Outer Space Is Confusing and Terrifying
by Rebecca Schembri, science communicator @rebeccafromreno
Did you know that if you travel far enough into outer space, you can theoretically look at Earth through a telescope and see the dinosaurs who once roamed our planet? When I learned this, I realized the Universe is full of mystery and that our minds are not prepared to make sense of it.
As a Harvard University space diplomat, I am fascinated with astroscience. My life’s work will include writing future laws for space on robotics, advanced intelligence, nuclear power, and human migration from Earth. I might even be ambassador to the moon one day.
Because I am a social scientist, however, I sometimes struggle with space topics. Does your brain hurt when you try to understand astroscience? Mine does. Space is confusing and terrifying.
Space study has ideas that don’t make any sense. For example: even though we are sitting still right now, did you know that we are rotating with the Earth at one thousand miles per hour, and we are going around the sun at seventy thousand miles per hour, while traveling with our solar system at half a million miles per hour? Why aren’t we dizzy? No wonder children love to spin hysterically until they run out of steam — they are just being their natural, cosmic selves.
Another question I have is: why is it not common knowledge that humans descend from stars? All my life I have wanted to be a star and now I know why — I am a star. (Well, kind of.) We all are, since when stars die, they explode and the residual stardust hovers and expands in outer space until it finds its stardust soul mate particles and they join together, making planet babies. Then, after four billion years, this evolves into human life. This is why we are confused; we are beings made of eternal stardust trying to go to work in the morning.
Space is so terrifying it is hard to take seriously. But when I heard that science does not care whether or not I believe in it, and that insufficient facts always invite danger, I paid more attention. Through my studies I learned that every star, including our sun, is a floating nuclear reactor. This is horrible. Every one of those stars we romanticize over could kill us.
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Similarly frightful are the millions of pieces of human-made debris orbiting our planet faster than speeding bullets. This is material we have left behind since we began exploring and using space sixty years ago. Maybe that’s why aliens haven’t visited us yet — they can’t get past the graveyard of satellites in our front yard to meet us, and they think we aren’t intelligent beings because we are disorderly slobs. The good news is that as long as Earth’s magnetic field doesn’t collapse, that metal garbage will never come crashing down on us.
Human-made space debris orbits Earth at 17,000 miles per hour.
Another terrifying thing about space is that there are over one hundred and fifty million huge metal rocks continuously flying past Earth. It is like our solar system has chicken pox and is highly contagious — these things are everywhere! In addition to asteroids, scientists estimate there are a trillion flying icebergs in our solar system, called comets. By the way, one trillion comets is about how many one dollar bills Elon Musk has.
The reason comets are so terrifying is that they are flaming fireballs speeding past Earth at forty miles per second. Think about a place forty miles from you. Now think of a burning, flaming ball of metal and ice going between you and that place in the blink of an eye. It’s as fast as teleportation. Through education I have realized that graceful aging is not as important as we thought, since a space rock could hit any one of us while we are having a coffee.
But the most confusing and terrifying fact about outer space is the most sobering: with the advent of technology, we now know that there are over one hundred thousand billion exoplanets in our universe. (If someone can explain that number to me, please send an email.) This creates an obvious issue: Darth Vader might be out there in a galaxy far, far away.
Do you feel like the text emoji with the exploding head when you think about this? I do. Space is confusing and it is terrifying.
People ask me how I stay down to Earth after learning these things at one of the best schools in the world. It is pretty simple actually — it’s just gravity. In fact, the next time you are standing outside, think of me, because you are not really right side up, but upside down, hanging from an ice-covered ball of lava that is flying around a gigantic nuclear reactor in five-hundred-degree subzero temperatures, and the only barrier between you and outer space is sixty miles of electromagnetic cloud cover. I think we can all agree that there is no such thing as a bad day on Earth if our atmosphere is still standing.
Even though space is confusing and terrifying, scientist Marie Curie once said that “nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” The answer lies in studying what we fear.
Humanity must further its understanding of space so that we migrate within our Universe in a conscious, safe, and sustainable way. You can get involved by reading books about space and by studying space online. Join us and together we will be less confused, less terrified, and stronger in our knowledge of the cosmos.
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Human Space Program is a central project to develop a citizen-authored blueprint for conscious space migration and stewardship of the solar ecosystem. We invite you to join us! Visit us at Human Space Program or donate here.
