Susan Sarandon Holds Star Stuff | StarTalk

This is what I brought to your son's birthday party. Cuz if you have a birthday party at the Museum, we got to do, got to take you places you haven't been before. Exactly! So don't you feel that? So does this mean… Ah, it's heavier than the Academy Award. Pretty heavy.

Excuse me, um, but this—so is that how you compare? CU? That's heavy! So we're made of stardust, right? Yes, as is this. So this is part of me. This is forged in the heart of a dying star. Of a dying star? Yes. Well, I'm not dying, but… and this is—this is mostly iron.

And so it is likely that the very same star that created this iron created the iron that's in this, as well as the iron in your blood. See, I find that really cool! So you have a kinship with the cosmos on its deepest level.

So meteorites are a reminder, first, that Earth moves in a shooting gallery. That's my first thought when I think of meteorites, because we get hit by them. Uh, but also there's a colleague of mine who did a calculation. It turns out that if you add up all the iron in the hemoglobin of all the residents of the New York metropolitan area, it's about the same amount of iron as we have in that meteorite.

So just to even think about calculating that was cool! And so it's a literal reminder, a scientific reminder, that we are stardust and that we've come from the same points of origin. So I'm impressed that she was impressed by that, 'cause she prompted that memory within me for me to bring out the meteorite.

And Emily, would you agree that this is powerful? This is powerful stuff! Carl Sagan made this famous: "We are star stuff." To think about it as one thing, but to hold it… and you—she like went down a little bit. You could see that on the clip because it's so heavy. More than her Academy Award!

It's heavier than you expect because we’re used to Earth rock, which also has magnesium and silicate and things in them. But this is iron that sank to the middle of an asteroid way back in the day. And so it's way heavier than we would expect for an Earth rock.

And so people take it and like don’t expect it to be so heavy. And to hold people who look—who like weigh a bit more than they look is that because they've got more—you know, people have got big bones, like they say, stuff like that. This meteorite has—it's a big-boned meteorite! Yes!