Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Plant. In this episode of the podcast,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be chatting with science journalist and author
Speaker 2: Rebecca Boyle about her new book, Our Moon, How Earth's
Speaker 2: Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet. It's such a good read,
Speaker 2: highly recommend it, as I'll touch on later in the
Speaker 2: interview itself. This is a great week to read a
Speaker 2: book about the moon, because of course we're getting into
Speaker 2: celebrations of lunar New Year. So without further ado, let's
Speaker 2: get right to that interview. Hi, Rebecca, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: So the new book is Our Moon, How Earth's Celestial
Speaker 2: Companion Transformed the Planet, out now in physical, ebook and
Speaker 2: audio formats. Can you tell us what inspired you to
Speaker 2: write book.
Speaker 3: I remember being a kid and sitting on the floor
Speaker 3: of my elementary school library, probably in fifth grade, and
Speaker 3: listening to a vinyl record of the Apollo Transcript or
Speaker 3: the the Apollo Recordings, and just being blown away and
Speaker 3: like I couldn't believe that they were actually up there.
Speaker 3: And I would look at the moon at night and
Speaker 3: it felt so far away but also so close and
Speaker 3: so much a part of my life that this sort
Speaker 3: of just it blew my mind the idea of people
Speaker 3: walking around up there, and I think I never lost
Speaker 3: that connection, you know. I write about astronomy a lot
Speaker 3: right now, and often the moon is sort of like
Speaker 3: it gets short shrifts, it's kind of annoying for astronomers,
Speaker 3: like it's really bright, it's up all the time. If
Speaker 3: you're trying to study distant galaxies and quasars and things
Speaker 3: like that, it's actually an obstacle. So I often find
Speaker 3: myself kind of defending it and like, no, the moon
Speaker 3: is really special and the moon is cool, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think that's sort of how I first approached this,
Speaker 3: was like I want this to be an appreciation of
Speaker 3: the moon, and then as I started writing it, it
Speaker 3: became more like, no, the moon is really actually super
Speaker 3: important for everything that's ever happened here, and the book
Speaker 3: turned into more of an argument about that, like the
Speaker 3: moon is central to our existence and it's not just
Speaker 3: this beautiful thing that we should care about. It's like
Speaker 3: it's the reason we're here.
Speaker 2: In your first chapter, you discuss the environment of the moon,
Speaker 2: and I guess some of this we perhaps get from
Speaker 2: just by being familiar with the famous footage of lunar
Speaker 2: landings and sort of general mainstream understanding of the moon.
Speaker 2: But what details of the lunar environment do you feel
Speaker 2: are most often lacking from sort of mainstream understanding of
Speaker 2: this environment.
Speaker 3: I think the thing that I go back to is
Speaker 3: the sharpness, and I mean sharp in terms of the light,
Speaker 3: like the contrast between light and dark. There's no atmosphere
Speaker 3: to refract the light at all and soften the sun's
Speaker 3: glare or to kind of bring light into the sh shadows.
Speaker 3: It's all literally black or white, like there's either complete
Speaker 3: sunlight or complete darkness and sharpness just physically, the rocks
Speaker 3: themselves are really jagged and blocky, and you know, crystalline sharp.
Speaker 3: Literally the dust itself is sharp. Dust on Earth is soft,
Speaker 3: and it's mostly from life. I mean most dust is
Speaker 3: from like human skin and pet dander and pollen and
Speaker 3: sort of the discards of living things. And it's always
Speaker 3: sort of rounded and kind of you know, softened by
Speaker 3: life and by by Earth itself, by wind and rain
Speaker 3: and erosion. And there's nothing like that on the Moon.
Speaker 3: So even the dust is like little knives, And I
Speaker 3: don't think people think about that, you know, when we
Speaker 3: imagine being back up there. It was really annoying for
Speaker 3: the Apollo astronauts. They would breathe it in and they'd
Speaker 3: go inside the Lunar lander and take their helmets off,
Speaker 3: and they would all reported this like stuffy nose congestion.
Speaker 3: It was like itchy and they would be coughing. You know,
Speaker 3: was really irritating, and it's because it was really abrasive.
Speaker 3: It's really terrible to breathe it in and to have
Speaker 3: it on you, and it's also really staticky, like it's
Speaker 3: really difficult to get off because you know, again there's
Speaker 3: no water, there's no atmosphere, there's no moisture at all
Speaker 3: to sort of take the edge off, and so it
Speaker 3: sticks to everything with static electricity and it's really difficult
Speaker 3: to remove. So the dust is going to be a
Speaker 3: huge obstacle I think for people going back up there.
Speaker 3: But I don't think we think about just like the
Speaker 3: sharpness of the moon, it's not like Earth.
Speaker 2: Now. One of the things that I love about the book,
Speaker 2: and I think our listeners are going to really get
Speaker 2: into as well, is that, of course you discuss the
Speaker 2: history as we understand it of the moon. You get
Speaker 2: into the human and also the human history of our
Speaker 2: understanding of it, and both scientific and folklore, mythological, etc.
Speaker 2: What did the ancient Sumerians seemingly get right about the
Speaker 2: creation of Earth's moon?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. This was something I found just
Speaker 3: researching the book. I got really into Samerian history and
Speaker 3: Babylonian history and a Syrian you know, all these different
Speaker 3: cultures that spanned the area what's now Iraq and parts
Speaker 3: of Syria and Iran, and this is sort of the
Speaker 3: first literate civilizations on Earth. The first written records come
Speaker 3: from Sumerian culture, and some of the oldest creation stories
Speaker 3: are from Sumerian age, and one of them is this,
Speaker 3: they're the creation tablets, which are these literally like tablets
Speaker 3: like you imagine, you know, Moses holding these clay tablets
Speaker 3: that were handed down and it's the same that literally
Speaker 3: is the same thing. This is how people were keeping
Speaker 3: written records at the time on clay tablets that would
Speaker 3: harden in the sun. And the Sumerian creation tales have
Speaker 3: these whole long stories of how the Earth and the
Speaker 3: moon and the oceans came to be and the story
Speaker 3: is that there were these two kind of god monsters
Speaker 3: and they were separate deities, but then they got married,
Speaker 3: you know, they united, and their union gave birth to
Speaker 3: all the other lesser gods, and then these gods kind
Speaker 3: of started conspiring, you know, as many mythologies hold these
Speaker 3: sorts of stories. People were arguing about, you know, who
Speaker 3: was in charge, who was more powerful, And these are
Speaker 3: like spirit deities but also human, you know, human form.
Speaker 3: There were two main gods, Apsu and Tiamat. And I'm
Speaker 3: probably butchering the pronunciation. So Tiamat is salty water, which
Speaker 3: is the oceans, Apsu is fresh water. And after they
Speaker 3: you know, are united in this sacred marriage, Tiamat gives
Speaker 3: birth to all the other gods of creation. And there
Speaker 3: are a few different translations of this story, and the
Speaker 3: one that I liked is Stephanie Dolly translation missed from Mesopotamia.
Speaker 3: And in this version, the younger gods and newer gods
Speaker 3: are like loud and annoying and braddy and disrespectful and so,
Speaker 3: and Apsu can't sleep, so he decides to destroy them.
Speaker 3: Tiamat is upset about this and wants to protect her
Speaker 3: young so she alerts the older son Anki, who's the
Speaker 3: god of wisdom, and Enki kills Apsu, and it's this
Speaker 3: great battle, and in the battle, you know, the gods
Speaker 3: are destroyed and torn apart. Tiamat herself doesn't survive, and
Speaker 3: she's rendered in two and one half of her becomes
Speaker 3: the heavens and the other half becomes the Earth. And
Speaker 3: I just enjoyed reading about this mythology as I was
Speaker 3: reading about the Sumerians, because I was trying to connect
Speaker 3: the oldest written languages to our understanding of the moon.
Speaker 3: But it turned out to be a really useful metaphor
Speaker 3: for the formation of the moon, because a very similar
Speaker 3: thing happens. You know, this sort of other being of
Speaker 3: their planet arrives in Earth's orbit and destroys Earth, and
Speaker 3: one half becomes the Earth and one half becomes the Moon.
Speaker 3: And I felt like it was a helpful way for
Speaker 3: me to imagine this event, and it just seemed like
Speaker 3: a useful metaphor for what actually.
Speaker 2: Happened now, which is the most widely accepted moon formation
Speaker 2: theory today.
Speaker 3: So this is still a pretty active area of debate,
Speaker 3: which I find is super interesting because I mean, it's
Speaker 3: the moon like shouldn't we know, Like don't you think
Speaker 3: we should have a better idea of what happened. But
Speaker 3: there are some really interesting things about the Moon, and
Speaker 3: one is that it's very unique in the Solar System.
Speaker 3: There's nothing else like this. It's huge relative to Earth.
Speaker 3: It's really far away from Earth, and you know, it
Speaker 3: has this sort of density that's lighter than Earth, but
Speaker 3: yet it's materials. It's like down to the atoms in
Speaker 3: the rocks of the Moon, it's almost identical to Earth.
Speaker 3: In some cases it is identical to Earth. So there's
Speaker 3: all these sort of weird characteristics. And this is a
Speaker 3: difficult story to disentangle. You know, we think, and we've
Speaker 3: learned in Apollo that probably would happen was this giant impact.
Speaker 3: And this is just called the giant impact theory, so
Speaker 3: that at some point early in Earth's history, another planet
Speaker 3: was moving around the same orbit as Earth collided with
Speaker 3: our early planet and both this impact are Thea, which
Speaker 3: is the Greek god that's the mother of the moon
Speaker 3: Seline in Greek mythology, So we name this planet THEA
Speaker 3: crashes into Earth. Earth and Thea are totally destroyed, and
Speaker 3: somehow in the cloud of debris that follows Earth and
Speaker 3: the Moon both coalesce, and this is one way of
Speaker 3: describing how they can look so alike but yet be
Speaker 3: so different and distinct worlds. But the particulars of this
Speaker 3: are still really hotly debated, actually, and we're not really
Speaker 3: sure how this went down. And some of it is
Speaker 3: because we know that the Moon is there, we know
Speaker 3: its size, we know its speed relative to Earth, how
Speaker 3: far it's moving away from us, how quickly it's leaving us,
Speaker 3: and all its rotation speed, our rotation speed, all these
Speaker 3: factors have to come into play, like there are some
Speaker 3: just physical facts that we have to explain, and yet
Speaker 3: some of the other physical evidence doesn't really seem to
Speaker 3: match up with our models of how this could be.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of people working on this and
Speaker 3: trying to figure out exactly how this could have happened.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting to me for a few reasons. And
Speaker 3: one is just I mean, like I said, it's the Moon,
Speaker 3: like we should know.
Speaker 2: Don't you want to know?
Speaker 1: Like is it?
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be amazing to know how the Moon got
Speaker 3: here and how we all got here and how those
Speaker 3: things are related. And I think it's also just really
Speaker 3: interesting because it has implications for the history of evolution
Speaker 3: on Earth. You know, if this is a really unique system,
Speaker 3: if there's no other place like Earth and our moon
Speaker 3: in the Solar system, which that's the case, maybe that's
Speaker 3: the case for other Solar systems, you know, maybe other
Speaker 3: stars that have rocky planets in the habitable zones, maybe
Speaker 3: those need a large moon sort of sculpting their existence
Speaker 3: for life to be able to take hold. And I
Speaker 3: think if we can come to understand a little bit
Speaker 3: more about how our moon got here, that will give
Speaker 3: us some insight into how unique we are maybe in
Speaker 3: the whole broader universe.
Speaker 2: Based on your research, and you get into this quite
Speaker 2: a bit in the book, do you think life would
Speaker 2: have been possible on Earth without our moon and or
Speaker 2: what might life have looked like without the moon's influence?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think about this a lot. I mean, we
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, how life arose here. We don't
Speaker 3: know exactly when, we don't know exactly where. We have
Speaker 3: some good ideas we think probably it was in the oceans,
Speaker 3: either in deep ocean events on these mid ocean ridges
Speaker 3: where Earth's crust sort of has these rifts in it,
Speaker 3: or somewhere closer to the surface in tidal pools, and
Speaker 3: these sort of like cycles of hydration and dehydration where
Speaker 3: the tide comes in, it moistens the rocks, it flows
Speaker 3: in more fresh water, and then the tide recedes and
Speaker 3: the water dries up, and you know, it sort of
Speaker 3: becomes thicker and murkier, and some interesting chemical reactions can
Speaker 3: happen in that sort of cycle of ebb and flow,
Speaker 3: And you know, I think the Moon is really responsible
Speaker 3: for both of those effects. If life evolved in tidal pools,
Speaker 3: if it originated there, then we can thank the moon
Speaker 3: for that flux of water. If life originated in the
Speaker 3: deep ocean, the Moon's probably what dragged it up and
Speaker 3: mixed the entire ocean and stirred it, you know, like
Speaker 3: a ladle stirring a pot of soup. Like imagine spinning
Speaker 3: your spoon around in a big stock pot and all
Speaker 3: of the onions kind of like flow up to the surface.
Speaker 3: You know, that's what the moon does through its tide.
Speaker 3: And so either way, I think the Moon played a
Speaker 3: huge role in fostering the evolution of life, if it
Speaker 3: didn't spark it into being in the first place, and
Speaker 3: maybe that also happened. We never We're never gonna know,
Speaker 3: but I do think the Moon's role in early evolution
Speaker 3: has probably been overlooked.
Speaker 2: I like the soup analogy though, because, yeah, you can
Speaker 2: imagine like a soup that has never stirred as ingredients
Speaker 2: are added. So even as I guess, as you have
Speaker 2: increasingly more complex forms of life, right, they're not going
Speaker 2: to necessarily be moved around the entire planet, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: They're not going to be able to move round. They're
Speaker 3: not going to be able to access the nutrients they
Speaker 3: need to feed themselves. You know, even if it's not
Speaker 3: just the life forms themselves, but the nutrients in the
Speaker 3: ocean and just material from runoff from the land into
Speaker 3: the water and how those things mix, those would have
Speaker 3: all sunk to the bottom and just been silt and
Speaker 3: couldn't have been used by the chain of life. And
Speaker 3: I think, you know, the Moon's tide has a huge
Speaker 3: influence on the movement of water from the deep ocean
Speaker 3: up to the surface. And we know that that's true,
Speaker 3: and we know that was true when it was much
Speaker 3: closer earlier in Earth history, and it was probably having
Speaker 3: an even bigger effect on all that material in the water.
Speaker 2: You mentioned just how familiar we are with the moon.
Speaker 2: It's easy to sort of take it for granted. One
Speaker 2: of the interesting things about the moon that you point
Speaker 2: out in the book of this of that, of course,
Speaker 2: the moon is roughly the same size as our Sun
Speaker 2: as visible from the earth, like making things like a
Speaker 2: solar eclipse possible. How do you think that you cover
Speaker 2: multiple ancient and traditional interpretations of the moon in your book,
Speaker 2: how do you think the general flavor of global traditions
Speaker 2: might have differed if the Sun and the Moon were
Speaker 2: not roughly the same size in the sky.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I mean, this is a fun
Speaker 3: thing to think about because I think it makes so
Speaker 3: much sense to people that they were sort of opposites
Speaker 3: because of the fact that they look the same. You know,
Speaker 3: occasionally the moon blocks the Sun. People for a long
Speaker 3: time had no idea that was happening physically, like people
Speaker 3: guessed at it in antiquity, but a until you know,
Speaker 3: the earliest sort of written literate cultures, people had no
Speaker 3: way of understanding what was happening. And even the ancient
Speaker 3: Greeks didn't really understand what was happening. They didn't know
Speaker 3: what the moon was and I think because they're roughly
Speaker 3: the same size. I mean, they look the same size
Speaker 3: in the sky. It's sort of an obvious, you know.
Speaker 3: The idea of opposite yin and yang is one of
Speaker 3: the Chinese traditions, you know, coming and going, black and white,
Speaker 3: male and female, all these sort of dualities that people have,
Speaker 3: death and life and death and resurrection. The moon is
Speaker 3: an interesting way to represent those ideas. And the moon
Speaker 3: and the sun together there's one that lights the day
Speaker 3: and one that lights the night. I mean, that's in Genesis.
Speaker 3: It's one of the first lines of the Old Testament
Speaker 3: that you know, on the seventh day, you know, Earth
Speaker 3: is created, but he gives us the sun to light
Speaker 3: the day and the moon to light the night, and
Speaker 3: the second light is the moon. So I think it's
Speaker 3: just a natural way of imagining the cosmos, like, of
Speaker 3: course there is one in the day, and of course
Speaker 3: there's one at night. Like why wouldn't that be, you know,
Speaker 3: And so if the moon was very different, or if
Speaker 3: it was small, or if it was maybe like the
Speaker 3: moons of Mars, these like dinky little asteroid crumbs, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe we wouldn't have had that mythic grasp on opposites
Speaker 3: the way that we do because of this lunar symbolism.
Speaker 2: Now dipping into a current and future lunar exploration. Did
Speaker 2: you think there's a substantial scientific advantage to sending human
Speaker 2: beings back to the Moon and as opposed to sticking
Speaker 2: strictly with probes and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yes, I definitely do, And I think there's a few
Speaker 3: reasons why. You know, there's no substitute for human eyes,
Speaker 3: and no substitute for human judgment, and a human pilot,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, one of them, maybe lesser known
Speaker 3: now but more well known examples from Apollo is Neil
Speaker 3: Armstrong's landing. Like he's. They were pretty off their target
Speaker 3: when they first arrived, and the eagles descending toward the
Speaker 3: lunar's surface, they missed their landing spot by a few miles,
Speaker 3: and you know, they're running out of fuel. He has
Speaker 3: to land, and he has to make a decision really
Speaker 3: quickly and set down without dipping over. Not on the
Speaker 3: rim of a crater, but in a pretty flat area,
Speaker 3: not on one leg on a boulder, but like in
Speaker 3: a pretty clear field, so that the whole thing is
Speaker 3: standing upright. So they can get home, and you know,
Speaker 3: he pulls it off. And I think, if we didn't
Speaker 3: have a human pilot, an exceptional human pilot in Neil Armstrong,
Speaker 3: we've seen what happens. I mean, japan just landed on
Speaker 3: the Moon a few weeks ago in January, and it
Speaker 3: flipped over and it sent telemetry. This lander, slim Is
Speaker 3: its acronym, is still there and they're hoping that sunlight
Speaker 3: on the panels will continue to let it wake up.
Speaker 3: As the Moon or wits the Earth and the Sun
Speaker 3: and the angle of light changes, it brings more sunlight
Speaker 3: onto its solar panels. But it landed belly up, essentially.
Speaker 3: And you know, this was a very complicated and very
Speaker 3: detailed so built by the Japanese Space Agency, which just
Speaker 3: had an incredibly success landing on asteroids, you know and
Speaker 3: other planets like Jack say's one of the best space
Speaker 3: agencies in terms of successes, and they still had issues
Speaker 3: and they crashed a few months prior to that in
Speaker 3: a different lunar attempt, and so you know, I think
Speaker 3: there's even just getting there physically. There's no substitute for
Speaker 3: a really well trained and equipped pilot. And then you know,
Speaker 3: when they were on the Moon. The astronauts have spent
Speaker 3: a lot of time doing geology training in Hawaii and Arizona,
Speaker 3: just sort of being able to understand how rocks looked
Speaker 3: different from one another and what that might mean. And
Speaker 3: Neil Armstrong grabbed the first samples and within a few
Speaker 3: minutes of touching down and there still some of the
Speaker 3: best samples we got because he knew what he was
Speaker 3: looking for. And successive missions too had really detailed astronaut training.
Speaker 3: The last Apaullo mission, A Paulo seventeen had a geologist,
Speaker 3: Jack Schmidt, was a trained field geologist, and he had
Speaker 3: some specific things he wanted and he knew what to
Speaker 3: look for him and these are really important samples to
Speaker 3: this day. So I think, you know, having people up
Speaker 3: there walking around making judgment calls, snap decisions the way
Speaker 3: humans can do. There's even with the most advanced technology
Speaker 3: we have, robots are no substitute, I think for human brains.
Speaker 3: And I think there's something more sort of just fundamental
Speaker 3: about it. I don't think I think that humans being
Speaker 3: up there and connecting the rest of humanity to the
Speaker 3: Moon through their presence is just an irreplaceable phenomenon like
Speaker 3: a robot being up there is not quite as impressive,
Speaker 3: and their robots are awesome, you know. We've landed cars
Speaker 3: on Mars and helicopter on Mars, you know, and these
Speaker 3: are incredible pieces of technology that are our extensions of
Speaker 3: our ideas and our ingenuity. But I still think humans
Speaker 3: being able to walk up there and transcend that boundary
Speaker 3: is just irreplaceable.
Speaker 2: Now, human spacecraft first reached the Mids in nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 2: and humans landed on the Moon for the first time
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine. What might we expect to happen
Speaker 2: on the Moon with humans and or probes between now
Speaker 2: and twenty fifty nine and twenty sixty nine.
Speaker 3: I mean, it depends on how you ask. I think
Speaker 3: there are a lot of people who are really excited
Speaker 3: about people being up there permanently, and that the beginning
Speaker 3: of that will be happening here pretty soon. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, NASA's Artemis program intends to land the first woman,
Speaker 3: the first person of color on the Moon, become you know,
Speaker 3: the first to go back to the Moon since we
Speaker 3: left it in nineteen seventy two, And there's a lot
Speaker 3: of momentum for that, and I think you know, we'll see,
Speaker 3: we'll see how quickly it happens. At NASA's goal is
Speaker 3: to land by no earlier than September of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: six as of right now, but that could change and
Speaker 3: probably will change, because they have a lot of reasons
Speaker 3: to be thlowing things down, because some of the companies
Speaker 3: building equipment to get there are having issues or taking
Speaker 3: a long time to finish their tasks. So these things
Speaker 3: take time. And I think, you know, no one's really
Speaker 3: expecting it to happen overnight, but I think by twenty
Speaker 3: fifty nine, by twenty sixty nine, you know, a century
Speaker 3: after the first lunar landings, I think it's very likely
Speaker 3: that we'll have permanent human habitation up there in some
Speaker 3: sort of modest settlement, you know, with with really austere conditions,
Speaker 3: and you know, people who are really well trained and
Speaker 3: well equipped to be able to live there for chunks
Speaker 3: of time. I don't think it's going to be, you know,
Speaker 3: a city. I don't envision it being this permanent, like
Speaker 3: you know. I one analogy I think of sometimes looking
Speaker 3: at moon exploration in the future is sort of Western
Speaker 3: expansion in the US, and I think this is sometimes
Speaker 3: problematic because some of that language is still very much,
Speaker 3: you know, wrapped up in colonial mindsets and sort of
Speaker 3: trampling over land and people who got here first. And
Speaker 3: you know, there are no cultures on the Moon, there
Speaker 3: are no indigenous peoples on the Moon who will be oppressed.
Speaker 3: But I still think that, you know, the ideas that
Speaker 3: carried us into western expansion in the United States are
Speaker 3: very similar to how people feel about settling the Moon,
Speaker 3: and I hope that we step back a little bit
Speaker 3: and think about that and consider why we want to
Speaker 3: be there and what we want to do. So I
Speaker 3: don't know if I think it's going to be like,
Speaker 3: you know, a company town, a railroad town, kind of
Speaker 3: like depot, but I do think there will be experiments
Speaker 3: up there happening, you know, repeatedly. I think there's likely
Speaker 3: to be some kind of observatory on the fire side
Speaker 3: doing astronomy that isn't you know, difficult or impossible from Earth.
Speaker 3: I think there will be companies taking people and supplies
Speaker 3: and scientists up there back and forth for research purposes.
Speaker 3: And because that will be happening, I think there will
Speaker 3: be sort of a secondary economy enabling those things, and
Speaker 3: providing services, and that's one of the goals that NASA has.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the entire purpose of their Commercial
Speaker 3: Learnar Payload Services program, which is to encourage startups and
Speaker 3: small companies and big companies to develop technology that will
Speaker 3: take people, even and supplies and material to the Moon
Speaker 3: alongside NASA, where like NASA is now just a ride
Speaker 3: share partner as opposed to the primary reason that we go.
Speaker 3: And I think that's probably going to happen. It just
Speaker 3: might take longer than people think.
Speaker 2: Now internationally that there is interest in mining on the Moon. Correct,
Speaker 2: what are they looking to? Mind? What are the main objects?
Speaker 3: There are a few things that might be of value,
Speaker 3: and I mean mostly it's per material that would be
Speaker 3: used up there. So there's not much that's really valuable
Speaker 3: on the Moon that we don't have on Earth. There
Speaker 3: are a few things, but you know, it's still way
Speaker 3: easier to mine for rare earth metals on this planet
Speaker 3: than it is to go to the Moon and get
Speaker 3: them and come back. But there are things like helium
Speaker 3: three is a potential resource. This is like a volatile
Speaker 3: form of helium that could be used to power nuclear reactors. Potentially,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of water, and it's not like lakes
Speaker 3: you know, or aquifers like we imagine on Earth, but
Speaker 3: it's probably locked up in hydrated minerals more like you know,
Speaker 3: the oil sands, or maybe in ices, you know, flat
Speaker 3: fields of ice at the bottoms of permanently shadowed craters,
Speaker 3: and that could be used either for just human use
Speaker 3: or more likely for rocket fuel. If you can split
Speaker 3: up the hydrogen and oxygen bonds and water, then you
Speaker 3: have hydrogen and you have oxygen, and those can be
Speaker 3: refined into rocket fuel. And if that would be really
Speaker 3: nice to have if you're going to go back home
Speaker 3: to Earth you don't need to bring as much with you,
Speaker 3: or if you want to go on somewhere else further
Speaker 3: afield to Mars or asteroids or who knows, it would
Speaker 3: be nice to have a fuel depot at the Moon
Speaker 3: where you don't need to take as much fuel off
Speaker 3: Earth with you as you leave.
Speaker 2: Now, in terms of conservation on the Moon, which you've
Speaker 2: touched on already, is it how much do we have
Speaker 2: actually ironed out in terms of like international cooperation regarding that, Like,
Speaker 2: I mean, we have there's so little on the Moon
Speaker 2: that we have put there. But if all this goes
Speaker 2: according to plan, that will change. Are there any like
Speaker 2: do we have any agreements in place to protect the
Speaker 2: Moon to any degree kind of?
Speaker 3: So there's I mean, there's not really an international agreement
Speaker 3: that everybody has signed on to. There is a nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty seven Outer Space Treaty, which is you know, dates
Speaker 3: to the Apollo Ara and the Space Race. And there
Speaker 3: are new Artemis Accords, which is set up by NASA
Speaker 3: but has a bunch of signatories. I think Belgium just
Speaker 3: became the forty fourth country to sign on to the
Speaker 3: Artemis Accords. And this is sort of a multilateral international agreement.
Speaker 3: It's not binding, it's not through the UN even. It's
Speaker 3: sort of just all the spacefaring countries coming together to
Speaker 3: agree to a few certain things. And mostly it's things
Speaker 3: like interoperability of equipment, so like, if you're going to
Speaker 3: go up there and put up capsule and have people
Speaker 3: in there, let's make sure that it can dock with
Speaker 3: you know, this other guy's Space agency equipment, so you
Speaker 3: can help each other out if you need to. There
Speaker 3: are provisions that protect lunar heritage sites, so like they
Speaker 3: would ask you to not land like on top of
Speaker 3: the Apollo eleven landing site, you know, and disturb that.
Speaker 3: There are things like, you know, let's make sure that
Speaker 3: if we extract material, that you know, we're not trampling
Speaker 3: on someone else's ability to extract material. Some of those
Speaker 3: provisions I think are interesting because they inherently give people
Speaker 3: a claim. So there's there's a clause in the Artemis
Speaker 3: Accords that says you can't disturb anybody else's equipment or
Speaker 3: site or you know, resource material or prospecting ability. And
Speaker 3: because there's no atmosphere and there's no water, there's no
Speaker 3: any there's nothing on the Moon to sort of soften
Speaker 3: your landing. Every landing and every takeoff will throw up
Speaker 3: enormous amounts of lunar dust that will sometimes go into
Speaker 3: orbit and take a long time to settle, and it
Speaker 3: will be really abrasive. And so if we all have
Speaker 3: to agree that we're not going to disturb somebody else's
Speaker 3: landing site, then a landing site becomes that country's or
Speaker 3: that companies or that you know, whoever, whatever entity can
Speaker 3: land up there is sort of staking a claim to
Speaker 3: that location under the Artemisic Coords. And this is not official.
Speaker 3: It's not like they've all said like, this is mine,
Speaker 3: my flag's there, it's my spot. But if you're all
Speaker 3: agreeing to not disturb one on another's locations, and that's
Speaker 3: sort of inherent, you know that these are you're staking
Speaker 3: a claim in a way. And not every country is
Speaker 3: this signatory to the artomistic course, not every country is
Speaker 3: a signatory to the space treating. So there's there's not
Speaker 3: really an international agreement that everyone has agreed upon that
Speaker 3: will protect the moon or the people going up there,
Speaker 3: or the robots going up there. So it's going to
Speaker 3: be very interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Speaker 2: Now, to come back to our appreciation of the moon
Speaker 2: on Earth and our experiences of the moon on Earth,
Speaker 2: I was reading an article you'd written for Adams Obscura
Speaker 2: on this topic, so I thought i'd ask this for
Speaker 2: our listeners. What is a strawberry moon and why is
Speaker 2: it your favorite?
Speaker 3: So a strawberry moon is one of the names for
Speaker 3: the twelve moons of the year. They each have different
Speaker 3: names depending on which indigenous tradition they're used, you know,
Speaker 3: or just history in whatever culture, whatever part of Earth
Speaker 3: you're on. Most moons have a seasonal aspect to them.
Speaker 3: In February, we have the wolf moon, there's the cold moon.
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of other names for different There's the
Speaker 3: harvest moon, and probably is the most famous example. But
Speaker 3: the strawberry moon is in early June, and I love
Speaker 3: this moon because it sort of brings summer along with it.
Speaker 3: It's called the strawberry moon because that's the time of
Speaker 3: year that strawberries are getting ripe and they're able to
Speaker 3: be picked, and so this has the seasonal aspect. But
Speaker 3: it sometimes even looks pink as it's rising, you know,
Speaker 3: in a full moon on a summer night, through a
Speaker 3: hazy atmosphere with humidity in the air because it's warm
Speaker 3: in the Northern Hemisphere, I should say, but you know
Speaker 3: in the US and Europe and northern northern Hemisphere areas,
Speaker 3: it's this beginning of summer. It's right before the summer solstice.
Speaker 3: It's the longest nights of the year, or the longest
Speaker 3: days of the year, sorry, the shortest nights. So you
Speaker 3: have a lot of sun and a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: warmth in the evenings to sort of extend your day outside.
Speaker 3: And the moon at this time of year is right
Speaker 3: kind of in your window it's lower on the horizon.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if people really notice this, but
Speaker 3: if you pay attention to the location of the Sun
Speaker 3: and the moon throughout the year, they do this sort
Speaker 3: of flip like almost like double Dutch jump ropes kind
Speaker 3: of crisscrossing in the sky. So the summer moon is
Speaker 3: in the same general area of the sky as the
Speaker 3: winter sun, and so in the winter the moon is
Speaker 3: high overhead, and in the summer again in the northern
Speaker 3: hemisphere the moon is. In the winter, the moon is
Speaker 3: high overhead, and in the summer the moon is sort
Speaker 3: of low on the southern horizon, so it feels more present.
Speaker 3: I guess, like you really can't miss it if you're
Speaker 3: walking around outside. It's so dominant on the landscape. It
Speaker 3: looks bigger, it looks more just with you. And the
Speaker 3: Strawberry Moon is the first really like low hanging bright
Speaker 3: moon of the summer. So it's just my.
Speaker 2: Favorite now with the lunar New Year celebrates happening this week,
Speaker 2: you know, first of all, it's a great time to
Speaker 2: pick up this terrific book on our Moon. I think
Speaker 2: a great, great read for this time of year. But
Speaker 2: I was wondering is there anything you might encourage new
Speaker 2: Lunar New Year celebrators to remember or keep in mind
Speaker 2: about Earth's moon in addition to you know, their their their,
Speaker 2: their heritage and culture.
Speaker 3: I think if there's one thing I want people to
Speaker 3: take away from this book, it's that the moon is
Speaker 3: so much more powerful and more potent even in our
Speaker 3: lives today than people might realize. It's so much more
Speaker 3: than this beautiful nighttime companion, and it's so much more
Speaker 3: than our ability to tell time and orient ourselves in time.
Speaker 3: You know, the lunar New Year is a lunar solar calendar,
Speaker 3: which is one of the few you know remaining on
Speaker 3: Earth in current use. I mean, most of the Western
Speaker 3: world and the civil calendar use the Gregorian calendar, which
Speaker 3: is a version of the calendar that Julius us are
Speaker 3: introduced forty four BC, and it's the first one in
Speaker 3: the world that divorced the moon from time. And that's
Speaker 3: how most people use time anymore. You know, even if
Speaker 3: you're celebrating in a New Year as part of a
Speaker 3: tradition in Asia, it's still not the way that you know,
Speaker 3: global economics and global trade sort of mark time. It's
Speaker 3: more of a tradition than it is a literal tool anymore.
Speaker 3: But I think it's so much more than that. It's
Speaker 3: so much more powerful over our lives than people might
Speaker 3: think anymore. We have artificial light at night, we live
Speaker 3: in a twenty four hour news cycle, we live in
Speaker 3: a twenty four hour economic cycle, and it's easy to
Speaker 3: sort of lose track of the Moon's importance. But I
Speaker 3: hope people think about it in a new way after
Speaker 3: reading this book, and that they understand how it's been
Speaker 3: involved in literally everything that has happened here, in ways
Speaker 3: that are much deeper and much more profound than I
Speaker 3: realized before I wrote the book.
Speaker 2: Well, Rebecca, thanks for taking time out of your day
Speaker 2: to come on the show and chat with me here.
Speaker 2: The book again, is Our Moon, How earth Celestial companion
Speaker 2: Transformed the planet. It's out now. If folks want to
Speaker 2: follow you online, where would you like them to go?
Speaker 3: Well, in our very fractured online landscape. Now, I'm still
Speaker 3: on Twitter x, but not it's active there anymore. Mostly
Speaker 3: active on Instagram on zed by Rebecca Boyle, and I'm
Speaker 3: also on like Threads and Blue Sky.
Speaker 2: Thanks again to Rebecca Boil for taking time out of
Speaker 2: her day to chat with me here on the podcast
Speaker 2: again Our Moon, How Earth Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet
Speaker 2: out now in I think every format you could ask for,
Speaker 2: so again highly recommend it. Go go check it out.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is, of course primarily a
Speaker 2: science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On
Speaker 2: Mondays we do a listener mail episode. On Wednesdays we
Speaker 2: do a short form episode of about three different flavors,
Speaker 2: and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 2: to just talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Thanks as always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing
Speaker 2: the show, and if you would like to reach out
Speaker 2: via email, well you can email us at contact at
Speaker 2: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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