Transcript of Probing Where the Sun Does Shine: A Holiday Special

Listener supported, WNYC studios. Wait, you're listening? Okay. All right. Okay. All right.

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C. C?

Yeah.

Hey, I'm Latif Nasser, and this is Radiolab. This is a computer Yes. Great. That's great. Amazing. Today. I've been looking forward to talking to you for so long.

No, thank you. It's really a pleasure to talk to you.

We're doing something a little bit different because this episode is coming out at the tail end of December 24. And so far this month, we have traced the bogus origin story of Stockholm syndrome. Our staff went on a bit of a romp, fact-checking a bunch of the old chest nuts, the adages you hear all the time. So Those were our two new episodes for this month. That's what we do. We make two new episodes a month. But we wanted to do a little something extra, a little sneaky holiday gift, a Christmas-ish offering, you could call it. It's actually two little Christmas-ish offerings, one from me, one from Lulu. They're similar but also very different. I'm going to start off with this story. This is the especially Christmas-y one that I heard from this guy, Noor.

I am Nour Raouhfi, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

Nour is part of a project, actually a mission that, I don't know, a few weeks ago, I didn't even think was physically possible.

There are things now I've been on this mission for 16 years, and there are certain aspects for me. The way they work is still like magic.

Okay, but if we back up all the way, how did you even get interested in all of this?

My interest in space was as a very young child.

Nour is originally from Tunisia.

Born in the countryside and being in the countryside, there is no light pollution at all. The sky is just, in particular in summertime, it's just mesmerizing. It's just captivating. And that's actually probably the first thing that got me interested into space. After that, my interest shifted a little bit on the sun, being really fascinated by it, how much heat in particular we get in the summer. They did all sorts of experiment.

He says when he was a kid, he actually made his own light prism out of plexiglas.

To create the rainbow spectrum from violet to red.

He started playing with lenses.

Focusing the sunlight. Some of them, actually, they caused fire, but it's not really a big fire at all. But still, the power of the sun was so fascinating to me.

Nour says that as he got older, he got interested in other fields.

Fields like particle physics, like nuclear physics, like optics, quantum He ends up going to study in France, starts working in the States at different observatories.

But around 2008, he hears about this mission that NASA is working on.

Put forth in 1958, many, many years before I was born. That is so monumental, that is going to make history, that is going to make a first just in a few weeks from now.

To explain, 2008, Nour starts working with NASA on this mission, and then… Status check, go Delta, go PS 2018, Nour and a team of NASA scientists launched this rocket out into space. Lift off. Being carried by that rocket was this…

About three meters tall.Couple.

Of meterssides.

It's not really big spacecraft when you look at it.

It almost looks like cone-shaped. Once it got into space, this little cone-shaped spacecraft detached from the rocket, and Nour and his team fired it up and sent it to Venus.

Kind of slow the spacecraft a little bit down.

So that the spacecraft would get caught in Venus's orbit. Then as it swung around Venus, they hit the jets and it just went out toward the sun. Then around the sun, then around the sun, then back to Venus, where again it goes, slingshots around Venus, out around the sun, and back again, and again, and again. As it's yoyoing back and forth between Venus and the sun, it's getting faster and faster and faster.

More than 430,000 miles per hour.

That's just so fast you can't even comprehend it.

Yes, it's the fastest human object flying in space.

As it gets faster, that orbit around the sun and Venus, it gets tighter and tighter and tighter to the point that this little spacecraft will get so close to the sun that we will basically, for the first time ever, touch it.

Nobody has ever done this. Nobody has ever gone so close to a star.

This is the mission, the mission that Nour He came obsessed with the mission that NASA spent decades developing.

Generations who invested into this mission.

To try and understand our sun.

Because there are certain phenomena that happening on the sun or in the environment of the sun that are so puzzling that for decades now, we don't really have a full understanding of them.

For instance, Nour says, take the surface of the sun that we see with the naked eye.

The temperature is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

But he says, if you move just a couple of thousand miles away out from the sun.

The temperature will jump to 2 million or 3 million degrees Fahrenheit. It's more. It's way, way. It's over 300 times hotter.

So nobody knows why that is? No. He said there's all these other mysteries as well, like solar wind to it. Or something called the dust free zone.

These mysteries about the sun, how the sun works.

The hope is to solve some of these mysteries.

Basically, rewriting textbooks for us about the sun.

But I How could you possibly send something? Now what you're telling me is that not even touching the sun, but even further away from the sun, it's even hotter than the surface of the sun. How can you get something even remotely close to without it just melting into a puddle?

The spacecraft, when you look at it in terms of technology, it's really a marvel of technology.

For instance, Nour says, NASA had spent decades trying to make a heat shield for a solar spacecraft.

But the heat shield was so heavy. Basically, it's not really doable. You cannot do it.

What is the solution?

The solution is, you will be surprised, it's basically a piece of carbon foam. What? It's a piece of carbon foam.

How? How does that work?

This is This is not any carbon foam. This is a very sophisticated carbon foam.

Tell me about the sophisticated carbon foam.

The heat shield, it is 4.5-inch thick. That's it? Basically, all of it is a carbon foam. On top of it, we have also a ceramic coating that is white to reflect as much light as possible. But that's the heat shield. When we are closest to the sun, the heat shield side facing the sun will be glowing at more than 2,000 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, you can melt almost all metals we know of. The nice thing about this, that the backside of the heat shield, which is just 4.5 inches thick, it will be at 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

So way less.

In a way, in four inch and a half, we already lost 1,800 degrees. Holy cow. About a yard or a meter behind that, it is almost room temperature.

No. Yes.

How does it do that? Well, that's actually the magic of engineering.

That's just the heat shield. The spacecraft also has solar panels to power it. But of course, if you get that close to the sun, those could vaporize. They develop these like, radiator pipes that go on the back of the solar panels.

Can you guess what is the liquid we use to cool the solar panels?

Like liquid nitrogen or something.

It's simply water. Water? It's just a gallon of water.

They also angled all the solar panels so they could be in the shadows of the spacecraft so they also don't overheat. I mean, it's really just wild.

Every piece of it is basically edge-cutting technology.

On November sixth, this little spacecraft full of edge-cutting technology and sophisticated carbon foam and a gallon of water, rounded Venus and began its nearly 67 million mile journey to the sun.

On December 24, 2024, which is the Christmas Eve, will be this historical moment where for the first time ever, we will basically reach out and touch a star. We will be basically embracing a star. To me, that's like magic.

That's the quick conversation I had with Noor. Why I was so excited to play it for you now is I really have this image in my mind of you, the listener. Just sometime over the holiday, you'll be doing something holiday-related, like maybe lighting a candle or gathering with friends around a fire or even just like, like microwaving your mom's leftovers. It'll be a heat related thing. Then boom, it'll just hit you that at that very moment, up in the firmament, this little probe is moving faster than any human made object has ever moved, putting itself and by proxy, all of us closer to the sun than we have ever been before. That's what I hope happens. I plan on checking back with Nour at some point in the new year to hear how everything went down, what he and his team learned. That is the exactly the bonus update that we like to put in our Lab member feed. If you're already a member of the lab, keep your eyes peeled for that. If you are not a member, that is the best way to help us do the things we love to do, like dig up buried archival tape.

When we did that for the NYPD psychologist who we really coined the term Stockholm syndrome, or to go out and add a live dimension to a historical story, like when we cooked up a thousand-year-old fish sauce recipe with Samed Nostrad, or even just the standard stuff we do, like just hours and hours of labor on immersive soundscapes that make you feel like you're really at the center of the action. We need your support to keep doing this work. If you're already a member of the lab, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, you are vital. If you are not a member, well, just know that joining the lab is the best way to make sure that we can keep reliably bringing you deeply researched, carefully produced, rigorously fact-checked, edge-cutting radio Radiojournalism. So consider going to radiolab. Org/join and becoming a lab member today. If you already are a member, we just did introduce a new premium level that you could join. It also makes a great holiday gift, radiolab. Org/join. Join as a member. You get extra content, ad-free listening, all kinds of extra little benefits. We are actually this month as a reward for joining, we're giving out this very cool poster, which comes from an episode of our sibling show, Terrestrials, hosted by Lulu Miller.

After we come back from a short break, we're going to play a little bit from the episode that inspired the poster, where Lulu, like myself, also became very, very obsessed about a tiny little spacecraft that, in her case, was heading out in the opposite direction, saddled with a little less edge-cutting technology, but carrying a much more emotional payload. That's after the break. Latif, Radiolab. We're now leaving behind the spacecraft that was going to the sun and turning to a spacecraft going out the opposite direction to Jupiter, in particular to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons that has an ocean of water, is a possible other place in our solar system that can sustain light. Life. Now, again, this was a story that was part of our Kids and Family podcast, Terrestrials, hosted by Lulu Miller, my co-host. This spacecraft that this episode is about, it launched just recently in October 2024. The reason why Lulu became obsessed with it is because on the side of the spacecraft, there was going to be a poem etched into it. Tasked with writing that poem, this message to represent all of us here on Earth was was US poet Laureate, Ada Limón.

But she was stuck, like real stuck, terrified.

We resume with the tale of what she did to move through that.

Well, I had about three months to write the poem, and I was going to Hawaii to a town, I'm not kidding, named Haiku. I was staying in the house of a former US poet laureate, W. S. Murwin. And so my husband and I went there. It's inside an incredible palm forest, all of these beautiful different varieties of palm trees. And so I got to watch all of the different species of birds and all the geckos inside and outside the house. And I had this real space to think and sit with the idea of what I wanted to offer. And so I began writing the poem. I was trying to imagine the audience being out in space, right? Whether there were other beings out there, whether the audience was the stars themselves. I kept imagining a loneliness. I would read a draft to my husband, and he would say, You know, I think you need to stop writing a NASA poem.

What do you think your husband heard when he said that?

I think he was hearing maybe more of a scientific approach, more stiff and formal type of writing, maybe more of following the assignment, thinking of it as presenting facts about Europa. Poets have one really beautiful way of procrastinating. And let me tell you about it. Okay. What we love to do is research. It means that instead of writing the poem, I think, you know what? I'm going to go Google everything about this moon of Jupiter. It's a wonderful distraction, and it's a great way of learning. But it often doesn't actually help you make the poem. But it is our way of just not writing. I think that that's part of what I was doing, was thinking, oh, I'm going to teach people about Europa. That's what he was hearing. And so what I needed to shift was, Oh, no, I need to speak to Europa and have this be a reaching out.

Was there anything that, like a bird or a tree or a moment that led you down the right path or the rabbit hole that would then turn into the more us poem? I don't know. There might not be, but was there... Do you have anything in your head?

Yeah. I was in Hawaii, and I was staring at this palm frond, and the palms really move. They glow and move. They have a bounceiness to them in the wind. There was a little gecko that was stuck on the underside. There was He was completely upside down, and he was hanging on this palm frond. I thought, How amazing. That little dude is just bouncing in the wind back and forth. I thought of the line, We, too, are made of wonders.

We, too, meaning both Europa and Earth are made of wonders?

Yeah, that's where the poem shifted. Then I realized that really the audience was us here on this beautiful planet. It includes everyone on Earth, and it also includes plants and animals. It needed to be from all of us to all of us. And the I, me, Ada, had to be taken out of it. That's where the poem really reached a momentum where I could follow it through. But I think that what I struggled with the most was how to use a we. To be honest, I am someone that's always been a little suspicious of a we. You know? As a Latina, as a woman. There are times where I even think of we the people, and I think, Am I included in that we? I want to know if I'm included in that we.

And that, of course, is from our Constitution.

Exactly. And so I think that as a poet, I often don't use we. And so I think the most difficult thing I had to do was actually surrender to the we and remember that the we had to represent everybody and to try to include trees and animals and plants. I had to really release that idea of the eye and make room for my most communal voice. That was where the poem took hold, really took hold.

That poem is now engraved into the spacecraft, and Ada's words are literally touching the cold of space, collecting stardust as they blast toward Jupiter's moon. She did it. She found a way to write a message from all of us here in this water world to Jupiter's water world in under 200 words. All right. Well, would you be up for reading it?

I would be honored. In Praise of mystery, a poem for Europa. Arching under the night sky, inky with black expansiveness, we point to the planets we know. We pin quick wishes on stars. From Earth, we read the sky as if it is an unairing book of the universe, expert and evident. Still, there are mysteries below our sky. The Whale song, the songbird singing its call in the bow of a wind-shaken tree. We are creatures of constant awe, curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow. It is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water. Each drop of rain, each rivulet, each pulse, each vein. Oh, second moon, we too are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas. We too are made of wonders, of great and ordinary loves, of small, invisible worlds, of a need to call out through the dark.

Do you feel like a part of you is going to space?

I do. I do feel like a part of me is going to space. And because I made the poem and the line breaks and the stanza breaks, that you have my own breath in it. The way that I read it, the way that I made the poem. In some ways, it is my little human breath is going Like I said earlier, we made a poster inspired by this episode of Terrestrials.

It is beautiful. You can check it out on our website or on Instagram, and it can be yours if you go to radiolab. Org/join and become a lab member. Like I said, lab members are a critical part of how we fund the show, how we get to do the work that we do. So please considering if you haven't already joining. You get all sorts of stuff, bonus content, ad-free episodes, this amazing poster. If you are already a member, a small additional one-time gift will also get you the This is the year. Now, whether you are a lab member or are about to become one, or whatever, you can't afford to do it this time of year, I want to tell you about one more way that you can join our little party here at no cost to you because as some of you might know, we are in the last week of our global contest to name one of Earth's Quasimun's, a little rocky buddy that will be with us for the next 600 laps around the sun. We partnered with the official nameers of things in Space, the International Astronomical Union, and we solicited thousands of names from nearly 100 countries.

We winnowed them down to seven finalists. Now, for the next week only, you get to choose the one you like best. The name with the most votes will be the official name for this thing in space that will outlive us all. Vote for the name you like best at radiolab. Org/mun. But for the end of the year, that's radiolab. Org/mun. It'll take two minutes, and you can say you made your mark in the heavens. Our little Solar Probe journey, by the way, was produced and sound designed by Mac Hilton. Of course, the bit of Terrestrials you just heard was produced by the Terrestrials team, Ana Gonzales, Mira Bertwin-Tonic, and Lulu Miller, with help from Tanya Chawla, Alan Kofinsky, Sarah Sandback, Valentina Power, and Joe Plourd. Fact checking by Natalie Middleton. You can hear that whole episode of Terrestrials, which is packed full of just gorgeous spacey stuff about Europa, and not to mention questions being asked by adorable children. You can hear that whole episode. It is called An Ocean in Space over on our Kids feed at terrestrialspodcast. Org. That's it for today. That's it for this year. I will see you in 2025 when we will be diving into the darkest place on the planet.

We will be getting high huffing apples, and we will be untangling quantum entanglement inside a bird's eyeball. Something to look forward to. Happy holidays. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time.

Hey, I'm Lemon, and I'm from Richmond, Indiana, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Zad Abamrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Lottif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Blum, Bacca Presler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Cindy Nianan Sambandan, Matt Kielte, Rebecca Lacks, Annie McKewen, Alex Niesen, Sara Khari, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vita, Erianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Hi, my name is Teresa. I'm calling from Colchester in Essex, UK. Leadership Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Saiman Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation..