Interesting Facts about Space

by Emily R. Austin

Her irises are the same color as Mars, rusty brown and bloodshot.

but I don’t mind hearing the same story over and over. In fact, I prefer it. I like knowing what happens. I feel more control over it.

I hate being startled. I prefer controlled forms of fear. I like my podcasts, horror movies, and ghost stories that I can pause and rewind. I handle fear sort of like a warhorse. I could charge bravely into a planned battle, take in the sights of bombs and corpses, but I would still be spooked by an unanticipated barn rat.

“When the sun explodes,” I tell my mom over the phone in the morning, “it’ll take eight minutes for Earth to know. Because of what I said last night about space and time.”

It is bizarre to see myself as a teenager. I can’t remember being that age. I didn’t like being a teenager. I don’t think back to that time. I find no enjoyment in doing so, and when you don’t hark back on memories, they fade.

It’s supposed to survive one moon night, which is fourteen Earth days.

One Moon night is 14 Earth days.

There is something soothing about being

rejected. It really anchors you in your body. It feels like a bath.

I wish I could have one nice interaction with everyone and then disappear.

Space is a vacuum, so it doesn’t carry sound waves like air on earth does. We have probes in space though that capture radio emissions. The radio emissions have been converted into sound waves. In them, Saturn sounds like a robot in a windstorm crying for help, and the magnetic field around Jupiter hums like a frozen lake.

If Jupiter disappeared, Earth would be hit by more asteroids. Jupiter’s gravitational pull grabs a lot of space trash heading toward us. If the moon disappeared, the Earth would tilt. Our ocean tides would weaken. The sky would be darker at night.