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Radiolab

Dark Side of the Earth

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.643.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2024

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Back in 2012, when we were putting together our live show In the Dark, Jad and Robert called up Dave Wolf to ask him if he had any stories about darkness. And boy, did he. Dave told us two stories that became the finale of our show. Back in late 1997, Dave Wolf was on his first spacewalk, to perform work on the Mir (the photo to the right was taken during that mission, courtesy of NASA.). Dave wasn't alone -- with him was veteran Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev. (That's a picture of Dave giving Anatoly a hug on board the Mir, also courtesy of NASA). Out in blackness of space, the contrast between light and dark is almost unimaginably extreme -- every 45 minutes, you plunge between absolute darkness on the night-side of Earth, and blazing light as the sun screams into view. Dave and Anatoly were tethered to the spacecraft, traveling 5 miles per second. That's 16 times faster than we travel on Earth's surface as it rotates -- so as they orbited, they experienced 16 nights and 16 days for every Earth day. Dave's description of his first spacewalk was all we could've asked for, and more. But what happened next ... well, it's just one of those stories that you always hope an astronaut will tell. Dave and Anatoly were ready to call it a job and head back into the Mir when something went wrong with the airlock. They couldn't get it to re-pressurize. In other words, they were locked out. After hours of trying to fix the airlock, they were running out of the resources that kept them alive in their space suits and facing a grisly death. So, they unhooked their tethers, and tried one last desperate move. In the end, they made it through, and Dave went on to perform dozens more spacewalks in the years to come, but he never again experienced anything like those harrowing minutes trying to improvise his way back into the Mir. After that terrifying tale, Dave told us about another moment he and Anatoly shared, floating high above Earth, staring out into the universe ... a moment so beautiful, and peaceful, we decided to use the audience recreate it, as best we could, for the final act of our live show. We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Vote on your favorites, here: https://radiolab.org/moon Signup for our newsletter!!. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Listener supported WNYC Studios.

0:08.2

Hey, Latif Nasser here.

0:10.2

So one of the things I've always loved about being at Radio Lab is that we take a kind of obsessive pleasure in trying to get you closer than you've ever been to things that are

0:23.8

an asteroid unimaginably big put it at 120 feet across 220 billion pounds oh my gosh or microscopically

0:32.1

small to the tiny bits of the nucleus of the atom or far away there's a place at the edge of our solar system right the edge the edge of the nucleus of the atom, or far away. There's a place at the edge of our solar system.

0:39.2

Right at the edge. The edge of the edge.

0:41.7

Or right there in front of us, but hidden from view.

0:44.1

A sort of organ inside the human body that scientists had completely missed.

0:51.3

And we go to absurd lengths.

0:53.8

Oh.

0:54.5

To make things so fantastically distant from our everyday lives feel real.

0:59.5

Oh, I'm so long!

1:00.9

We built a cloud chamber in our studio.

1:05.1

Made a 500-person choir sing the spectrum of color of mantis shrimpsies.

1:12.6

One of the very first radio labs I ever heard made me actually feel like I touched a star.

1:18.5

Oh my God, they're so bright.

1:20.0

That's really cool.

1:22.1

Sometimes getting close is about getting...

1:23.8

In the mind of the beginner, there are many possibilities.

1:27.2

In the mind of the expert, there are a possibilities. In the mind of the expert, there are a few.

1:29.1

Emotionally close.

1:30.4

I get choked up.

...

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