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For those who were not yet subscribed
to True Stories. I just wanted to

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release this kind of cross pollinate my
first and second podcast, plaus. It's

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a great story and it's really really
sciency, so enjoy. It runs just

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over seven minutes. You can subscribe
to hear more than two hundred stories like

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this True Stories with Seth Andrews.
Anyway, this one's called a piece of

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Asteroid. I'm Seth Andrews, and
what you're about to hear is a true

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story. Once an amazing time we
live in. Our ancient ancestors used to

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look up at the night sky and
they didn't see stars per se. I

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mean, they saw lights, but
they couldn't begin to understand suns and planets.

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They couldn't imagine the cosmos that we
view today through our telescopes. Light

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and darkness were often seen through the
lenses of superstitions of good and evil.

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Early New Zealand tribes thought that every
star was the soul of a hero who

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had been slain in battle. The
brighter the star, the braver the hero.

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In three point fifty bcees and Oftenes
taught that gods would light the stars

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every evening and then blow them out
the following morning, the early Spanish Iberians

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said that the stars were flickering nail
heads, nails which held up the ceiling

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of the universe. I could go
on and on. Imagine if we could

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get in a time machine and go
back and attempt an explanation of what is

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really out there? How would we
even start. This is a solar system,

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this is a galaxy. Is the
universe? Here's a sun which is

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also a star, and those are
moons and planets. And what if we

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tried to teach the people of our
past about asteroids? And we talk about

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an amazing endeavor, a fantastic mission
involving teams of thousands and thousands of engineers

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and researchers and scientists, including an
astrophysicist named Brian the man who was a

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small and yet also not so small
part of this NASA team working to land

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a probe on the surface of an
asteroid, take samples from the surface,

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and then rocket those samples back to
our laboratories here on Earth. This would

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be the very first sample of its
kind in history, and the elements within

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those samples could help us to understand
our universe. It is interesting that even

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though we hear about them today,
Many people don't know exactly what an asteroid

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is. Well, they are small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun like

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planets and our Solar system. Most
exist in the main asteroid belt between Mars

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and Jupiter. They are leftovers from
the formation of our Solar system about four

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point six billion years ago. Asteroids
come in all shapes all sizes. Some

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are hundreds of miles in diameter and
others are only a few feet across.

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Even smaller than the asteroids are the
meteoroids. These are the things that hit

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the atmosphere and burn up on descent
and make those brilliant meteors of falling light

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from the sky. About eighteen hundred
meteorites have been found in North America since

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the year nineteen hundred, and some
can be very valuable. Sure, you

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might find some nickel and iron in
there, but meteorite platinum, well that

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could mean some serious money. Back
in twenty fifteen, there was an asteroid

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called twenty eleven UW one fifty eighth. This asteroid did a fly by of

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planet Earth and scientists believe it to
have a one hundred ton platinum core that

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is worth a potential five point four
trillion dollars. Of course, that's the

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entire asteroid. But you get my
point. Yet, I remain convinced,

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and I know that many of you
do as well, that the real value

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of asteroids is the knowledge that they
bring us. Which brings me back to

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that mission. Brian the astrophysicist joining
the thousands who carried out that incredible landing

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on the asteroid. The Osiris REX
spacecraft, launching September eighth, twenty sixteen,

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headed toward the asteroid Benu. The
journey took two years. NASA studied

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the surface for over five hundred days
to find a suitable site to take the

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sample. The Osiris then dipped down, it almost landed and collected a surface

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sample with its robotic arm. There's
a video of this moment on the internet.

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It is very cool. More than
sixty grams of material were returned and

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landed by parachute on the twenty fourth
of September twenty twenty three, and scientists

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are now studying these puzzled pieces of
our universe, captured on an asteroid millions

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of miles away at speeds of over
sixty thousand miles an hour. How in

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the world would we ever describe all
of this to the ASA astronomers and the

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astrologers of our ancient past. For
me, if I got to choose the

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person who got into that time machine, someone to go back and educate our

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ancestors, I would probably choose Brian, the man who was a small part

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of this very ambitious plan to harvest
the universe from that asteroid venue. Brian

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might be able to tell the story
pretty well, and he might welcome the

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opportunity for a greater role, since
sadly Brian was not able to attend in

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person when NASA first retrieved that historic
sample from another world. Now Brian was

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busy preparing to travel with another team, a team of musicians. You see,

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Brian the scientist, the man who
studied physics and mathematics set him Serial

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College, London, specializing in the
study of reflected lights from interplanetary dust and

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the velocity of that dust and the
plane of the Solar system. Brian the

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astrophysicist, well, we know him
best as Brian the guitarist, lead guitarist

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for one of the most iconic rock
bands in history. Queen. Of course,

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we're talking about Brian May and that's
a true story. True Stories podcast dot Com