Pssst! You! Yeah, you... are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that's orbiting a golden star. And right now we are traveling through the part of our yearly orbit where I think about sweat, salt - AND vampires. During these sweaty months we lose salt - which can be fatal. But blood, of course, is salty... [lip-licking sounds]

Salt conducts electricity, and if you want to stay alive, your heart cells, muscle cells and nerve cells must send and receive electric signals. Without the right amount and kind of salt, your cells cannot take in water or nutrients, so you become dehydrated and malnourished, no matter how healthy your diet is. Also, your muscles cannot function, your blood pressure cannot be regulated and your brain becomes crazed.

Fortunately, the seasonal rhythms of Earth and sky make salt more available now. Summer's heat evaporates the moisture in salt ponds, leaving a salt residue we can collect. Meanwhile, our planet goes through large, life-threatening climate swings that are difficult for our scientists to understand. But we do know that rising temperatures in medieval times melted glaciers, raised sea levels and flooded European salt flats, causing a salt famine there. Frightening accounts of blood-sucking vampires began - according to a European historian - with crazed, malnourished famine victims cutting the jugular veins of weaker ones, so desperate were they for salt.

The saltiness in our blood is the saltiness of the sea, where our ancient, fishy ancestors lived. We survived on land because we kept a little ocean inside us. Our blood, sweat, tears and the fluid in our cells have a similar salinity, mineral content, and acid-alkaline ratio as the ocean where life began.

Thanks to our salty electrolytes, we are walking electric fields, interacting with other electric fields, including the one that's in and around our planet. Lightning storms, volcanoes, hurricanes and earthquakes are electrically charged and driven. So are waterspouts, dust devils and the movements of the jet stream and El Nino. All the while, our planet's electric field is interacting with our sun's electric field. Charged particles blasting off our sun are blowing around us at a million miles per hour. This solar charge interacts with our magnetic poles, causing northern lights and southern lights. Storms from the sun have hit so hard that power grids and phone systems have been knocked out - and electric garage doors have gone up and down, up and down, up and down... all night long.

As I sprinkle sea salt onto a juicy ear of August corn, I thank the salt for keeping my body electric. I also wonder about the electric signals in and around my body. I wonder about the exchange of signals between my electric field, our planet's electric field - and the electric field of the star that we're orbiting. I have no idea what the signals are saying, but I do know there is a cosmic conversation going on!

This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet.


If you have any questions, drop Harriet an email: harriet@passengerplanet.com


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