Five Reasons to Never Take Your Space Helmet Off

You've consumed enough science fiction to know something the average red shirt doesn't: Never take your space helmet off on a foreign planet. But if you're still tempted to breathe deep the gathering gloom, how about five compelling scientific reasons not to? Join Robert and Joe as they discuss 'Alien: Covenant' and explore some very compelling biological and radiological reasons to remain helmeted on an alien hell world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to blow your Mind from how stop
works dot com. Hey you wasn't discussable your mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and boy
do we have a treat for you today because Robert
and I saw Alien Covenant this past weekend, right, yeah,

(00:24):
on a Saturday, wasn't Yeah, it was. So we're going
to try to avoid major plot spoilers, but this episode
today is going to uh spring off of an idea
that came up when we were watching the movie. So
we are going to talk about the movie a little
in more general terms. But if you absolutely cannot bear
to hear anything at all until you see it, you
might want to pause here and come back once you've

(00:45):
seen it. Like I said, no specific plot spoilers, but
I mean, we've got to talk about the movie, right yeah,
I mean, and I don't agree with me talking about
any more depth than you would get out of the
trailers for it. And there were so many trailers for
this film. I feel yeah, I feel like this was
the most part of it. May just be those sort
of the algorithms of YouTube advertisements, but I felt like

(01:06):
I was absolutely bombarded to the point where I just
really wanted to respond and say like, look, I I'm
on board, I'm gonna see it. Just stop making me
watch trailers for it, because I'm gonna it's gonna reach
the point where I'm gonna start losing interest. So Ridley
Scott did the same thing with Prometheus where he didn't
just do trailers, but he did scenes that take place
before the movie starts. Sit with him and that thing.

(01:28):
I don't know. I think maybe part of it just
like shooting a lot of footage, and then with this
film in particular, I felt like there was this is
so one of the things with the film, like Alien Covenant,
is that by no means was just a small movie.
This is a large studio production. And and over the
years Ridley Scott has has proven himself one of these

(01:51):
directors who knows how he has the clout to work
within that system, but he seems to know how to
to cater to expectations like you don't not that I
follow this kind of thing just religiously, but you know,
I don't remember every hearing stories about Ridley Scott's battle
with the studio over something like he seems to Yeah,

(02:11):
it may have happened that. I don't recall hearing about that.
It's not like hearing about David Fincher's struggles on Alien
three with Fox. Yeah, and part of that is him
having cloud. You know, he's Ridley Scott. He's essentially, you know,
a living legend of of the cinema. But but I
also get the sense that he is willing to he's

(02:33):
willing to work. He's willing to adjust that or to
um to to to adjust the settings, the trajectory on that,
on that that vision he has in order to see
it to the theater. What you're saying is he'll play ball. Yeah, yeah,
I get the impression that he's a he's a guy
who will play ball. Okay, So here's so it is
an alien movie. I will say it's an alien movie

(02:54):
in the Alien franchise. That actually felt kind of like
an alien movie. And here's my short review. Almost all
the things I can think of to say about it
are criticisms. I felt that it had really similar problems
with Prometheus. With the script, the human characters are underdeveloped.
Their personalities and motivations didn't seem to be consistent from

(03:15):
one scene to another. Parts of the plot definitely went on.
And this is a cliche I hate to use it,
but it is the best descriptive term for it. It
was on autopilot in certain parts, but I just really
liked it. I enjoyed it nonetheless, despite all that it
was beautiful to look at. Of course, Ridley Scott's always
a great set designer, great at the visual aspect of

(03:38):
his movies, creative and interesting things to explore. In the
first half at least, I love the gleeful sense of
body horror repaired with this classically ponderous mad scientist vibe,
especially in the mid section of the movie. And Michael
Fastbender is just heroically fun so to the extent this

(03:59):
makes any sense, I felt like the movie was somehow
both stupid and an intensely pleasing work of art. Okay,
well this actually this in ways lines up with some
of my feelings about it. It was definitely for me
a film that I saw it, I wasn't sure how
I felt about it, but I keep thinking about it

(04:19):
every day since I saw it, and and I feel like,
for me at this point in my life and only
the way I interact with films like that's how I
tend to judge it is it something more than like
the structural completeness of a film, or the or the
character motivations and the character development, Like is there something
in the movie that I came back to because there's

(04:40):
for instance, there's so many just sort of paint by
number of superhero films, and there are a lot of
fun I enjoy seeing them, but it's well, I mean,
I'm into them. I get excited about him. I'm excited
to say, see the next Guardians of the Galaxy film
whenever it's you know, I can watch it on an
airplane or however it comes together. I enjoy seeing them,

(05:01):
and then I don't. I don't chew on them afterwards.
They kind of go in in in, one year out
the other kind of right. So with Alien Covenant, I
kept thinking about in terms of of of Scott's vision
for this film and the fact that he you know,
like we said, well play ball um. Because it's because

(05:24):
just as the the Malevolent Organism and the Alien series
draws its form via the life forms that it annihilates,
so too does Alien Covets Covenant Seema a chimerical beast.
So it's a it's a Prometheus sequel and Body, but
with appindages that call back to Aliens Alien three, even
a dash of a VP and there for good measure,

(05:46):
and you know, the monster's form varies, enabling the creature
to better consume it's victims, but the genetic mission remains
the same. This you know, unstoppable will of weaponized evolution,
created and recreated by those who would take on the
mantle of gods. And it's such really Scott, I feel
like he allowed Covenants form to encompass fan and studio

(06:08):
demands for more, for more monsters, for dashes of past
installments in the franchise, but still at its heart, it's
a Prometheus sequel. It's the the second installment in a
new film Mark that one commentator on called called quote
a weirdly religious science fiction universe. And uh, you know,
I'm me personally, I love both space horror and virtually

(06:30):
anything that's weirdly religious, So you know, I'm on this
bull's eye for me to h Yeah. I love it
though with I mean the those aspects you mentioned, I
love that they're all there, but they also, um would
you say, so many of them are not followed through
on It's almost like they set something up to happen
in the movie and then it just never happened. Yeah,

(06:52):
I mean I would be interested to learn more about
sort of the behind the scenes and what was added,
what was changed, because for instance, there's a there's a
shower scene not to not just spill anything later in
the film, and it's very a VP, and it feels
feels a bit tacked on. It's like the moment it goes.
Multiple reviewers have commented on this that at some point
the movie suddenly becomes a slasher movie. It's like a

(07:14):
Friday movie for a few minutes, and that's sort of
how it felt to me. Yeah, and uh, and I
also have to say that when it comes to the
characters of this film, like really, this is a film
about two androids and uh and and to a and
to a lesser extent, a third character who is Um,
who is sort of like the associate captain who ends

(07:36):
up taking over the Billy credit character. Uh. Everyone else
is is far less developed. But at the core, I
mean a film about to androids sort of struggling to
figure out like where they stand in relationship to the
to these these these lesser creators are they are there
there there their guardians or are they there destroyers and

(07:58):
know I'm I'm I'm all on board of that kind
of thing. Yeah, okay, so we got to get into
the meat of the episode. But one final comment about
the movie. Do you think they're ever going to stop
with the the title format of franchise named colon abstract now?
And I'm so sick of it. Alien Resurrection, Alien Coming,
and all the franchises do it now. It's you know,

(08:19):
it's like, uh, Terminator, Genesis whatever. It makes me feel
like the next one is going to be called like
Alien Gamification. It just feels like such a product I hated.
I wish they could give each movie its own title. Well,
the last one was Prometheus, so thumbs up for that.
I get the feeling that it is about tying everything
into this overarching brand. Yeah, I think it's just to

(08:42):
get people in the theaters. And I mean sometimes we
use the NOWNI nown colon additional keywords, uh template when
say titling episodes of this podcast, because a part of
it is like I've only got so much space and
I really need to convey what this is about. So
Alien's Colon Covenant that lets you know that it's going
to involve aliens, it's gonna involve Colon's, involve something quasi religious,

(09:07):
and that's all you need to know. But if we
were to really follow this format, every episode of ours,
somebody called something like stuff to blow your mind colon respiration,
which is sort of what we're gonna get into today. So,
without spoiling anything significant about the plot, I wanted to
point out something this movie movie has in common with Prometheus.
So it's got space explorers, that's no surprise. Astronauts go

(09:29):
into other planets and they just plunge their faces straight
into the atmosphere and biosphere of an alien planet without protection.
And Prometheus they are these scenes where they take their
helmets off for no reason I can really remember. I
think they're just for the heck of it. In Covenant,
they just walk out of their landing vehicle without suits

(09:50):
of any kind. There. They just weren some hats and
some overcoats. Now, I'm fine with characters behaving irrationally or
unrealistically in horror or in sci fi movies. I think
that's a pretty common element and I'm okay with it. Yeah,
I mean basically the whole movie Covenant, it begins with
a hey, should we go check this out? Scenario? Like

(10:11):
so many horror films, And if your characters were smart
enough to stay on the path, right, then they would
never we would have no movie because what was that
noise in the bushes? And most horror stories are about
going off the path? Should we go off the path?
Should we go explore that? And yeah, you don't do that,
you never get out of the boat. But if you
never got out of the boat, we would have no film, right,

(10:32):
So I'm fine with that happening, providing that I get
provided that there's some consistent level of realism. Most modern
sci fi movies I would say, have a very healthy
dose of fantasy in them. And that's just one expression
of that here. But today we wanted to explore the
topic of why, if you're an actual exoplanet colonist or explorer,

(10:53):
you really shouldn't want to take your helmet off or
otherwise open yourself up to the alien environment and in
the sea of unknown possibilities that could come flooding in
upon you. Right. Uh. One thing to keep in mind
here is that that we we're definitely looking at why
you should keep that that helmet on and the dangers

(11:13):
that are inherent to any any kind of alien environment
we might experience. However, I feel like an important caveat
to all this is that anytime we're looking at a
fictional people landing on a fictional world taking their helmet off,
I always have to wonder, Okay, would any sufficiently advanced
civilization capable of not only interplanetary but interstellar travel, would

(11:36):
they have all that worked out? Like, would they have
sufficient scanning technology to know just like down to the
finest detail that the air was breathable? Uh? Well, without
spoiling too much about Alien Covenant, obviously they don't know that.
But they're also religious fanatics. Not to have played David's
advocate too much, but but they are. They are driven

(12:00):
by religious optimism in that film. So what you're saying,
Robert is you're a little more gung ho. I think
maybe you're saying, breathe in, breathe in, Brothers. I'm thinking
that if the if your technology is not picking it up,
if there's a danger out there that you're interstellar technology
is incapable of picking up on, let it act fast.

(12:20):
Because movies movie movies like Alien Covenant show it's like
there's no there's no real victory, and being a survivor,
it's better to be that that individual that gets that
has something jump out of him rather quickly. Right, at
least you go out with a with a burst. Yeah,
a big, chesty burst. Okay, Well, so maybe we should
start by just acknowledging the concept of a space suit. Yeah,

(12:44):
it's kind of it's kind of easy to forget why
we have them because we end up just focusing on
how cool they look most of the time. Right, So,
a space suit is I think I remember reading a
NASA resource at some point a long time ago that
put it like this, and it was it's a spacecraft
for one person. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Uh. So,
for example, the extra vehicular mobility units that are worn

(13:07):
by astronauts. When you've got to go outside and perform
external work on the International Space Station and do a spacewalk,
you put this suit on and it cools your body.
It Uh. It supplies you with oxygen and breathable atmosphere.
It purges the CEO two that you exhale when you're
out there. Uh. It shields you from radiation, It shields

(13:27):
you from impacts from space debris. So, and these are
all very important things. But another important aspect of any
type of suit for extra vehicular activity when you're out
exploring the cosmos is that it's a contained environment. It's
supposed to create a sealed barrier between external conditions and
internal conditions. So this sort of means making the inside

(13:50):
of the suit as earth like as possible, no matter
what the outside of the suit is. And of course
this would also mean keeping out things that really just
don't go well with your Earth adapted biology, for example,
for and dust, gas, particles, radiation, and potentially life. Yeah,

(14:10):
it comes back to the idea of like the spacecraft itself,
it's it's the idea that we as humans evolved not
only to live on Earth, but to live within a
very um thin portion of the atmosphere and under very
specific environmental settings. And uh and and so there are
places on our own Earth whereof we we go, we perish,
and therefore we have to we have to bring part

(14:32):
of our world with us, even if it's just a
skin layer in a suit. Yeah. Now I can totally
understand the impulse to want to take the space suit off.
I can imagine if I was somebody colonizing an exoplanet
that was, you know, that we thought would be habitable,
that we could start living there. Obviously, protocols would be
to maintain that seal, to to keep the quarantine as

(14:54):
long as there was any doubt whatsoever that what was
outside could hurt us. But you just can't live that way, right,
I mean, anytime you go outside, you've got to wear
the suit. You you can't touch the rocks and the trees,
You can't interact by contact, by respiration, by anything except
through this barrier with the planet you live on. And

(15:16):
that sounds like a horrible existence. Well, I don't know,
you know, environmental standards are changing a little every day, Joe,
So we'll check to get back in on this in
a few years. Yeah. So, I guess now we should
get into the five reasons that we've come up with,
at least why you should really not want to take
your helmet off on an alien planet. This would be

(15:37):
a good list to have, you know, in in in
reduced form as a sticker on the inside of your helmet.
And then if when you're tempted to, when you're overcome
by the beauty of uh, you know, exo planet. I
love it when an exo planet has a nice diabolical
name like uh in Furness b yeah or Manta Bolga six,

(15:58):
you know whatever it happens to be. When you when
you in there and you think, ah, this place with
this uh this creepy name is actually rather beautiful. I'm
gonna get a breath of fresh air. Look to the
lower left hand portion of your visor and go through
this list, Pope satan Alpi six e. Alright, so reason
number one is going to be the obvious one, the

(16:20):
one that you probably don't even need to think about.
It's gonna be atmospheric gas. Can I breathe this atmosphere
that I am seemingly moving through? And we should be generous?
This is one that sci fi almost always takes care of.
There's a line in the script where somebody says, atmospheric
conditions nominal the air, we can breathe it. But it's

(16:40):
worth looking at what the atmospheres of other planets generally
look like. Jean Paul Starchers said, you know, Hell is
other people once you start looking beyond Earth. I propose
an update, which is Hell is other people's planets, because
we are just so tightly adapted to the earth biosphere
and and and it's very particular balance of gases, and

(17:02):
to upset that balance significantly would be to change the
properties of Earth and thus to change the biosphere. So
we need our atmosphere to be the way it is
seventy eight percent nitrogen, one percent oxygen, about point nine
percent are gone, and point one percent trace gases primarily
carbon dioxide, plus a lot of variation in water vapor

(17:23):
in the air. Now, we don't know exactly what the
atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets are going to be. We know
we can see some gas giants orbiting other stars in
the galaxy, and those of course are going to be
composed generally like gas giants are like, they'll have hydrogen
and helium atmospheres. But as far as the terrestrial exoplanets

(17:43):
are go out there, we we don't know exactly what
their atmospheres are going to be like. If you look
at other terrestrial planets in our Solar system, you do
start to get a picture that might be local to us,
But we don't know Venus atmospheres about carbon dioxide, yeah,
not good, not so nice. Mars has an incredibly thin atmosphere,

(18:05):
it's you know, a one percent or kind of atmosphere,
and what's there is about nine carbon dioxide. Yeah, and
of course with venus to the reality is that if
you're breathing that on the surface, you're essentially standing in
a pressure cooker too, so so yeah, But but you're
just talking about just the breatheability of the the air, right. Uh.

(18:27):
And even if you arrived on Earth at a different
point in Earth's history, you would have encountered a very
different atmosphere. But the primeval surface of Earth, say about
four billion years ago, we also had an atmosphere of
much higher CEO two concentration. Before the biogenic oxygenation of
Earth about two billion years ago you had the original terraforming. Now,

(18:47):
carbon dioxide is obviously not good to breathe. That is
what you exhale. It's a waste product of of human respiration,
and breathing it in can lead to bad effects at
low concentrates, and death or asphyxiation or poisoning at high concentrations.
I found an interesting chart put together based on research

(19:09):
on carbon dioxide toxicity, and the chart was made by
the International Volcanic Health Hazard Network and it's got a
sort of ascending scale of c O two concentration in
the air you're breathing, and what the effects would be.
So they say, you know, two to three percent of air,
you're not really going to notice what's going on, but
there will be a shortness of breath if you exert yourself.

(19:32):
If at three percent exposure, you're breathing gets deeper, uh,
three to five percent exposure, you're breathing, rhythm speeds up
and you might get headaches. At five percent exposure, your
breathing gets really labored. You're gonna have headaches, sweating, heavy pulse.
At seven point five percent exposure, you're gonna have really

(19:53):
rapid breathing, increased heart rate, headaches, sweating, dizziness, shortness of breath,
loss of strengthen the muscles, probably some mental fuzziness, like
inability to work things out in your head. You're gonna
get sleepy and hear ringing in your ears. At eight
you get the really bad stuff vertigo, vomiting, loss of consciousness, uh,

(20:16):
possibly death in this range, and then at you're gonna
have convulsions, rapid loss of consciousness and death. Of course,
this is a situation too in control environments where the
CEO two level can can creep up if if things
are are are out of wax stays in a submarine environment, yeah,

(20:36):
or in the space Shuttle or this or like the
Apollo spacecraft. If you don't have your CEO too scrubbers
working you, you are in for a world of pain.
And so, as we said earlier, this is something the
sci fi movies usually do address. They're not just gonna
land on a planet with the carbon dioxide atmosphere, opened
the doors and say breathe in. Well, unless it's I

(20:56):
feel like it. It It happened all the time. And track though,
right what they beamed down somewhere and they couldn't breathe.
I don't know. I mean, it's been a long time
since I've really mainline some trek, but it seems like
they're always just breathing the heck out of any atmosphere
they came across, like every world was breathable. Uh. And
maybe there's a maybe there was always an explanation or
maybe there's you know, some sort of transhumanist read where

(21:18):
they've all had like an operation that makes them able
to breathe carbon dioxide. Yeah, like if if this were
Banks's Culture series. I'm sure that would be the explanation. Well, Okay,
they're members of the culture and their their body is
automatically adjusting to some different atmospheric condition. Yeah, but I
wanna posit that you should still be careful here. So
imagine you are in this sci fi spaceship and you've

(21:40):
arrived at a planet and they analyzed the atmosphere. Hopefully
they've analyzed it before you went to the planet, because
they can do that via the spectral analysis of the
colors of light that reflect off of it. But you
should arrive there and well you arrive there and they say, okay,
oxygen atmosphere, you can breathe it, it still might not
be safe to take that suit off, even just in

(22:02):
terms of atmospheric gas, because even though ambient carbon dioxide
levels might not be at a concentration to cause poisoning
or asphyxiation, there could be other possibilities of localized events.
So one thing I want to point out is on
August twenty one nine, there was one of the weirdest

(22:22):
and most tragic natural disasters in modern history, and this
was near Lake Nyos in Cameroon, and Robert I think
you've probably read about this before. I believe there's a
House to Works article on this. There is, there is.
This is one of the things I looked at. So,
Lake Nios is a crater lake. It's resulting from volcanic
eruption several hundred years ago, and on this day in
August ninety six, the lake suddenly exploded. The lake exploded,

(22:46):
sending towers of water up into the air, and it
produced this cloud of gas that rushed out of the
lake into the surrounding countryside, and it ended up killing
more than seventeen hundred people in the nearby town of Nios.
Nearly every person was killed. Only six people survived, and
the killer was carbon dioxide. Now, lakes and volcanic craters

(23:09):
often accumulate dissolved carbon dioxide in the water, but in
most cases it gets absorbed into the atmosphere more gradually,
right it rises up and gets released. In this case,
it looks like what happened is that the water under
high pressure at the bottom of this lake began to
accumulate more and more dissolved CEO two it really high
concentrations without ever releasing it. And then some unknown event

(23:33):
could have been a small earthquake or in anything. It
caused the lake to suddenly release all that carbon dioxide
at once, and this massive cloud of poison gas that
traveled at about sixty miles per hour across the surface
of the land. So fortunately now that lake has de
gassing pipes and it's got an alarm system that monitors
the c O two at the bottom of the lake water,

(23:54):
meaning you can prevent something like this from happening in
the future. But it goes to show that local atmospheric
conditions can be altered in a very deadly way at
a moment's notice. So if you're walking around on a
rocky alien planet with breathable oxygen atmosphere, should you also
consider the frequency and location of geological outgassing of this type? Yeah? Yeah,

(24:17):
this sounds very much like a planet that might be
encountered in the chronicles of Riddick World, like a a
a regular you know, occurrence that they can sort of
plan the action scene around. Yeah, like, oh, everybody, since
you start going off. It starts going off because of
a big CEO two surge is about to occur, and
then they're having to stop in the fight sequence and

(24:37):
get their masks on. Can I admit something you're probably
gonna hate me for was that I've never seen a
Riddick movie. Oh, You've got a remedy to this joke,
at least with the first two. Yeah, how many are
there is? So wait it's it's pitch Black Chronicles Narnia
of Riddic Chronicles of Narnia rita, uh and what else?
There's more after I think that the third one is
just Riddick, and then then it's just ridd It's gonna

(24:59):
be rid It or Dick. And the next one, I guess, um, yeah,
I mean the first one. The first one is a
fun action film with some cool critters in it. Uh,
And many people hold it up just as an objectively
you know, good sci fi action flick monsters. Yeah, and
the monsters are good in that one. The second one
is a bit silly, a little flash Gordiny. But but

(25:22):
I actually probably enjoyed that one the most just because
it plays it plays two things I like, and the
kind of a goofy um a space opera scenario. Yeah,
and the villain And that one's really good too. Yeah yeah, okay,
I'll have to check it out. But they often encounter
the scenario where like in the first one, the whole
deal is that the planet has these uh, these these

(25:45):
plot uh centric periods of light and darkness, and the
monsters only come out at night. But when they make
the next one, they should definitely consider a a an
explosive CEO two planet because I can I can picture
it working beautifully. Well, that is one thing I guess
we don't know. So in this episode we're going to
be raising things that could be possibilities on unknown planets,

(26:05):
but we don't really know if there are planets out
there where there is very frequent CEO two out gassing
all over the planet. On Earth, this can't happen, and
we've just shown examples of how it can be deadly,
but it doesn't happen all that often. It's not like
if you're just generally landing on the surface, you'd expect
to encounter that, because, yeah, you can imagine a scenario

(26:26):
in which this is this is every day. This is
just a regular part of life on Chernobyl six or
whatever the name of the planet is, and a human
is just not going to be evolved to survive that,
right uh. And and it is something that you might
expect to happen on geologically active planets all over the place.
So you've got an icy mantle, it's got materials in
it like a CEO two or sulfur dioxide that erupting

(26:49):
clouds the dispersed on the surface. And it's true on Earth,
lots of the deaths that are due to volcanic eruptions
and other geologic events like that are not always from
the things you think of like lava flows, mud and
pyroclastic flows and ash fall, but due to poison gas,
inhalation and suffocation. And you can even see that there

(27:10):
are other objects in our Solar system that have eruptions
like this, like Jupiter's moon, Io is incredibly geologically active
as full of volcanoes on its surface that erupt with
sulfurous glee. Yeah, and on this other world they just
might be used to it. I'm reminded of the scene
on The Simpsons where Marge just casually it's a Treehouse
of Horror episode where March just casually says, oh, it's
the fog that turns people inside out, creeping in, you know,

(27:33):
and and in this world, yeah, that's just the fog
that turns people inside out. It just happens every now
and then. It's just how life goes. And uh, either
you're you're evolved to uh to roll with the punches
or you're not. That's they sing a song though. They
just one sniff of that fog and you're side out. Yeah,
it's a big dance number with a dog in it. Yeah,

(27:55):
and coming going after Abe Simpson's exposed Visra. Yeah, it's
good times anyway. Okay, well, there are some possibilities, but
I think we should take a quick break and when
we come back we will look at probably the biggest
thing to consider. All Right, we're back, so Robert, we

(28:17):
assume that the gases of the atmosphere on our exoplanet
are safe. We we want to explore or colonize. We've
thoroughly checked it out. It has a breathable atmosphere with
oxygen we've checked as geological activity. It's not going to
be belching poison gas on us constantly wherever we land.
We're we're pretty confident about the gas quality itself. Should

(28:37):
we just take the helmet off now? Well, then we're
getting into yeah that the next big worry is going
to be what if there's some something in the air
some sort of life form, be it alien spores, some
sort of alien disease. I have no idea what I'm
about to breathe in, right, right, So this is reason
number two pathogens. Obviously, it's not going to be spoiling
much about Alien Covenant to say that this plays a

(28:58):
role in there. It's there in the trailers. You know
what aliens about. But in our so are we. We
did a live episode from September last year which was
Stuff to Blew Your Mind Live. Actually, we put the
franchise title before the colon and that one they did,
we did Stuff to your Mind Live colon something about
Strike Trek I think was the title. I mean, so

(29:19):
many crows today, man. So yeah, it was Stuff to
Blew your Mind Live Prime directives and planetary contamination, and
what we talked about in that episode was uh NASA
protocols for preventing cross contamination of life forms between different planets,
and that that follows up on Article nine of the
United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which contains the following language.

(29:41):
Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space,
including the Moon and other celestial bodies, to conduct exploration
of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and
also adverse changes in the environment of Earth resulting from
the introduction of extraterrestrial matter, and we're necessary shall adopt
appropriate measures for this purpose. Yeah, and this comes down

(30:04):
to the idea that, sure, if we went to the
Klingon homeworld, maybe we couldn't catch the Klingon flu or
whatever the kind of element it happens to be. Maybe,
but it could. But maybe even if we couldn't, Yeah,
what could we do? Right? Yeah? But the idea too
is that we only have this one model of life,
and we have to sort of work forward with the
assumption that any kind of life that evolves in another

(30:26):
world is going to be uh, is the potential to
be a comfortable system? Right, we even if we couldn't
get germs from them, what if we could give germs
to them? So yeah, those are the two primary concerns mentioned,
their forward contamination and bat contamination. Forward contamination is this
ethical scientific concern against contaminating other planets with Earth life,

(30:47):
which could potentially harm any microbes that already exists there
or obviously larger organisms. But if there is anything like
that around us, we don't see it or it could
be damaging the integrity of future scientific re search on
that planet or moon, Like if you want to go
there later and try to figure out if there's any
indigenous life, you might have ruined your chances if you
spread Earth life all over it. But the other concern

(31:10):
is more akin to what we're looking at today, which
is back contamination, and this is based more on self preservation.
We don't want to endanger Earth life by accidentally returning
alien pathogens or other dangerous life forms to our home planet. Now.
Of course, the primary relevance of this in the Outer
Space Treaty and in NASA protocols is the planets that

(31:33):
are within reach of us, right which, as far as
we can tell, look fairly devoid of life. We we
might get a surprise, but we're not seeing anything running
around on the surface. What would happen if we tried
to apply the bio containment principles to a planet that's
obviously teeming with life. If we go to an alien
world and there's stuff all over the surface that's reproducing,

(31:56):
should we feel safe to go down and walk around
with the helmet off and take in some air. I
would say maybe not. No, you know, Okay, Well, there
is an article that I wanted to talk about I
found in Astrobiology magazine, and that's a magazine about the
the hypothetical study of of astro you know, applying astronomy

(32:18):
principles to other life forms around the around the galaxy.
Obviously we don't know whether they exist, so it's all
a lot of hypothetical stuff. But it also deals with
the origins of life on Earth and microbial environments and
things like that. And the articles called alien Infection by
Leslie Mullen from August two thousand three, and uh it

(32:38):
draws in some thoughts on the subject of whether we
could be infected by alien pathogens on another planet. So
it cites the American astrobiologist Christopher F. Chiba, and at
the time he held the Carl Sagan Chair at ST
Now he's a professor at Princeton. Chaiva says, there are
two potential types of alien pathogens we need to worry about.

(32:59):
One would be toxic and the other would be infectious.
Infectious are the types of germs we share between us
here on Earth. They infect a host, they can be
passed from host to host, and they they are parasitizing
your body in a way, they're using your body to
do something in the reproductive cycle. Toxic pathogens would be

(33:19):
merely those that produce a poison or act as a
poison that damages the body, even if you're not the
intended host of this organism. So, first of all, there's
some good news because we should think about how viruses
and bacteria infectious agents work here on Earth. The strain
of a disease that affects maybe dogs and chickens or

(33:40):
even chimpanzees might not infect humans. In fact, it often doesn't.
Lots of our parasites are co evolved, meaning they're they're
finally tuned to their preferred host organism. And in the
same way, animals evolved traits to live in a certain ecosystem.
You know, think away the hands and the feet and
tales of tree dwelling primate specialized in climbing trees and

(34:04):
hanging from branches and swinging between branches that brackyation motion.
Pathogens evolved to certain ecosystems as well, but those ecosystems
tend to be the body of their primary host. Thus,
if you've got alien pathogens that are not specifically evolved
to colonize our bodies, they might not be able to.
Then again, this goes both ways. It seems unlikely that

(34:26):
we would encounter a space microbe finally tuned to infect
our bodies, but if we did, our immune systems would
probably not be finally tuned to defend against them. M
that's true. So what would this look like? So, for example,
you've got a microorganism that lives in the icy soil
of Mars. It might be able to get inside our bodies,

(34:47):
but the internal environments of our bodies that there are
several options that our bodies might kill it. It might
be too hot, too wet, it's just not how it's adapted. Alternately,
it could maybe occupy our bodies without really doing anything,
and you know, it could infect us, but it wouldn't
necessarily cause disease or illness, or rapidly reproduce, take over
our cells, or make toxic byproducts, or cause any other

(35:10):
kind of damage. But every now and then on Earth
there is one of these scary situations where a pathogen
that previously could only infect another type of animal crosses
the species barrier and becomes able to infect humans. And
so we wonder if the same thing could happen with
the microbes of another planet. So, like, if we're trying
to figure out how we could be attacked by microbes

(35:32):
that did not evolve to infect us and that our
immune systems did not evolve to fight off, are there
any Earth parallels we could look to that would give
us an idea of what that war between us and
the microbes would look like. The author of this piece
does come up with an answer, so she talks to
John Rummel, NASA's former Planetary Protection officer, and Rummel points out,

(35:54):
you know, there's one way to guess how our bodies
might be affected by microbes of other planets, and that's
to look at the effect of non specific microbes on Earth,
which is are those that didn't co evolve with the
specific host. Now, one example would I think fall more
into the category I mentioned earlier of toxic bacteria, and
this would be the example of cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria is all

(36:18):
over the place on Earth. It's also known as blue
green algae, even though it's not really algae, and you
find it everywhere you go. So if you're out walking
on a dock and you see blooms of this kind
of turquoise scums sloshing around against the document. You might
be looking at blue green algae or cyanobacteria. So cyanobacteria
are capable of producing biological poisons known as cyanotoxins, for example,

(36:42):
neurotoxins that attack the nervous system and hepatotoxins that attack
the liver. And blooms of cyanobacteria in alpine lakes, the
article points out, have been linked to the deaths of
cattle in the area around the lakes, even though it's
not that the cyanobacteria evolved to infect the cattle, and
it's not that they're specifically trying to protect themselves from

(37:04):
being eaten by cattle. It's just that the cyano bacteria is.
Poisons are very general and they work across a broad
range of organisms. So in the same way that you
might have if you can imagine a large alien creature
with a spiked tail, Yes, spike is very very broad
in its application. It can cut into and decapitate and

(37:24):
disembow varying types of life forms. Right, this is a
brilliant analogy. And uh and and the same for just
a a a sufficiently deadly um strain of sano bacteria. Right, Okay,
so it's not like if an alien had i don't know,
a human shaped iron maide and designed specifically to pierce

(37:46):
human bodies. That might not work on some cosmic jellyfish
or gas planet somewhere. But if you just got a
big spike on your tail, yeah, you can use it
on pretty much anything. Uh So, yeah, that's a good comparison.
But another example would be going away from the toxicity
example and more towards the infectious example, would be, uh,
the bacteria Seratia marcisns. And this is a rod shaped

(38:09):
gram negative bacterium that can be found infecting an extremely
diverse range of hosts. The article cites this is as
one example of something that sort of works from one
end of the evolutionary bush to another. It can infect humans,
of course, and sometimes it's responsible for infections that are
acquired in what's supposed to be a sterile environment, like

(38:30):
hospital acquired infections, but it can also infect everything from
fruit flies to coral Yeah. Crazy. So if there are
organisms on Earth that can be that generalized in in
the types of hosts they infect, you can imagine the
same thing being true of some kuidance of alien microbes. Now,

(38:51):
the difference there might be even bigger because they are
not even part of our evolutionary tree. But if we're
similar enough as organisms, it's it's possible they could infect us. Yeah,
similar enough. I think that's where a lot of the
danger lies. And in this I want to I want
to touch on parasites for just a little bit. Nice. So,

(39:11):
so here's the thing. Taking into account, Yeah, all the
variables of conversion evolution on a foreign world. Um, that's
one thing, But I'm not sure the greatest worry is
that you would have a fine tune parasite taking to
it to our body the way that it has, you know,
evolved to take advantage of a host. Because even on
our own planet, in the midst of our own ecosystem,

(39:32):
we see the harmful and even fatal consequences of the
parasite just getting lost and perishing inside of the wrong
host or even you know, the right host, it just
gets turned around. Parasitic death by misadventure. Yeah, there's a
misadventure you've gotta be a war weary of. For instance,
the pork tape worm is a prime example of this.
Tell me more so, it needs to hold on. Sorry,

(39:54):
is this what you'd get from eating undercooked pork burgers? Yeah,
that's the name the pork tape worm. So this is
a This is a parasite that needs to venture inside
a pig to complete its life cycle, but the eggs
often wind up inside of a human instead. The eggs
hatch the confused larva. Uh, don't make it to the
human intestines. Instead, they burrow into the bloodstream. They're swept

(40:18):
through the body, often winding up in the brain forming cysts.
And this can disrupt brain functions, damage the brain. It
can cod's hydrocephalus and the result and it can also
result in brain hernias that cause coma or death. Whoa,
this is? This is like some alien stuff? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean really really, if you want to, if you
want to explore some just complex you know, not only

(40:41):
xenomorph esque, but like even beyond that level of complexity.
In terms of life cycles, the parasitic world is phenomenal,
especially when you have these are crazy branching um life
cycles that involve multiple organisms. It's it's delightfully grotesque stuff. Uh. So, yeah,
you these parasites you encounter on another world, they or

(41:04):
the parasites canna encounter you and even enter you. And
maybe they don't have the they have not evolved to
fully take advantage of you and serve as a proper parasite.
But what if they could still get inside you? And
they get they get lost, They don't know what to do.
This is actually something I thought of quite a bit
in viewing Alien Covenant, because we see a few different
horrific scenes where these neomorphs, these uh, these these white

(41:27):
sort of proto xenomorph creatures, they burst out of the
infected person, like through the spine or through the mouth.
It's uh, it really gave me the idea of all
these poor things. They don't know where they are, These
poor creatures, they're just lost inside this human host and
they're just trying to get out wherever they can. Yeah,
it's funny if you go back to the old alien movies.

(41:49):
Maybe it's not funny. I don't know. If you go
back to the older alien movies, the aliens we see
in those movies have a much more highly specified life cycle.
They infect a person the same way every time, and
they emerge from a person the same way every time.
And these newer movies seem to be developing more more
general diversity in the way the alien organisms parasitize their hosts,

(42:12):
So again that's something to keep in mind. Uh my.
My basic point is the parasite need only gain access
to any of your major body systems or the body
cavity itself to really mess things up. So it's life
cycle might be might be doomed. But what about yours? Yeah,
so I think we should admit that we just don't

(42:34):
know what kind of dangers exists on real planets out there,
and to what extent we would be vulnerable to them
if they did. But the possibility space of fatal outcomes,
I would say, is vast, and we just don't know
what the probability of of real encounters is. Within that space,
you could possibly have your body wrecked by an alien

(42:54):
parasite that doesn't know what to do with you, allow
the pork tape worm. You could effectively be in infected
by a path of the pathogen that deems you close
enough to its ideal environment or host organism. Or you
might be poisoned by the toxic byproducts of defensive poisons
in a microbial life form that wants nothing to do
with you, but the story actually gets a little bit

(43:16):
worse for our intrepid colonists on this exoplanet, because I
want to mention a couple of things here that specifically
have to do with space travel. First of all, I'm
sure you've read about this Robert. Space travel jams up
your immune system. So for several years now, NASA has
been studying the effects of space flight on immune system

(43:36):
responsive crew members aboard the I S S. I've got
a NASA news piece here from August reporting the findings
of the NASA Integrated Immune Study and Clinical Nutrition Assessment,
and so far results have shown that astronauts have a
problem with diminished immune capacity during their time on the
I S S. Specifically, NASA's Integrated Immune Study showed that

(43:59):
immune cells remained present in the blood, but their activity
was confused. Some cells are overactive, other cells are underactive,
and this leads to a condition they refer to as
asymptomatic viral shedding, which means you've got dormant viruses inside
your body that wake up and become active once again

(44:19):
without the host showing normal symptoms of infection, and then
in turn, this viral reactivation triggers immune overreaction leading to
symptoms like allergies and rashes, and so this is often
times why you see you might see people in the
I s s like filming videos and they look like
they're having bad allergies. Yeah, you know that this is

(44:42):
a This touches on just sort of the The general
risk of course interplanetary travel, certainly interstellar travel, is that
it's not just you're you're traveling from a hospitable world
Earth to some inhospitable world like the ablow three h
you were you were trying to get there. You have
to travel a thoroughly inhospitable environment that of of of space,

(45:07):
deep space, without the you know, protection from well, this
gets into you know, what kind of technology would you
have worked out to enable your trip, but you know,
not having a proper protection from radiation, perhaps not having uh,
you get into the mental realm as well, like being
isolated for extended periods of time, like you get you're
able to show up in that other world a little

(45:29):
bit crazy sick without properly functioning immune system, and then
you still have to deal with the rigors of a
foreign biosphere. The idea is that the day you meet
a space microbe could be the day, your immune system
is just about at its worst. And so the article
sites NASA immunologist Brian Crucian, who says, quote, if this

(45:50):
situation persisted for longer deep space missions, he's talking about
the the immune condition of people in the I s s.
It could possibly increased risk of in action, hypersensitivity or
autoimmune issues for exploration astronauts. Uh. And so what causes
this we don't fully know yet, but there are a
bunch of hypotheses. They focus on microgravity, stress, lack of sleep, uh,

(46:15):
microbial environment or microbial exposure, isolation, and exposure to radiation.
On the plus side, I would say all of these
are things that we would hope, as you just alluded to, Robert,
you would be able to address by the time we're
an exoplanet colonizing species. If you're trying to travel to
exoplanets in a space ship that doesn't have artificial gravity,

(46:37):
that hasn't come up with ways of dealing with radiation,
exposure or stress, you've got bigger problems. You know, you're
you're probably not gonna make it there. Yeah, I mean,
unless you're go in with a sci fi scenario where
basically everyone just needs to get out of the pool.
You know, everyone has to get off of Earth and
start on these colonies in it. That's the motivation for
getting there, is that it's either go or perish totally.

(47:00):
So that is something we should keep in mind. The
other thing I had to mention so is space travel
appears to make us immuno compromised. Also, multiple studies have
shown that space flight conditions can increase the virulence of
known pathogens. One example would be Salmonella Tiffi mariam. So
in some experiments, when you took the strain of salmonella
into space, once it came back, it was more deadly

(47:23):
to mice than earth grown strains of the same bacterium.
So if you can imagine picking up a germ on
an alien planet and then ash overrides Ripley's quarantine procedure
and you get in the ship and take it back
to space with you, you could be making things even
worse for yourself. All right, Well, on that note, let's
take a quick break and when we come back we

(47:43):
will discuss killer allergens. Thank alright, we're back, And I
have to say this is an area that I had
not really given much thought of when I think of
risks on an alien world. Um, I tend to think
of I think of the atmosphere. I think of diseases
and foreign organisms. I think of some of the things

(48:05):
we're going to discuss in a bit, like radiation. But
the idea of just all my allergies are acting up
because um, because side is six. It's just it's just
really affecting my sinuses. Well, again, I just wanted to
explore possibility space. So this is not something that I
think has been um widely explored. I just want to
think about it as a possibility. So small bits of

(48:28):
organic matter in the air, for example, of the pollen
of plants or other airborne life forms. These are the
kinds of allergens we encounter here on Earth, and I
wondered what people with allergic susceptibility might might encounter on
an alien planet. They might not be active pathogens, they
might not be germs trying to invade your body, but

(48:49):
that could make your body go haywire. That could trigger
this critical immune system response and and death by asthma
or anaphylaxis. So this process might not be as speedy
as some other dangers, but could represent a threat to
colonists who burn their helmets or otherwise open them up
and breathe deep of the alien biosphere. So to look

(49:11):
at whether this is a possibility, I think we should
take a quick look at how allergic responses work. An
allergic reaction is basically just a malfunction of the immune system.
It happens when a foreign substance called an allergen comes
into contact with the body and the immune system mistakes
the substance for a hostile pathogen, right. It thinks that
you are being infected by a germ that needs attacking,

(49:34):
when in fact it's just some harmless stuff. It's a
piece of protein, pollen, something like that, you know, shrimp,
and this triggers an immune system response that is unnecessary
and self destructive. It's kind of like if you've got
an army base and the wind flows a tumble weed
up against the exterior fence of the base and a

(49:55):
malfunction in the basis automated defense network responds by shelling
the area with heavy artillery, destroying part of the base
in the process. So we don't fully understand all of
the deep underlying causes of allergic reactions, like why some
people have specific allergies and other people don't. Twin studies

(50:15):
do seem to show that there's a strong genetic component
to allergies, but environmental influences are a factor as well.
According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology,
a little less than about eight percent of adults in
the US have respiratory allergies also known as hay fever. Worldwide,
it's more it's like ten percent to thirty percent of
people as far as we know, And so it's generally

(50:37):
true that allergic reactions to new substances don't occur immediately
the first time you get exposed to those substances. The
body has to encounter the allergen, produce allergy and specific
antibodies known as I G E antibodies, and then allow
those antibodies to bind two receptors on immune cells called

(50:58):
mast cells and bays of rolls. And the delay between
this first exposure, the sensitizing exposure, and then the potential
for the first dangerous reaction I think is usually considered
to be about a week or ten days. So this
could be something that sneaks up on you. You've been
on the surface of this planet. For a while, you
think everything's okay, nobody's gotten sick in the first day

(51:19):
or two, But suddenly you might get really bad asthma.
And so this is more of a danger of prolonged
exposure to an alien biosphere. The first encounter probably wouldn't
harm you. But once this sensitization has happened, if the
body encounters that same allergy and again, the cells trigger
what's known as an allergic cascade. And this means the
body floods with allergy mediators like histamine, which causes dilation

(51:44):
of the blood vessels, low blood pressure, itching, sneezing, digestive problems,
et cetera. And if this gets bad enough, it leads to,
of course, what we know as anaphylaxis. You know, this
is the really severe reaction that can be fatal if
not treated quickly. So I is wondering how how dangerous
is anaphylaxis, How fatal is it? Can? Can it cause death? Yes,

(52:07):
but the odds aren't as bad as you think. So
aten study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
found that anaphylactic shock resulted in between sixty three and
nine deaths in the United States every year However, that's
only about point three percent of cases where people presented
in hospitals with anaphylaxis. So if you can get to

(52:27):
a hospital, it looks like your odds are pretty good.
Treatment usually tends to be a big shot of epinefron,
also known as adrenaline, so you get the rush, uh
and exactly the EpiPen it's a it's an epine an
auto injector. One hopes that by the time we get
to these foreign planets the prices have come down a
little bit and they can stock up the ships with them. Um,

(52:50):
it's less clear to me what the survival rate without
medical attention or epinefron would be due to anaphylaxis. But
of course, on the surface of an alien planet, can
you get to hospital or can you get your rope
and fern shot in time? I guess we would just
hope that your med droid is working well. It has,
it has the EpiPens for fingers to drive them in.

(53:10):
That's right. Every time it tries to hug you, you
get the adrenaline injection. Uh. So. The other the other
thing to think about would be asthma attacks, which can
also be triggered by allergic reactions to inhaled irritants, and
they're often more deadly in the modern day. So an
asthma attack causes constriction of the airways, and according to
the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, about ten Americans

(53:32):
die from asthma every day and ineen asthma killed three thousand,
six hundred and fifty one people. So it's usually treated
with inhaled broncho dilators like the the emergency and haler
that you have the rescue in haler um, but it
can be treated with other stuff in the case of
a really bad asthma attack. So, if you're on the

(53:55):
surface of an alien planet, can you imagine what types
of thing this that go into your body might cause
a severe allergic reaction. Of course, it could be pollen
or spores from an alien plant or some other kind
of germinating life form. Could be alien foods if you
find yourself eating them, though, I guess have we factored in, Robert,
do you consider if you take your helmet off, do

(54:16):
you also just eat the stuff around you? I don't know.
I was thinking about this the other night because they
watched um uh, the new MST three K episode that
deals with the lost world. You know, uh, Edgar ice
Burrows store German submarine winds up in this place where
evolutions all walking, and you still have all these dinosaurs

(54:37):
and they immediately, like right after they kill the first dinosaur,
they cook it up and they eat it, just no
concerns whatsoever. Um, it would be it would be funny
to see that utilize in some of these sci fi
scenarios where they kill a neomorph in they're like, out
where we gotta eat, So let's fire up the grill.
Sick of this freeze dried ice cream. But hey, how

(54:58):
about another thing for anna phylactic shock? What about the
venom of an alien organism? Oh yeah, I mean you
look at the terrestrial example, and you have plenty of
of of small organisms that pack a substantial punch thanks
to their their neurotoxins. Yeah, but it wouldn't even have
to be that the or the organism's natural venom is
strong enough to kill you. I mean, that could have

(55:20):
been a reason we cited all on its own. Actually
it would be the venom of alien arthropods. But imagine
that the venom is not enough to kill you on
its own, you still could have one of these immune
system malfunctions. Uh that you know it. Basically, you get
stung by the alien equivalent of a wasp what would
we call it, the infernas seven hymenopteroid, and it stings

(55:43):
you and gives you a dose of something that really
just just meant to hurt, but instead you have an
allergic reaction to the insect. And according to the American
Academy of Allergy, Asthma, Immunology, up to fifty percent of
people who die from allergic reactions to insects had no
previously documented allergy, like they didn't know they were allergic.

(56:04):
So it sounds like it could be a scary scenario
on an alien world. Yeah, fear of alien bees. Alien bees,
by the way, also a brand of professional lighting equipment
for photographers. No way. Yeah, yeah, they have a lovely,
lovely logo. Dude, I just looked it up. Yes, they
give it. So they give him the alien face with
the large eyes. It's like a gray except he's not
Gray's yellow because he's a bee. And they make his

(56:26):
wings yellow too. I'm not saying. I'm not sure why
I'm saying. He I guess it looks kind of masculine.
In the logo here. But but the bees we know
and love are women, right. I know about this because
my wife is a photographer, and uh, and there have
been times in the past which is like, can you
help me get the the alien bees? Make sure you can?
You can you get the alien bees out of the
car for me? So that the alien bees have become
a normal part of my life. But then also on

(56:48):
top of talking about potential alien allergens that that could
get you, I I don't know to what extent that's
a real thing to worry about, but I thought that
was worth considering. There's also this other class where you know,
we've looked at infectious agents and microorganisms, and we've looked
at allergens, which is like bits of matter that upset
your body. I wonder if there's also categories of things

(57:12):
in between that we haven't even reckoned with, that we
we don't even fully understand because there's just not a
strong analogy on Earth. It makes me think about one
of the picks from the My My Fiction pick from
the summer reading episode we did last year, which was
a sci fi book that I really loved called Aurora
by Kim Stanley Robinson and A lot of reviewers seemed

(57:35):
to hate this book, I think because they found it
depressing and pessimistic, conjuring up this universe where space colonist
characters come to the conclusion that Earth might be the
only viable home for us in the galaxy. And the
reason is that, based on a very small sampling of planets,
planets seemed to be either uninhabitable, unable to sustain life,

(57:55):
or already home to hostile micro organisms. And and so
there's this organism. I don't want to spoil too much
about the book, but they go to a planet whether
where there is this organism that they just don't really understand.
It does seem to infect and kill people, but it
doesn't really work like micro organisms that were familiar with.

(58:16):
At some point, a character tries to compare it to
a fast acting preon, like the you know, these misfolded
proteins that make copies of themselves and damage our tissues
that way, But then they rule out they say, it
actually doesn't really work that way. It's just a sci
fi scenario. But it does make me think about the
possibility that there could be tiny, chemically active molecules and

(58:39):
objects that act upon our bodies in ways that are
not even familiar to us. Uh in the ways we're
familiar with from micro organisms or from allergens. Interesting, I'm
not that familiar with with Kim Stanley Robinson. Is there
another work by this author that I should recognize? This
is the only book of his that I've read, but
I know he's well known for his He did a

(59:01):
trilogy of books about Mars, about terraforming Mars. Yes, that
that must be where I recognized his name from. They're
like different colors. I think it's called yes, yes, yes, Okay, yeah,
I have not read those, but I have friends who
spe Yeah. I haven't read them either, but I so.
Despite the fact that a lot of people didn't like Aurora,
I really loved it. I thought it was a fascinating

(59:22):
counterpoint to a lot of the space exploration fiction we
usually see. Are you ready to look at the next
threat to the unhelmeted space explorer? Bring it on? Helmet
still on? Ready to look at the reason? Number four? Okay,
how about killer particles? So we discussed this in our
episode Your Health is a Mars colonist. Many alien worlds

(59:42):
are likely to contain extremely fine particles of dust, and
soil that could cause health problems or even kill you.
One thing that we mentioned in that previous episode that
I just wanted to mention again. In December nineteen seventy two,
you have the crew of the Apollo seventeen walking on
the un They're out there doing their extra vehicular activity.

(01:00:03):
Did they play golf? I can't remember who played golf? Yeah,
I can't remember off handy there some people play golf.
Maybe they did. Maybe that was somebody else. But astronauts
Harrison Schmidt and Eugene Cernan, and they were operating in
the location near the Sea of Serenity, and when they
got back inside the lunar module after the A v A,
Harrison Schmidt experienced what has been called quote lunar dust

(01:00:24):
hay fever, which was this respiratory reaction to inhaling fine
particles of lunar regulars. So the dust on the surface
of the Moon has these weird qualities. It's abrasive, it's
almost kind of been described like tiny fine shards of glass.
It sticks to everything, It smells like gunpowder. Apparently it's

(01:00:45):
hard not to inhale it when you're messing around on
the surface of the Moon. And when you do, it's
not good for your respiratory system. It it it messes
you up. Other planets also have other types of surface soil.
They're going to be very different than what we're used
to on Earth, and we need to consider the possibility
that all of these surface soils could have chemicals in them,

(01:01:09):
fine particles that could really be a threat to our
health and and could even kill us. Even on Earth,
there are situations where inhalation of fine particles can lead
to respiratory diseases. Like you can if you inhale a
lot of extremely fine silica, Like if you're a minor
or sand blaster or something, you can inhale this stuff,

(01:01:31):
this fine silica that it leads to something called silicosis,
and that's just not good for your lungs. It depends
on exactly what kind of exposure you get, but eventually
it can lead to progressive massive fibrosis, which is just
destroys your lungs. It's almost like your lungs filling up
with concrete. Uh. You do not want things like this

(01:01:53):
going into your lungs. And things like in these fine
grains could be present on many other worlds. Also. Mars
is a good example of places where the soil is
believed to contain chemicals that are not just dangerous in
terms of them being fine and uh and respirable, But
the Martian soil is known to contain perclorates, which have

(01:02:14):
detrimental effects on the thyroid and hormone production in the
human body. And we don't know what kinds of toxic
chemicals could be in the soil of alien planets. But
if you break the seal between the inside and outside,
it's difficult to keep fine grain particles separate. And then,
of course that's just assuming these are just straight up
particles and they're not radioactive particles, right, because even Earth

(01:02:37):
has naturally occurring radioactive particles radionuclides, which can be hazardous
to your health if you inhale them. And so we
don't also know the extent to which the surface of
another planet might be peppered with fine radioactive particles that
you can suck right in with a deep breath. All right,
So we're down to the last item on our checklist

(01:02:58):
before opening the helmet. And again, this is not just
the opening of the helmet, but the breaching of the
mini space suit and the presume protective layers that encompasses, right,
so this one might be a little bit less helmet
focused and more just focused on the general barrier between
you and the outside. That's right. So radiation. We we've
done a few different episodes now where we've we've we've

(01:03:21):
discussed radiation, most most recently the episode dealing with like
the demon Core idea and like what happens with what
happened with Chernobyl and the risks probe posed by radiation
to human health. Yeah. I haven't even thought about this
before before we did this episode, but walking around with
exposed skin on these planets, I mean, can you get

(01:03:42):
an infurnace six sunburn? Yeah? I would guess depending on
what the the the star or stars at the center
of the infurnace system are like yeah, yeah, because both
cosmic and solar radiation immediately become a problem once you
leave the neighborhood of Earth, and to your point, even
on Earth, solar radiation can be an issue depending on
what your skin situation is like and where you are.

(01:04:05):
Even on Earth's surface, we're exposed to a steady ambient
level of radiation from the sun. Solar radiation, uh, and
the larger universe cosmic radiation. But Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere
work together to protect us from most of the danger.
So even astronauts on the International Space Station two miles

(01:04:25):
above Earth, uh, they're exposed to much more radiation than
we get on the surface. They're still shielded by Earth's magnetosphere,
which extends thousands of miles into space around the planet.
That's right, yea, So even though they're outside the atmosphere,
there's still within this thing that repels a lot of
this cosmic radiation. Yeah. This so this sort of magic
field that's not magic, but you know, it's this wonderful

(01:04:48):
protective shield shielding around the Earth. So you land on
an alien world, you're just thinking about breaching your suit
taking that helmet off. Does the planet have an atmosphere?
Let's go ahead and assume it does, Otherwise you really
don't have a good excuse. So if there's so, there's
some level of radiation shielding just by virtue of there
being an atmosphere. But is there a magnetosphere? So I'm

(01:05:11):
gonna go ahead and guess there is. Because one of
the things that happens when there's no magnetosphere is that
the solar wind strips most of the atmosphere off of
your world. Yeah, this is we talked about the thin
atmosphere of Mars. Mars does not have a strong magnetosphere.
I think it doesn't have one at all. Yeah, we're
talking massive atmosphere loss in these scenarios. So yet to
to break down who has magnetosphere. There's Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, Ganymede, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

(01:05:39):
Mars definitely does not have one. But in the case
of you know, an absence of a magnetosphere, massive atmosphere lost.
There are there are many astrobiologies that predict that that
potential life on an exoplanet might well be doomed without
a magneto magnetosphere in place. At the very least, it
would mean that life would have to flourish there perhaps
underground be mind, you know, beneath protective ice caps or

(01:06:02):
or artificial structures and systems. You get into the same
scenario when we start thinking about the potential Mars colonists, like,
how how would you effectively shield uh, you know, a
colony on that world? Right, you want to like dig
underground or something. Yeah, Still, you've got this protective space
suit presumably provides some sort of protection against radiation, and

(01:06:24):
even a world protected by a magnetosphere and an atmosphere
can be a radioactive mess for creatures such as ourselves.
I mean, it could be naturally occurring radioactive environments which
we we certainly encounter, or something compromised by an intelligent
species radioactive dumping. So to come back to the the
alien universe, we don't know what the what other crimes

(01:06:47):
the the engineers got up to today decided to just
dump a whole bunch of radioactive waste on any particular planet.
It seems like the kind of thing we would do. Yeah,
uh yeah, So that's the thing that I guess is
worth considering. What is the range of possibilities for the
natural ground based radioactivity of a foreign planet? I mean,
on Earth, there are natural sources of radiation apart from

(01:07:09):
just what's coming from the sky. We've got uranium in
the Earth. Uranium decays produces radon gas. If you inhale that,
you can have radiation exposure. Uh so, yeah, I guess,
I guess we just don't know what's possible on other planets. Yeah. Now,
to put everything in sort of a uh in context
of what we have here, which is our again, our
best model for what we might find elsewhere. Uh. In

(01:07:31):
terms of natural radiation, again, everybody has to do with
some degree of terrestrial radiation thanks to naturally occurring radioactive
materials such as uranium, thorium, radium, et cetera. In the Earth,
and the inhabited area on the planet with the highest
levels of terrestrial radiation is Ramsar, Iran, and this is

(01:07:53):
due to a nearby radioactive hot spring in building materials
that have been harvested from there. But I think I
recall reading because we did a now piece on this,
didn't mean that that actually in rams are like people
are not don't really have much worse health outcomes despite
the fact that they're exposed to elevated levels of radiation.
But yeah, that's my understanding. But but just in terms

(01:08:15):
of like the levels here and these are gonna be
this is what we're looking at, and this is gonna
be in ing wise or nano gray units, and uh,
and it's gonna be per hour, I believe, so absorbed
rates of radiation in the air and Ramsar are going
to be between seventy and seventeen thousand and again that's

(01:08:37):
the highest you're gonna find for an inhabited area on Earth.
But if you go into uninhabited Uh, then this is
the place that takes takes the cake. The Black Beaches
of guadapare Brazil, and they contain monosite, which is a
phosphate of rare earth metals containing uranium and thorium. Uh

(01:08:58):
So it's in the sand here and it produce uses
absorbed dose rates of of ninety to ninety thousand en
gy wise um per hour. And now that's just natural radiation.
If you go ahead and new a factory in radioactive
pollution in our case by humans, but in another case
by some you know, it doesn't even have to be

(01:09:19):
an existing estraterrestrial species. You know, presumably you could have
the radioactive waste of a of a of an inner
planetary or simply planetary society that then later got onto
destroying itself. Like what have we arrived on an exoplanet?
We realize, Oh, the previous inhabitants annihilated themselves with an
atomic war. Uh, surely that's been explored. That sounds like

(01:09:40):
classic trek right there. But if we factor that in,
then the most polluted example we have on Earth is
h Lake Karace in Russia. This is a long time
dumping site for radioactive waste and by most estimates, the
most radioactive place on the planet now is that including
next to the elephant's foot in in chernobyl Um. I

(01:10:04):
believe so, yeah, I mean the idea here is that
we're talking like longstanding you know, radiation. So this was
just a place where just a small ural mountain lake
where they would just dump stuff. They would they would
just dump radioactive waste continually, and uh it they let

(01:10:25):
to researchers in in the nineties to analyze it based
on I think current satellite data. It's completely covered and cement.
Now there have been attempts to to manage it. But
in nineteen nine, uh, it's said if you were standing
on the shore of the lake, you more than an
hour of exposure would have been fatal. Wow. So I

(01:10:46):
think you know, you can you can imagine a scenario
where you you land on a world, maybe you have
a preliminary radiation reading for just sort of the world itself.
You wander onto a black sand beach. Yeah you want,
you want onto the beach and uh, you know, the
next thing, you know, you're absorbing increasing levels of radiation,
which might not be an immediate problem, but it might be, uh,

(01:11:07):
you know, a problem of prolonged exposure. Right. Well, when
we think about radiation again, there are there are two
main ways that you would want to keep yourself sealed
from your environment. It works in multiple ways. So one
is that you would have a suit. Hopefully they would
have some kind of shielding that proprides a barrier against
the ray radiation, you know, the bombardment of your body

(01:11:29):
with direct rays like gamma rays or neutron radiation. But
then you would also want to keep your environment sealed
so that you don't have the interaction with radioactive particles.
And I think that could be one of the biggest dangers,
is the inhalation of these radio nuclides. The more I
think about it just might be better to leave the
suit on. Definitely, no matter how delicious the neomorphs seem,

(01:11:54):
no matter how delightful that beach may seem, maybe it's
just better just to stay in the suit. It's I'm
sure it has a bathroom function. Okay, here's a question.
You're totally out of freeze, dried ice cream, no earth
food left, you're on the alien planet. You've killed a neomorph.
Do you starve to death or do you try to
eat it? Well, I guess you try and eat it.

(01:12:15):
I mean, geez, I don't know, of course, not knowing
what I know about the neomorphs. Now, I mean, actually
that maybe in a sense that's a survival method because
you know that you might live on in some sorts,
some form or another, right, right, at least you're parasitic progeny. Yeah, yeah,
that the NEOMRP sandwich kind of becomes you, and then
then you're good to go. Now you're completely acclimatized to

(01:12:38):
the environment. You're no longer remotely human, but you're thriving. Okay, Well,
I hope you have enjoyed this weird exoplanet speculation with us.
But but if we haven't convinced you knit by now
to keep your helmet on, uh, we're probably not gonna
all right, Yeah, it's probably off by now, I'm guessing
you know. But but hopefully we give you some good

(01:12:58):
ideas here. Uh. Now, that's not to say that I
want you to go in and just kneel the grass.
Tyson the heck out of every science fiction film you see,
because I think there's there's ultimately little joy in that,
but but it it does. I do think it's always
important to to have the scientific reality and at least
in the background. You know, it's an act of disengaging

(01:13:19):
from what you know about the real threats of space exploration,
as opposed to just not knowing about it to begin with,
and and and basing everything on the sci fi fantasy
world you're observing. Well, I think earlier I mentioned something
about how for me it has it's consistency. Really like,
if if a movie seems to have an ethic of

(01:13:41):
realism and hard science, I will be troubled by things
that are unrealistic. But if it doesn't across the board
have an ethic of realism and hard science, then who cares? Yeah, yeah,
I guess you know it comes. It's kind of like
if you were to encounter a scene where the helmet
comes off in two thousand and one, right, like that
would be a case we're like, whoa, come on, Stanley.

(01:14:02):
Up until now, like we didn't even have sound in space.
We're being just really hard with our science and now
you're just kind of thrown it to the wind. But yeah,
does in the windom do not sing. I'm sorry for
singing twice, y'all. All right, everybody, Well, if you like

(01:14:22):
this discussion here today, head on over the stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we have all
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and blog posts um including my expanded review of Alien
Covenant that is on the website and that will be
on the landing page for this episode as well. Also
include links to other alien related and sci fi related

(01:14:43):
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(01:15:21):
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