've never seen one.
Corinne Caputo 5:10
Yeah, I don't think I don't know if I've seen a comment. I don't know I feel like in comments to me are like big deals and I don't know if that's true or if that's just like pop culture where there's like, you know, Halley's comet and like they're this significant events, but I have seen like, you know, shooting star type things which obviously aren't in stars but are like, you know, something burning up fast. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 5:32
absolutely. Yeah. Historically, in in folklore, people have made a big deal about some comments because it's, it's when the comment returns, they're much bigger than little meteors. And so they make a bigger vision on the sky.
Corinne Caputo 5:50
Yeah, that's how I picture them too.
Moiya McTier 5:52
And I think that a lot of stories have been pulled about comments. So they are very important in our, like, collective conscious consciousness, consciousness, collective consciousness. Words are hard friends. Okay, so there are asteroids and comets. What's the difference here? Let's get into it. Both comets and asteroids orbit the sun, just like the planets do. But asteroids are made of rock and they tend to orbit closer to the sun, while comments are made of ice and dust and tend to orbit much further away from the sun. So those comments that we see like Halley's Comet, they are coming from the outer solar system on a very eccentric orbit. So not circular, but more like an oval shape flying closer to the sun. And because they're made of ice and dust, they melt and then you get this long tail of material that can go for like, so many miles so many miles. So they look they look a lot bigger.
Corinne Caputo 6:52
They look really cool.
Moiya McTier 6:54
But you might be asking, Okay, that's a comment. That's an asteroid. But what what are meteors? And like what? Yeah, meteoroid meteorite like what's what's going on? A meteor roid. It starts off as a meteoroid. And that is a small piece usually like like a broken off piece of an asteroid or a comet. So when it's floating around, that is a meteor roid. By the time it gets close to our atmosphere and becomes what we call a shooting star, then it's a meteor so it's a meteor or when it's in our atmosphere. And once it Okay, crashes once it lands on Earth's surface, then it is meteorite, meteorite. Why do we do this? I don't know. We don't actually need different words for all of these different stages of a tiny little Yeah, okay.
Corinne Caputo 7:40
It feels very, like old language, like Latin language kind of stuff, where we're, we're just conjugating this word to like, better express what's going on. But instead, it's just like, annoying. It's exhausting. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 7:50
absolutely. old timey scientists fucking loved to give things and more names than they needed. Like to break it up into even smaller categories, and just trying to
Corinne Caputo 7:59
keep science out of the hands of the common man. Yeah, they're like, wait, I want to be in charge of information.
Moiya McTier 8:08
Those people are the reason we can't just get a degree in science anymore. Because they generated so much knowledge and so much like useless vocabulary that now we have to go into special subfield Exactly. I think about that so often, like 400 years ago, you could just go to school for science.
Corinne Caputo 8:28
I didn't even realize that like philosophy. Of course, that makes sense. I mean, like, even in elementary school, it's like, you take English, math, science, and then like that month that you're thinking about, you know, whatever subcategory, but it's still, it's still in my green
Moiya McTier 8:41
notebook science. With your little drawings in the margin.
Corinne Caputo 8:46
Yeah, exactly. Just like drawing little hearts over and over. Oh, that's cute. I do find that that helps me Listen, like it's so much easier to listen in a lecture if I'm like, occupied in some small way.
Moiya McTier 8:57
That's valid. That's there's like actual science that backs that up. Yeah. Not that your lived experience wasn't enough. But oh,
Corinne Caputo 9:04
no, but, but it helps to have the science behind you. Because otherwise teachers are like, well, you stop that and listen, and you're like, I kind of
Moiya McTier 9:11
am. I drew a lot of weird crosses in my notebooks, as a child, not like a crucifix, you know, not a Christian cry, but like weird crops.
Corinne Caputo 9:22
Like you're conjuring something.
Moiya McTier 9:24
I wouldn't be surprised if there are some demons running around Greene County, Pennsylvania, because I accidentally caused
Corinne Caputo 9:32
on a heatmap of like paranormal experiences, like bright red,
Moiya McTier 9:36
my doodles actually turned my hometown into a hell mouse and now Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Corinne Caputo 9:42
And I decided to leave but it had
Moiya McTier 9:44
nothing to do with the racism or the lack of running water. It was about not wanting to do that. So, back to science. Where can you find these asteroids? And these comments, most asteroids live in the asteroid belt. It's a very appropriately named part of our solar system between Mars and Jupiter. Yeah, I'll just I'll just tell you that I was gonna ask you to guess how big it is. But like that's, that's cool.
Corinne Caputo 10:14
How big the belt is?
Moiya McTier 10:15
Yeah.
Corinne Caputo 10:16
Like how wide? Yeah. Oh my God, I want to save way bigger than I think
Moiya McTier 10:20
it is. It's huge. I will tell you that it is more than 100 million miles wide. And 20 million miles thick. And it goes all the way around the sun. So if you do that math to calculate a volume, it is for quintillion cubic miles, which is 10 followed by 18 zeros. That is
Corinne Caputo 10:44
so big weed. I
Moiya McTier 10:46
had no idea. It's really fucking big.
Corinne Caputo 10:49
How have we ever sent something past Mars? Great question.
Moiya McTier 10:54
Or getting a little claps? Yeah. So even though this spans a very large volume, there's a lot of space in between individual asteroids. The average space between them it's about 100,000 miles, we have sent spacecraft beyond Mars beyond Jupiter. We've sent spacecraft that have kind of left the solar system, they've gone beyond Pluto, both Voyager One and Two passed through the asteroid belt and had no problems. They didn't even touch any tiny little rocks. In fact, it's kind of counterintuitive. But because all of these asteroids are so spaced out, it's easier to miss an asteroid than it is to land to hit
Corinne Caputo 11:36
on. Yeah, sure. That makes sense. I feel like in pictures, though, it's like, I mean, it's hard to visualize how far apart things are in space anyway. But in these like, kind of illustrations of the asteroid belt, they feel so dense.
Moiya McTier 11:49
Yeah. Yeah, they do that it's really hard to depict scale. In space. Yeah, it's actually, I have never, it might actually be impossible. I've never seen anyone be able to demonstrate the scale of the solar system in both size and distance. Because if you're doing the distance scale, right, then you need like a huge piece of paper. Yeah. Or like a very large computer screen.
Corinne Caputo 12:14
Totally. There is some simple website that's tried to do it, where it just like, it starts scanning you across the solar system, but and then it takes like 10 minutes to get between like planet A and B, you
Moiya McTier 12:27
have to do that you cannot show it all on one thing. Because if you do the side if you do the distance, right size,
Corinne Caputo 12:33
the size, right? Yeah, yeah, of course, miles.
Moiya McTier 12:36
So the solar system is big. And the solar system is just one very small part of our galaxy, which is just one small galaxy and the vast, wide universe. We're so small. I love it. Love it. We're all we have. Let's love it. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 12:51
that's really sweet.
Moiya McTier 12:53
So that's the asteroid belt. Most of the comments come from much further away in the Solar System out beyond the orbits of Neptune. And Pluto, which we established in the first episode of the show is still a planet. It's just a special kind of planet. But they come from this region called the Kuiper Belt, or the Oort cloud. Have you heard of either of these? I
Corinne Caputo 13:15
know Kuyper belt. Okay, good word cloud sounds like some kind of fantasy creature
Moiya McTier 13:23
Oh, that thought will live in my head for so long. Thank you for
Corinne Caputo 13:28
like an hour is some like thing on a mountain. But do you like fight to get the ring in the volcano or whatever? It
Moiya McTier 13:35
sounds like orc? Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 13:37
exactly. Exactly.
Moiya McTier 13:40
I guess it does. The orcs are distant cousins to the orc with slightly better temperament. Oh, actually, no, I haven't the orts so like orcs come from volcanoes. But orcs come from glaciers?
Corinne Caputo 13:57
Yes, definitely.
Moiya McTier 14:00
Come at me Wizards of the Coast. Oh my God, these
Corinne Caputo 14:02
orcs are scarier than I thought I just Googled an image of them again scary.
Moiya McTier 14:08
I I have been sexually attracted to several orcs that I've seen on a screen.
Corinne Caputo 14:16
That's okay. me that's like me and Robin Hood is like the highest thing you've ever seen when you're seven years old?
Moiya McTier 14:22
With like Robin Hood as a fox? Oh, yeah.
Corinne Caputo 14:25
Oh my god. That's like a whole thing online of like, that was a hot Fox.
Moiya McTier 14:29
I agree. That's hot Fox. Now is not the time to have an in depth discussion about all the things that my husband's actually attracted to.
Corinne Caputo 14:40
Also, when they were making that Fox they knew they knew. They knew.
Moiya McTier 14:44
Yeah, they were like, you know, we've seen Jessica Rabbit now we're gonna make the second
Corinne Caputo 14:49
we got to make something for the parents who are taking their kids here.
Moiya McTier 14:56
Yes, so if orcs come from volcanoes and or come from glaciers. The thing that you can remember from that is that the Oort cloud is very, very cold. And that's because it's very far away from the sun. So let's start with the Kuiper Belt first. Okay? The Kuiper Belt is a ring of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune discovered. When do you think we discovered the Kuiper Belt?
Corinne Caputo 15:19
I always get this wrong.
Moiya McTier 15:21
I know, which is why I like to ask.
Corinne Caputo 15:24
This is again, I'm like, Okay, I feel like it's been around my whole life. So like, the 70s. No, has it been around my whole life?
Moiya McTier 15:34
I don't know. How old you are Corinne, but it there's
Corinne Caputo 15:38
actually 105. But no,
Moiya McTier 15:41
it was discovered after your birth. There. There's a chance that we've known about the Kuiper belt for exactly as long as you've
Corinne Caputo 15:48
been exactly. Okay, I was born in 91. Okay, okay.
Moiya McTier 15:51
You're older than our discovery of the Kuiper Belt by just one year. Or two.
Corinne Caputo 15:56
I don't want to be older than it. I want to be younger. Korean,
Moiya McTier 16:00
the Kuiper belt itself is, is almost 5 billion years old. So you're saying is younger than the belt. But older than that's discovered, I'm really trying
Corinne Caputo 16:10
to cope with being older now. Just constantly being reminded, I'm older than I think.
Moiya McTier 16:15
That's what happens, it will continue to happen more and more frequently. Unfortunately, as we both age
Corinne Caputo 16:21
I know, my low back every day has been different than it was pre pre COVID. Those three years have really done a number on me. Time does
Moiya McTier 16:29
move faster, the further away you are from the surface of the earth. So if you want to age more slowly Korean you should spend all of your time at sea level.
Corinne Caputo 16:37
Yeah, kind of go immediately underground. No exposure to sun damage and Time moves different. Yes. And
Moiya McTier 16:44
then you would be and look very young. Exactly. You also wouldn't have any friends.
Corinne Caputo 16:49
I know. Again, it feels like a capitalist scheme, everything.
Moiya McTier 16:54
So the the Kuiper belt itself is 20 astronomical units, or 2 billion miles across was a big boy, that's really big. Hmm. We discovered that in 1992, out beyond the orbit of Neptune, it's in for people who don't consider Pluto a planet. They consider it just one of the larger objects in the Kuiper Belt. Okay, and the reason Pluto was demoted was because all of those other big objects in the Kuiper Belt would then add 1000s of planets to our list in the
Corinne Caputo 17:27
solar system. Yeah. And there's no pneumonic device for that. No,
Moiya McTier 17:30
you would. I mean, you could make a mnemonic device for that, but it would look like a like, like some some very wordy old timey radio. Yeah, there you go. It would have to be a James Joyce book. It's the Bible. Yeah. That is your mnemonic. If we include all of the objects in the Kuiper Belt, that are as big as Pluto or bigger, but not all of the comments come from the Kuiper Belt, some of them come from beyond, we think, from something that we call the Oort cloud. And I have been talking about the Oort cloud, in my science communication work for a very long time, because I did a project in graduate school, where I simulated the orbits of stars to see how often they would fly close enough to each other to interrupt their planets, which meant I had to look at our spot in the galaxy, like our solar system spot in the galaxy, to see if people if other stars, I call them people to see if people have these stellar people come come close enough to our solar system. And I always said in all of my talks for that project, you know, if something if another star passed within 1000 astronomical units of us it would be within the Oort cloud, like I have mentioned, the Oort cloud in so many presentations. And I learned yesterday while I was preparing for this episode, that it's just a predicted thing, we have never actually observed the Oort cloud. What
Corinne Caputo 19:01
I know. So that's why you're saying comes from beyond. We don't know what's out there.
Moiya McTier 19:07
I mean, we're pretty sure that it is this spherical cloud of icy objects that surrounds the entire solar system going out to or starting at a trillion miles from the sun, we are already sure that that should be there based on seeing comments come from a place that would be beyond the Kuiper Belt based on like its speed, and based on what we know about planet and star formation, like there should be a bunch of stuff out there.
Corinne Caputo 19:35
Now is this Oort cloud type thing around all galaxies? Or is it just like the
Moiya McTier 19:42
solar system?
Corinne Caputo 19:42
Just the cell? Oh, just the Solar System academic? Yeah,
Moiya McTier 19:45
it's just around the solar system. It's
Corinne Caputo 19:46
a part of our galaxy.
Moiya McTier 19:47
It is part of our galaxy, I guess. I really like thinking about spaces fractals, so it looks the same on on different scales. So if you imagine a galaxy as something with a black hole at the center, and Then there's this disk of stars around it, if it's a spiral galaxy, and then there's the dark matter Halo in a bubble around that solar system, or just the same, instead of a black hole, you have a star at the center. Instead of a disk of stars, you have a disk of planets. And instead of a dark matter Halo, you have an Oort cloud. It's
Corinne Caputo 20:17
like, it looks like some kind of like protective shield round.
Moiya McTier 20:20
Yeah.
Corinne Caputo 20:21
When you google image, yeah,
Moiya McTier 20:23
it kind of does. And I wish we had actually observed it. So we knew how dense it was or, yeah, and how many comments there are in it. But no, it's predicted. It's probably a lot.
Corinne Caputo 20:35
It looks dense. Looks dense on here. But I also thought the asteroid belt was way denser.
Moiya McTier 20:41
Those artists renderings are deceiving. Yeah, they really are. You might be wondering if these asteroids and comets are dangerous to us, there's definitely been a lot of talk in the media, there have been a lot of TV shows and movies that use the danger of asteroids and comets as a plot point. But they're probably not that dangerous to us, we most likely do not need to worry about asteroids and comets. We are not the dinosaurs. And also like that asteroid that distribute killed the non avian dinosaurs. That was a fluke. You know, that's not gonna happen more than once in like, several billion years. That's
Corinne Caputo 21:18
an exception to the rule. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 21:20
because space is so big, the chances the chance of two things colliding quite small. So we probably don't have to worry. But here is some more information so that you can make up your own mind about that. So about 50,000 tons of MIDI or material and cosmic dust fall on the surface of the Earth every single year. We are getting hit by, I guess, meteors that then become meteorites every every single day.
Corinne Caputo 21:50
And it's not I guess it hasn't disrupted life enough here for it to be noticeable even right,
Moiya McTier 21:55
it hasn't. If anything, it has given us cool, precious material. And we've been able to learn about our solar system by studying these meteorites. So it's good that we are gaining all of this material that's falling to our surface every year. Just like a fun fact, the earth even though stuff is falling on it, the Earth is actually losing mass every year, like the earth, the earth is losing weight. Wow. Why? So we we gained 50,000 tons from meteors and dust. But we lose about 100,000 tons every single year? Because of gas, mostly like hydrogen escaping our atmosphere.
Corinne Caputo 22:38
Oh, yeah. That sounds bad. No,
Moiya McTier 22:42
that's fine. That's totally fine. Like, it's just gonna happen. Because by the time you get to the outer edges of our atmosphere that gravity is and you're dealing with the the wind from the sun, the solar wind coming off and like moving away particles got it? Yes. So Earth is, is losing weight every year. And there is no moral judgment on that that is neither good nor bad. Not it's just a fact. It is not dangerous, because they're rare. You know, these very dangerous asteroids that are big enough and actually have the right trajectory to hit Earth. Those are rare, but they might happen. So space agencies around the world are monitoring asteroids and comets, just to make sure none of them are getting close to us. One of these organizations is NASA, specifically their center for Near Earth Objects studies. Nice to meet me Yos.
Corinne Caputo 23:40
Me,
Moiya McTier 23:41
it's actually the one caminos
Corinne Caputo 23:44
with a seat. Oh, the center? Of course, I can't forget the center.
Moiya McTier 23:48
So cameos. That sounds like a great Greek name, like I'm sure there is yeah, that's something you can use out there. Can you cameos coordinates with the planetary defense Coordination Office headquartered in Washington, DC. So together, they work on monitoring all of the asteroids and comets and analyzing their orbits to figure out if they might intersect with Earth? Earlier this year, just a few months ago, NASA practice their double asteroid redirection test, or Dart, which is an acronym that actually works so good for that. I like that one. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes the ball goes in the hoop. Sometimes they don't miss Well, when you
Corinne Caputo 24:28
make them this constantly, yes. When you when you make them this offense, sometimes they're gonna land. Even a broken
Moiya McTier 24:34
clock is right twice a day. Yes, exactly. So the Dart mission sent a spacecraft slamming into an asteroid that we detected. That asteroid was called dimorphic hosts and the impact knocked it off of its orbit. The the number that I saw was, it knocked it off its orbit by 33 minutes and I'm like, okay, so will it take 33 less minutes or more
Corinne Caputo 24:59
minutes like As BIOS some time, yeah,
Moiya McTier 25:01
I think what it's saying is that after the spacecraft hit the asteroid, that asteroid would have reached its destination 33 minutes later, which is enough time, you know, imagine this asteroid was not headed for Earth. But if it had been 33 minutes would give us enough time for the Earth to like, yeah, move more in its orbit around the sun. Sure, sure. This the asteroid. That makes sense. Okay, it was successful. Mostly, scientists are still analyzing the data and the outcomes from the test, we have to see, you know, when the impact happened, there was an explosion, it created a lot of other debris. So we have to see if that Debris might be dangerous to us. But overall,
Corinne Caputo 25:45
you don't want to make more little guys are gonna fall down. Yeah, overall, the mission
Moiya McTier 25:49
was a success. And now if there is an asteroid headed toward us, we would detect it because of cameos. And then we could, we could nudge it away with with another dark.
Corinne Caputo 26:03
I love that. And that's exactly what we guided the students to during their mission.
Moiya McTier 26:10
So we are interested in studying these asteroids and comets because of the defense and deflection angle. But we can also study them to learn about science. We can study meteorites, the stuff that actually falls to the surface of Earth, to learn about the state of our solar system in its early stages. It's kind of like a time capsule that tells us what the solar system was like when the sun was still very young. And one of the I think most important calculations that we've been able to do, thanks to meteorites is calculate the age of the earth, and the sun and the solar system. So it's, it's really hard to do that with material from Earth, because earth has this rock cycle that's constantly taking rocks from the surface, bringing them down, under, into like the core of the planet, doing something with them, and then putting them back onto the surface. Look, this is not a podcast about geology.
Corinne Caputo 27:05
Yeah, the little trolls that live down there are like, I could
Moiya McTier 27:09
I do know this, I could talk about geology. But this is an astronomy podcast, I'm finished, we're staying on track. Yeah, I'm focusing on stuff above the surface of the earth. So exactly the rock cycle, things happen under underneath in the core, and then the rocks come back to the surface. And they have been changed in a way that makes it so we can use those rocks to measure the age of the Earth. Okay, so what we have to do is get rocks from out in space that haven't undergone this recycling process, because they are still in their original form from when the solar system was born. So we can like radio date those objects to measure the age of the solar system. And we did, we now know that the solar system is like four and a half billion years old. And there are a lot of ways to know that now. But in the olden days, they were getting some very inaccurate ages for the Earth and the Sun and the solar system. Yeah, I'm sure. So it's good that we have these asteroids that are constantly bombarding the earth. And then, I'd say the third reason that some I am not personally very, are at all interested in this. But the third reason that some people are interested in comets and asteroids is for resource mining who, okay, like we we could actually fly to an asteroid, if it's big enough, land on it, and extract precious metals from asteroid. Companies and labs across the world have spent so much money developing ways to mine asteroids. When I was an undergrad in astronomy at Harvard, one of my classmates her like senior thesis project was figuring out how feasible it would be to land on different types of asteroids and what types of materials you'd be able to get from. Like, there's active research and energy and labor being put into resource mining from asteroids. But it has never been done successfully. We have not yet done this. A couple spacecraft have brought samples of asteroids back to us, Japan's Hayabusa mission, and NASA's OSIRIS REx, which is scheduled to return a sample next fall. So in fall of 2023, they are returning these tiny little samples of the rock, which is not enough for resource mining. Right, right. Of course not. I hope we don't get to this.
Corinne Caputo 29:35
Yeah. Yeah, that feels like it's creating a whole other economy of like bad, rich people getting better and richer.
Moiya McTier 29:44
And the thing is, if we were to lean further into this asteroid resource mining into this asteroid mining process, we would then be creating a lot more human made space Chuck. Yeah. Which brings us to what I think My might be the sadder half of the episode.
Corinne Caputo 30:03
Definitely, it's good to end on the sad note
Moiya McTier 30:08
doesn't have to be sad, all in how you frame it. Let's not assign moral judgments. These are just facts that we're sharing facts just the facts man
Hi, it's Moiya and I wanted to give a quick but very enthusiastic shout out to our amazing patrons who are keeping Pale Blue Pod going. First, I want to thank our pre-main sequence stars live Malikai wait threes, the charm and Tiana. I love you cars. And I want to extend a very warm by human standards. Thank you to our latest red dwarf star Mike Jones. I'm so proud of you for starting fusion in your core. And as always, thank you so much to our sunlike stars Siân Llewellyn and Finn, I'm so grateful for your solar-like light that you are just shining on us every single day. You too can support us, hear your name on this pod and make it to our patron star chart. By supporting us on Patreon, you can find the star chart the Patreon info and more at our website, palebluepod[dot]com. Or you can just skip the middle site and go straight to patreon[dot]com/palebluepod, whatever you want. Either way, the information is available on our site. And we would love to say your name on this podcast.
Corinne Caputo 31:29
This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. I know I feel like my best when I'm confident and have a good grip on my life. But I also know that feeling can be rare. When you're at your best you can do great things. And sometimes life just gets you bogged down and you may feel overwhelmed or like you're not showing up in the way that you want to. Working with a therapist can help you get closer to the best version of you. Because when you feel empowered, you're more prepared to take on everything life throws at you. And therapy is helpful for so many reasons. I can't emphasize enough how much therapy has helped me. I used to describe my days like I'm feeling like I'm holding too many balloons and if I make any movement in any direction, I might lose them all. And these days, it's so much easier to manage my anxiety myself, my goals just everything in my life. Therapy is helpful for learning positive coping skills, learning how to set boundaries and so much more. And I want to emphasize it's not just for those who've experienced major trauma, anyone can benefit from it. If you're thinking of giving therapy a try, BetterHelp is a great option. It's convenient, flexible, affordable and entirely online. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. If you want to live a more empowered life therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp[dot]com/palebluepod today and get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp H-E-L-P [dot]com/palebluepod.
Moiya McTier 32:56
If you would like more space in your life, then you can get from the one weekly episode of Pale Blue Pod, I'd like to recommend a fellow astronomy podcast called The Cosmic Companion. It's an astronomy news podcast that comes out every week on Saturdays. And it brings the mystery of the cosmos down to earth in podcast video and 3D environments they're fancy over there. They feature friendly interviews with scientists, authors and developers around the globe. But Cosmic Companion is hosted by James Maynard who grew up around the space program and has dedicated his professional life to continuing the work of Carl Sagan who inspired the name of Pale Blue Pod so thank you Carl! James Maynard uses the latest technology to humanize science education and one science to be fun. He wants you to enjoy the exploration of the universe together so you can go check out the cosmic companion coming out weekly on most podcast platforms. Just search for The Cosmic Companion in your favorite podcast app.
Corinne Caputo 33:55
Hey, it's Corinne I want to recommend another fantastic podcast in the Multitude family. Ppirits is a history and comedy podcast focused on everything folklore and mythology and the occult told through the lens of feminism, queerness, and modern adulthood. Every week, mythology buff Julia and her childhood best friend Amanda get together to learn about a different story from mythology and folklore over drinks. That's everything from the mythological origins of major franchises like Lord of the Rings and Wonder Woman to modern urban legends to a roundup of werewolf stories from around the world. There are even episodes that Moiya and I guess doesn't start listening with any of the 300 Plus episodes they've released over the last six years. Whether you're here for analysis of mental health and mythology or modern ghost stories, there's so much to enjoy, dive in at spiritspodcast[dot]com or search for Spirits wherever you download your podcasts.
Moiya McTier 34:52
Okay, so moving on to human made junk, like satellites and rockets and As ships and stuff, we have launched 1000s of rockets into space. And those rockets are made of different component parts that break up as you enter different levels or stages of your launch. So for every one rocket, there are several pieces of space junk that get produced. Lately, we are starting to develop rockets that can be reused. So they'll re enter the atmosphere, which is great. But we're still generating a lot of a lot of junk. There's also a lot of old satellites up in space, we send them up. Yeah, they stop working. And it's not like we have a an easy British retrieval. Yeah. So they just stay there. Occasionally, they do just fall back to Earth and an uncontrolled reentry. That that is more dangerous to us than like space asteroids.
Corinne Caputo 35:52
Yeah, sure. That
Moiya McTier 35:53
makes sense. So how much is there? You said before Karina, there's a bunch there's so much there's so much there's so much rough estimates say that there are about 8000 tons worth of human made space. In orbit around Earth. Almost 30,000 pieces of space junk are larger than a softball. Wow, that's so big. It's really big. And there are 30,000 of them and growing like more all the time. And when you're talking about smaller pieces, there are millions of them. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 36:29
that makes me think all of the like pictures of like a BEAUTIFUL PRISTINE Earth from like the ISS or whatever is like totally not true when there's like all these dangerous things right there.
Moiya McTier 36:39
Well, I mean, the ISS is pretty close to us. Yes, that's true. And a lot of these junk pieces are quite small, small enough that they wouldn't show up in those pictures, but they are all moving so fast. So these these pieces range in size from like individual flecks of paint, all the way up to full satellites that have not broken down, oh, my god, we're coming out of the atmosphere, and they're all moving so fast. In order to stay in orbit around the Earth, you have to be moving at a certain speed, or else you'll succumb to the pull of gravity. So to stay in orbit, you have to be moving at at least 17,000 miles per hour. So all of these tiny little space junk pieces, including the little flecks of paint are moving at like 17,500 miles an hour. And at that speed, even something as small and light as a fleck of paint can cause damage. NASA has actually had to repair several windows, because of what they've realized where paint spots flying through space and hitting their window and these little cracks.
Corinne Caputo 37:48
We're hitting the window of the ISS. Yeah, I was like, NASA is just replacing their office windows every few seconds
Moiya McTier 37:55
of paint. No, no, like, we have to replace space windows because of space pain.
Corinne Caputo 38:01
That can't be an easy thing to do. You can't just like open the window.
Moiya McTier 38:07
I'm sure there's a whole complicated process involved. But it can it can get more dangerous than that. Imagine you are an astronaut out side of the ISS because you're doing a repent. Maybe you're fixing one of those windows, you're wearing a spacesuit. The flick of paint probably isn't enough to damage your suit, but something the size of like a small pebble absolutely would fuck you up.
Corinne Caputo 38:30
Yeah.
Moiya McTier 38:31
Oh my god. And beyond that it can be a danger to important parts of a spacecraft. I remember hearing a story about this from a few years ago. So I went to look it up and then I found out that it happened again very recently. So back in December this right now it's December Yeah. And this month of the Russian Soyuz capsule on the International Space Station started leaking coolant out into space, likely after being hit by a small little meteoroid in its radiator. Like no, we have created enough space junk that we are now endangering our precious space missions. So that sucks.
Corinne Caputo 39:14
Oh my god, this way to serve it in my astronaut training show where we met where there was like this short lived game where there was a hole breach and then I gave the scientists like these bags full of random junk and you had to patch this hole in a piece of oak tag with like the random shit.
Moiya McTier 39:34
I don't think I ever played that game. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 39:36
it was it didn't last long. It was more fun for me to watch than it was for the audience. So we did cut it eventually.
Moiya McTier 39:43
I remember the game where you made me put on a giant helmet and then also a big a big like button level suit and you made me run around the space which is in a basement in New York City. So not much and tables are pretty close together. run around and pick up space rocks.
Corinne Caputo 40:02
You are Yeah, you had to go get some samples for the team. The all of the samples, by the way, were like things I made of marble magic, like the day before. And they were always like half dry by the time.
Moiya McTier 40:14
Why is this sticky?
Corinne Caputo 40:16
Yeah, exactly.
Moiya McTier 40:17
It's because space is sticky. That's not true. It's true. Don't remember that. Well,
Corinne Caputo 40:22
yeah, don't remember that. But you can think of all those rocks as a fluid.
Moiya McTier 40:26
You can actually you really can like the the asteroid belt as they move together. Yeah, they're moving us as kind of a fluid. Okay, you correctly shouting out to last episode.
Corinne Caputo 40:38
I'm really getting smart. Yeah, I heard last week's episode. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 40:43
you did. That's a callback. So we have put out so much junk into space that people have started to come up with theorems and syndromes and effects about the consequences of our space. So in 1978, a NASA scientist named George Kessler came up with this theory that ended up being called the Kessler effect. And his theory was that there's going to be a point in our production of space debris, where it would spiral out of control, because any random collision of two big enough objects would then create a bunch of other small objects that could lead to more future collisions. Yeah. In his initial paper about this, he was like, we're gonna reach this point where it's untenable in 2000. Like, we have to figure something out. That was revised a couple times. And it's like, it's kind of subjective, like when we actually reach this, this Kessler point, but things are already bad right now. So yeah, they feel it, they feel it. Yeah. So we are now trying to figure out ways to mitigate and fix this space debris problem. So there are a few different ways that agencies around the world are trying to fix the space junk problem. Most of these methods involve nudging the space junk just enough so that it falls back to Earth and burns up as it enters our atmosphere. So we're just creating like a giant burn. Okay,
Corinne Caputo 42:17
that makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think I like that idea.
Moiya McTier 42:21
I agree, it's, let's
Corinne Caputo 42:22
get rid of it. It's
Moiya McTier 42:23
a good idea. Let's just burn it up. Occasionally, these space objects fall back to Earth themselves. And they, if they're small enough burn up in the atmosphere. But there are a few different, like, specific ways that some places are doing this. So Japan has this one project where they want to use a very long I think it's six football fields long, a big electrified rope. So I guess the point is that as this this rope, as this tether is moving around in orbit, the electric field of this rope will interact with the metals in these space objects and push them towards the atmosphere somehow. Hmm. It's okay. Yeah, it's unclear to me how how this would work.
Corinne Caputo 43:12
It feels like Wonder Woman's lasso. Yeah. Somehow got that up there. They were like great. Anything you could hit? That would be great.
Moiya McTier 43:20
They're gonna lasso of truth us all the way to No, no. Kessler issue. Yeah. So that's one of Japan's methods. The European Space Agency is going to launch their mission called clear space, a spacecraft that was built by the Swiss, I think they're launching that in 2025. And it is just a big claw. It's like the claw machine from an arcade
Corinne Caputo 43:48
machine. Oh, my God, grab
Moiya McTier 43:51
space objects. And then I guess just like,
Corinne Caputo 43:54
put it in their trashcan, or like, fling
Moiya McTier 43:57
it and like redirect it towards the atmosphere, but they're playing the claw game they're playing.
Corinne Caputo 44:04
Maybe that is the fix, like a super simple thing. I don't know why I just like to think that like, the smartest of the smart people think of these like super creative solutions. And it's like, what about a
Moiya McTier 44:15
quarterback? Well, one other potential solution was a big net, shoot out. But the tricky thing about a net is that you only get one shot because you like to release the net. And if you Your aim is off, then oh, well, screw you doesn't
Corinne Caputo 44:29
do a thing. And now you've really sent that into the problem, which
Moiya McTier 44:33
probably just makes things worse. So yeah, they depended on the cloth function.
Corinne Caputo 44:37
Oh my gosh, okay, good luck.
Moiya McTier 44:40
Good luck. And then Australia has this plan to use powerful lasers. Nudge space debris.
Corinne Caputo 44:50
seems scary to me.
Moiya McTier 44:53
They're pointing lasers at this space object, I guess hoping that it heats up a little or that they can Yeah, push Should around with the laser so that it falls back to the atmosphere. So those are ways that people are trying to remove the space junk that is already there. But we also have to try and figure out how to stop putting so much junk up into space. So there is a whole field of law devoted to space, it is appropriately called Space Law. And they have a lot further than they need to go. A lot more needs to be done in the realm of Space Law, IMO, but these space lawyers need to make laws preventing us from generating a lot of space trash, but it's really difficult because you're dealing with international politics and like social issues. And like, what body will have the power to tell all of the countries around the world what they can and cannot do in space? Yes, the closest thing we have is the United Nations, you know, not everyone is going to listen to the United Nations. Some people will say they're listening to the United Nations, but they're really not listening to the United Nations. And so there are a couple offices at the UN that are relevant here. The first is the UN's office of Outer Space Affairs, okay. Love that name. They have put forth guidelines and best practices, but like, who says people are gonna follow those? Yeah. And then the other office is, I guess it's not an office. But it's a Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. And different nations around the world have signed five treaties coming out of this committee that protect space, and its pristine nature from the chaos of human ingenuity. So the first of these treaties is the Outer Space Treaty, real creative name there, they they were
Corinne Caputo 46:54
thinking hard, because they really were on that one.
Moiya McTier 46:57
The Outer Space Treaty says things like no one owns space, and you can't have a weapon of mass destruction in orbit. And also every country is responsible for any damage done by their spacecraft. I agree with that. So that treaty did a lot. It set up a lot of precedents and conditions that people needed to meet. And then there's the rescue Treaty, which I love. I'm glad we thought of this. The rescue treaty says that astronauts or valuable space objects, even if they're from another nation, must be rescued and returned. I think we have something similar and oceans here. Like if you see someone stranded in an ocean, like you have to rescue them.
Corinne Caputo 47:40
Yeah, sure. I don't know. But I buy it. I have. So if I if I ever find myself in the ocean, I gotta hope that there's a moral code where I will be.
Moiya McTier 47:50
So that's the rescue treaty out in space. The moon agreement says that celestial bodies can only be used for peaceful purposes. Oh, good luck. Correct. Correct. But like,
Corinne Caputo 48:03
we're not fighting a war on the moon. Well,
Moiya McTier 48:05
we're not supposed to fight a war on the moon. Corinne but who? There's no, there's no, I don't like the police. But there's no space law police. Yeah, no. There's no one sitting in a traffic stop out in the asteroid belt deciding if you're breaking space traffic laws. Like we don't have anyone to enforce this. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 48:26
I like to think that that we could all do it. We could all just shake hands and agree, but I don't know. It only takes one bad egg.
Moiya McTier 48:34
I know what that we could correct. Like, I really do wish I would let us try it first off like you and me. Yeah, yeah.
Corinne Caputo 48:42
I go up there first and see if we can get along.
Moiya McTier 48:47
Okay, next Pale Blue Pod. We're recording from the moon, the
Corinne Caputo 48:51
cozy spot of the moon. Oh, my gosh, silent in the background,
Moiya McTier 48:55
we are going to have to record future episodes out in space, like we're gonna get oh, yeah, of course, there will work up to it. Mm hmm. Something to look forward to listeners. And then there are there are two conventions that have been signed. One of them is the liability Convention, which I think just restates a lot of stuff from the Outer Space Treaty. It says like, hey, if one of your space related objects damages something, you have to pay for it. Make it right, you break it your bike and break it. Exactly. And then I think this is this is a good idea to the registration convention. If you are putting something up into space, you have to register it. So that we know it's there.
Corinne Caputo 49:38
Yeah, we tag it again. People are so sneaky. Yeah. Which feels crazy because I when I think of space and launching things to space, I think of it as an extremely formal process. But, but maybe it's not there.
Moiya McTier 49:55
If you have enough money, you can launch your own shit into space. And that I think, is the real thing. Space Law needs to focus on next. The focus on the commercial space sector, we need to make it so that individual people who have way more money than anyone ever should have gas just decide that they want to go into space one day, or can't just decide that they want to put up hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit. For Forest Service. That doesn't
Corinne Caputo 50:21
mean Well, exactly. That's an unthinking like, Starlink
Moiya McTier 50:25
doesn't even work well. And we just put a
Corinne Caputo 50:30
car still up there. Yes. Is that space cars still out there? Of course, that space
Moiya McTier 50:35
car is still out there with the claw is not going after space cars, space car.
Corinne Caputo 50:40
That is probably to me one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in my life. I am not a space car fan.
Moiya McTier 50:47
I have watched small human beings literally eat a rock. And that is still the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
Corinne Caputo 50:59
That's exploration. That's true exploration when a child needs a rock or puts a rock up their nose. Yeah, that to me is discovery. The car in space. I don't know what that is. That's
Moiya McTier 51:10
just a future scientist. Right there. Yeah, but of course face that's just a sad dude going through a really sad life crisis.
Corinne Caputo 51:16
That's just someone showing off. Exactly, exactly.
Moiya McTier 51:21
So Corinne, I know that the best idea of the claw arcade game has been taken, but how would you solve this space drug problem?
Corinne Caputo 51:30
Okay, this is a moment of the podcast I have been dreading because I put in our notes that I have an amazing I wrote quote, I have an amazing idea. Actually Did you did that? I cannot remember what. So there was a point in time probably late. Late in the night, I'm looking through our notes. And I was like, I knew exactly how I would solve this. And right now, I couldn't tell you. Okay, I think it would be a matter of I think it wouldn't be far from the car. To be honest. I think it would be like a collection and removal type scenario, maybe some giant net like not the net that we launched, but like, like, have you seen those like buoyant things that they put in the ocean to kind of huddle? Like, yes, garbage and a thing I that's the kind of thing I'm, I'm hoping we can do, I
Moiya McTier 52:22
think we can do that. So there, there's a thing called interferometry, where you get a bunch of different telescopes to work together as one. And for a long time, the idea of space interferometry was like, beyond what we could consider capable or possible. And now we are planning a space based interferometer called Lisa. And that was a long walk to get to this one point where if we now have the ability to make sure different telescopes in space can stay in the same spot relative to each other to create an interferometer, then we can have two telescopes holding on to different ends of this net and just fly around Earth gathering up all the space.
Corinne Caputo 53:03
Yeah, yeah, that would be really cool. That would really do a big cleanup. Lisa, and to be named Lisa. Lisa. Yeah, it's
Moiya McTier 53:11
the maybe it's the LIGO interferometers space observatory for space seals, I
Corinne Caputo 53:17
think got that name right to like dark, dark. i It's funny that we talked about this, I did write a three episode radio drama for Yale summer cabaret last summer, about three women astronauts in space who they're cleaning up space junk, and they're pretty pissed about it. They want the kind of glory of going to the moon.
Moiya McTier 53:39
Oh, of course, they have the women astronauts. Yeah. John Exactly.
Corinne Caputo 53:42
And then they have and then they like kind of nobly launch a young woman to the moon but and she's like so young and hot and cool. And like all the other astronauts are kind of past their prime or like dammit. But it's a it's a story of them working together. In the end it I did put it on my website, and the music is by Evan Johnston, who does our music for Pamela
Moiya McTier 54:03
Lottie. Is there anything else you want to say about space junk Corinne, this was you you wanted to learn about space junk? Have I know your questions? Have I sated your curiosity?
Corinne Caputo 54:15
You really have. I think the best thing I learned is that it's not. Or rather asteroids and comets are probably not as dangerous as I thought and I could redirect my attention towards the human made danger zone that we've created.
Moiya McTier 54:30
Yeah, like, like most things, the real danger is not coming from the people nature. It's the people
Corinne Caputo 54:37
inside the Earth. Yeah.
Moiya McTier 54:39
The danger is coming from inside the atmosphere. Well, I'm glad that you were so satisfied by by whatever I told you about space junk. Yes.
Corinne Caputo 54:49
I appreciate the garbage stock.
Moiya McTier 54:51
It just happened and it is now all left. My brain had
Corinne Caputo 54:53
just released it the same way they released all the other stuff.
Moiya McTier 54:58
But I see someone who is getting up to go get a specific book that I have been eyeing on the shelf this entire time. So I gotta go gotta gotta go.
Corinne Caputo 55:08
Alright, I'll hold this seat for when you come back but thank you. And I guess everyone before we say goodbye You should remember you are space. Yeah, you want space junk
Moiya McTier 55:27
Pale Blue Pod was created by Moiya McTier and Corrine Caputo with help from the multitude productions team. Our theme music is by Evan Johnston and our cover art is by Shea McMullin. Our audio editing is handled by the incomparable Mischa Stanton.
Corinne Caputo 55:42
Stay in touch with us and the universe by following @PaleBluePod on Twitter and Instagram. Or check out our website palebluepod[dot]com we're a member of multitude and independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like Pale Blue Pod you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude[dot]productions.
Moiya McTier 56:00
If you want to support Pale Blue Pod financially, join our community over at patreon[dot]com/palebluepod for just about $1 per episode, you get a shout out on one of our shows and access to directors commentary for each episode. The very best way though to help Pale Blue Pod grow is to share it with your friends. So send this episode this link to one person who you think will like it and we will appreciate you for forever.
Corinne Caputo 56:26
Thanks for listening to Pale Blue Pod. You'll hear us again next week.
Moiya McTier 56:29
Bye bye