S12:E02, “Catching Stardust” edition, with Natalie Starkey (audio)

Posted by jnshaumeyer on 17 November 2018

Streamed live on 15 November 2018.

The details of just how our Solar System came to be, starting with a large, rotating solar nebula and ending with our Sun, our planetary companions, and moons and asteroids and comets, have been vague up until recent decades when scientists turned their deductive attention toward those unassuming asteroids and comets. Remote observations, observations up close with dramatic, technically challenging spacecraft missions, like Rosetta, and even missions with spacecraft that have returned sample to Earth, have all contributed deductive components that are coming together to make a clear, comprehensive, and at times very surprising story about the early days of our Solar System.

All these things were on our minds when we talked in this episode to Natalie Starkey, author of Catching Stardust : Comets, Asteroids and the Birth of the Solar System. Her authoritative book presents a wealth of recently learned facts and the knowledge that we deduce from all this recent scientific work. It also gave us more to talk about (as usual!) than we could fit into our surprisingly short hour-long conversation.

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