<p>There are a lot of things vying for attention right now, things that feel worrying and insurmountable, that one can’t help thinking of as we go about our daily lives. But there are also other things, like the NASA-led Artemis II mission, a lunar flyby that marks the first crewed flight that left Earth orbit since 1972 — the first in my lifetime. My mind has been up in the stars. Curious, I picked up two books this week that reflect on how space affects us right here on Earth — Helen Gordon’s The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Space & Deep Time, and Emma Chapman’s Radio Universe: How to Explore Space Without Leaving Earth.</p>.<p>In The Meteorites, Gordon looks at pieces of space that come to meet us on the ground. Meteorites are rocks that come to us “from the dark coldness of space”— pieces of ancient asteroids, planets, or even comets, that survive the journey to our Earth. In accessible and wide-ranging chapters, Gordon meets museum curators, scientists, amateur meteorite hunters, meteorite dealers and collectors, and fellow enthusiasts. The chapters span the Sahara to Antarctica (two stark places that make meteorite collecting slightly easier than in others), to micrometeorite hunters on very urban rooftops. She writes of meteorites witnessed as they reached Earth (“falls”) and ones that have been discovered from centuries ago (“finds”).</p>.<p>More than anything else, there is a palpable sense of wonder in these pages — how these otherworldly rocks can tell us something about the universe at large, and our place within it. Gordon writes that she always thought that “we are here, space is out there. Now I’m realising that, of course, that isn’t true. Out there is all around us.”</p>.<p>The people in these pages are holding objects that are older than we can imagine, that travelled incredible distances through space and time to reach us. The Meteorites is full of surprises, like — as happens to a family in these pages — there’s a possibility you could open your front door and find a piece of space sitting on your driveway.</p>.<p>In Radio Universe, Chapman writes about radio astronomy and its rich history. She herself works with radio astronomy, and in a sense, this book is her pitch to remind us of its importance, which may be overshadowed by optical telescopes or the very rare and expensive missions that leave our Earth. This is an accessible overview of what we’ve done so far to learn about everything around us — the Sun, the Moon, the planets nearest to us; the nature of black holes, and neutron stars — and where we are going in our journey to understand the universe.</p>.<p>Through the book, Chapman reminds us that radio astronomy has been here for a really long time, founded on the same science that structures so much of our daily life, but turned up, towards the sky. She reminds us of the incredible power of listening and piecing together data to fill in the gaps where optical telescopes can’t. This is a wide-ranging and accessible book for a science newbie like myself.</p>.What the space missions are teaching me.<p>I want to end here by reflecting on something that always seems to echo through space exploration, from the Apollo missions to Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot,” to today; it echoes through these books, too. And that is the reminder that our Earth is so much smaller and more unique than we remember. From up there, really all you can sense is the Earth’s beauty, a feeling of collectiveness, and loneliness — no borders (although probably you can see the effects of years of climate change). It can feel dissonant that so many different kinds of realities are unfolding at the same time — up there with so much optimism, and down here on Earth, where a new tragedy occurs daily. But I will quote what Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch said, on their lunar flyby: “You can look up and see the moon right now. We see you, too. When we burned this burn towards the moon, I said that we do not leave Earth. That is true. We will explore. We will build ships. We will visit again. [...] But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.”</p>.<p>Piqued is a monthly column in which the staff of Champaca Bookstore bring us unheard voices and stories from their shelves. </p><p><em>(The reviewer is a writer and illustrator.)</em></p>
<p>There are a lot of things vying for attention right now, things that feel worrying and insurmountable, that one can’t help thinking of as we go about our daily lives. But there are also other things, like the NASA-led Artemis II mission, a lunar flyby that marks the first crewed flight that left Earth orbit since 1972 — the first in my lifetime. My mind has been up in the stars. Curious, I picked up two books this week that reflect on how space affects us right here on Earth — Helen Gordon’s The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Space & Deep Time, and Emma Chapman’s Radio Universe: How to Explore Space Without Leaving Earth.</p>.<p>In The Meteorites, Gordon looks at pieces of space that come to meet us on the ground. Meteorites are rocks that come to us “from the dark coldness of space”— pieces of ancient asteroids, planets, or even comets, that survive the journey to our Earth. In accessible and wide-ranging chapters, Gordon meets museum curators, scientists, amateur meteorite hunters, meteorite dealers and collectors, and fellow enthusiasts. The chapters span the Sahara to Antarctica (two stark places that make meteorite collecting slightly easier than in others), to micrometeorite hunters on very urban rooftops. She writes of meteorites witnessed as they reached Earth (“falls”) and ones that have been discovered from centuries ago (“finds”).</p>.<p>More than anything else, there is a palpable sense of wonder in these pages — how these otherworldly rocks can tell us something about the universe at large, and our place within it. Gordon writes that she always thought that “we are here, space is out there. Now I’m realising that, of course, that isn’t true. Out there is all around us.”</p>.<p>The people in these pages are holding objects that are older than we can imagine, that travelled incredible distances through space and time to reach us. The Meteorites is full of surprises, like — as happens to a family in these pages — there’s a possibility you could open your front door and find a piece of space sitting on your driveway.</p>.<p>In Radio Universe, Chapman writes about radio astronomy and its rich history. She herself works with radio astronomy, and in a sense, this book is her pitch to remind us of its importance, which may be overshadowed by optical telescopes or the very rare and expensive missions that leave our Earth. This is an accessible overview of what we’ve done so far to learn about everything around us — the Sun, the Moon, the planets nearest to us; the nature of black holes, and neutron stars — and where we are going in our journey to understand the universe.</p>.<p>Through the book, Chapman reminds us that radio astronomy has been here for a really long time, founded on the same science that structures so much of our daily life, but turned up, towards the sky. She reminds us of the incredible power of listening and piecing together data to fill in the gaps where optical telescopes can’t. This is a wide-ranging and accessible book for a science newbie like myself.</p>.What the space missions are teaching me.<p>I want to end here by reflecting on something that always seems to echo through space exploration, from the Apollo missions to Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot,” to today; it echoes through these books, too. And that is the reminder that our Earth is so much smaller and more unique than we remember. From up there, really all you can sense is the Earth’s beauty, a feeling of collectiveness, and loneliness — no borders (although probably you can see the effects of years of climate change). It can feel dissonant that so many different kinds of realities are unfolding at the same time — up there with so much optimism, and down here on Earth, where a new tragedy occurs daily. But I will quote what Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch said, on their lunar flyby: “You can look up and see the moon right now. We see you, too. When we burned this burn towards the moon, I said that we do not leave Earth. That is true. We will explore. We will build ships. We will visit again. [...] But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.”</p>.<p>Piqued is a monthly column in which the staff of Champaca Bookstore bring us unheard voices and stories from their shelves. </p><p><em>(The reviewer is a writer and illustrator.)</em></p>