June 11, 2020 • 56 mins
Katie Goldin, host of the Creature Features pod, visits to talk about what's needed for life and where in the solar system it might be hiding.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
And Daniel, I've got a tough question for you. I
love those, Well you might not like this one. I
don't know. Bring it on all right? Would you prefer
that we a never find life outside of Earth? Or
be we find ailing life but it's just tiny little microbes?
Oh man, you mean like we find aliens, but I
don't get to ask them any physics questions unless you
(00:28):
speak microbe. No. I mean you can ask, but I'm
not sure that microbes will reply. Oh that's such a
nightmare scenario. But even worse, what if alien physicists come
here and find us, but we just seemed like microbes
to them? Oh man, they might not even bother to
ask us physics questions? How dare they? Hi? I'm orhammy
(01:04):
cartoon is and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
I'm a particle physicist, and if the aliens come, I
demand an audience with them, even if they're microbes. Hey,
my wife is a microbiologist, so I think I've learned
to speak microbe a little bit. It might be funny
of our first contact with Aidian life is that we
accidentally breathe them and then kill them with our immune system.
(01:27):
That's right. Maybe they'd be inside us, right, we catch
some alien disease. I think I've seen that movie. But
welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the university
production of I Heart Radio, in which we take you
on a tour of everything that's amazing and beautiful and
squishy and dangerous in this universe and try to explain
it all to you or squishy and dangerous at the
same time and amazing and bonkers. The universe is bizarre.
(01:50):
It's stranger than fiction, and what we discover out there
is always weirder than what we imagine. That's right. And
it's also really big universe. And so a big question
for us and for everyone is are we alone in
the universe and this huge giant cosmos? Are we the
only sentient life out there? Or are there other living
things out there in this solar system or in this galaxy?
(02:13):
That's right, because we want to know. Are we the
only ones thinking these questions? Are we the only ones
trying to figure out how this universe works, why we're here,
what we're supposed to do with our lives? And should
we get out of bed in the morning? Are we
the only ones? Are there other people out there who
have maybe made significant advances, and would you know, give
us a clue that would be fun. Well, to be honest, Daniel,
I record from my bed, so literally, I don't have
(02:34):
to get up ever. Well, maybe you answered the question, Joge,
but not everybody else out there has figured it out
for themselves. And you know, this is a question that
when we think about we wonder sometimes cosmically, like are
there alien civilizations and minds out there, deep deep far
away in space? But it's also a question we can
ask about our own neighborhood. Yeah, because you know, I
feel like most science fiction movies assume that when we
(02:56):
find alien life, it's you know, from a galaxy far
far away, or you know, maybe from another part of
the galaxy or some our way out there in space.
But maybe, you know, there's a question of whether or
not life could also be here in our own backyard,
in our own solar system. Yeah. And I think historically
it's a fascinating question because a long time ago, hundreds
(03:16):
of years ago, we didn't know the answer to that question.
People wondered, you know, is their life on Mars. And
then more recently, like a hundred years ago, fifty years ago,
it seemed to be sort of settled that there wasn't
a place in the Solar system where we could find
intelligent life or life at all. But then recently I
think the question has changed again and now we have
a new perspective on life in our own backyard. Heard.
(03:38):
So today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question,
what's the most likely place in the Solar system to
find life other than of course here on Earth? And um,
I guess not Twitter. Twitter wouldn't be a Daniel not
if we're talking about intelligent life. Yeah, we'll be tackling
(03:58):
this question of whether or not and air would we
most likely find life in our own solar system? And
so we have a special treat for you guys here today.
We have a guest today to help us answer this
question and to talk about the possible places in our
solar system that we can find life. She's the guest
of the podcast Creature Features, which you can also find
on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you listen
(04:19):
to podcasts, and so welcome Katie Golden. Hey, guys, thank
you so much for having me. Thanks very much for
being a guest on our podcast. Yeah, I was a
guest on Creature Features last week or so, and I
had a blast talking to Katie about irradiating animals or
animals that survive I radiation. No animals were intentionally irradiated
for that podcast. I was just gonna ask if you
(04:41):
can have Peter knocking on our podcast doors. You know,
although we did, of course create our own radiation. You know,
the sound waves you are hearing in your ear right
now are a form of non ionizing, non damaging intellectual
radiation NERD radiation, pure NERD radiation. It'll make your brain grow. Yeah,
grows your brain case. O Katie, you're you have a
(05:02):
biology background rate? Yeah. So I actually studied both psychology
and biology at Harvard as an undergrad, and after that
I went into the various fields of both, uh, science
education and comedy, a natural mix science comedy or science
(05:22):
education kind of plus comedy, science education plus comedy. The
comedy thing came after the science education because I think
I having to do a bunch of learning modules about
all these diseases and stuff. I was like, you know,
I need a little comedy in my life. Nothing sence disease.
Like That's what I did. When I would I would
(05:43):
do these educational animations for pharmaceutical researchers. And I would say,
but you know what the best medicine is laughter? Yeah,
for sure, for sure. Uh. And so Katie, that's kind
of what your podcast is about. And you talk about
biology and creatures and but you also make sing comedians
and lot of funny stuff. You want to tell us
a little bit about it. Yeah, So it's called Creature Feature,
(06:04):
And I like to explore what is it like to
be an animal? And I think it's it's a lot
easier to relate to animals when you think about it
from a human lens. So it's fun to look at
all this huge variety and great diversity of animal behaviors
and kind of try to imagine yourself as that animal,
(06:25):
Like imagine the rat that gets infected with Toxoplasma gondhai
and how it would be to suddenly be attracted to
a cat, your most dreaded of predators. And nature is
so full of incredible behaviors that there's no there's no
better way to experience it than to imagine what it's
like to be those animals and dive right in. Those
(06:47):
are some deep questions, you know, what is it like
to be a bat? What is it like to be
attracted to a cat? I mean, I don't know that
anybody's ever going to answer those questions. I thought you
were going to rhyme that, Daniel, I don't know anything
about that. That's Doctor SEUs right there. That's what we
should make comedy science and Dr SEUs all at the
same time, comedy science and children's education. That sounds like
(07:09):
a great mixture. Horry, we should do that sometimes. Let's
get on it, Daniel. Cool. So, Katie, we're attacking today
the question of whether there could be life in our
solar system, and if there could, where might we find it?
And so we're so glad to have it here as
a Sartain biology guide. As we talked about life and
what it needs and where it can possibly thrive. But
as usual, we sort of like to go out there
(07:30):
and ask people what they think of this subject. And
so Daniel went out there and he asked people on
the internet what they thought was the most likely place
in the solar system to find life. That's right, And
so I got these questions answered from people on the internet.
Now I assume there are people, some of them may
well be aliens, that have slipped their way into human society,
trying to influence the direction of human thought. But so
(07:51):
I can't attest. Maybe they're irradiated animals. Could they be
irradiated birds from cheer Noble? They could be, as they
very well could be. So I cannot attest to their
actual humanists. But I think you'll hear them quite interesting answers.
Here's what people have to say. It depends what we
define life. There's a frozen moon of Jupiter. I think
probably proper conditions water I would say in Mars, or
(08:17):
maybe some of them June moons of Jupiter, probably by
looking in the mirror outside of Earth, I would say
Mars places where we have water and some kind of
reasonable temperature in the clouds on Venis. I think there's
weird forms of life everywhere. I know that Jupiter has
a lot of moons, and one of them, europa Is.
(08:41):
It's said that there's like a lot of ice on
that moon. And I read an article recently and it's
some scientists are proposing or describing potential water that's like
spewing out into space one of jupiter moons. I was thinking,
Iowa for a minute, they're but then realized that you
really don't want to live on Ohio. I will say Titan,
(09:05):
which is a moon of Saturn. All right, Katie, what
did you think of these answers from people or birds?
These are very smart, guess is whether they come from
people or birds. I think that people have the right
idea that you want water and the right temperature and
conditions for that water to both be warm enough to
actually be flowing water and then also have enough sort
(09:28):
of like chemistry going on for there to be life.
But I think that's a really although I'm not it's
interesting that in the clouds on Venus answer I thought
was very intriguing. I'm I don't know too much about
the chemistry of the clouds on Venus, but that that
seems like an interesting answer. Yeah, we have some smart listeners. Right.
Congratulations listeners, you just got an A plus on your
(09:50):
biology tests. All right, well, let's just jump into this
topic here, and so if you guys can answer me
for me this first question, which is what what are
the conditions that you need for life? You know a
lot of people sort of talk about needing water, and
you know, nobody said that the life could be in
the sun. Although that's an interesting idea, So step us
through here. What do you think are the what are
the basic things that life needs another to exist and
(10:13):
to thrive? Well, you know, as usual. I think we've
got to take a digression even before we get to
that interesting question, because the necessary question to ask first
is like what do we even mean by life? Like
life as we know it, or like any kind of
life at all? So I thought maybe we could first
ask Katie, like, what does it even mean, you know,
(10:33):
life as we know? How you define life? Yeah, this
is actually the question I think of first when when
you ask what's the requirement for life? Is? What? What
even is life? And this is actually a much trickier
question than it seems. It's not just kind of a
hippie question to ask. It's something that is tricky for
biologists to answer because when you come up with criteria
(10:56):
for what life is, it seems to necessarily cover everything
that does seem alive. So you could maybe come up
with a list like, say, okay, to be alive, you
have to respond to stimuli. You have to be able
to grow, reproduce, and have offspring pass on traits to offspring.
(11:18):
You have to be complex, you have to seek homeostasis,
hold on a second, respond to stimuli. Does that mean
if you don't answer your emails, you're not alive? That's
what I assume. I think it means you're truly alive.
You're living more than anyone else. I think you correctly
understood that. To be a subtweet to you, Yes, so
(11:39):
you you have to also grow, reproduce, and have offspring
pass on traits to offspring. You have to be complex.
Maybe maybe it's that you seek out homeostasis or equilibrium,
or maybe it's that you're built with cells. But even
this criteria doesn't really seem to be satisfactories. So a
(12:00):
few examples. Crystals take energy to grow, they reproduce, they
even respond to stimuli. If you change their environment, they
will grow in a different way. They will respond to
it by altering their growth. Does that mean that crystals
are alive? And you might argue like, well, no, they
don't have a nervous system, but neither do plants. And
(12:23):
then you might say like, well, then they need to
be built with cells. But then well, viruses aren't a cell.
Are our viruses alive? Are they not alive? So it's
it's a very complicated question, and it's not one that
I think we have a strictly neat and tidy little
answer to. And why is that? Why is it so
(12:44):
hard to answer? Is it because they're just like different
you know, sort of religious groups arguing this thing or
that thing, or is it one of these things where
the distinction is artificial, whether it's sort of like a
spectrum of different ways to be in the universe and
calling some things alive and some things not alive as
an artificial distinction. I think it's the latter. Mostly. It
seems to be less that there are these very specific
(13:08):
ideas in biology of like, well, I think life has
to be you have to be green if you're alive.
Only frogs are alive, Like I think it's it's just hard.
Like basically, once we get to okay, so our viruses
are alive, like they they are able to replicate, reproduce,
but they require a living cell. So they could be
(13:29):
are they like a parasite that's alive or are they
not life because they can't exist on their own. But
we also have plenty of clear you know, animals, you
carryotes that are alive by any definition, who are parasites
and who require other organisms to live. I mean, you
could even say, like humans require other humans to live.
(13:51):
So you know, to say that a virus isn't alive
just because it requires a living cell to replicate and
to extract energy is kind of an odd distinction. So
I think it is. It does at a certain point
become hard to make that cut off, as with many
categories in biological science. Yeah, and we're also kind of
(14:13):
dependent on other organisms to like, our guts are full
of bacteria and viruses and we kind of depend on critically,
right exactly. Yeah, we we have a lot of gut
bacteria that we actually have to develop soon after we're
born to be able to digest things. And we actually
the earliest forms of life were a symbiotic relationship, probably
(14:36):
between these really early cells and the mitochondria, which may
have been an entirely different organism that these early cells
just kind of absorbed and formed this partnership. And now
mitochondria are, as everyone learned, you know, the powerhouse of
the cells, the things that make most life on Earth possible. Well,
(14:56):
I guess the conclusion is, no matter what we discover out,
their biologists will argue about it. Yes, it's a lively
debate about what it means to be alive. All right. Well,
I think it's interesting because all these is just sort
of our discussions and talking points about life as we
know it. But there's also kind of the question of
what if there's life out there in ways that are
(15:17):
that we don't know, you know, or can't even imagine
at this point. Yeah, I mean, I think that's sort
of the role of like science fiction authors to be
creative and think out of the bounds and imagine different
ways to live life. And you know, I've been doing
some research in that area, by which I mean reading
science fiction novels, and you know, there's some crazy ideas
out there, you know, life on galactic time scales, you know,
(15:39):
where the constituent processes are, like gravitational processes inside a
galaxy to take millions of years, or life inside energy
flow of stars. It's like the galaxy could be sentient
in itself. Yeah, it's sort of could you know, very
slowly thinking, very deep thoughts. But I guess maybe for
our discussion, let's maybe talk about what are some of
the basic things that we think right now, at least
(16:01):
for life as we know it that we need in
order to have life. We're going to talk about other planets,
and so I think, you know, as somebody mentioned, water
is kind of a pretty big requirement Katie. Yeah, and
specifically liquid water, because it is a very unique kind
of molecule or large group of molecules that are essential
(16:22):
for biochemical reactions to take place. It's it's basically like
it's the work bench and tools and you know, everything
you need to create these biochemical reactions that are requirement
for life, at least life on Earth or life as
we know it. And you also need chemicals plenty of
(16:44):
plenty of things like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, obviously oxygen that
and then once you have water that is like this
giant work bench that facilitates all of these chemical reactions,
you can actually with some energy, turn these into proteins
and also energy currency that life needs, right, And then
(17:06):
that's when you get into things like DNA and sort
of complex molecules that can then sort of I think
the basic idea is to create something that can store information, Daniel,
Is that kind of how you would put it? Yeah?
I think you need some way to write down your
good ideas and pass them onto your offspring. And so
it's Katie was saying, you need like basically the lego
(17:26):
pieces of life, which are you know, these organic molecules,
and then you need a way to put them together.
But a question I have for you, Katie, is like,
why is liquid water so unique? I mean, why can't
you have all these lego pieces come together in like
liquid methane or liquid some other kind of organic molecule. Yeah,
that's a really good question. And water is just a
(17:48):
really unique molecule that it has these properties that kind
of it's like it's one of the most incredible fluids ever.
It's on the like a miracle liquid that can do
it all. So first, just kind of on the molecular level,
it is polar, so it has a positively charged side
(18:09):
and a negatively charged side. So it binds really well
to itself because it's polar, So that's why water kind
of sticks together. But it also can bind to other
polar molecules and this sticky cohesion which is great for
all sorts of things that life needs, so transporting nutrients,
(18:31):
transporting molecules that life needs. So like an example on
the macro level would be a plant being able to
transport nutrients from its roots into the plant, but that
also happens on the cellular level of nutrients being transferred
to cells. And also it's great at breaking apart substances
(18:52):
into these molecules because it has these strong bonds. Basically,
you can think of oxygen as having these two little
hands and it really wants to hold hands with each other,
and then other molecules that are also willing to hold
hands with it. So if if something gets in the
way of it, like wanting to hold hands with itself
or with another polar molecule, it will actually break it apart,
(19:13):
like you know, like you won't get in the way
of me holding hands. And then that actually helps break
down molecules, and that's why it's called like the universal solvent,
and that can dissolve compounds which allows them to be
transported and used by cells. And basically it can also
I mean you can think of it as like lazy river,
(19:36):
but all of the inner tubes are like chemical molecules
like oxygen that are important to life, and this lazy
river water just like lets them be transported into cells
and then also breaks them apart so that they can
be actually used by cells. So life is a lazy river.
You're saying, yes, yes, that's that's how I approach life. Yeah,
but what's in the lazy river of water? Water and
(19:58):
a little bit of RUMs, Yeah, rivers. I feel like,
say you're gonna use water, You're not gonna use methane
or anything else. Crazy. It can't be solid water because
things don't flow, electricity doesn't conduct. Why can't you have
life which has a basis of like water vapor, like
steam based life. Why can't you get the same kind
(20:20):
of chemistry? I think it has to do with equilibrium
and the structure of cell membranes. So water inside of
cells actually plays this really important role, especially for cells
that have a membrane instead of a cell wall, so
it helps it maintain its shape without collapsing. So liquid
(20:41):
water has enough movement that it's relatively like it. It's
unlike frozen water, which is static and forms this like
crystalline structure. Liquid water has movement, but it's stable enough
that you can actually have basically like a little water
balloon which is the cell, and it does and explode
or or collapse. But with vapor, I think that's too chaotic.
(21:05):
It can't achieve that kind of equilibrium and that pressure.
So you don't want a frozen river. And then you
don't want a crazy river. You want the lazy river,
which is right in the middle. You don't want whitewater rapids, right,
just a lazy river. All right, let's get into um,
how rare it is to find water out there and
these organic molecules, and also let's get into where in
(21:28):
our sources and we might find these things. But first
let's take a quick break. All right, we're talking to
Katie Golden from the podcast Creature Features. You can find
(21:49):
it on iHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
And Katie, I'm talking to a little bit about water
and the things that the life as we know it needs,
the organic materials like carbon, nitrogen. Uh. And so I
guess my question I have is how rare are these
in our solar system? Like is the Earth the only
(22:10):
place you can find water and in these basic building
blocks or are there a lot of places in this
solar system where you might find these I mean, as
far as I know, it is tough to find liquid
water because we both have water on our planet, but
we're also close enough to the Sun where we are
nice and warm enough to have that liquid water. But
(22:33):
I think recently we're we're finding that there may be
liquid water, especially not necessarily on planets, although there's some
it seems like maybe there's some recent discoveries like maybe
we know Mars has frozen water, but we're not sure
whether any of that water is actually a liquid And
then also we may have some moons right that could
(22:57):
have some liquid water. I think there's sort of too
fascinating things to understand. They're one is like that water
itself as a substance is not rare at all in
our Solar system, Like in the form of ice. There
are huge stores. They're like enormous asteroids that are basically
just ice balls, and some of those planets out there, Neptune,
they're referred to as ice giants. So we have like
(23:20):
huge deposits of the actual chemical for water. Then the
second part is like does it exist in liquid form anywhere?
And here this is sort of fascinating because if you
just look at the surfaces of other planets, you don't
see oceans, right, no oceans of water except here on Earth.
And so to have liquid water, you need the water
which is everywhere but then you also need a heat source.
(23:42):
And so, as Katie said, recently, people have been thinking
about like having underground liquid water, which is a really
fascinating way for little creaters to potentially evolved. Okay, so
water is not that rare in our Solar system. And
by the way, I really want to see that space
comedy movie ice Balls sounds and so besides the Earth,
(24:03):
I think, um, you know, there's no maybe oceans liquid
oceans out there but that you can see on the
surface of other planets or moons. But there might be
underground oceans out there, right, and several moons and places
in the Solar System. So maybe Daniel, you want to
step us through some of these fun places. Yeah. One
of my favorite is Europa. This is a moon of Jupiter,
(24:24):
and it's amazing because if you look at its surface,
it's totally frozen. It's just like it's an ice crust, right,
It's like super thick ice ball. But the surface of
itself is very smooth. And anytime you see something in
the Solar System that's smooth, that means that it's new,
it's fresh. Because things in the Solar System are always
getting impacted by rocks and meteors and whatever. So if
(24:47):
it's smooth, it means it's fresh, it's newly formed, sort
of on the Solar System time scales. And they've done
a bunch of fly bys to try to understand what's
going on in Europa, and they discovered that it's covered
in a thick crust of it's about a hundred kilometers thick,
maybe thinner. And they've probed the inside of this moon.
This is incredible science and they're pretty sure that under
(25:09):
that ice crust is liquid water. So when you have
a planet that is maybe kind of far from the Sun,
so like the surface of the planet is frozen, how
are you getting that liquid water under this frozen surface? Potentially? Yeah, right,
you can't get the energy from the Sun, right, you
have an ice cube on the surface of Europa. It's
(25:30):
not gonna melt, right, It's gonna be frozen forever. And
so the heat comes from underneath, from the core of Europa,
and the heat comes from Jupiter. Actually, because Jupiter is
dumping energy into Europa using its gravitational field, it has
tidal forces, much the way that the Moon tugs on
the oceans of Earth. Jupiter is tugging on Europe. It's
(25:51):
squeezing it with its gravity, and that's squeezing creates a
lot of energy, keeps the insides of Europa sort of
fluid and hot, and so it's getting needed underneath, which
is why the the ocean is underneath the ice crust
on Europa. So it's sort of underground heat. Really, it's
not because it has you know, like Earth has a
molten cores, not because we have left overheated. It's like
(26:13):
it's all from the shaking that Jupiter gives Europa. Yeah,
it's all from the tidal fluxes there. Remember, these tidal
forces come about from the gravitational field. If you're further
from Jupiter, you feel less of a force, and if
you're closer to Jupiter, you feel more of a force.
And so if you're big enough that one side of
you is feeling more of a force than the other
side of you, then effectively Jupiter is like pulling you apart.
(26:35):
And so as Europa spins, Jupiter is like squeezing different
parts of it, and that keeps it hot and fresh.
And so they think that that there's a huge ocean
under there. They think that under the ice of Europa
there is as much liquid water as two to three
times all of Earth's oceans. That's incredible. But for life
to exist, it's not just liquid water that you need, right,
(26:58):
You need chemicals and need energy input. So do we
know what the chemical composition is in the water that
is fluid in Europa? We don't. We think that there's
some salt in there. And they've done these measurements where
they measure the electrical conductivity of the ocean, Like, how
do you know if there's liquid water under a hundred
(27:20):
kilometers of ice? Right? You can't see it. And so
what they do is they see the impact on Jupiter's
magnetic field when Europa moves past it, and ice has
a different conductivity than liquid water, which is a different
conductivity than salt water. So you can measure sort of
the phase of the water and how much salt there
is in there by measuring its electromagnetic properties, which is
(27:43):
sort of an incredible piece of science. So we think
there's a little of salt in there, but we don't
know the answer to your really good question, which is
like are there the organic molecules we need? But we
do have an awesome plan for figuring it out. Are
we going to drill down. We're gonna send physicists over,
We're gonna send biologists. Katie, put on your helmet. You're
(28:06):
going to Europe. Let me get my drama. Mean, well,
it's sort of a two stage plan. The first one
is to just fly by because this surface of Europa
cracks furally often and the water shoots up into space.
And we've actually seen this from Earth using hubble, we
can see these things, these water volcanoes, these cryo geysers,
(28:27):
shooting the water out into space like up to a
hundred or two hundred kilometers. So we're planning to send
something in. It's the Europa Clipper that will fly through
these guysers and sample when the water from Europa and
see are there things living in there? Wow? I know,
is that's gonna be so exciting. That's I guess simultaneous
(28:49):
mind blowing there we'll imagine be there right? Are these
going to be unmanned? Because I feel like this would
be way more exciting than driving through a car wash
to be able to fly through a guys and and
do you one win to you know, brush away the
line you're trying to detect. I don't know if you're
flying through it and just like a fish lands on
(29:11):
your windshield. You're like, there it is an alien fish.
I guess there's life. That's sort of the fantasy. No.
Much more likely, of course, is that they just get
some like frozen bit of life. But it's you know,
that's also a fascinating question. Like say you had a
sample of water from underneath Europe that was spewed out
into space, How would you tell if there's life in there?
(29:31):
I guess that's a question for you can like what
experiments would you do on this tea spoon of water
from Europa to tell me whether there was life in there.
One of the things that you would be looking for
would be some sort of organized structure of molecules. So
it's I mean, obviously you could potentially identify if you
had unicellular or multicellular life forms. You would, you know,
(29:55):
take a look at the samples under a microscope and
check it out. But if you want to see if
it has if it is starting to form life, or isn't,
like has the capability of forming life, you would probably
want to see what molecules it has in there, and
if it's able to form any of these protein chains
(30:18):
that are so important, and amino acid chains because we
think that probably early on in the development of life
r n A chains, So that's similar to DNA, but
it's just a single strand of amino acids we're able
to form, and that is basically how you, like you
(30:39):
mentioned earlier, you need that ability to record data and
pass it on in order to create complex life. And
so if we saw any evidence of these these chains forming,
I think that would be a really positive indicator that
you know, there could be life or it has the
(31:00):
possibility of life. And obviously if we found a big
old alien fish that would be that would be pretty positive,
but far more likely we wouldn't find any large life
forms just probabilistically in terms of it would more likely
be unicellular or maybe just like the beginnings of some
protein chains that could eventually form life. Really you don't
(31:23):
think it's likely, you know, that's kind of where the
science falls, is that there's a probability and and it's
it's more likely than not that it will be microscopic
and not a big fish. I think it's more about
just the time scale, right, like, because I think it's
very likely that there is life in the universe, but
for our like very short human time to be able
(31:46):
to intersect with other complex life, especially this close by,
when we know that complex life has been around much
less time than these these sort of archaic unite cellular organisms,
small organisms have been around. So it's just it's more
in terms of, like, you know, we have this little
(32:08):
short flight through the universe US humans, and then for
our our little flash in the pan time to intersect
with another flash in the pan time of other complex life,
it would be very lucky. I would say it's not impossible.
I just think that we would be incredibly lucky to
find complex life. But I think it's I think that
(32:30):
in terms of whether it exists somewhere, even if we
don't find it, I think it's almost inevitable that there
is some life out there. Just the question is are
we going to be lucky enough to you know, have
a have a missed meeting on on intergalactic craigslist like
this connection. I think that's a good point, and I
mostly agree, But I think also it's important to remember
(32:52):
that we just really don't know because everything we're basing
this off of is one example, which is that on Earth,
life form pretty quickly, and then complex life took a
long time, as you say, and then intelligent life, you know,
still has yet to form here on Earth, and and
so we don't know how long it will take to
form on another planet, but we don't know necessarily that
(33:12):
it will follow the pattern here on Earth. Right, maybe
Earth was unlucky. It took us unusually long to make
complex life. So we gotta keep an open mind and
and believe in this space fish man, I mean, especially
if it's not like life on Earth, right, Like, if
we have instead of it being carbon based, like being
silicon based life, it may function entirely differently, have a
(33:35):
totally different, much longer kind of time scale in terms
of how it evolves and develops. Yeah, but to get
back to the original question, like are there organic molecules
on Europa? We don't actually know. We could figure it
out by flying something through these geysers, But in general,
I think we do have a sense that there are
organic molecules out there. It's not like it's super rare
(33:56):
to find complex organic molecules in comments or in meteors,
so probably there's a lot of them out there. Do
you do you agree with that sentiment? Katie, Oh, absolutely, Yeah,
I think finding the building blocks for life, it makes
sense that it would exist. It's I think the reason
that we don't have life on every asteroid and every
(34:17):
planet that has these these complex molecules is that you
need a lot of other conditions to be met as well.
Like in terms of how life formed on Earth, it
was this very potentially kind of complex interplay of having
the right organic molecules, having just the right amount of
(34:38):
water and just the right amount of energy, and maybe
even like so you guys know, the sort of primordial
soup hypothesis. Yeah, I had some of this morning for sure.
That's definitely the very back of your free Jimmy. I
think there's done life growing there as well, extra chunky. Yeah,
(35:00):
but yeah, there's other ideas about how life could have formed,
and it's not like the idea that it just kind
of formed in a big boiling pot of stew is
a little bit hard to believe because once you start
to get a complex chain of amino acids or protein
to form and you have this chaotic environment, it could
(35:21):
just get blasted apart by other molecules before it has
a chance to form these complex structures. So there's actually
a theory called the primordial soup and sandwich. I kind
of like the term primordial bok Leva better because it's
basically these thin sheets of mica that like are like
(35:41):
these layers of a pastry or or if you want
layers of a sandwich, and in between these sheets of mica,
which is a type of thin sheeting mineral that then
you could get these organic compounds to kind of like
have these like little safe havens, these little hidy holes,
to be able to start forming these complex structure while
(36:02):
also having access to enough chemicals and enough water and
enough energy to actually have these biochemical processes take place.
I feel like we should just go for it and
call it the primordial big neck, the primordial club's handling.
This is what this is what happens when you charge
your signs. Just before, so, to wrap up on Europa, Katie,
(36:23):
let me just ask you a really quick question. Say
we have the organic molecules and we have energy source
that's heating this liquid water. What do you think do
you think there is microbial life right now in the
oceans of Europa. I want there to be, so I
would say yes, just because I'm very optimistic. I think
(36:44):
if we will it, it will happen. Yes, exactly, it's
you're officially in I think it's I mean, I think
it's almost basically inevitable that there's alien life somewhere, whether
it's on Europa, I think it it would be lucky
for it to be there, But it seems like it's very,
very possible, and I'm so excited for discoveries to be
(37:08):
made from there. Like I hope that we are able
to make some of these discoveries in my lifetime because
that would be so exciting. But yeah, I think there's
a definitely good chance that we have some some form
of life, especially if we see that all of these
basic requirements are met. Cool. Well, I'm glad we're optimistic,
and and we'll send you the our official Daniel and
(37:29):
Jorge explain the universe alien button commemorative souvenir. Alright, well, right,
let's get into other places where there could be life
in our solar system and whether or not that is
even remotely possible. But first let's take another quick break. Alright,
(37:56):
we're talking to Katie Golden, host of the podcast Creature.
Feature is about life and other places in our Solar System,
and so we talked about Europa. Now Daniel did maybe
give us a quick rundown of maybe other places in
the Solar System where we can find life and water
and moleculars. Well, the sort of three categories in general,
One is like moons of really big planets, and then
(38:18):
there are dwarf planets, and then there are like actual
straight up possibility for life on planets in the Solar System.
And so in the moon category, of course we had
Europa that's maybe number one, But then there are other contenders.
There's Titan. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn. It
itself is actually bigger than Mercury. So like, what, Yeah,
(38:39):
if I was a Titan booster, I'd be like, how
come I'm called the moon and Mercury is a planet?
And so there's water there too. Well we don't know,
but we think so. And Titan it's fascinating because it
has an atmosphere. It has a nitrogen atmosphere. You know
on Earth is a lot of nitrogen, and they're active
rivers and lakes and oceans on the surface of Titan.
Problem is they're not the oceans of water. Their oceans
(39:01):
of like methane and ethane, which is why I was
asking Katie earlier about whether you could have life in
like methane oceans. But it's sort of awesome because there's activity,
you know, it's like the surface of the planet has
motion on, it has stuff going on. But just like Europa,
we think that underneath those oceans is a shell of ice,
and underneath that is probably liquid water. So again we
(39:24):
have subsurface oceans that are probably under the ice on Titan.
I don't know, a sea of methane that sounds like
more like a smelly river more than a lazy river.
Have you been in a lazy river recently? They're mostly
smelling methane there, I'm sure. All right, Well, what are
some other places? Um, So there might be moons that
(39:46):
have also kind of like Europa, kind of a shell
and an underground ocean. But you're saying there might be
other kinds of places. Yeah, So Ganymede is another moon
like that, an icy crust, probably with a big ocean underneath.
And you know, you add all of these up and
it tells you that most of the liquid water in
the Solar System is probably not on Earth, which is
kind of mind blowing because until recently we thought it
(40:07):
might be the only place. But there are other things
that are not moons. Like one of my favorite places
in the Solar System is this dwarf planet called Series.
And it's not a TV series, it's you knows, of all,
we have a dwarf planet in our Solar system. Oh yeah,
I mean Pluto is now a dwarf planet, right it
got demoded. And there are others. There's an element of
(40:28):
the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter where some of
the chunks are big enough that they could called dwarf
planets and Series. If you remember, we saw this weird
feature on it a couple of years ago. They took
a picture of it and it looked like a pyramid,
and there was a moment there when I thought, this
is like the opening act of every science fiction novel.
You know, somebody sees a pyramid and an alien planet
(40:51):
and they go, what Hereles soundtrack from two thousand and one, Well,
this planet is amazing because it's twenty five percent water.
Like this dwarf planet is not tiny. It's a big
chunk of stuff and it's one fourth water. You know,
Earth is like a tiny fraction of Earth is water
in comparison, so this thing is basically a big or
(41:14):
liquid well again, it's a frozen crust, but we think
that underneath there could be a salty ocean. So it's
most of the oceans in the Solar system turned out
to be under frozen ice crusts, and this is another
place where we can have the same situation. And it
has a pyramid, so that's that's really And it turns
out there's this really shiny feature and it's this pyramid
(41:36):
shaped It looked really geometrical, but then you know, just
like the face on Mars and other fascinating features, when
you zoomed in and you've got better pictures from other angles,
it looked just like a word shaped rock. So it
turns out probably not a signal from the aliens, but
another place in the Solar system where you have a
lot of organic molecules and probably liquid water. So it's
(41:56):
a great place to get started. I mean, if you're
a young microbe you're looking to start our family, you know,
this place is everything you're looking for if your life
try series, Welcome to series your new home. That's right,
And then you've got another couple of small moons like
Callisto and in slats which I don't even know if
are you supposed to pronounce in slatist like you know,
(42:17):
like um something you would see on the menu to
tak area is. I don't know, but I guess my
question for you guys is you know a lot of
these moons. It seems like Earth is the only place
that you can see from space liquid ocean, and so
a lot of these places have like underground oceans, and
that's how maybe life could be there. But could life
exist in an underground ocean, you know, without you know,
(42:38):
sunlight or you know some sort of you know, heat
and wind and things like that. Yeah, I mean absolutely,
we see it on our own planet right where we
have deep sea life and we don't necessarily life doesn't
necessarily need sunlight to provide it with energy as long
as it's getting some kind of energy. So we see
life around the clustered around these deep sea events that
(43:02):
are spewing energy and nutrients down at the bottom of
the ocean where there's no light and life drives there.
And so you could definitely have a planet that is
not getting any sunlight on its oceans. But if they
have some form of energy down in like near the
(43:23):
core of the planet. You know, maybe these deep see
events spewing some heat and and nutrients into these oceans.
You can absolutely have life. It sort of comes along
for free this source of energy because if you're asking
for liquid water, if you're starting from that requirement, then
to make the water liquid to avoid it being iced,
you need some energy source, and that's either solar energy
(43:45):
or you know, internal energy from tidal forces or from
having a hot core or something. So if you have
liquid water, that by definition requires you have an energy
source for life to get start. Interesting, you just made
me think that maybe I wonder if there are aliens
in the ocean of Europa having a podcast discussing whether
or not life could exist on surface water like they
(44:05):
have on Earth. Well, you know, another fascinating question is
if you are alien intelligent life that grew up under
an ocean, so you never saw the sky, right then
could you even imagine the vastness of the universe? What
is it like to drill through that for the first
time and stick your head out above the ocean and
see that there's a whole universe out there? What a
(44:26):
what a crazy sort of philosophical moment for those aliens,
do you think they may maybe they could have like telescopes.
Could you build a civilization with technology with telescopes that
could see through the ice shell and so then maybe
that's how they could know about the wider universe. It's
a hundred kilometers thick in a lot of places, so
that'd be a pretty impressive telescope. I think you'd have
to drill well. I wonder how they would evolve in
(44:48):
terms of sight and the use of light, especially if
they're not getting light from the sun. So we do
know that deep sea animals on Earth, while they don't
get sunl they can have these biochemical processes that result
in bioluminescence, which then provides them light to see and
(45:09):
also light to potentially lure prey into their doom, like
with the deep sea angler fish. It's got that beautiful
bulb of bioluminescence that it uses to lure prey. But
basically what that means is you could have a group
of life or a group of animals or no, I
don't want to calm animals, but life whatever form it
may take, that doesn't get to see sunlight. But if
(45:31):
you have the right biochemical processes to create bioluminescence, they
could potentially evolve eyes because then they can use that
bioluminescence to navigate and find prey or find mates. So
I think that's a fascinating kind of idea of like,
how would you evolve the ability to see if you
don't have sunlight? That sounds like a great science fiction novel.
(45:54):
I'm looking forward to reading that. There's another possibility, which
is that life could have started out on the surface.
It would have been that the word liquid oceans in
the Solar System, not on Earth, for example, on Mars,
and life evolved in those scenarios and now is underground.
So one of my favorite possibilities is Mars because as
listener as to podcasts, no, Mars doesn't have a magnetic field,
(46:16):
it really doesn't have much atmosphere, so any water on
the surface of Mars will either just sublimate or freeze.
But we do think that there is water again underground
on Mars. They detected on Mars a sub glacial lake.
It's like just two kilometers below the surface and it's
like twenty kilometers wide. So there's a stable body of
(46:39):
liquid water on Mars. And if a billion years ago
there were the conditions for life on the surface, that
it is possible that in that lake underground there are
you know, remnants of that archaic life still swimming around, right.
And there's even the theory that maybe life on Earth
came from Mars, like maybe a meteor hid Mars and
a chunk of water or rock or ice from there
(47:01):
came to Earth with life, and that's how we have life.
It certainly would explain a lot about how weird people are, right,
we're all Martians, all aliens, but wouldn't we be aliens
to aliens? Nice? All right? Well, um, and I think
there's a couple other places that sound interesting, Tritton, even Venus,
Daniel can have maybe water or life. Yeah, And this
(47:23):
is something that one of our listeners pointed out that
the surface of Venus is crazy intense. It's you know,
hundreds of degrees, it's covered with sulfuric acid. You do
not want to be alive on the surface of Venus.
But and the pressure is really intense. There's like so
much atmosphere that you're getting instantly crushed. So it's not
a place that's very hospitable to life. But you go
(47:44):
above the surface, like in the clouds, like fifty kilometers
above the surface, then the pressure is lower. You're above
the sulfuric acid clouds, and you might have life sort
of floating in water droplets that far above the surface.
Does that sound plausible, Katie, to evolve life or create
life and in a cloud. I mean, if you have
water droplets that are large enough to have tiny microbes
(48:09):
floating around in liquid water, then I think that is
certainly possible. That's that's crazy to think about, like these
little tiny floating micro bioms of little water droplets. But yeah,
I mean life can be so teeny tiny, it can
exist in a droplet of water. And we know that
we can take a little drop of water, put it
(48:31):
on a microscope slide and see a bunch of little
guys swim around in there. I've I've done that. I've
looked at dinal flagelets. It's amazing how many of those
guys you can cram into one little tiny drop of water.
So if you have water in clouds, I think it
would have to be the right temperature, it would have
to be stable enough to actually, you know, have large
(48:53):
enough droplets for enough life to be in. But yeah,
I think it's possible your whole entire specy, decent, civilization,
and life could just exist in a water droplet. It's
kind of like a like a like a city in
a bottle to Yeah, and then you smash up against
another droplet and you've got all of a sudden new
neighbors or new roommates. Maybe to them, that's like two
(49:16):
galaxies colliding, or the premise for a good reality show
on Venus. Yeah, we'll call it iceballs to just because
you know, I like the name. All right, Well, it
sounds like the ingredients for life are out there for sure,
like in other planets and moons of other planets in
our Solar system. I guess you know, um, maybe a
(49:39):
larger question that we can just wrap up here is,
you know, what are the chances of life, Like we
have all the ingredients definitely for sure in our Solar system,
is it likely? I know, we we optimistically think that
there is probably life, But what does this sign say
about the likelihood of their being life out there? Yeah?
(49:59):
I mean I think it is. I mean, you guys
can speak more to the expansiveness of the universe, but
I think because we have so many chances and so
much time that it's almost inevitable that there is going
to be life somewhere else in the universe. I think
the thing that is much more difficult is the timing
(50:22):
of it, whether our time in the universe is going
to overlap with life somewhere where we can measure it.
So there could be life out there simultaneously with us
in an area where we can't find it and can't
measure it. There could be life somewhere right next door.
But it's just it happened either before after our time here.
(50:42):
But yeah, there is there is a chance for sure
that we are going to overlap with some form of life,
especially if we loosen our definition of what life is,
and it's not doesn't have to be some green little
aliens with funny hats. I totally agree with what you said,
and I think a lot about this question. You know,
how do you go from the precursors to actually having life?
(51:03):
And I just wish that we understood the science of
that better, that we could reproduce that in the lab
or understand whether it's likely or unlikely, because we only
really have this one experiment, and as you say, it
could be that life started many times on Earth and
didn't take hold, then once actually got a foothold and
then spread and became us. We just don't know. So
I did a little informal survey where I asked basically
(51:25):
all the biologists I know what they think about this question,
And the thing that strikes me is that they're all optimistic,
like they think the way you do that, like life
is probably inevitable. I don't know if that's they're biased
just because they are alive, and so they're like pro life.
They've got a probe being alive bias exactly pro prob
being alive, not pro life. That's a whole different philosophical discussion.
(51:49):
But it makes me wonder, you know, why they all
think that's true. We don't really have a solid scientific
argument for the likelihood of life starting given these precursors,
but everybody has this sense that it might be inevitable,
or maybe they just wanted to be inevitable, because the
alternative is scary that even with the precursors and our
own solar system, we could be the only things alive.
(52:12):
But the answer is that we you know, we won't
know until we look, until we send these missions out
to Europa and sample those cryo geysers. Until we drill
down underneath the ice on some of these moons, until
we sample that lake on Mars, we won't actually know
the answer. Until then, we're just you know, all informed
podcasters speculating wildly. I think also the fact that our
(52:32):
measly little planet has been capable of producing such incredible
complexity over what is kind of a short period of
time on the scale of the universe makes it really
feel like that cannot be a fluke if you have
the necessary ingredients, and our little tiny Earth was able
(52:53):
to do all of this in just a few billion years, Like,
it has to be happening elsewhere. How could we possibly
be that special? I think is, and I think there's
a certain logic to that, Like, how can we evolve
this incredibly bio diverse planet with these ingredients and there
not be some form of life elsewhere where they also
(53:13):
have similar ingredients? Yeah? How special can we be? Really?
I feel like life may be inevitable is kind of
like the optimists extrovert point of view, you know, I
wonder if introverts out there might look at it more
as life is unavoidable. There's no escaping life. But either way,
(53:35):
it sounds like, um, there's a lot to look forward
to in terms of exploring our solar system and learning
more about what's on the surface of these frozen, crusty planets. Yeah,
and it's fascinating because it's either out there or it's not.
Like right now, there are maybe things swimming around in
liquid bodies in our solar system. And the only thing
(53:55):
that keeps us from knowing the answer from cracking this
crazy ancient miss three these our willingness to go and look.
These things don't even cost that much money, you know,
a few hundred million dollars. We could know the answer
to this question that every human has been asking basically
since forever. So if you think that's important to talk
to your elected officials and support this kind of research.
(54:17):
Al right, Well, uh, that was super interesting. Thank you
Katie for joining us today. Again. Katie, your podcast is
called Creature Features And so where can people find it? Yeah,
I mean it's on this network, on I Heart Radio.
You can find it on iHeart Radio website, the app,
or you know, on Apple podcasts where wherever you get
your podcasts. And yeah, we answer a lot of questions
(54:40):
about life here on Earth on that podcast with comedy
and in diseases, right, also, that's right, more comedy than
diseases generally. Well, I mean you also talked about the
viruses and fun and interesting things that affect the animal behaviors. Absolutely. Yeah,
like we we talked about sometimes serious subjects about our
(55:02):
health and and the planet's health. But yeah, we we
always try to bring it back to the things that
really bring us together and the common behavior as you
can find in life on Earth, and it's it's really fun.
Who knows, maybe in a couple of years in the future,
you'll be having an episode about life in other planets. Yes,
(55:22):
space fish, don't get them on your windshield. I like
to eat buy space fish with the side of ice balls.
All right, Thank you Katie, and thank you guys for
joining us. We hope you enjoyed dad, see you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
(55:45):
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. No
And Daniel, I've got a tough question for you. I
love those, Well you might not like this one. I
don't know. Bring it on all right? Would you prefer
that we a never find life outside of Earth? Or
be we find ailing life but it's just tiny little microbes?
Oh man, you mean like we find aliens, but I
don't get to ask them any physics questions unless you
(00:28):
speak microbe. No. I mean you can ask, but I'm
not sure that microbes will reply. Oh that's such a
nightmare scenario. But even worse, what if alien physicists come
here and find us, but we just seemed like microbes
to them? Oh man, they might not even bother to
ask us physics questions? How dare they? Hi? I'm orhammy
(01:04):
cartoon is and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
I'm a particle physicist, and if the aliens come, I
demand an audience with them, even if they're microbes. Hey,
my wife is a microbiologist, so I think I've learned
to speak microbe a little bit. It might be funny
of our first contact with Aidian life is that we
accidentally breathe them and then kill them with our immune system.
(01:27):
That's right. Maybe they'd be inside us, right, we catch
some alien disease. I think I've seen that movie. But
welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the university
production of I Heart Radio, in which we take you
on a tour of everything that's amazing and beautiful and
squishy and dangerous in this universe and try to explain
it all to you or squishy and dangerous at the
same time and amazing and bonkers. The universe is bizarre.
(01:50):
It's stranger than fiction, and what we discover out there
is always weirder than what we imagine. That's right. And
it's also really big universe. And so a big question
for us and for everyone is are we alone in
the universe and this huge giant cosmos? Are we the
only sentient life out there? Or are there other living
things out there in this solar system or in this galaxy?
(02:13):
That's right, because we want to know. Are we the
only ones thinking these questions? Are we the only ones
trying to figure out how this universe works, why we're here,
what we're supposed to do with our lives? And should
we get out of bed in the morning? Are we
the only ones? Are there other people out there who
have maybe made significant advances, and would you know, give
us a clue that would be fun. Well, to be honest, Daniel,
I record from my bed, so literally, I don't have
(02:34):
to get up ever. Well, maybe you answered the question, Joge,
but not everybody else out there has figured it out
for themselves. And you know, this is a question that
when we think about we wonder sometimes cosmically, like are
there alien civilizations and minds out there, deep deep far
away in space? But it's also a question we can
ask about our own neighborhood. Yeah, because you know, I
feel like most science fiction movies assume that when we
(02:56):
find alien life, it's you know, from a galaxy far
far away, or you know, maybe from another part of
the galaxy or some our way out there in space.
But maybe, you know, there's a question of whether or
not life could also be here in our own backyard,
in our own solar system. Yeah. And I think historically
it's a fascinating question because a long time ago, hundreds
(03:16):
of years ago, we didn't know the answer to that question.
People wondered, you know, is their life on Mars. And
then more recently, like a hundred years ago, fifty years ago,
it seemed to be sort of settled that there wasn't
a place in the Solar system where we could find
intelligent life or life at all. But then recently I
think the question has changed again and now we have
a new perspective on life in our own backyard. Heard.
(03:38):
So today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question,
what's the most likely place in the Solar system to
find life other than of course here on Earth? And um,
I guess not Twitter. Twitter wouldn't be a Daniel not
if we're talking about intelligent life. Yeah, we'll be tackling
(03:58):
this question of whether or not and air would we
most likely find life in our own solar system? And
so we have a special treat for you guys here today.
We have a guest today to help us answer this
question and to talk about the possible places in our
solar system that we can find life. She's the guest
of the podcast Creature Features, which you can also find
on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you listen
(04:19):
to podcasts, and so welcome Katie Golden. Hey, guys, thank
you so much for having me. Thanks very much for
being a guest on our podcast. Yeah, I was a
guest on Creature Features last week or so, and I
had a blast talking to Katie about irradiating animals or
animals that survive I radiation. No animals were intentionally irradiated
for that podcast. I was just gonna ask if you
(04:41):
can have Peter knocking on our podcast doors. You know,
although we did, of course create our own radiation. You know,
the sound waves you are hearing in your ear right
now are a form of non ionizing, non damaging intellectual
radiation NERD radiation, pure NERD radiation. It'll make your brain grow. Yeah,
grows your brain case. O Katie, you're you have a
(05:02):
biology background rate? Yeah. So I actually studied both psychology
and biology at Harvard as an undergrad, and after that
I went into the various fields of both, uh, science
education and comedy, a natural mix science comedy or science
(05:22):
education kind of plus comedy, science education plus comedy. The
comedy thing came after the science education because I think
I having to do a bunch of learning modules about
all these diseases and stuff. I was like, you know,
I need a little comedy in my life. Nothing sence disease.
Like That's what I did. When I would I would
(05:43):
do these educational animations for pharmaceutical researchers. And I would say,
but you know what the best medicine is laughter? Yeah,
for sure, for sure. Uh. And so Katie, that's kind
of what your podcast is about. And you talk about
biology and creatures and but you also make sing comedians
and lot of funny stuff. You want to tell us
a little bit about it. Yeah, So it's called Creature Feature,
(06:04):
And I like to explore what is it like to
be an animal? And I think it's it's a lot
easier to relate to animals when you think about it
from a human lens. So it's fun to look at
all this huge variety and great diversity of animal behaviors
and kind of try to imagine yourself as that animal,
(06:25):
Like imagine the rat that gets infected with Toxoplasma gondhai
and how it would be to suddenly be attracted to
a cat, your most dreaded of predators. And nature is
so full of incredible behaviors that there's no there's no
better way to experience it than to imagine what it's
like to be those animals and dive right in. Those
(06:47):
are some deep questions, you know, what is it like
to be a bat? What is it like to be
attracted to a cat? I mean, I don't know that
anybody's ever going to answer those questions. I thought you
were going to rhyme that, Daniel, I don't know anything
about that. That's Doctor SEUs right there. That's what we
should make comedy science and Dr SEUs all at the
same time, comedy science and children's education. That sounds like
(07:09):
a great mixture. Horry, we should do that sometimes. Let's
get on it, Daniel. Cool. So, Katie, we're attacking today
the question of whether there could be life in our
solar system, and if there could, where might we find it?
And so we're so glad to have it here as
a Sartain biology guide. As we talked about life and
what it needs and where it can possibly thrive. But
as usual, we sort of like to go out there
(07:30):
and ask people what they think of this subject. And
so Daniel went out there and he asked people on
the internet what they thought was the most likely place
in the solar system to find life. That's right, And
so I got these questions answered from people on the internet.
Now I assume there are people, some of them may
well be aliens, that have slipped their way into human society,
trying to influence the direction of human thought. But so
(07:51):
I can't attest. Maybe they're irradiated animals. Could they be
irradiated birds from cheer Noble? They could be, as they
very well could be. So I cannot attest to their
actual humanists. But I think you'll hear them quite interesting answers.
Here's what people have to say. It depends what we
define life. There's a frozen moon of Jupiter. I think
probably proper conditions water I would say in Mars, or
(08:17):
maybe some of them June moons of Jupiter, probably by
looking in the mirror outside of Earth, I would say
Mars places where we have water and some kind of
reasonable temperature in the clouds on Venis. I think there's
weird forms of life everywhere. I know that Jupiter has
a lot of moons, and one of them, europa Is.
(08:41):
It's said that there's like a lot of ice on
that moon. And I read an article recently and it's
some scientists are proposing or describing potential water that's like
spewing out into space one of jupiter moons. I was thinking,
Iowa for a minute, they're but then realized that you
really don't want to live on Ohio. I will say Titan,
(09:05):
which is a moon of Saturn. All right, Katie, what
did you think of these answers from people or birds?
These are very smart, guess is whether they come from
people or birds. I think that people have the right
idea that you want water and the right temperature and
conditions for that water to both be warm enough to
actually be flowing water and then also have enough sort
(09:28):
of like chemistry going on for there to be life.
But I think that's a really although I'm not it's
interesting that in the clouds on Venus answer I thought
was very intriguing. I'm I don't know too much about
the chemistry of the clouds on Venus, but that that
seems like an interesting answer. Yeah, we have some smart listeners. Right.
Congratulations listeners, you just got an A plus on your
(09:50):
biology tests. All right, well, let's just jump into this
topic here, and so if you guys can answer me
for me this first question, which is what what are
the conditions that you need for life? You know a
lot of people sort of talk about needing water, and
you know, nobody said that the life could be in
the sun. Although that's an interesting idea, So step us
through here. What do you think are the what are
the basic things that life needs another to exist and
(10:13):
to thrive? Well, you know, as usual. I think we've
got to take a digression even before we get to
that interesting question, because the necessary question to ask first
is like what do we even mean by life? Like
life as we know it, or like any kind of
life at all? So I thought maybe we could first
ask Katie, like, what does it even mean, you know,
(10:33):
life as we know? How you define life? Yeah, this
is actually the question I think of first when when
you ask what's the requirement for life? Is? What? What
even is life? And this is actually a much trickier
question than it seems. It's not just kind of a
hippie question to ask. It's something that is tricky for
biologists to answer because when you come up with criteria
(10:56):
for what life is, it seems to necessarily cover everything
that does seem alive. So you could maybe come up
with a list like, say, okay, to be alive, you
have to respond to stimuli. You have to be able
to grow, reproduce, and have offspring pass on traits to offspring.
(11:18):
You have to be complex, you have to seek homeostasis,
hold on a second, respond to stimuli. Does that mean
if you don't answer your emails, you're not alive? That's
what I assume. I think it means you're truly alive.
You're living more than anyone else. I think you correctly
understood that. To be a subtweet to you, Yes, so
(11:39):
you you have to also grow, reproduce, and have offspring
pass on traits to offspring. You have to be complex.
Maybe maybe it's that you seek out homeostasis or equilibrium,
or maybe it's that you're built with cells. But even
this criteria doesn't really seem to be satisfactories. So a
(12:00):
few examples. Crystals take energy to grow, they reproduce, they
even respond to stimuli. If you change their environment, they
will grow in a different way. They will respond to
it by altering their growth. Does that mean that crystals
are alive? And you might argue like, well, no, they
don't have a nervous system, but neither do plants. And
(12:23):
then you might say like, well, then they need to
be built with cells. But then well, viruses aren't a cell.
Are our viruses alive? Are they not alive? So it's
it's a very complicated question, and it's not one that
I think we have a strictly neat and tidy little
answer to. And why is that? Why is it so
(12:44):
hard to answer? Is it because they're just like different
you know, sort of religious groups arguing this thing or
that thing, or is it one of these things where
the distinction is artificial, whether it's sort of like a
spectrum of different ways to be in the universe and
calling some things alive and some things not alive as
an artificial distinction. I think it's the latter. Mostly. It
seems to be less that there are these very specific
(13:08):
ideas in biology of like, well, I think life has
to be you have to be green if you're alive.
Only frogs are alive, Like I think it's it's just hard.
Like basically, once we get to okay, so our viruses
are alive, like they they are able to replicate, reproduce,
but they require a living cell. So they could be
(13:29):
are they like a parasite that's alive or are they
not life because they can't exist on their own. But
we also have plenty of clear you know, animals, you
carryotes that are alive by any definition, who are parasites
and who require other organisms to live. I mean, you
could even say, like humans require other humans to live.
(13:51):
So you know, to say that a virus isn't alive
just because it requires a living cell to replicate and
to extract energy is kind of an odd distinction. So
I think it is. It does at a certain point
become hard to make that cut off, as with many
categories in biological science. Yeah, and we're also kind of
(14:13):
dependent on other organisms to like, our guts are full
of bacteria and viruses and we kind of depend on critically,
right exactly. Yeah, we we have a lot of gut
bacteria that we actually have to develop soon after we're
born to be able to digest things. And we actually
the earliest forms of life were a symbiotic relationship, probably
(14:36):
between these really early cells and the mitochondria, which may
have been an entirely different organism that these early cells
just kind of absorbed and formed this partnership. And now
mitochondria are, as everyone learned, you know, the powerhouse of
the cells, the things that make most life on Earth possible. Well,
(14:56):
I guess the conclusion is, no matter what we discover out,
their biologists will argue about it. Yes, it's a lively
debate about what it means to be alive. All right. Well,
I think it's interesting because all these is just sort
of our discussions and talking points about life as we
know it. But there's also kind of the question of
what if there's life out there in ways that are
(15:17):
that we don't know, you know, or can't even imagine
at this point. Yeah, I mean, I think that's sort
of the role of like science fiction authors to be
creative and think out of the bounds and imagine different
ways to live life. And you know, I've been doing
some research in that area, by which I mean reading
science fiction novels, and you know, there's some crazy ideas
out there, you know, life on galactic time scales, you know,
(15:39):
where the constituent processes are, like gravitational processes inside a
galaxy to take millions of years, or life inside energy
flow of stars. It's like the galaxy could be sentient
in itself. Yeah, it's sort of could you know, very
slowly thinking, very deep thoughts. But I guess maybe for
our discussion, let's maybe talk about what are some of
the basic things that we think right now, at least
(16:01):
for life as we know it that we need in
order to have life. We're going to talk about other planets,
and so I think, you know, as somebody mentioned, water
is kind of a pretty big requirement Katie. Yeah, and
specifically liquid water, because it is a very unique kind
of molecule or large group of molecules that are essential
(16:22):
for biochemical reactions to take place. It's it's basically like
it's the work bench and tools and you know, everything
you need to create these biochemical reactions that are requirement
for life, at least life on Earth or life as
we know it. And you also need chemicals plenty of
(16:44):
plenty of things like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, obviously oxygen that
and then once you have water that is like this
giant work bench that facilitates all of these chemical reactions,
you can actually with some energy, turn these into proteins
and also energy currency that life needs, right, And then
(17:06):
that's when you get into things like DNA and sort
of complex molecules that can then sort of I think
the basic idea is to create something that can store information, Daniel,
Is that kind of how you would put it? Yeah?
I think you need some way to write down your
good ideas and pass them onto your offspring. And so
it's Katie was saying, you need like basically the lego
(17:26):
pieces of life, which are you know, these organic molecules,
and then you need a way to put them together.
But a question I have for you, Katie, is like,
why is liquid water so unique? I mean, why can't
you have all these lego pieces come together in like
liquid methane or liquid some other kind of organic molecule. Yeah,
that's a really good question. And water is just a
(17:48):
really unique molecule that it has these properties that kind
of it's like it's one of the most incredible fluids ever.
It's on the like a miracle liquid that can do
it all. So first, just kind of on the molecular level,
it is polar, so it has a positively charged side
(18:09):
and a negatively charged side. So it binds really well
to itself because it's polar, So that's why water kind
of sticks together. But it also can bind to other
polar molecules and this sticky cohesion which is great for
all sorts of things that life needs, so transporting nutrients,
(18:31):
transporting molecules that life needs. So like an example on
the macro level would be a plant being able to
transport nutrients from its roots into the plant, but that
also happens on the cellular level of nutrients being transferred
to cells. And also it's great at breaking apart substances
(18:52):
into these molecules because it has these strong bonds. Basically,
you can think of oxygen as having these two little
hands and it really wants to hold hands with each other,
and then other molecules that are also willing to hold
hands with it. So if if something gets in the
way of it, like wanting to hold hands with itself
or with another polar molecule, it will actually break it apart,
(19:13):
like you know, like you won't get in the way
of me holding hands. And then that actually helps break
down molecules, and that's why it's called like the universal solvent,
and that can dissolve compounds which allows them to be
transported and used by cells. And basically it can also
I mean you can think of it as like lazy river,
(19:36):
but all of the inner tubes are like chemical molecules
like oxygen that are important to life, and this lazy
river water just like lets them be transported into cells
and then also breaks them apart so that they can
be actually used by cells. So life is a lazy river.
You're saying, yes, yes, that's that's how I approach life. Yeah,
but what's in the lazy river of water? Water and
(19:58):
a little bit of RUMs, Yeah, rivers. I feel like,
say you're gonna use water, You're not gonna use methane
or anything else. Crazy. It can't be solid water because
things don't flow, electricity doesn't conduct. Why can't you have
life which has a basis of like water vapor, like
steam based life. Why can't you get the same kind
(20:20):
of chemistry? I think it has to do with equilibrium
and the structure of cell membranes. So water inside of
cells actually plays this really important role, especially for cells
that have a membrane instead of a cell wall, so
it helps it maintain its shape without collapsing. So liquid
(20:41):
water has enough movement that it's relatively like it. It's
unlike frozen water, which is static and forms this like
crystalline structure. Liquid water has movement, but it's stable enough
that you can actually have basically like a little water
balloon which is the cell, and it does and explode
or or collapse. But with vapor, I think that's too chaotic.
(21:05):
It can't achieve that kind of equilibrium and that pressure.
So you don't want a frozen river. And then you
don't want a crazy river. You want the lazy river,
which is right in the middle. You don't want whitewater rapids, right,
just a lazy river. All right, let's get into um,
how rare it is to find water out there and
these organic molecules, and also let's get into where in
(21:28):
our sources and we might find these things. But first
let's take a quick break. All right, we're talking to
Katie Golden from the podcast Creature Features. You can find
(21:49):
it on iHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
And Katie, I'm talking to a little bit about water
and the things that the life as we know it needs,
the organic materials like carbon, nitrogen. Uh. And so I
guess my question I have is how rare are these
in our solar system? Like is the Earth the only
(22:10):
place you can find water and in these basic building
blocks or are there a lot of places in this
solar system where you might find these I mean, as
far as I know, it is tough to find liquid
water because we both have water on our planet, but
we're also close enough to the Sun where we are
nice and warm enough to have that liquid water. But
(22:33):
I think recently we're we're finding that there may be
liquid water, especially not necessarily on planets, although there's some
it seems like maybe there's some recent discoveries like maybe
we know Mars has frozen water, but we're not sure
whether any of that water is actually a liquid And
then also we may have some moons right that could
(22:57):
have some liquid water. I think there's sort of too
fascinating things to understand. They're one is like that water
itself as a substance is not rare at all in
our Solar system, Like in the form of ice. There
are huge stores. They're like enormous asteroids that are basically
just ice balls, and some of those planets out there, Neptune,
they're referred to as ice giants. So we have like
(23:20):
huge deposits of the actual chemical for water. Then the
second part is like does it exist in liquid form anywhere?
And here this is sort of fascinating because if you
just look at the surfaces of other planets, you don't
see oceans, right, no oceans of water except here on Earth.
And so to have liquid water, you need the water
which is everywhere but then you also need a heat source.
(23:42):
And so, as Katie said, recently, people have been thinking
about like having underground liquid water, which is a really
fascinating way for little creaters to potentially evolved. Okay, so
water is not that rare in our Solar system. And
by the way, I really want to see that space
comedy movie ice Balls sounds and so besides the Earth,
(24:03):
I think, um, you know, there's no maybe oceans liquid
oceans out there but that you can see on the
surface of other planets or moons. But there might be
underground oceans out there, right, and several moons and places
in the Solar System. So maybe Daniel, you want to
step us through some of these fun places. Yeah. One
of my favorite is Europa. This is a moon of Jupiter,
(24:24):
and it's amazing because if you look at its surface,
it's totally frozen. It's just like it's an ice crust, right,
It's like super thick ice ball. But the surface of
itself is very smooth. And anytime you see something in
the Solar System that's smooth, that means that it's new,
it's fresh. Because things in the Solar System are always
getting impacted by rocks and meteors and whatever. So if
(24:47):
it's smooth, it means it's fresh, it's newly formed, sort
of on the Solar System time scales. And they've done
a bunch of fly bys to try to understand what's
going on in Europa, and they discovered that it's covered
in a thick crust of it's about a hundred kilometers thick,
maybe thinner. And they've probed the inside of this moon.
This is incredible science and they're pretty sure that under
(25:09):
that ice crust is liquid water. So when you have
a planet that is maybe kind of far from the Sun,
so like the surface of the planet is frozen, how
are you getting that liquid water under this frozen surface? Potentially? Yeah, right,
you can't get the energy from the Sun, right, you
have an ice cube on the surface of Europa. It's
(25:30):
not gonna melt, right, It's gonna be frozen forever. And
so the heat comes from underneath, from the core of Europa,
and the heat comes from Jupiter. Actually, because Jupiter is
dumping energy into Europa using its gravitational field, it has
tidal forces, much the way that the Moon tugs on
the oceans of Earth. Jupiter is tugging on Europe. It's
(25:51):
squeezing it with its gravity, and that's squeezing creates a
lot of energy, keeps the insides of Europa sort of
fluid and hot, and so it's getting needed underneath, which
is why the the ocean is underneath the ice crust
on Europa. So it's sort of underground heat. Really, it's
not because it has you know, like Earth has a
molten cores, not because we have left overheated. It's like
(26:13):
it's all from the shaking that Jupiter gives Europa. Yeah,
it's all from the tidal fluxes there. Remember, these tidal
forces come about from the gravitational field. If you're further
from Jupiter, you feel less of a force, and if
you're closer to Jupiter, you feel more of a force.
And so if you're big enough that one side of
you is feeling more of a force than the other
side of you, then effectively Jupiter is like pulling you apart.
(26:35):
And so as Europa spins, Jupiter is like squeezing different
parts of it, and that keeps it hot and fresh.
And so they think that that there's a huge ocean
under there. They think that under the ice of Europa
there is as much liquid water as two to three
times all of Earth's oceans. That's incredible. But for life
to exist, it's not just liquid water that you need, right,
(26:58):
You need chemicals and need energy input. So do we
know what the chemical composition is in the water that
is fluid in Europa? We don't. We think that there's
some salt in there. And they've done these measurements where
they measure the electrical conductivity of the ocean, Like, how
do you know if there's liquid water under a hundred
(27:20):
kilometers of ice? Right? You can't see it. And so
what they do is they see the impact on Jupiter's
magnetic field when Europa moves past it, and ice has
a different conductivity than liquid water, which is a different
conductivity than salt water. So you can measure sort of
the phase of the water and how much salt there
is in there by measuring its electromagnetic properties, which is
(27:43):
sort of an incredible piece of science. So we think
there's a little of salt in there, but we don't
know the answer to your really good question, which is
like are there the organic molecules we need? But we
do have an awesome plan for figuring it out. Are
we going to drill down. We're gonna send physicists over,
We're gonna send biologists. Katie, put on your helmet. You're
(28:06):
going to Europe. Let me get my drama. Mean, well,
it's sort of a two stage plan. The first one
is to just fly by because this surface of Europa
cracks furally often and the water shoots up into space.
And we've actually seen this from Earth using hubble, we
can see these things, these water volcanoes, these cryo geysers,
(28:27):
shooting the water out into space like up to a
hundred or two hundred kilometers. So we're planning to send
something in. It's the Europa Clipper that will fly through
these guysers and sample when the water from Europa and
see are there things living in there? Wow? I know,
is that's gonna be so exciting. That's I guess simultaneous
(28:49):
mind blowing there we'll imagine be there right? Are these
going to be unmanned? Because I feel like this would
be way more exciting than driving through a car wash
to be able to fly through a guys and and
do you one win to you know, brush away the
line you're trying to detect. I don't know if you're
flying through it and just like a fish lands on
(29:11):
your windshield. You're like, there it is an alien fish.
I guess there's life. That's sort of the fantasy. No.
Much more likely, of course, is that they just get
some like frozen bit of life. But it's you know,
that's also a fascinating question. Like say you had a
sample of water from underneath Europe that was spewed out
into space, How would you tell if there's life in there?
(29:31):
I guess that's a question for you can like what
experiments would you do on this tea spoon of water
from Europa to tell me whether there was life in there.
One of the things that you would be looking for
would be some sort of organized structure of molecules. So
it's I mean, obviously you could potentially identify if you
had unicellular or multicellular life forms. You would, you know,
(29:55):
take a look at the samples under a microscope and
check it out. But if you want to see if
it has if it is starting to form life, or isn't,
like has the capability of forming life, you would probably
want to see what molecules it has in there, and
if it's able to form any of these protein chains
(30:18):
that are so important, and amino acid chains because we
think that probably early on in the development of life
r n A chains, So that's similar to DNA, but
it's just a single strand of amino acids we're able
to form, and that is basically how you, like you
(30:39):
mentioned earlier, you need that ability to record data and
pass it on in order to create complex life. And
so if we saw any evidence of these these chains forming,
I think that would be a really positive indicator that
you know, there could be life or it has the
(31:00):
possibility of life. And obviously if we found a big
old alien fish that would be that would be pretty positive,
but far more likely we wouldn't find any large life
forms just probabilistically in terms of it would more likely
be unicellular or maybe just like the beginnings of some
protein chains that could eventually form life. Really you don't
(31:23):
think it's likely, you know, that's kind of where the
science falls, is that there's a probability and and it's
it's more likely than not that it will be microscopic
and not a big fish. I think it's more about
just the time scale, right, like, because I think it's
very likely that there is life in the universe, but
for our like very short human time to be able
(31:46):
to intersect with other complex life, especially this close by,
when we know that complex life has been around much
less time than these these sort of archaic unite cellular organisms,
small organisms have been around. So it's just it's more
in terms of, like, you know, we have this little
(32:08):
short flight through the universe US humans, and then for
our our little flash in the pan time to intersect
with another flash in the pan time of other complex life,
it would be very lucky. I would say it's not impossible.
I just think that we would be incredibly lucky to
find complex life. But I think it's I think that
(32:30):
in terms of whether it exists somewhere, even if we
don't find it, I think it's almost inevitable that there
is some life out there. Just the question is are
we going to be lucky enough to you know, have
a have a missed meeting on on intergalactic craigslist like
this connection. I think that's a good point, and I
mostly agree, But I think also it's important to remember
(32:52):
that we just really don't know because everything we're basing
this off of is one example, which is that on Earth,
life form pretty quickly, and then complex life took a
long time, as you say, and then intelligent life, you know,
still has yet to form here on Earth, and and
so we don't know how long it will take to
form on another planet, but we don't know necessarily that
(33:12):
it will follow the pattern here on Earth. Right, maybe
Earth was unlucky. It took us unusually long to make
complex life. So we gotta keep an open mind and
and believe in this space fish man, I mean, especially
if it's not like life on Earth, right, Like, if
we have instead of it being carbon based, like being
silicon based life, it may function entirely differently, have a
(33:35):
totally different, much longer kind of time scale in terms
of how it evolves and develops. Yeah, but to get
back to the original question, like are there organic molecules
on Europa? We don't actually know. We could figure it
out by flying something through these geysers, But in general,
I think we do have a sense that there are
organic molecules out there. It's not like it's super rare
(33:56):
to find complex organic molecules in comments or in meteors,
so probably there's a lot of them out there. Do
you do you agree with that sentiment? Katie, Oh, absolutely, Yeah,
I think finding the building blocks for life, it makes
sense that it would exist. It's I think the reason
that we don't have life on every asteroid and every
(34:17):
planet that has these these complex molecules is that you
need a lot of other conditions to be met as well.
Like in terms of how life formed on Earth, it
was this very potentially kind of complex interplay of having
the right organic molecules, having just the right amount of
(34:38):
water and just the right amount of energy, and maybe
even like so you guys know, the sort of primordial
soup hypothesis. Yeah, I had some of this morning for sure.
That's definitely the very back of your free Jimmy. I
think there's done life growing there as well, extra chunky. Yeah,
(35:00):
but yeah, there's other ideas about how life could have formed,
and it's not like the idea that it just kind
of formed in a big boiling pot of stew is
a little bit hard to believe because once you start
to get a complex chain of amino acids or protein
to form and you have this chaotic environment, it could
(35:21):
just get blasted apart by other molecules before it has
a chance to form these complex structures. So there's actually
a theory called the primordial soup and sandwich. I kind
of like the term primordial bok Leva better because it's
basically these thin sheets of mica that like are like
(35:41):
these layers of a pastry or or if you want
layers of a sandwich, and in between these sheets of mica,
which is a type of thin sheeting mineral that then
you could get these organic compounds to kind of like
have these like little safe havens, these little hidy holes,
to be able to start forming these complex structure while
(36:02):
also having access to enough chemicals and enough water and
enough energy to actually have these biochemical processes take place.
I feel like we should just go for it and
call it the primordial big neck, the primordial club's handling.
This is what this is what happens when you charge
your signs. Just before, so, to wrap up on Europa, Katie,
(36:23):
let me just ask you a really quick question. Say
we have the organic molecules and we have energy source
that's heating this liquid water. What do you think do
you think there is microbial life right now in the
oceans of Europa. I want there to be, so I
would say yes, just because I'm very optimistic. I think
(36:44):
if we will it, it will happen. Yes, exactly, it's
you're officially in I think it's I mean, I think
it's almost basically inevitable that there's alien life somewhere, whether
it's on Europa, I think it it would be lucky
for it to be there, But it seems like it's very,
very possible, and I'm so excited for discoveries to be
(37:08):
made from there. Like I hope that we are able
to make some of these discoveries in my lifetime because
that would be so exciting. But yeah, I think there's
a definitely good chance that we have some some form
of life, especially if we see that all of these
basic requirements are met. Cool. Well, I'm glad we're optimistic,
and and we'll send you the our official Daniel and
(37:29):
Jorge explain the universe alien button commemorative souvenir. Alright, well, right,
let's get into other places where there could be life
in our solar system and whether or not that is
even remotely possible. But first let's take another quick break. Alright,
(37:56):
we're talking to Katie Golden, host of the podcast Creature.
Feature is about life and other places in our Solar System,
and so we talked about Europa. Now Daniel did maybe
give us a quick rundown of maybe other places in
the Solar System where we can find life and water
and moleculars. Well, the sort of three categories in general,
One is like moons of really big planets, and then
(38:18):
there are dwarf planets, and then there are like actual
straight up possibility for life on planets in the Solar System.
And so in the moon category, of course we had
Europa that's maybe number one, But then there are other contenders.
There's Titan. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn. It
itself is actually bigger than Mercury. So like, what, Yeah,
(38:39):
if I was a Titan booster, I'd be like, how
come I'm called the moon and Mercury is a planet?
And so there's water there too. Well we don't know,
but we think so. And Titan it's fascinating because it
has an atmosphere. It has a nitrogen atmosphere. You know
on Earth is a lot of nitrogen, and they're active
rivers and lakes and oceans on the surface of Titan.
Problem is they're not the oceans of water. Their oceans
(39:01):
of like methane and ethane, which is why I was
asking Katie earlier about whether you could have life in
like methane oceans. But it's sort of awesome because there's activity,
you know, it's like the surface of the planet has
motion on, it has stuff going on. But just like Europa,
we think that underneath those oceans is a shell of ice,
and underneath that is probably liquid water. So again we
(39:24):
have subsurface oceans that are probably under the ice on Titan.
I don't know, a sea of methane that sounds like
more like a smelly river more than a lazy river.
Have you been in a lazy river recently? They're mostly
smelling methane there, I'm sure. All right, Well, what are
some other places? Um, So there might be moons that
(39:46):
have also kind of like Europa, kind of a shell
and an underground ocean. But you're saying there might be
other kinds of places. Yeah, So Ganymede is another moon
like that, an icy crust, probably with a big ocean underneath.
And you know, you add all of these up and
it tells you that most of the liquid water in
the Solar System is probably not on Earth, which is
kind of mind blowing because until recently we thought it
(40:07):
might be the only place. But there are other things
that are not moons. Like one of my favorite places
in the Solar System is this dwarf planet called Series.
And it's not a TV series, it's you knows, of all,
we have a dwarf planet in our Solar system. Oh yeah,
I mean Pluto is now a dwarf planet, right it
got demoded. And there are others. There's an element of
(40:28):
the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter where some of
the chunks are big enough that they could called dwarf
planets and Series. If you remember, we saw this weird
feature on it a couple of years ago. They took
a picture of it and it looked like a pyramid,
and there was a moment there when I thought, this
is like the opening act of every science fiction novel.
You know, somebody sees a pyramid and an alien planet
(40:51):
and they go, what Hereles soundtrack from two thousand and one, Well,
this planet is amazing because it's twenty five percent water.
Like this dwarf planet is not tiny. It's a big
chunk of stuff and it's one fourth water. You know,
Earth is like a tiny fraction of Earth is water
in comparison, so this thing is basically a big or
(41:14):
liquid well again, it's a frozen crust, but we think
that underneath there could be a salty ocean. So it's
most of the oceans in the Solar system turned out
to be under frozen ice crusts, and this is another
place where we can have the same situation. And it
has a pyramid, so that's that's really And it turns
out there's this really shiny feature and it's this pyramid
(41:36):
shaped It looked really geometrical, but then you know, just
like the face on Mars and other fascinating features, when
you zoomed in and you've got better pictures from other angles,
it looked just like a word shaped rock. So it
turns out probably not a signal from the aliens, but
another place in the Solar system where you have a
lot of organic molecules and probably liquid water. So it's
(41:56):
a great place to get started. I mean, if you're
a young microbe you're looking to start our family, you know,
this place is everything you're looking for if your life
try series, Welcome to series your new home. That's right,
And then you've got another couple of small moons like
Callisto and in slats which I don't even know if
are you supposed to pronounce in slatist like you know,
(42:17):
like um something you would see on the menu to
tak area is. I don't know, but I guess my
question for you guys is you know a lot of
these moons. It seems like Earth is the only place
that you can see from space liquid ocean, and so
a lot of these places have like underground oceans, and
that's how maybe life could be there. But could life
exist in an underground ocean, you know, without you know,
(42:38):
sunlight or you know some sort of you know, heat
and wind and things like that. Yeah, I mean absolutely,
we see it on our own planet right where we
have deep sea life and we don't necessarily life doesn't
necessarily need sunlight to provide it with energy as long
as it's getting some kind of energy. So we see
life around the clustered around these deep sea events that
(43:02):
are spewing energy and nutrients down at the bottom of
the ocean where there's no light and life drives there.
And so you could definitely have a planet that is
not getting any sunlight on its oceans. But if they
have some form of energy down in like near the
(43:23):
core of the planet. You know, maybe these deep see
events spewing some heat and and nutrients into these oceans.
You can absolutely have life. It sort of comes along
for free this source of energy because if you're asking
for liquid water, if you're starting from that requirement, then
to make the water liquid to avoid it being iced,
you need some energy source, and that's either solar energy
(43:45):
or you know, internal energy from tidal forces or from
having a hot core or something. So if you have
liquid water, that by definition requires you have an energy
source for life to get start. Interesting, you just made
me think that maybe I wonder if there are aliens
in the ocean of Europa having a podcast discussing whether
or not life could exist on surface water like they
(44:05):
have on Earth. Well, you know, another fascinating question is
if you are alien intelligent life that grew up under
an ocean, so you never saw the sky, right then
could you even imagine the vastness of the universe? What
is it like to drill through that for the first
time and stick your head out above the ocean and
see that there's a whole universe out there? What a
(44:26):
what a crazy sort of philosophical moment for those aliens,
do you think they may maybe they could have like telescopes.
Could you build a civilization with technology with telescopes that
could see through the ice shell and so then maybe
that's how they could know about the wider universe. It's
a hundred kilometers thick in a lot of places, so
that'd be a pretty impressive telescope. I think you'd have
to drill well. I wonder how they would evolve in
(44:48):
terms of sight and the use of light, especially if
they're not getting light from the sun. So we do
know that deep sea animals on Earth, while they don't
get sunl they can have these biochemical processes that result
in bioluminescence, which then provides them light to see and
(45:09):
also light to potentially lure prey into their doom, like
with the deep sea angler fish. It's got that beautiful
bulb of bioluminescence that it uses to lure prey. But
basically what that means is you could have a group
of life or a group of animals or no, I
don't want to calm animals, but life whatever form it
may take, that doesn't get to see sunlight. But if
(45:31):
you have the right biochemical processes to create bioluminescence, they
could potentially evolve eyes because then they can use that
bioluminescence to navigate and find prey or find mates. So
I think that's a fascinating kind of idea of like,
how would you evolve the ability to see if you
don't have sunlight? That sounds like a great science fiction novel.
(45:54):
I'm looking forward to reading that. There's another possibility, which
is that life could have started out on the surface.
It would have been that the word liquid oceans in
the Solar System, not on Earth, for example, on Mars,
and life evolved in those scenarios and now is underground.
So one of my favorite possibilities is Mars because as
listener as to podcasts, no, Mars doesn't have a magnetic field,
(46:16):
it really doesn't have much atmosphere, so any water on
the surface of Mars will either just sublimate or freeze.
But we do think that there is water again underground
on Mars. They detected on Mars a sub glacial lake.
It's like just two kilometers below the surface and it's
like twenty kilometers wide. So there's a stable body of
(46:39):
liquid water on Mars. And if a billion years ago
there were the conditions for life on the surface, that
it is possible that in that lake underground there are
you know, remnants of that archaic life still swimming around, right.
And there's even the theory that maybe life on Earth
came from Mars, like maybe a meteor hid Mars and
a chunk of water or rock or ice from there
(47:01):
came to Earth with life, and that's how we have life.
It certainly would explain a lot about how weird people are, right,
we're all Martians, all aliens, but wouldn't we be aliens
to aliens? Nice? All right? Well, um, and I think
there's a couple other places that sound interesting, Tritton, even Venus,
Daniel can have maybe water or life. Yeah, And this
(47:23):
is something that one of our listeners pointed out that
the surface of Venus is crazy intense. It's you know,
hundreds of degrees, it's covered with sulfuric acid. You do
not want to be alive on the surface of Venus.
But and the pressure is really intense. There's like so
much atmosphere that you're getting instantly crushed. So it's not
a place that's very hospitable to life. But you go
(47:44):
above the surface, like in the clouds, like fifty kilometers
above the surface, then the pressure is lower. You're above
the sulfuric acid clouds, and you might have life sort
of floating in water droplets that far above the surface.
Does that sound plausible, Katie, to evolve life or create
life and in a cloud. I mean, if you have
water droplets that are large enough to have tiny microbes
(48:09):
floating around in liquid water, then I think that is
certainly possible. That's that's crazy to think about, like these
little tiny floating micro bioms of little water droplets. But yeah,
I mean life can be so teeny tiny, it can
exist in a droplet of water. And we know that
we can take a little drop of water, put it
(48:31):
on a microscope slide and see a bunch of little
guys swim around in there. I've I've done that. I've
looked at dinal flagelets. It's amazing how many of those
guys you can cram into one little tiny drop of water.
So if you have water in clouds, I think it
would have to be the right temperature, it would have
to be stable enough to actually, you know, have large
(48:53):
enough droplets for enough life to be in. But yeah,
I think it's possible your whole entire specy, decent, civilization,
and life could just exist in a water droplet. It's
kind of like a like a like a city in
a bottle to Yeah, and then you smash up against
another droplet and you've got all of a sudden new
neighbors or new roommates. Maybe to them, that's like two
(49:16):
galaxies colliding, or the premise for a good reality show
on Venus. Yeah, we'll call it iceballs to just because
you know, I like the name. All right, Well, it
sounds like the ingredients for life are out there for sure,
like in other planets and moons of other planets in
our Solar system. I guess you know, um, maybe a
(49:39):
larger question that we can just wrap up here is,
you know, what are the chances of life, Like we
have all the ingredients definitely for sure in our Solar system,
is it likely? I know, we we optimistically think that
there is probably life, But what does this sign say
about the likelihood of their being life out there? Yeah?
(49:59):
I mean I think it is. I mean, you guys
can speak more to the expansiveness of the universe, but
I think because we have so many chances and so
much time that it's almost inevitable that there is going
to be life somewhere else in the universe. I think
the thing that is much more difficult is the timing
(50:22):
of it, whether our time in the universe is going
to overlap with life somewhere where we can measure it.
So there could be life out there simultaneously with us
in an area where we can't find it and can't
measure it. There could be life somewhere right next door.
But it's just it happened either before after our time here.
(50:42):
But yeah, there is there is a chance for sure
that we are going to overlap with some form of life,
especially if we loosen our definition of what life is,
and it's not doesn't have to be some green little
aliens with funny hats. I totally agree with what you said,
and I think a lot about this question. You know,
how do you go from the precursors to actually having life?
(51:03):
And I just wish that we understood the science of
that better, that we could reproduce that in the lab
or understand whether it's likely or unlikely, because we only
really have this one experiment, and as you say, it
could be that life started many times on Earth and
didn't take hold, then once actually got a foothold and
then spread and became us. We just don't know. So
I did a little informal survey where I asked basically
(51:25):
all the biologists I know what they think about this question,
And the thing that strikes me is that they're all optimistic,
like they think the way you do that, like life
is probably inevitable. I don't know if that's they're biased
just because they are alive, and so they're like pro life.
They've got a probe being alive bias exactly pro prob
being alive, not pro life. That's a whole different philosophical discussion.
(51:49):
But it makes me wonder, you know, why they all
think that's true. We don't really have a solid scientific
argument for the likelihood of life starting given these precursors,
but everybody has this sense that it might be inevitable,
or maybe they just wanted to be inevitable, because the
alternative is scary that even with the precursors and our
own solar system, we could be the only things alive.
(52:12):
But the answer is that we you know, we won't
know until we look, until we send these missions out
to Europa and sample those cryo geysers. Until we drill
down underneath the ice on some of these moons, until
we sample that lake on Mars, we won't actually know
the answer. Until then, we're just you know, all informed
podcasters speculating wildly. I think also the fact that our
(52:32):
measly little planet has been capable of producing such incredible
complexity over what is kind of a short period of
time on the scale of the universe makes it really
feel like that cannot be a fluke if you have
the necessary ingredients, and our little tiny Earth was able
(52:53):
to do all of this in just a few billion years, Like,
it has to be happening elsewhere. How could we possibly
be that special? I think is, and I think there's
a certain logic to that, Like, how can we evolve
this incredibly bio diverse planet with these ingredients and there
not be some form of life elsewhere where they also
(53:13):
have similar ingredients? Yeah? How special can we be? Really?
I feel like life may be inevitable is kind of
like the optimists extrovert point of view, you know, I
wonder if introverts out there might look at it more
as life is unavoidable. There's no escaping life. But either way,
(53:35):
it sounds like, um, there's a lot to look forward
to in terms of exploring our solar system and learning
more about what's on the surface of these frozen, crusty planets. Yeah,
and it's fascinating because it's either out there or it's not.
Like right now, there are maybe things swimming around in
liquid bodies in our solar system. And the only thing
(53:55):
that keeps us from knowing the answer from cracking this
crazy ancient miss three these our willingness to go and look.
These things don't even cost that much money, you know,
a few hundred million dollars. We could know the answer
to this question that every human has been asking basically
since forever. So if you think that's important to talk
to your elected officials and support this kind of research.
(54:17):
Al right, Well, uh, that was super interesting. Thank you
Katie for joining us today. Again. Katie, your podcast is
called Creature Features And so where can people find it? Yeah,
I mean it's on this network, on I Heart Radio.
You can find it on iHeart Radio website, the app,
or you know, on Apple podcasts where wherever you get
your podcasts. And yeah, we answer a lot of questions
(54:40):
about life here on Earth on that podcast with comedy
and in diseases, right, also, that's right, more comedy than
diseases generally. Well, I mean you also talked about the
viruses and fun and interesting things that affect the animal behaviors. Absolutely. Yeah,
like we we talked about sometimes serious subjects about our
(55:02):
health and and the planet's health. But yeah, we we
always try to bring it back to the things that
really bring us together and the common behavior as you
can find in life on Earth, and it's it's really fun.
Who knows, maybe in a couple of years in the future,
you'll be having an episode about life in other planets. Yes,
(55:22):
space fish, don't get them on your windshield. I like
to eat buy space fish with the side of ice balls.
All right, Thank you Katie, and thank you guys for
joining us. We hope you enjoyed dad, see you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
(55:45):
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. No
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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