Radiolab - Dark Side of the Earth

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

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/moonSignup 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 [e-mail] 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.

Hey, Latif Nasser here. So one of the things I've always loved about being at Radiolab is that we take a kind of obsessive pleasure in trying to get you closer than you've ever been to things that are an unimaginably big. closer than you've ever been to things that are an asteroid unimaginably big put it at 120 feet across, 220 billion pounds oh my gosh or microscopically 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 at the edge the edge of the edge or right there in front of us but hidden from view a sort of organ inside the human body that scientists had completely missed.

And we go to absurd lengths. To make things so fantastically distant from our everyday lives feel real. I found one! We built a cloud chamber in our studio. Three, two, one, red. Made a 500-person choir in the mind of the beginner. There are many possibilities in the mind of the expert.

There are a few emotionally close. I got choked up. Why does that choke you up? Because it's so profound. We always try to get the person at the heart of the story to be the one to tell it like, what if she died? Like, what would died? Like what would happen?

Like would we have a funeral? In their own voice. Did she know I was there? And if she didn't know I was there, did she wonder where I had gone? And did she feel alone and is she scared? We hope those efforts have given you something. A laugh on a hard day, a factoid to drop at a party, a moment that made you feel less alone.

Even just something to wonder about when you're lying in bed in the middle of the night. And now, here's where I ask you, any of you who are willing and able, to give us something back. We need your support to keep building cloud chambers and visiting quasi moons and creating elaborate soundscape so we can feel and see and taste and touch the abstract. The best way to do that is to join the lab radio labs membership program. Listener support is a crucial part of how we get to make the show. And when you join in, it also gets you fun stuff, exclusive merch, bonus content, ad free listening.

And right now a beautiful radio lab poster, go to radiolab.org slash join to become a member or check out the poster. Also, even if you don't give, next week in this feed will be a short little holiday gift for you, where I mean, I can't even believe I got to do this interview. We will hear from a person in charge of a space mission that if you asked me last week, I would have said was impossible. Like you couldn't even write this into a movie. No one would believe you, but it actually is happening. And you're going to hear about it here next week. As for right now, while we're making that little extra bit of radio for you, I want to offer you this story we did back in 2012, which takes you to a place that fewer than 300 people have ever been, with

a view of the universe that is, to say the least, striking. Here is Dark Side of the Earth. You're listening to Radio Lab. From WNYC. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Krulwich. This is Radio Lab. The podcast. And we've just finished our In the Dark tour, which is the thing we've been yammering on

about for the last year. And we wanted to play for you in this podcast, one of our favorite stories from that show. Now this was designed for the eye as well as the ear, this particular performance, so you will not see the Palabalus Dance Theater, which means you will not see... Oh my... Pretty amazing stuff happening on that stage. Yeah, strangely beautiful shadow plays on a huge white canvas on a gigantic stage. You can go to the website and you can see pictures at radiolab.org.

Yeah, these guys are really good at what they do. They're magicians. They really are. We should also note that this story was scored live by the amazing Tao Nguyen with Jason Slota on the drums, Jamie Ryota on the bass, and it was recorded masterfully at UCLA's Royce Hall by Reverend John Delore. So here it is. So for our final segment, we were thinking through this show, we thought, you know, who would have a really interesting perspective on darkness? Maybe somebody who works in a rich, dark environment. Astronauts, for example. Yeah. So we called up NASA. We talked to an astronaut.

We connected our little studio in New York to their studio in D.C. to talk to an astronaut, but he was a little late. And here's the funny thing. When you are on hold with NASA, this is literally what you hear. This has a blast-off feel to it. This is amazing. This, by the way, is literally the case. You dial 1-800-NASA or whatever, and this is like go to the moon music. Uh-oh. Hello? I hear someone breathing. It's probably... I'm breathing.

That's an interesting way to meet. So this is our guy. Dave Wolf is his name. He's a NASA astronaut. He had been since 1990, over 20 years. He wasn't really sure why we had called him. What's our topic here? So we explained to him that we're doing this show called In the Dark, we're going to do it on stage in front of some very nice folks. Do you have any stories that relate?

And right off the bat, he says. You've triggered an interesting darkness story I have Well, that's why we calling you up. Yeah, okay. You're taping and you're ready Yep, darkness is an interesting theme in space because there's nowhere Where this contrast between light and dark is any more extreme? Dave has done dozens of spacewalks and he says there have been times when he's just sort of out there floating in space next to the craft and maybe the ship tilts a little bit and the wing

blocks light that's coming from the sun or the moon and it creates a shadow. And he says the darkness of that shadow is blacker than any black you thought it could be. Out there in space the shadow has no light in it. There's not reflected light from dust in the air, the earth around you, or clouds. It's just pure absolute dark. And you can reach into a shadow so deep, so black, that your arm can appear to disappear. Wow, right in front of your face. Your head is in the bright light and your arm is in this depth of darkness.

And it's just gone, like it's been cut off? Yeah. Wow. But I do want to tell you an experience I had in my first space walk. Late 97, I had this experience okay it was from a Russian spacecraft you might remember the mirror yeah sure spacecraft so Dave is up there he was with two Russian cosmonauts and he and

Anatoly Soloviev they were suited up and getting ready to make their first walk into space or his first walk. And we did all the preparations to get the suits ready and we're in the airlock and... Door opened and they floated out. We clipped our tethers on outside. And he and Anatoly gently float to the worksite. And it was dark out. And dark up in space means you're on the night side of the Earth, in the shadow of the Earth.

And there were no external lights on this spacecraft. This was really, really dark. And we were over the ocean. And at night, that basically means you don't see the Earth. You don't see it at all? Not at all. When it's a moonless night, you don't see the Earth. In fact, all it might look like to you is the absence of stars. I want you to imagine this with me. He's up there in this darkness and the earth with all of us on it is somewhere far, far

below him but he can't see it. All the while, and this is really important for what happens next, he is shooting through space. He's rocketing across the dark shadow of the earth at five miles a second. That is 16 times the speed that we're all moving right now because we are on the earth at five miles a second. That is 16 times the speed that we're all moving right now because we are on the earth. But he says at that moment he didn't feel any of that. It just felt like he was suspended in this cocoon of black.

Floating gently. He thought, all right. No problem. This is kind of peaceful. Because it was just me in the spacecraft and blackness. And suddenly... and blackness and suddenly this blazing light blasts him from below what was it it was the sunrise you know because he and the ship were moving so quickly at the sunrise which normally

happens here on earth very very slowly, at that speed up there, the sun comes screaming from the eastern edge of the Earth straight across the Earth, lights up everything in seconds. And the Earth lights up below me. Suddenly I can look down 200 miles and see that we're moving at five miles per second. Oceans, whoosh, clouds, whoosh, deserts, whoosh. And he was like, ah! And I clutched onto these handrails

like there's no tomorrow white-knuckled in my spacesuit gloves because I suddenly had this enormous sense of height and speed. He says it was sort of like if you're standing comfortably on the ground and then someone just flips on the lights suddenly and you realize, actually you're standing comfortably on the ground and then someone just flips on the lights suddenly and you realize, actually I'm not on the ground, I

am on a 400,000 foot ladder. Crazier still, in that sunrise moment. The temperature also increases by upwards of 400 degrees. In the moment? In the moment. Really? This is the most extreme thing I've ever heard. Are you air conditioned or whatever?

You are. We are totally dependent on that space suit. But the colors, what you're seeing on that Earth is so spectacular. The greens and blues and the delicate pastel-like colors, the contrasts and the brights are just aren't present in anything I've ever seen other than up in space. Dave and his Russian buddy, Anatoly, they're out there for hours doing repairs on the ship so they are, because of their speed, they're going in and out and in and out of these days and nights. So it's 90 minutes of their speed, they're going in and out and in and out of these days and nights.

So it's 90 minutes of a light-dark cycle. So you have 16 nights and 16 days for every Earth Day. Which means, as they're working, this change is happening over and over and over. Every 45 minutes they go from blazing light... ...to quiet dark. Blazing light to darkness. You can get lost. You get stories of people doing spacewalks that lose their orientation or feel like they're falling. So he says the only thing to do in that circumstance is just to focus on your job. Look straight ahead only at the Or feel like they're falling so he says the only thing to do in that circumstance

It's just to focus on your job look straight ahead Only at the screw only at the screw don't look down is kind of the it's it's real in this business So We would have been perfectly happy to end the story right here, because Dave and Anatoly finish their repairs, job well done, they get ready to come back into the spacecraft, but we cannot not tell you what happens next. Yeah, because this splits with a very different kind of darkness. And that darkness, we will get to right after this break.

Hey, Latv Radio Lab picking back up with our story of astronauts Dave Wolf and Anatoly Soloviev. They couldn't get back in. You were locked out of your spaceship? You could call it locked out. We were trapped outside, yes. Essentially their airlock was busted. They couldn't repressurize it. And if you can't get it at the right pressure, you can't re-enter. And we worked on it for four or five hours and ran out our resources. Wait a second, ran out of oxygen or what? You have plenty of oxygen it turns out. What you run out of first is your carbon dioxide scrubbing unit that takes the CO2 out of your suit. And now the problem with this one is, usually in a space accident,

you figure it'll only hurt for a moment. But when you die of CO2 intoxication, that drags out. That's a miserable way to go. What does he mean? Did you ever find out? What happens is first you get a headache, and then your muscles start to twitch. Eventually your heartbeat starts to accelerate faster, faster, faster. You go into convulsions and then you die. Luckily the life support system has an extra cartridge. That gave us an extra six or so hours. We used all that and

trying to fix the hatch and we couldn't get it to hold air and we were done. Did you know you were done? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. You mean done like in over? Yeah, yeah, no more ideas. Done like in death. So, they decide, okay, we've got to do something. Last ditch maneuver. If we can't get our usual airlock to work,

maybe we can make a new one. Because see, on the Mir space station, it's this big cylinder with these rectangular modules that jut out. And one of those modules is the airlock. But there are these adjacent ones, which are normally just living quarters. They thought, well, if we can't get our usual airlock to pressurize at the right pressure, maybe we can go to the next one over and try and pressurize it. Essentially treating that next module in as a airlock, and we opened the hatch into that

next module. And in order, though, to go into it, we had to disconnect our umbilicals. Because you can't close the hatch over your umbilical, right? And the umbilical was providing our cooling to our suits. So as soon as we disconnected, well, that gives you maybe five, eight minutes at max. Before you what? I don't even want to talk about it.

It's so bad. Did you put that up? Yeah, I looked this one up too. Essentially what happens is you boil inside your spacesuit. In a very ugly way. So Dave and Ed totally think, okay, we've got to get through this tiny hatch into this room, and they've got to do it fast. But they also know... If you struggle hard and go too fast, you won't get much time at all in that suit before that heat builds up on you.

So he thinks, okay, hurry, hurry, but slowly, slowly... What I did not anticipate was as soon as we disconnected our umbilicals that the visor would fog up and you'd now be having to feel your way through. So you're blind? Yeah. You could spit and kind of get a little area through the fog. So I'm in the airlock trying to make my way into the next section and I was crawling along the wall moving into the next section, and I was crawling along the wall, moving into the next section.

And I spit on my visor, you know, to make a little hole to look through and get a hint. And it was an area I had been sleeping in some weeks before. And I had left a picture of my family, taped with scotch tape on the wall and I spit on the visor and I my helmet light went there and there was this picture of my family right here in this moment as I was scooting across the wall in what was likely my last minutes.

likely my last minutes. So this is how it's going to end. So this is it. And look, it's so strange. There they are. And I look back at that and I shudder. Now of course, Dave and his partner made it back into the space station, barely. But it didn't strike me really until months later on the earth how close that had been and what a strange situation. This Russian guy must be your best friend. Like he must be, you have to probably call each other and say, 20 years later you go, huh. Well not many people have been through anything

like that together and are there to talk about it. And you just reminded me of something. So we're gonna leave you with one last story from Dave. He was kind of a story machine. This is from that same stay in space involves the same friend, Anatoly. They were out there doing some work on the ship, floating in space again.

And then mission control radios and tells them to pause for a while. We had a period where we had to wait through the night to go on with our work. So he said, look, David, all in Russian, of course, I wanted to show you something. And we hooked our tethers on, pushed ourselves about six feet away.

We had about six feet of tether so that our eyes couldn't see anything but out in space. And I turned my air conditioner down a little, our eyes couldn't see anything but out in space. And I turned my air conditioner down a little, so it was kind of warm. And I was floating in this spacesuit, just looking out into the blackness of space. And I felt like I didn't have a spacesuit on.

It was so comfortable. The air temperature was so comfortable. The air temperature was just right. I felt like I was just out in the universe. In the stars. I couldn't see anything but stars all around me and I couldn't feel anything. Outside a spacecraft going five miles per second

out in the universe. Was that what he wanted to show you? Yeah, I think so. This is his rocking chair on the front porch thing. There were a hammock almost. He didn't want to talk. He said, let's just be quiet, turn your helmet light off, so you don't get any reflected light. Just relax.

Raslaba Vayat. Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax. Now, had you been there in the theater, this is the moment where we gave everybody a little pinpoint of light, a little hand-carried star that they could put over their heads and wave together.

Like 2,000 tiny little lights from the seats. It's like a canopy of stars. We saw this happen again and again, like times I think we performed this and every time it was just like breathtaking. This whole show came together thanks to so many people on stage and off and we want to make a couple of thank yous before we go. Very, very special thanks to Meg Bowles who found our astronaut. She found Dave Wolf. Yes.

Also to Pilobolus, the dance company, and to the Pilobolus. Yes, starting with Itamar Kubovi. Lily Bins. Matt Kent. Renee Jaworski. Greg Laffot. Yes, starting with Itamar Kubovi. Lily Bins. Matt Kent. Renee Jaworski. Greg Laffey. Yes. And the dancers.

Chris Whitney. Heather Favretto. Anthony Oliva. Christina Conjure. Evan Adler. Annika Schief. And the Olvera twins, Edwin and Roberto. We love you guys.

Yeah. Dmitri Martin, thank you so much for coming and creating this show with us. Tao Nguyen and Jason Sloda. Thank you so much to them. And Mike Fabba. Jake Fine. Serena Wong. John Belore, Melissa Lacasse, Dave Foley, Nick Nuciforo, Kaitlyn Fitzwater,

Rebecca Lair, and Roslyn Loutine. Lutes. Lutes. Most of all, most, most, most of all, to Alan Horn, who loved doing this and made it so fun to do. Hey, I'm Lemon and I'm from Richmond, Indiana, and here are the staff credits. fun to do. Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gabel, Maria Paz Gutiárez, Cindy Uñana-Nzambandan, Beth Kielty, Rebecca Lacks, Annie McEwan, Alex Niesen, Sara Khare,

Sarah Sandback, Anisa Vitsa, Ariane Whack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton. Hi, my name is Treza. I'm coding from Colchester in Essex, UK. Leadership support for Radiolab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betsy Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Seymonds Foundation Initiative and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.