September 8, 2016 • 54 mins
The Prime Directive serves as the Federation’s philosophical backbone, no matter how often our favorite Trek heroes bend and break its values in order to save the day. How does this policy match up with current space exploration procedures, colonial Earth history and our most dangerous terrestrial ideas? Robert, Joe and Christian explore in this special LIVE Stuff to Blow Your Mind presentation from Star Trek: Mission New York.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
so we recorded a special live edition of the podcast
last week at Star Trek Mission, New York, and all
(00:26):
three of us, Robert, Christian and I up in a
conference room full of Star Trek Conference attendees. Yeah it was.
It was really great. Hopefully some of the folks who
were there in person are listening now, and if so,
I just want to thank you once more for being
a fabulous audience. Everyone seemed to really get into the topical.
We had some fun chatting with folks after the show. Absolutely, So,
(00:46):
without further ado, here is our live episode of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. Robert, you've got to start us
Star Trek history. Okay, So um, when we're not going
to pretend to be like the the the perfect Star
Trek fans. Our knowledge is not perfect. But I certainly
have a very warm place in my heart for Star
(01:07):
Trek the Next Generation, especially because I grew up watching
it every evening in syndication at nine pm. It was
my my go to I would escape from the horrors
of Junior High and just just pour myself into the
hollow deck of Star Trek. Yeah, for me, I think
deep Space and nine was when I really dove in
deep But I was talking to these guys the other day.
(01:28):
Does anybody remember the Cheerios commercial right before The Next
Generation came out where you they offered like if you
cut out on the back of the box, you could
be like an extra in the Next Generation. That was like,
I was like five, maybe six years old, and that's
how we got Wesley Crusher. That glued right in my kid.
But yeah, I didn't. I guess I didn't make it.
(01:49):
I didn't make the cut. I am far less trek
ucated than these two, even I have to admit to
the room. I I love like the even numbered movies,
as they say. And I've watched some highlight episodes from
the original series, like a Balance of Terror and what's
the one where they Kirk and Spocko back in time
and they wear these like cool nineteen thirties suits and
(02:09):
some lady gets hit by a car. It Yeah, that
was a good one. Uh. Then, Also, I watched the
first season of Next Generation, and I really loved the
planets that looked like a nineteen nineties like family portrait
photo studio filled with potted trees. It was pretty cool.
(02:30):
So let's talk a little bit about the Prime directive
because it while we are by no means experts on
the Prime Directive, it does relate quite a bit to
the real world science that we're gonna be talking about. Yeah,
and and uh, I mentioned we don't we don't have
to tell you guys what the Prime directive is. You know,
it is, um, it's the philosophy of the federation. Right,
it is that it's an anti colonialist for that matter
(02:51):
of anti Vietnam War ethos the policy of of non interference.
Don't mess around with the natural progression or demise of
of life on a given world. Right is it, don't
get involved in it's it's cultural ascension. Let it, let
it happen. Yeah. And one of the major questions that's
going to be important to talking about planetary contamination later
(03:14):
that we had was is observing mere mere early observing
a violation of the Prime Directive? And from what I
could tell, it seems like no, Although it seems like, uh,
there's there's quite a bit of instances the one that
I remember the most is in Star Trek Insurrection with
you know, when Data is running around in the invisible
suit and goes crazy and rips his mask off and
everybody just sees a floating Brent Spiner head. This is
(03:36):
the one where f Murray Abraham played Allain. Yes, yeah, yeah,
so so that clearly violated the observing thing. Uh. And
then apparently I haven't seen this one, but there's a
next generation episode called Who Watches the Watchers where Ryker
and Troy put on makeup so they look like they're
members of this indigenous race so they can observe what's
going on there. Uh, we're not quite there yet. Uh,
(03:59):
but but it seems like observing is okay, right, Yeah,
I mean as long as, of course you're not seen observing.
That's kind of the primatologist's view on it, right. You
you want to be able to observe, uh, these creatures
in their natural habitat. But if they see you, then
you you've already disrupted everything. And obviously nothing disrupts a
(04:20):
would disrupt a culture's ascension, of a planetary culture's attention
more than seeing a starship suddenly appear in the sky. Yeah,
exactly right. Oh yeah, that's another good example of that.
We'll talk about later when we get into cargo cults
is seen in a Star Trek into Darkness of course
at the beginning where they see the enterprise and then
they start sort of worshiping it by drawing the images
(04:40):
of it in the sand. Uh So, I can actually
think of worse if they piped in some like Van
Halen singles. I could see that that could go beyond
the starship. But you know, one of the things it
would be Beastie Boys given uh that that particular version
of multi Yeah. Uh so. Yeah. One of the things
about the prime to active as throughout the show, I
(05:01):
mean even a a a Star Trek light viewer like
me can observe is that it's not a rule that's
simply followed, but it's something that is often debated. People
are weighing the pros and cons uh that. You know,
they often want to have a conversation about, well, should
we follow the non intervention you know, guidelines, or should
we step into help where we can, And a lot
(05:21):
of times it's sort of like the following the lawful
path versus following the good path. Yeah, it reminds me
a lot too of the journalists Um Connundiam at times
like if I'm I'm not gonna observe, I'm gonna stand
back and take this photo, or do I jump in
and help in a situation where help is required. Yeah,
So this leads us into the let's just break down
the very beginning or science that we're gonna talk about today.
(05:44):
What's the difference between planetary protection and planetary contamination. Well,
protection is a term that we give to our goal
to protect other celestial bodies. Actually, you know, we're talking
about planets, moons, comets, or asteroids here. Uh. We don't
want to contaminate them with life from here on Earth
as we're going throughout the galaxy, mainly the Solar System
(06:06):
right now and interacting with them. That's what's called forward contamination,
US contaminating other celestial bodies. And and later in this
presentation we will give you some examples where that has
already happened unfortunately. Uh, But we also want to protect Earth,
right We don't want a scenario like the Andromeda Strain
to happen. So we want to make sure that Earth
(06:29):
is protected from possible life forms that may have returned
from extraterrestrial samples. Anybody here familiar with the Osiris REX
mission that's taking off the next couple of I think
it's like in the next month, right UH, NASA is
sending a spacecraft called Ocyrus REX to the asteroid Baynu,
and the goal is to go to Baynu. UH scoop
(06:51):
a piece of dirt off of Baynu, put it into
a capsule, and then bring it back to Earth so
that we can study it. UH mainly about so that
they can get some ideas about the origin of life.
They think Baynu has got some particularly carbon rich minerals
in it that might give us some some kind of
history to the universe. So in that case, we really
(07:13):
don't want there to be I don't know, like space
worms on it that are affect everybody and turn us
into zombies or something. So in the unlikely scenario that
this UH, this return the soil returned from the asteroid
has some kind of microbe in it that could infect
our bodies. What if they bring it back and it
escapes from contamination there that received the retrieval areas. What
(07:34):
if it explodes in the atmosphere upon re entry and
then scatters all over the place. They're not very worried
about that with the Osiris REX mission because they're they're
not very good scientific reasons for thinking you're likely to
encounter life on an asteroid, and asteroids just a death zone.
It's out in the middle of space. It's bombarded I radiation,
micro meteoroid impacts, and there's just it's not a friendly
(07:56):
place to live. But there are some other places in
the Solar System that we do think are are much
more likely to be friendly to life. Yeah, probably the
bathrooms here at the jab At Center are friendly to life,
I would imagine. Uh No, But so we're talking about
backward contamination when we're talking about these asteroids bringing samples back.
In particular, NASA is worried about Mars. I don't know
(08:18):
if any of you have been down to the show
floor yet, but they have a really cool exhibit about
their plans for Mars missions. And if you talk to
some of the NASA volunteers that are down there, uh,
they know all about backward contamination and what their policies
are concerning this. We'll talk a little bit about today,
but we're not the experts, right. But then also you
might be asking so The reason for preventing backward contamination
(08:41):
is obvious. We don't want to get infected with space
germs and I'll die. Well, this is the selfish side
of it, right, I mean, we know, like, whatever you
get into out there, don't bring it back home, don't
not don't bring it back and then the potentially knows
of our environment. Right. But the motivations for preventing the
contamination of other bodies in the Solar System is maybe
less obvious, Like why would you care if a probe
(09:04):
that you send to Mars or Saturn's moon Titan has
microbes living on it? I mean, who cares? They're probably
gonna die anyway, What does it matter? Well, there are
several reasons we want to prevent that. One is protecting
science objectives. Uh So, if we're going to Titan or
to Mars to try to figure out if there is
microbial life living in the soil there, we don't want
(09:25):
to take contaminants with it that are going to make
it impossible for us to do that scientific research. I mean,
it's like visiting a crime scene, right, You don't want
somebody to go in and leave their fingerprints or their
genetic material all over the place because we need to
get down to who has had access to it. Instance,
the case with with a foreign body. It would be
like if detectives investigating a crime scene couldn't investigate it
(09:48):
very easily without having all the prime suspects come in
and bleed everywhere, um exactly. But but it's difficult. But
then there are also other potential concerns. One is the
protection of in digenous life. So introducing microbial life forms
to a new environment very often kills what's already there.
And it's quite possible that if there are life forms
(10:09):
on Titan or on Enceladus Europa, Mars, and we bring
our own microbes there, there could be a battle of
the bacteria and our bacteria might win. Again, that's very
bad obviously for those bacteria. That you could have a
debate about whether that ethically matters or not, you know,
should we care about those bacteria, But it certainly matters
for the science. We we want to be able to
(10:30):
know if they're there, and so we don't want to
kill them all. And then a final reason is that
we can disturb natural environments by introducing life forms just
like bacteria here on Earth and and uh small organisms
have geoengineered the Earth. You know, they've changed our atmospheric composition.
We don't want to potentially do that to other planets
(10:51):
in the Solar System by accident. So let's give you
like a like a real world analogy that will sort
of hopefully bring it all together. Right, Like, whenever you
travel abroad with an animal here and on Earth, right,
you usually have to have documents of some sort that
they have their vaccinations. Right, So it's a similar sort
of situation. You don't you would sometimes quarantine an animal
(11:13):
in those situations you also don't want to, well you do.
You have to declare agricultural items when you come into
and out of certain countries, right, So how many people
here have been through customs before? That's supposed to It's fun, right,
I mean, So like the example that we're gonna use
here is like what if we brought a watermelon up
(11:35):
here from Florida and it's just filled with mosquitoes that
are infected with the Zeke virus. Right, But that probably
wouldn't be a great example, uh because you guys would
hate that, But that would be forward contamination. Yeah, I mean,
you can find plenty of examples just by thinking of
all the missteps that we've we've taken in our in
(11:56):
our in our you know, recent history here on ourth
spreading invasive species across the planet and exactly stabilizing natural environments.
The carp car carp fish are notorious invasive species here
in America. Yeah, we have a podcast about that, by
the way, you can look it up. It's about jumping
fish in the rivers of the Midwest. They jump out
(12:18):
of the water and smash people's facebones. They do pretty cool. Joe,
is there any law? Is there anything that's like keeping
us from doing this? Like why can't I just build
my own rocket and shoot a zeke a mosquito and
outer space? That is a good question. So there actually
are guidelines for how you're supposed to behave in space.
In fact, there are tons of different organizations treaties that
(12:40):
put space law on space guidelines into place. Where's the
boundary between law and guidelines, I don't know a lot
of times we haven't tested that boundary, So we don't
know exactly what would happen if you broke certain guidelines,
but we have them. Uh, for example, what prevents Spain
from flying to Europa? Here? This is Jupiter's moon Europa.
It's believe that it could possibly contain life because it's
(13:02):
got an icy crust with liquid oceans underneath it. There
could be something living in that water. What prevents Spain
from flying a rocket to Europa, sticking a flag down
in the ice and saying, I declare Europa for Spain,
it is Spanish territory. Now, well, fortunately we have the
UN Outer Space Treaty, and all signatories and parties of
(13:23):
the treaty agree that, for example, you can't go claim
the Moon for your country. It doesn't belong to you.
It's the common heritage of all mankind and you can
access it equally. But there are other things that are
entailed by this treaty as well, right, Yeah, Well it
was developed in nineteen sixty seven. It was really you know,
in the middle of the Cold War, but they managed
(13:44):
to get the U S, the Soviet Union, the UK
and a couple of other countries to sit down and
you know, agree to this at the United Nations to
prohibit mainly countries from placing nuclear arms or other w
m D weapons of mass instructions UH destructions de duction
UH in outer space. So that was mainly why this
(14:04):
was put together. But it also holds all nations accountable
for whatever their various actions are in outer space according
to international law, so that's important. It does kind of
underlie one of the problems with any of this kind
of legislation is they always emerged from the time and
in which they're rolled out. They speak to very specific
(14:25):
near future concerns, and when it gets to the you know,
the more far future concerns, Uh, they don't really grapple
with them with with with a degree of detail that
might be necessary. Yeah, that's the thing of this And um,
there were arguments not like a year or two after
it had first been written that it was already either
too stringent or not stringent enough, and we're still seeing
(14:48):
arguments like that today, decades later. So a lot of
people argue the Outer Space Treaty is out of date
and needs to be updated. But in any case, how
it relates exactly to the topic we're talking about today
is that Article nine of the U and Outer Space
Treaty says that all parties to the treaty have to
avoid harmful contamination of the Moon and other celestial bodies,
(15:10):
and they also have to avoid adverse changes in the
environment of Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter.
So that's pretty vague, right it It basically just says,
don't pollute outer space with our microbes and don't bring
anything you find out there back here that could kill us. Uh.
So how's it gives to work? Like, so Spain's gonna
(15:31):
go plant their flag on Europa? Right, So how does
that work? Can can Spain just do that on their own?
They can't do it at all? What are you talking about? Exactly?
So Spain is supposed to go to all the other
international bodies and say, hey, we're about the send that
every I think everybody be pretty astonished if they did that.
But they they're gonna We're gonna send a flag up
to Europa. Right. They're supposed to tell everybody what their
(15:52):
plans are, what their mision, mission parameters are, and what
kind of regulations they have in place. Uh. Now that
holds for international bodies like nation states, It doesn't necessarily
hold for commercial entities. And we were talking about that
a little bit later. So for instance, UM, I'm sure
many of you have heard that the SpaceX rocket exploded
(16:14):
yesterday on the platform, right, Um, what if it didn't
explode on the platform. What if it exploded in orbit,
uh and it contained something? Yeah? Or what if it
was an orbit or orbiting Mars and it exploded there
and showered Mars with whatever was inside it. Or it
was returning from an asteroid orbiting Earth and exploded in
the atmosphere. So okay, so we've got this this Outer
(16:38):
Space Treaty from the United Nations. Okay, that's about as
close to the federation as we have right now. Um, well,
what do we do then for these guidelines? Like who
who cooks up these guidelines? Who decides between all these
various space agencies all over the planet right now? What?
How how do we prevent backward or forward contamination? Well? Yeah,
(16:58):
so the U entreaty gives us the vague objectives. The
actual Uh, some more specifics I guess come from what's
known as the Coast Bar Planetary Protection Policy. Yeah. So
Coast BAR stands for the Committee on Space Research. It's
part of the International Council of Science. So it's an
international body, but it's it's mainly like a committee, uh
(17:19):
that has a panel within it. It's a little arcane here, Uh.
But the planet, the panel focuses on planetary protection. Now,
keep in mind the policies that Coast Bar puts out
are not legally binding in any way. It's just a
set of guidelines on contamination that nations should consider. And
they've got five categories that they look at, uh and
(17:41):
there for various possibilities. There's flybys, orbiters, landers, probes, non
earth returns, and then Earth returns and those are the
ones that were the most worried about because they're the
most likely to have backward contamination involved. Alright, we're gonna
take a quick break and when we come back, more
of this special live episode of stuff to blow your mind.
(18:05):
And we're back. Okay, Well, maybe we should transition to
another question, which is why should we even worry about this?
I mean, why tax dollars going to this? Yeah, well
it's an it's an interesting question because we look at
all this this legislation and sort of pseudo legislation in
some some cases where it really paints biocontamination up as
(18:27):
this is kind of like the ultimate sin, you know,
I mean, breaking the prime directive. Really, but what if
it's less of sin and more just the way things
work in the universe. What if it's a cosmic standard,
and in that it would line up rather nicely with
pan spermia hypothesis. And uh, the idea that life exists
throughout the universe. It spread from place to place by meteorites, asteroids, comets,
(18:49):
planetary fragments, and yes, even spaceships carrying hearty extreme of
file microbes. And there are a few different variants of
pan spermia um that play in this. Uh. The first
one I'm gonna mention he real quick is radio pan
spermia ambular podcasts. Right radio radio pant spermia. Yeah, you
can listen to it. I think it's a's out of
(19:09):
a w N y C. But this is the dust
in the wind hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, And this is pretty
cool because there's no rocks, no spaceships, the ideas that
the micro organisms may live in space driven by radiation
pressure away from distant distant stars. So it's very if
we have any lovecraft readers in the and the audience
is very love crafty and feeling like something like the
(19:30):
Mego creatures flying across the void of exhalation of cosmic horror,
just floating free. Fortunately for for any of you who
are not fans of cosmic hard drifting in UM. Most
of what we know about the lethal nature of space
radiation tends to rule this one out. Then then there's
a litho pan spermia, and this is the one that
(19:52):
most of the attention is revolving around. That's the idea
you of rocks, they go from one planet to another um,
and it jives far better with our understanding of life.
Microbes just have to be able to survive ejection from
their planet, survival through the radiation radiations wet void, and
then atmospheric reentry into planet b um. Yeah. And this
(20:13):
this is actually something that uh, some nations on Earth
they're trying to test the hypothesis of we'll talk about
a little bit later. That's one of the instances where
we may have been responsible for forward contamination right there.
There's even a you know, hypothesis that life traveled throughout
our own solar system, that life on Earth might have
originated on Mars exogenesen. Then there's some kind of major
(20:35):
impact that spread it from one planet to another. Again,
this is not something we know or that they're strong
evidence for us. Is very interesting possibility. Now as as
as far as panspermia goes. Obviously, you have two possible
variants here on top of this. There's accidental and then
there is directed Accidental is that the idea that the
Spanish go to Europa and they leave some trash. They're right,
(20:57):
that we accidentally eat life on the world. The other
is directed pants spermia. And this is the stuff of Prometheus.
This is the stuff of the founders and track right,
it means the deliberate seating of worlds. Uh. And it
comes up both in terms of near future concerns. We
don't want to accidentally see the world with life, according
(21:18):
to some, But then there are those who advocate, well, yeah,
we we should see dead worlds. Why not? I mean,
life is kind of what we're all about. Uh, that's
that's kind of our thing here on Earth. Why shouldn't
we want to see this flourish elsewhere in the universe. So, Okay,
we've we've thrown a lot of theory at you all
of a sudden, all this pant spermia stuff. But let's
get down to some concrete examples. Where has this happened
(21:41):
before in our recent past? Well, arguably you mean fermia
or you know, you're talking about planetary protection polls. Yeah,
I'm talking about backward and forward contamination. Yeah. Well, let's
start with looking at some protection against backward contamination. I
want to visit a picture from Space History with you.
A lot of you may have seen this before, but um,
if you can see the screens. So here we have
(22:04):
a picture of the Apollo of an astronauts after they
returned from the Moon, and they are they're they're on board.
This is July believe did I get that date right? Yeah?
But anyway, so they're on board the USS Hornet in
the Pacific Ocean after they've splashed down, and the three
of them are contained inside this metal box. Uh, and
(22:26):
so what is this box? To me? This picture has
always looked like Nixon has trapped them in some sort
of steel pizza oven and he's about to bake them.
And he's explaining to them that he's about to bake them,
and how good looking happy they are about it. They're thrilled,
they're laughing. But yeah, anyway, so so what is this box? Well,
(22:47):
this box is known as the mobile Quarantine Facility, and
in reality it was a converted air stream trailer like
you would travel around in and uh, I don't know.
I guess you take the family to go see the
Grand Canyon or something in it. But the trailer maintained
quarantine on the freshly returned astronauts. Now why would they
need to maintain quarantine. It's like that scene an Alien
(23:08):
when you know, uh Ash returns with the alien on
his face and and Ripley is saying, I don't think
we should let him in, and then they ignore her
and one of the great lawful neutral characters in science
fiction is overridden. Ripley is really kind of a patron
saint of a planetary protection. Yeah, she is, totally I
would agree with that. But anyway, so, so how did
(23:29):
they keep this quarantine? Well, uh, they kept the air
pressure inside the airstream trailer lower than the pressure outside,
so things we want to be pushing in rather than
bleeding out. And then they filtered all exchanged air. And
then also on their way from the splash down point,
when the astronauts came down in the water to the
m QF, they had to wear these sealed suits called
(23:50):
biggs or biological isolation garments, and they look great. They're
like full body gas masks. Uh, you know the kind
of thing you see in those apocalyptic movie where there's
radiation event, everybody runs in with guns in the bio
containment suits. It's kind of like what Data wears in
the episode where he's observing everybody and then he just
rips that mask right off episode. Wait that was a movie,
(24:11):
wasn't sorry the movie? Yeah, these are the kind of
details that are going to get us chewed out after
this panels over. Uh, wait to be afraid to show us.
You have a theory here that I think you should
share with the audience. Hold on, I'm getting to that
all right. Okay, So, so after the Apollo Paulo love
An astronauts. They've been on the moon, they returned to Earth.
They were kept in quarantine in this trailer with a
(24:33):
bathroom and a kitchen. I'm sure it was just great. Uh.
They had to spend twenty one days in here to
make sure, yeah they have bathroom. Uh, to make sure
that they didn't set loose anything that they brought back
with him. And I always wondered, Okay, so what happens
if one of the astronauts does start to show signs
that they have contracted in an infection? I mean, nothing
(24:54):
happened but what would they have done if buzz Alderan
started erupting with parasitic moon worms? And would they just
keep the other two guys in there and just have
like Nixon watching through the window like, oh, I don't know,
I'm not sure, I'm pictures. It's like that scene in
the Thing where like the the one dog right starts
(25:15):
turning and just like tentacles shooting everywhere, ripping the other
dogs apart. They wouldn't have much choice. They just have
to set the whole thing on fire. Well, anyway, fortunately
nothing happened to our brave astronauts. But but why were
people so afraid? I have a pet theory? So this
was July of nineteen sixty nine. And do you all
know what movie came out in nineteen sixty eight? What?
(25:40):
Wo Barbarella? I'm trying to get my okay, I'm sure
Richard Nixon loved Barbaralla. I'm sorry, we're just here we go. No,
it was Night in the Living Dead. Does anybody remember
in Night of the Living Dead what explanation is given
by the scientists on TV who were talking about why
the dead have come back to life? Anybody remember it's
(26:03):
it's radioactive contamination. That's hitching a ride on a probe
that has returned from Venus. The radioactive contamination part doesn't
really make any sense, but I can see how this
might have planted a seed in people's heads. Anyway, So
the procedure into and I'm kidding by the way, I mean,
they've they've been talking at NASA about protecting the planet
(26:24):
for for many years about forward and backward contamination. But
to discount the power that that fiction and popular media
was on on the psyche, I think the idea, yeah, exactly,
the idea was in the zeitgeist. I mean we're seeing
it in U n policy, we're seeing in movies, and
then obviously in actual space missions. What year did the
andromedas trained by Michael Crichton come out? Was that nineteen
(26:47):
sixty nine. I think it might have been so right
around the same time. I mean, this was obviously on
people's minds, and you know, I think for good reason.
But then the procedure after it ended after Apollo fort Team,
when scientists they're like, yeah, we've been to the moon.
The Moon's dead. You know it's dead, We've seen it.
They just weren't really worried about microbial life being there anymore,
(27:08):
and that that makes sense too, because the fear of
backward contamination is one of those things that we don't
even know what all of the numbers to plug into
our risk equation are because we don't know how common
life is out there. I mean, it could be that
all kinds of planetary bodies out there are teeming with
life that we could bring back and could kill us.
(27:29):
Or it could be a totally dead universe except for Earth.
We we just have no idea yet. Are you familiar
with the Drake equation, So let's let's explain it just quickly.
The Drake equation, Well, it's a hypothetical equation in the
history of thinking about technological civilizations in the galaxy. For
you know, you come up with a number of other
technological civilizations in the Milky Way by multiplying together all
(27:52):
these variables like the number of habitable planets, the probability
that life will arise on a habitable planet, the probability
the intelligence will arise from life, And you multiply all
these together and you get your number of planets. But
the problem is most of the variables in the equation
are just a big question mark, and so it's kind
of the same if we were to come up with
(28:12):
a formula for backward and forward contamination. Right. But but
this doesn't mean we should end our concerns, because after all,
scientists are gonna want to do sample returns from all
kinds of objects in the Solar System, and until we know,
it's probably a good idea to practice caution. So we
want to have Mars sample return. We pick up some
soil from Mars, bring it back, pick up some methane
(28:34):
soaked soil from Titan. I love the idea of what
organisms might be like on Titan. They might be the
super cold, slow metabolism, long planning, slow moving organisms that uh,
I don't know. The slow ones are scarier to me.
I'm thinking like a greenland shark basically, yeah, yeah, very sleepy.
But also you let from D and D the land sharks. Yeah,
(28:57):
I don't even know what that is. We're gonna have
to I'll get chewed out for that too. But then
also like water from the Jupiter's moon Europa, like we
talked about earlier, from Saturn's Moonenceladus. But then there's also
the forward contamination concern that we could look at from
the past. Okay, so you got Mars here, this is
(29:17):
the landscape of Mars. What if we want to send
a probe to Mars, what lengths should we go to
to make sure that nothing is alive on that probe
in case there's something alive on Mars to contaminate, or
even just in case that there are places where organisms
we bring with us could settle in and and make
(29:38):
a new home and contaminate our future science. Well, we
have sent landers to Mars before. Of course you'll probably
know that. How about the Viking Landers, right, we said
the Viking Landers one and two down on the surface
of Mars in the nineteen seventies, and at the time
we had very little idea what might be on the
surface of Mars. You had people like Carl Sagan and
(29:59):
saying that they're they're could be microbes there, and if
there is a microbial environment on Mars, we don't want
to destroy it. So we need to put rigorous standards
in place to make sure that the probes we send
are as sterile as dental equipment. They're just you know,
the war. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if
we set our dental equipment on fire. Well, you know this,
(30:19):
this underlies them. You know, one of the one of
the big problems about trying to be to behave um,
you know, with with cleanliness to avoid uh contamination of
other other planets is that it's it's kind of the
wild West. And yeah, the idea of like a sterile
wild West just doesn't doesn't jive with how we operate.
(30:39):
I'd agree that's true. I mean then again, yeah, so
this highlights this tension again like how much how much
time and money should we put into this? How much
does it really matter? Well, I'm glad that you asked, Joe,
because there's two recent examples that will show you how
much or how little it may matter. Remember I was
talking about that there were some missions that were testing
(31:03):
this this han spermia idea. Right. Well, in two thousand
and ten, I don't know if you've heard about this,
but the director of the International Committee against Mars Sample
Return that's a thing. His name's Barry E. D. Gregorio.
He wrote a piece in New Scientist Maggan's magazine about
how there's a Russia. There was a Russian mission that
was going to Phobos Mars Moon, and it was called
(31:25):
the Phobos grunt. I love the name of this mission,
Phobos grunt uh. And it was supposed to be similar
to os Iris recks. It was supposed to go to Phobos.
It was gonna get a sample of the Moon, and
the idea was that while it was there, it was
also going to test transpermia by leaving life behind on Phobos.
That's transpermiama. We transferred deliberately an organism to this place
(31:51):
and it survived. The basic idea being similar to the
rocks thing we were talking about earlier, that that planets
get life forms on from rocks being ejected from meteorites
or asteroid collisions. Okay, but the probe totally failed and
fell back to Earth that it was actually destroyed over
the Pacific Ocean. At the time, this is what six
(32:14):
years ago now, Russia's space program had several space failures
in a row, and the head of their space agency
actually publicly wondered if there were saboteurs at work. So
maybe this committee against Mars sample return was up to
no good. Well that makes me wonder if yeah, so,
do we have planetary protection Ninja's out there are spies
(32:35):
going around trying to enforce it's like the infection guidelines
by sabotaging missions that are not appropriately about abiding by.
That's like Gary Abusey's son in contact, right, wasn't he
like against that? Uh? So there was another one. Unfortunately
it wasn't Russia this time, it was US. We we
committed forward contamination when in eleven we're working on the
(32:58):
Mars Science Laboratory Curia City, were over after it already launched.
They discovered that there was a set of drill bits
that they had put on board and they had not
been sent through their final sterilization step. God, dirty drill bits.
That's horrible. They're very dirty. But it deviated totally from procedures,
so much so that NASA's Planetary Protection officer, who am
(33:19):
gonna talk about later and is the most important woman
in the world. Uh, she recognized this is a problem.
There was a lot of miscommunication. We're gonna trying to
make sure it doesn't happen again. They weren't that concerned
about it because where they were sending this lander two
is a place called the Gale Crater on Mars, and
it was mostly just dead ice. They didn't think it
was possible if there was any life that could be
(33:41):
harbored there, especially as deep as these drill bits were
going to be going down. So they were hoping, crossing
their fingers that they weren't going to commit forward contamination.
But it slipped through the system despite the fact that
we've got cost bar and all these guidelines and every
you know, it comes comes down to just like this.
The brigger is of sterilization because it's one thing to
(34:01):
you go to the dentist and you see that neat
little tray of items there, right, and yeah, it's like,
that's not that big of a deal, right to sterilize
a few different instruments and have like a fresh little
packet of horrible toothpaste to open. But they'll imagine going
on a family vacation, Like, how would you sterilize all that?
You gotta sterilize the van, the clothing for the for
the children, right the toothbrush to the toothpaste the children.
(34:24):
Right there, you highlight a problem is that it's hard
to sterilize people. Um, so what are some protocol options
we we gotta probe We want to send it to Mars,
we want to send it to Titan, and we want
to make sure that it is just pristine has nothing
on it. Well, So one option is we can build
in a clean room. So like those clean rooms you see,
electronics are constructed in people wearing the bunny suits and
(34:47):
then you have to go through decontamination to get in.
Would this be the same as when I'm watching, say
like a drug dealer movie where they have in their underwear,
I think everybody, yeah, Uh no, I I don't think
that they're about people trying to escape from the clean
room with pieces of the lander. But maybe. But so
(35:08):
you can also clean it with solvents like spraight down
with some cleaner, just wipe it out. You can This
is a wonderful phrase that I've heard from several NASA
scientists involved in this. You can bake it out, so
that's dry heat baking of the environment of the thing
you're gonna send. But the problem with that is a
lot of times they have sensitive instruments on them. Uh,
these don't respond very well to a lot of the
(35:31):
sterilization tactics we want to use. So if you have
sensitive equipment and electronics on something, how hot can you
bake it before you damage all that stuff? You can
also encase it in some kind of BioShield essentially put
it in a big plastic bag or plastic container until
it gets out of the atmosphere. Um. You know, there
have been also other methods that have been explored in
(35:52):
the past, I know, like gassing things with killer gas,
ethylene oxide, or radiation bombardment. Though a problem with radiation
bombardment is that's not as effective at killing microbial life
as it is at killing people, you know, larger organisms
like us. And then you go back to the sensitive
instrument aspect of this. I mean, a lot of what
we're talking about is internal stuff that is ideally not
(36:13):
going to be a factor unless the thing explodes or
crashes or gets torn apart by like a large space
monster and and partially consumed. Yeah, I mean you point
out that this is a reason this is all much
harder than it sounds. So you think, like, okay, I
could stare alze, you know, dental equipment again and can
sterilize that white down. You can stare life the whole
of something conceivably, But when you start talking about all
(36:34):
the inside exactly, so if this thing explodes and the
interior components leak out all over the planet, that they've
got to be clean too, and that's so so hard
to do. And then once you enter crude missions missions
with humans on them, there's a whole other stage because
you cannot bake out an astronaut. There's no way to
do it. You bring, you bring microbial life with you.
(36:54):
They can't just wipe you down and make you clean
the stuff that's inside out of us. Well, for one thing,
you poop some of it out. So that introduces the
question of should we poop on Mars? I think this
is a very important thing going forward in human space exploration. Yeah,
this should be a whole department dedicated to that. And
they just have those like doggie bags. Yeah, should you
(37:17):
bring the same ethics to to Mars that you bring
to your neighborhood when you go out and walk your dog,
you pick it up with you. Hopefully you wouldn't be
pooping on the ground in Mars, but yeah, that would
be rough. However, there are current efforts that are in
this area. Specifically, NASA is what we're going to focus on.
So together with the the U N Treaty that we
talked about and co SPAR, there is a basic guideline
(37:41):
idea for how we should go forward. With this stuff,
and it's all overseen by who I mentioned earlier, NASA's
Planetary Protection Officer. She oversees compliance with requirements for each mission,
and she's typically directly involved in the development and planning
stages of all missions that occur in our solar system.
Her name is Katherine Conley. You probably don't hear about
(38:03):
her all that much. I don't know why she's super important.
She makes sure that NASA and all us organizations that
journey into space adhere to that U n Space Treaty.
She's way more important than a Kardashian, Like, I don't
understand why. And I don't mean Star Trek Kardashians, I
mean the the reality TV ones. I'm just I'm surprised
(38:26):
that she's not more high profile. Well, she doesn't represent
like the sexy side of I know, but man, she's important, Like, yeah,
no doubt if it if it weren't for her. She's
like Wilford Brimley and the thing. It's the kind of
office where you immediately know the person occupying the office
once there has been a major scrept exactly. Yeah, we'll
all learn her name when there's some huge catastrophe. But
(38:49):
she just did an interview with Scientific American in the
last couple of years, and she stated that she's actually
less worried about asteroids and you know, not so much
worried about the NASA stuff because they're following these guidelines
we talked about. Uh. The one thing that she's concerned
about our commercial entities sending missions into space, because NASA
isn't supporting all of those, and there's no oversight for
(39:10):
any of them, especially with regards to planetary protection. So
currently the Federal Aviation Administration is in charge of launches
and landings, but only within our atmosphere. There's nobody in
charge of space. So UH, NASA is in a regulatory
agency and they can't do anything about it either. What happens, uh,
(39:31):
if there's a commercial mission, like we mentioned earlier, maybe
they scoop up some dirt off and asteroid or Mars
or something and then accidentally backward contaminate the Earth. This
is the opening of a James Bond movie, right somebody.
It's like Moonraker, except probably hopefully better. Uh Moonraker. I
think if I had to rewatch a Bond film right now,
(39:54):
you would beat Moonraker. Moonraker is the one where a
pigeon does a double take. Can you remember that, Like
he drives by on a car that comes out of
the water and the pigeon. Anyway, we stray from the
subject back back to the requirements that we have for
these space space missions. We have certain cleanliness requirements, as
Joe is talking about right, like how sterile they get,
(40:16):
how much we bake them out, all that kind of stuff.
So here's the question related to Star Trek. Does the
Federation have a cleanliness policy? I couldn't find anything about
this online. Do they have like some clean rooms on
board the ships where they make sure that everything is
like super clean and they don't have to worry about
back order forward contamination? Does anybody know? Oh, yeah, we
(40:39):
have an answer somebody. Oh that's smart. Yeah, because the
transport kills everything that goes through it anyway, including you. Okay, okay,
we were guessing that it had something to do with
the transporters, but we weren't sure. Yeah. Like for me,
I start thinking about cleanliness and transporters, and then I
just go down a rabbit hole thinking about the fly
(40:59):
and like, how do you how do you root out
fly DNA when you have to worry about other like
all the microorganisms that are part of the human body.
But that's a separate that's that's true. Brundle should have
become Brundle gut flora rather than just Brundle fly. The
general rules that we operate under now though, don't have
transporters unfortunately, So we try to avoid unintended encounters with
(41:19):
objects inner solar system, especially those that have a probability
of no more than one in a thousand of their
being life on them. This is the ideal, is that
it's supposed to extend for fifty years after emission arrives
at its protected target. So, but think about all the
organic molecules that could accidentally get on something just from us,
(41:42):
just from us breathing, Like this microphone right now, I'm
getting all kinds of bacteria on it, or shedding your
dead skin, all of them. Right. Yeah. We we basically
walk around life and with with just a cloud of
dead skin falling behind us. We really do so. Similar
to coastpar now, USA actually has five categories that they
use for planetary protection as well. Their main concerns are about,
(42:06):
you know, whether the mission is critical to discovering the
origin of life, how much of a chance there is
that contamination will be a part of it, and they
look at protection requirements from everything from what is referred
to as bio burden reduction UH to clean rooms and
bakeoffs as we talked about earlier. I think instead the
Great British Bakeoff, they should have the Great NASA Bakeoff.
(42:28):
I would watch that just like cooking the Osiris rex
to perfection. But it's pretty rare that they actually sterilize
any of these crafts. The most concerning of these missions,
like I mentioned earlier, are the ones that will return
to Earth after they've brought something back. Now there's unrestricted returns,
and that is when we go to something that has
(42:50):
theoretically no chance of life, like the Moon, like we
just mentioned earlier, they be pretty sure that there's nothing
on the Moon unless there's like transformers buried under their like,
they're at least confident enough to gamble with the life
of everyone on Earth. But the restricted ones are the
ones that we're worried about. Those are the ones where
there is the possibility or a sign of what is
referred to as a non terrestrial replicating organism, so so
(43:13):
life yeah exactly, so we get worried about that. Here's
the reality though, no matter what we do, these missions
will never be a dent secure. Our detection methods are
getting better and better every day, and we're starting to realize, oh, hey,
these missions that we thought were sterile that we sent
off ten years ago, we totally they were filthy. We
(43:35):
sent all kinds of things in space. So well, our
biodetection capabilities are getting better. Yeah exactly. And like I
mentioned earlier to that that U. N. Space Treaty is
just getting old and inadequate. So this stuff really needs
to be reviewed, especially when you've got elon musk firing
rockets up like every week. This. Uh. One more concern
(43:57):
I think we should introduce is the fact that this
is not just at an Earth problem. The forward and
backward contamination problem is a problem that we take with
us anywhere we go. So if we establish a space station,
you know, like a big space station like they have
in I don't know, Mass Effect or something, it's got
people walking all over it, that that is essentially like
a new Earth that has the same considerations with it.
(44:20):
Anytime you leave it, you are taking a forward contamination
risk with you. Anytime you come back to it, you're
taking a backward contamination risk with you. Uh. So this
is it's not so much about the Earth as a rock,
but about humanity and humanity's dwelling space, or not just humanity,
Earth life dwelling space. Okay, but now everything we've talked
(44:41):
about so far has been bio contamination. We've been dealing
with micro organism. But of course there are there are
other ways to contaminate, uh, an alien world, especially if
that alien world, you know, potentially has language, it has
a culture. Could we could culturally contaminate that world with
you know, some of our our our top twenty musical hits, right,
(45:03):
the Van Halen hits exactly as we said before. So
maybe we should start with backward contamination concerns because that's
more clear to us what the risks could be. So
imagine we've got radio telescope array that we have decided to,
you know, listen to a certain patch of sky that
we think might have alien life on it, and we
actually do get a message. Uh you know, they're listening
(45:23):
to the Tao Setti system. It's about twelve light years away,
and this obvious sign of alien intelligence comes through. It
is clearly a message. It's made for us to be
able to decode and understand it, and we do. And
what are the messages contain? Well, imagine it contains like
coded schematics for building some kind of machine. What is
the machine? Or it's maybe the holy text of a
(45:46):
two setti in religion, or it is a statement of intentions,
just like hello, here we are, here's our attitude toward you.
I would argue that any of these things could potentially
be as destructive to humanity as a foreign microbe that
we brought down from Titan or from Mars. We'll just
think back to the primatologist example. If we just if
all we we had was a clear message, an undeniable
(46:09):
message that said, hey we're watching, or hey we've been
we've we've been checking out, Like that alone is enough
to just cause just just cataclysmic dust the world. Well,
I mean, okay, so take this statement of intentions example.
They they're just saying, hey, here we are here, here's
something you need to know about us. What if that
message decodes to we are inbound to your planet at
(46:31):
the speed of light. We're decelerating currently and we'll arrive
within less than one of your Earth years, and we're
going to eradicate every living organism on your planet, even
if they're lying, even if that's not true, you could
potentially cause catastrophic damage to Earth just by spreading the message.
It would be a killer meme. I think that the
(46:52):
counter here would be for for everyone to agree on
a lay down and play dead today. But the day
that we realize the aliens will arrive, everyone just just
just be really still, be really quiet. So we were
talking about this before we were researching this. I remember
this TV show maybe some of you remember it was
called Threshold and it got like maybe I don't know,
like eight episodes. You remember that Bent Spiner was in
(47:14):
it and Peter Dinklage, and it was sort of the
premise of that show was that like through like I think,
like a fourth dimensional entity was like somehow in you know,
transmitting information that was basically designed for us to destroy
ourselves so that they could take over our dimension. Well, yeah,
I mean there are other ways you could do it too.
That what if the coded schematics for the machine are
(47:35):
for a planet killer super weapon. It's a suicide machine
that they trick us into building, and they don't even
have to come here to eradicate us. Or it could
be you know what if the the holy text of
that Taosettian religion is actually very attractive. It's something that
a lot of Earthlings convert to, and it's a you know,
destroy your planet religion. In any of these things I
(47:56):
think could be potentially possible, but you need to consider,
you know, the coroll area of this, which is also
it could go the other way. You could send a
meme from star system to star system that's encoded entirely
in information, but there's no exchange of matter. That could
be potentially very destructive, and we could be sending that
(48:18):
meme entirely by accident. Yeah, like Pristans, a warlike alien species,
receives our hanging their cat poster, and they were they
were about the sublime. They were about it's completely drift
off and just abandon all physical um complications, and they're like, no,
we should hang in here and let's go conquer this planet.
But this brings up what we referred to on our
(48:40):
show a lot, because Robert's a big fan of E
and M. Banks and his culture series. We talk about
outside context problems. If any of you are familiar with that.
We did an episode on cargo cults a couple of
months ago and this was a big one for that.
So think about it in relation to what we're talking
about here with this cultural backward or forward can amination
(49:01):
the society. If a society or civilization encounters a problem
or a threat or or a complication like like we're
we're talking about here, they have no context to prepare
for or effectively deal with. That's an outside context problem.
And as as far as the m banks goes, they're
pretty much always fatal. Like those societies are just yeah,
(49:22):
like in a big trouble or at least transformed in
a really right I mean the restrial example is, you know,
a unless advanced society is out there on the beach
and then a warship shows up or a colonial vessel
shows up, and then you know, what are you gonna do?
You can't to fight is to be annihilated. All you
can do is give in and or meet it halfway
(49:43):
and find a find a way to still retain your
beliefs while accepting these new movies. In the example that
we talked about on the show, and this is real,
cargo cults sprang up all over Pacific island societies after
the Second World War because of this very thing. American
battleships would show up, or maybe planes would land, and
they would see them, and they it was very much
(50:04):
like the beginning of Star Trek into Darkness. They would
literally start worshiping them. They were they were they were
radio towers and airstrips out of bamboo. It's sort of
real life evidence of the principle that technology you don't
understand is magic to you. Yeah. I mean, they were
exposed to the military industrial complex, to the I mean
not not just to the physical manifestation, but to the
(50:24):
network that it represented. And and what can you do, Well,
you neither change or you die, I guess yeah. Um.
And you know, but you extrapolate that out to a
larger scenario with us or maybe another maybe an alien
civilization like that we're beaming cat memes to, uh, and
it gets a little bit more difficult. Yeah. So I
(50:45):
want to think about the potential dangers of this kind
of intellectual contamination between planets, and I'll venture a hypothesis.
I'm not sure if this is true, but it's something
to just think about. It. Could it be true that
any planet occupied by a species intell leigen enough to
understand written language, understand a coded message, and receive it.
With technology, it is possible to spread a meme that
(51:08):
kills that species or potentially kills that planet. Yeah, and
on that note, I want to bring up the Federation again.
I want to get back to the prime directive. So
to join the United Federation of Planets, like generally, well,
you need to have your planet altogether, right, you need
to have a unified culture to a certain extent, everybody,
there's gonna be a certain amount of peace, right. Uh,
(51:29):
and certainly I can. I think there's been a couple
of episodes here and there where that has been an
issue that's come up. Yeah, Planning wants to join the Federation,
but there's still like two factions. You don't share our values, right, So,
but I but I wonder to what extent then, is
a mono cultural world like this is it? Is it
kind of like having an entire field with one crop?
(51:51):
Is it like having an asexual organism that has no
genetic diversity? Uh? It makes it highly susceptible to its
disastrous meme, to a disastrous cultural contamination incidents, far more
vulnerable right, yeah, yeah, in the same way that I
think you could argue that a diverse biosphere with a
(52:11):
lot of biosphere, with lots of genetic diversity and different
types of organisms, would be more resistant to an invasive pathogen.
Could it be possible that a diverse culture is more
resistant to an invasive meme? So on one on one level,
you could well imagine that that something like the Federation
would want to say, hey, make sure you keep your
your population a little bit diverse, make sure you have
(52:33):
you know, sort of a sort of flood barriers of
language there to keep this thing from from disastrous ideas
from running wild. But then, on the other hand, what
is the Federation but a kind of infection itself? Like
it it had it kind of sets back waiting for
the planet to have a certain amount of uniformity and
and monocultural susceptibility to infection in this case of beneficial infection.
(52:56):
So it's its own version of cultural forward contamination. But
but or maybe even inoculation if you want to look
at it, and even alsositive step. All right, So there
you have it. Hey, if you want to learn more
about stuff to blow your mind, if indeed, if you're
interested in booking us for some sort of an appearance,
(53:17):
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(53:39):
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and thousands of other topic Is that how stuff Works
(53:59):
dot com. Mhm sem start
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
so we recorded a special live edition of the podcast
last week at Star Trek Mission, New York, and all
(00:26):
three of us, Robert, Christian and I up in a
conference room full of Star Trek Conference attendees. Yeah it was.
It was really great. Hopefully some of the folks who
were there in person are listening now, and if so,
I just want to thank you once more for being
a fabulous audience. Everyone seemed to really get into the topical.
We had some fun chatting with folks after the show. Absolutely, So,
(00:46):
without further ado, here is our live episode of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. Robert, you've got to start us
Star Trek history. Okay, So um, when we're not going
to pretend to be like the the the perfect Star
Trek fans. Our knowledge is not perfect. But I certainly
have a very warm place in my heart for Star
(01:07):
Trek the Next Generation, especially because I grew up watching
it every evening in syndication at nine pm. It was
my my go to I would escape from the horrors
of Junior High and just just pour myself into the
hollow deck of Star Trek. Yeah, for me, I think
deep Space and nine was when I really dove in
deep But I was talking to these guys the other day.
(01:28):
Does anybody remember the Cheerios commercial right before The Next
Generation came out where you they offered like if you
cut out on the back of the box, you could
be like an extra in the Next Generation. That was like,
I was like five, maybe six years old, and that's
how we got Wesley Crusher. That glued right in my kid.
But yeah, I didn't. I guess I didn't make it.
(01:49):
I didn't make the cut. I am far less trek
ucated than these two, even I have to admit to
the room. I I love like the even numbered movies,
as they say. And I've watched some highlight episodes from
the original series, like a Balance of Terror and what's
the one where they Kirk and Spocko back in time
and they wear these like cool nineteen thirties suits and
(02:09):
some lady gets hit by a car. It Yeah, that
was a good one. Uh. Then, Also, I watched the
first season of Next Generation, and I really loved the
planets that looked like a nineteen nineties like family portrait
photo studio filled with potted trees. It was pretty cool.
(02:30):
So let's talk a little bit about the Prime directive
because it while we are by no means experts on
the Prime Directive, it does relate quite a bit to
the real world science that we're gonna be talking about. Yeah,
and and uh, I mentioned we don't we don't have
to tell you guys what the Prime directive is. You know,
it is, um, it's the philosophy of the federation. Right,
it is that it's an anti colonialist for that matter
(02:51):
of anti Vietnam War ethos the policy of of non interference.
Don't mess around with the natural progression or demise of
of life on a given world. Right is it, don't
get involved in it's it's cultural ascension. Let it, let
it happen. Yeah. And one of the major questions that's
going to be important to talking about planetary contamination later
(03:14):
that we had was is observing mere mere early observing
a violation of the Prime Directive? And from what I
could tell, it seems like no, Although it seems like, uh,
there's there's quite a bit of instances the one that
I remember the most is in Star Trek Insurrection with
you know, when Data is running around in the invisible
suit and goes crazy and rips his mask off and
everybody just sees a floating Brent Spiner head. This is
(03:36):
the one where f Murray Abraham played Allain. Yes, yeah, yeah,
so so that clearly violated the observing thing. Uh. And
then apparently I haven't seen this one, but there's a
next generation episode called Who Watches the Watchers where Ryker
and Troy put on makeup so they look like they're
members of this indigenous race so they can observe what's
going on there. Uh, we're not quite there yet. Uh,
(03:59):
but but it seems like observing is okay, right, Yeah,
I mean as long as, of course you're not seen observing.
That's kind of the primatologist's view on it, right. You
you want to be able to observe, uh, these creatures
in their natural habitat. But if they see you, then
you you've already disrupted everything. And obviously nothing disrupts a
(04:20):
would disrupt a culture's ascension, of a planetary culture's attention
more than seeing a starship suddenly appear in the sky. Yeah,
exactly right. Oh yeah, that's another good example of that.
We'll talk about later when we get into cargo cults
is seen in a Star Trek into Darkness of course
at the beginning where they see the enterprise and then
they start sort of worshiping it by drawing the images
(04:40):
of it in the sand. Uh So, I can actually
think of worse if they piped in some like Van
Halen singles. I could see that that could go beyond
the starship. But you know, one of the things it
would be Beastie Boys given uh that that particular version
of multi Yeah. Uh so. Yeah. One of the things
about the prime to active as throughout the show, I
(05:01):
mean even a a a Star Trek light viewer like
me can observe is that it's not a rule that's
simply followed, but it's something that is often debated. People
are weighing the pros and cons uh that. You know,
they often want to have a conversation about, well, should
we follow the non intervention you know, guidelines, or should
we step into help where we can, And a lot
(05:21):
of times it's sort of like the following the lawful
path versus following the good path. Yeah, it reminds me
a lot too of the journalists Um Connundiam at times
like if I'm I'm not gonna observe, I'm gonna stand
back and take this photo, or do I jump in
and help in a situation where help is required. Yeah,
So this leads us into the let's just break down
the very beginning or science that we're gonna talk about today.
(05:44):
What's the difference between planetary protection and planetary contamination. Well,
protection is a term that we give to our goal
to protect other celestial bodies. Actually, you know, we're talking
about planets, moons, comets, or asteroids here. Uh. We don't
want to contaminate them with life from here on Earth
as we're going throughout the galaxy, mainly the Solar System
(06:06):
right now and interacting with them. That's what's called forward contamination,
US contaminating other celestial bodies. And and later in this
presentation we will give you some examples where that has
already happened unfortunately. Uh, But we also want to protect Earth,
right We don't want a scenario like the Andromeda Strain
to happen. So we want to make sure that Earth
(06:29):
is protected from possible life forms that may have returned
from extraterrestrial samples. Anybody here familiar with the Osiris REX
mission that's taking off the next couple of I think
it's like in the next month, right UH, NASA is
sending a spacecraft called Ocyrus REX to the asteroid Baynu,
and the goal is to go to Baynu. UH scoop
(06:51):
a piece of dirt off of Baynu, put it into
a capsule, and then bring it back to Earth so
that we can study it. UH mainly about so that
they can get some ideas about the origin of life.
They think Baynu has got some particularly carbon rich minerals
in it that might give us some some kind of
history to the universe. So in that case, we really
(07:13):
don't want there to be I don't know, like space
worms on it that are affect everybody and turn us
into zombies or something. So in the unlikely scenario that
this UH, this return the soil returned from the asteroid
has some kind of microbe in it that could infect
our bodies. What if they bring it back and it
escapes from contamination there that received the retrieval areas. What
(07:34):
if it explodes in the atmosphere upon re entry and
then scatters all over the place. They're not very worried
about that with the Osiris REX mission because they're they're
not very good scientific reasons for thinking you're likely to
encounter life on an asteroid, and asteroids just a death zone.
It's out in the middle of space. It's bombarded I radiation,
micro meteoroid impacts, and there's just it's not a friendly
(07:56):
place to live. But there are some other places in
the Solar System that we do think are are much
more likely to be friendly to life. Yeah, probably the
bathrooms here at the jab At Center are friendly to life,
I would imagine. Uh No, But so we're talking about
backward contamination when we're talking about these asteroids bringing samples back.
In particular, NASA is worried about Mars. I don't know
(08:18):
if any of you have been down to the show
floor yet, but they have a really cool exhibit about
their plans for Mars missions. And if you talk to
some of the NASA volunteers that are down there, uh,
they know all about backward contamination and what their policies
are concerning this. We'll talk a little bit about today,
but we're not the experts, right. But then also you
might be asking so The reason for preventing backward contamination
(08:41):
is obvious. We don't want to get infected with space
germs and I'll die. Well, this is the selfish side
of it, right, I mean, we know, like, whatever you
get into out there, don't bring it back home, don't
not don't bring it back and then the potentially knows
of our environment. Right. But the motivations for preventing the
contamination of other bodies in the Solar System is maybe
less obvious, Like why would you care if a probe
(09:04):
that you send to Mars or Saturn's moon Titan has
microbes living on it? I mean, who cares? They're probably
gonna die anyway, What does it matter? Well, there are
several reasons we want to prevent that. One is protecting
science objectives. Uh So, if we're going to Titan or
to Mars to try to figure out if there is
microbial life living in the soil there, we don't want
(09:25):
to take contaminants with it that are going to make
it impossible for us to do that scientific research. I mean,
it's like visiting a crime scene, right, You don't want
somebody to go in and leave their fingerprints or their
genetic material all over the place because we need to
get down to who has had access to it. Instance,
the case with with a foreign body. It would be
like if detectives investigating a crime scene couldn't investigate it
(09:48):
very easily without having all the prime suspects come in
and bleed everywhere, um exactly. But but it's difficult. But
then there are also other potential concerns. One is the
protection of in digenous life. So introducing microbial life forms
to a new environment very often kills what's already there.
And it's quite possible that if there are life forms
(10:09):
on Titan or on Enceladus Europa, Mars, and we bring
our own microbes there, there could be a battle of
the bacteria and our bacteria might win. Again, that's very
bad obviously for those bacteria. That you could have a
debate about whether that ethically matters or not, you know,
should we care about those bacteria, But it certainly matters
for the science. We we want to be able to
(10:30):
know if they're there, and so we don't want to
kill them all. And then a final reason is that
we can disturb natural environments by introducing life forms just
like bacteria here on Earth and and uh small organisms
have geoengineered the Earth. You know, they've changed our atmospheric composition.
We don't want to potentially do that to other planets
(10:51):
in the Solar System by accident. So let's give you
like a like a real world analogy that will sort
of hopefully bring it all together. Right, Like, whenever you
travel abroad with an animal here and on Earth, right,
you usually have to have documents of some sort that
they have their vaccinations. Right, So it's a similar sort
of situation. You don't you would sometimes quarantine an animal
(11:13):
in those situations you also don't want to, well you do.
You have to declare agricultural items when you come into
and out of certain countries, right, So how many people
here have been through customs before? That's supposed to It's fun, right,
I mean, So like the example that we're gonna use
here is like what if we brought a watermelon up
(11:35):
here from Florida and it's just filled with mosquitoes that
are infected with the Zeke virus. Right, But that probably
wouldn't be a great example, uh because you guys would
hate that, But that would be forward contamination. Yeah, I mean,
you can find plenty of examples just by thinking of
all the missteps that we've we've taken in our in
(11:56):
our in our you know, recent history here on ourth
spreading invasive species across the planet and exactly stabilizing natural environments.
The carp car carp fish are notorious invasive species here
in America. Yeah, we have a podcast about that, by
the way, you can look it up. It's about jumping
fish in the rivers of the Midwest. They jump out
(12:18):
of the water and smash people's facebones. They do pretty cool. Joe,
is there any law? Is there anything that's like keeping
us from doing this? Like why can't I just build
my own rocket and shoot a zeke a mosquito and
outer space? That is a good question. So there actually
are guidelines for how you're supposed to behave in space.
In fact, there are tons of different organizations treaties that
(12:40):
put space law on space guidelines into place. Where's the
boundary between law and guidelines, I don't know a lot
of times we haven't tested that boundary, So we don't
know exactly what would happen if you broke certain guidelines,
but we have them. Uh, for example, what prevents Spain
from flying to Europa? Here? This is Jupiter's moon Europa.
It's believe that it could possibly contain life because it's
(13:02):
got an icy crust with liquid oceans underneath it. There
could be something living in that water. What prevents Spain
from flying a rocket to Europa, sticking a flag down
in the ice and saying, I declare Europa for Spain,
it is Spanish territory. Now, well, fortunately we have the
UN Outer Space Treaty, and all signatories and parties of
(13:23):
the treaty agree that, for example, you can't go claim
the Moon for your country. It doesn't belong to you.
It's the common heritage of all mankind and you can
access it equally. But there are other things that are
entailed by this treaty as well, right, Yeah, Well it
was developed in nineteen sixty seven. It was really you know,
in the middle of the Cold War, but they managed
(13:44):
to get the U S, the Soviet Union, the UK
and a couple of other countries to sit down and
you know, agree to this at the United Nations to
prohibit mainly countries from placing nuclear arms or other w
m D weapons of mass instructions UH destructions de duction
UH in outer space. So that was mainly why this
(14:04):
was put together. But it also holds all nations accountable
for whatever their various actions are in outer space according
to international law, so that's important. It does kind of
underlie one of the problems with any of this kind
of legislation is they always emerged from the time and
in which they're rolled out. They speak to very specific
(14:25):
near future concerns, and when it gets to the you know,
the more far future concerns, Uh, they don't really grapple
with them with with with a degree of detail that
might be necessary. Yeah, that's the thing of this And um,
there were arguments not like a year or two after
it had first been written that it was already either
too stringent or not stringent enough, and we're still seeing
(14:48):
arguments like that today, decades later. So a lot of
people argue the Outer Space Treaty is out of date
and needs to be updated. But in any case, how
it relates exactly to the topic we're talking about today
is that Article nine of the U and Outer Space
Treaty says that all parties to the treaty have to
avoid harmful contamination of the Moon and other celestial bodies,
(15:10):
and they also have to avoid adverse changes in the
environment of Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter.
So that's pretty vague, right it It basically just says,
don't pollute outer space with our microbes and don't bring
anything you find out there back here that could kill us. Uh.
So how's it gives to work? Like, so Spain's gonna
(15:31):
go plant their flag on Europa? Right, So how does
that work? Can can Spain just do that on their own?
They can't do it at all? What are you talking about? Exactly?
So Spain is supposed to go to all the other
international bodies and say, hey, we're about the send that
every I think everybody be pretty astonished if they did that.
But they they're gonna We're gonna send a flag up
to Europa. Right. They're supposed to tell everybody what their
(15:52):
plans are, what their mision, mission parameters are, and what
kind of regulations they have in place. Uh. Now that
holds for international bodies like nation states, It doesn't necessarily
hold for commercial entities. And we were talking about that
a little bit later. So for instance, UM, I'm sure
many of you have heard that the SpaceX rocket exploded
(16:14):
yesterday on the platform, right, Um, what if it didn't
explode on the platform. What if it exploded in orbit,
uh and it contained something? Yeah? Or what if it
was an orbit or orbiting Mars and it exploded there
and showered Mars with whatever was inside it. Or it
was returning from an asteroid orbiting Earth and exploded in
the atmosphere. So okay, so we've got this this Outer
(16:38):
Space Treaty from the United Nations. Okay, that's about as
close to the federation as we have right now. Um, well,
what do we do then for these guidelines? Like who
who cooks up these guidelines? Who decides between all these
various space agencies all over the planet right now? What?
How how do we prevent backward or forward contamination? Well? Yeah,
(16:58):
so the U entreaty gives us the vague objectives. The
actual Uh, some more specifics I guess come from what's
known as the Coast Bar Planetary Protection Policy. Yeah. So
Coast BAR stands for the Committee on Space Research. It's
part of the International Council of Science. So it's an
international body, but it's it's mainly like a committee, uh
(17:19):
that has a panel within it. It's a little arcane here, Uh.
But the planet, the panel focuses on planetary protection. Now,
keep in mind the policies that Coast Bar puts out
are not legally binding in any way. It's just a
set of guidelines on contamination that nations should consider. And
they've got five categories that they look at, uh and
(17:41):
there for various possibilities. There's flybys, orbiters, landers, probes, non
earth returns, and then Earth returns and those are the
ones that were the most worried about because they're the
most likely to have backward contamination involved. Alright, we're gonna
take a quick break and when we come back, more
of this special live episode of stuff to blow your mind.
(18:05):
And we're back. Okay, Well, maybe we should transition to
another question, which is why should we even worry about this?
I mean, why tax dollars going to this? Yeah, well
it's an it's an interesting question because we look at
all this this legislation and sort of pseudo legislation in
some some cases where it really paints biocontamination up as
(18:27):
this is kind of like the ultimate sin, you know,
I mean, breaking the prime directive. Really, but what if
it's less of sin and more just the way things
work in the universe. What if it's a cosmic standard,
and in that it would line up rather nicely with
pan spermia hypothesis. And uh, the idea that life exists
throughout the universe. It spread from place to place by meteorites, asteroids, comets,
(18:49):
planetary fragments, and yes, even spaceships carrying hearty extreme of
file microbes. And there are a few different variants of
pan spermia um that play in this. Uh. The first
one I'm gonna mention he real quick is radio pan
spermia ambular podcasts. Right radio radio pant spermia. Yeah, you
can listen to it. I think it's a's out of
(19:09):
a w N y C. But this is the dust
in the wind hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, And this is pretty
cool because there's no rocks, no spaceships, the ideas that
the micro organisms may live in space driven by radiation
pressure away from distant distant stars. So it's very if
we have any lovecraft readers in the and the audience
is very love crafty and feeling like something like the
(19:30):
Mego creatures flying across the void of exhalation of cosmic horror,
just floating free. Fortunately for for any of you who
are not fans of cosmic hard drifting in UM. Most
of what we know about the lethal nature of space
radiation tends to rule this one out. Then then there's
a litho pan spermia, and this is the one that
(19:52):
most of the attention is revolving around. That's the idea
you of rocks, they go from one planet to another um,
and it jives far better with our understanding of life.
Microbes just have to be able to survive ejection from
their planet, survival through the radiation radiations wet void, and
then atmospheric reentry into planet b um. Yeah. And this
(20:13):
this is actually something that uh, some nations on Earth
they're trying to test the hypothesis of we'll talk about
a little bit later. That's one of the instances where
we may have been responsible for forward contamination right there.
There's even a you know, hypothesis that life traveled throughout
our own solar system, that life on Earth might have
originated on Mars exogenesen. Then there's some kind of major
(20:35):
impact that spread it from one planet to another. Again,
this is not something we know or that they're strong
evidence for us. Is very interesting possibility. Now as as
as far as panspermia goes. Obviously, you have two possible
variants here on top of this. There's accidental and then
there is directed Accidental is that the idea that the
Spanish go to Europa and they leave some trash. They're right,
(20:57):
that we accidentally eat life on the world. The other
is directed pants spermia. And this is the stuff of Prometheus.
This is the stuff of the founders and track right,
it means the deliberate seating of worlds. Uh. And it
comes up both in terms of near future concerns. We
don't want to accidentally see the world with life, according
(21:18):
to some, But then there are those who advocate, well, yeah,
we we should see dead worlds. Why not? I mean,
life is kind of what we're all about. Uh, that's
that's kind of our thing here on Earth. Why shouldn't
we want to see this flourish elsewhere in the universe. So, Okay,
we've we've thrown a lot of theory at you all
of a sudden, all this pant spermia stuff. But let's
get down to some concrete examples. Where has this happened
(21:41):
before in our recent past? Well, arguably you mean fermia
or you know, you're talking about planetary protection polls. Yeah,
I'm talking about backward and forward contamination. Yeah. Well, let's
start with looking at some protection against backward contamination. I
want to visit a picture from Space History with you.
A lot of you may have seen this before, but um,
if you can see the screens. So here we have
(22:04):
a picture of the Apollo of an astronauts after they
returned from the Moon, and they are they're they're on board.
This is July believe did I get that date right? Yeah?
But anyway, so they're on board the USS Hornet in
the Pacific Ocean after they've splashed down, and the three
of them are contained inside this metal box. Uh, and
(22:26):
so what is this box? To me? This picture has
always looked like Nixon has trapped them in some sort
of steel pizza oven and he's about to bake them.
And he's explaining to them that he's about to bake them,
and how good looking happy they are about it. They're thrilled,
they're laughing. But yeah, anyway, so so what is this box? Well,
(22:47):
this box is known as the mobile Quarantine Facility, and
in reality it was a converted air stream trailer like
you would travel around in and uh, I don't know.
I guess you take the family to go see the
Grand Canyon or something in it. But the trailer maintained
quarantine on the freshly returned astronauts. Now why would they
need to maintain quarantine. It's like that scene an Alien
(23:08):
when you know, uh Ash returns with the alien on
his face and and Ripley is saying, I don't think
we should let him in, and then they ignore her
and one of the great lawful neutral characters in science
fiction is overridden. Ripley is really kind of a patron
saint of a planetary protection. Yeah, she is, totally I
would agree with that. But anyway, so, so how did
(23:29):
they keep this quarantine? Well, uh, they kept the air
pressure inside the airstream trailer lower than the pressure outside,
so things we want to be pushing in rather than
bleeding out. And then they filtered all exchanged air. And
then also on their way from the splash down point,
when the astronauts came down in the water to the
m QF, they had to wear these sealed suits called
(23:50):
biggs or biological isolation garments, and they look great. They're
like full body gas masks. Uh, you know the kind
of thing you see in those apocalyptic movie where there's
radiation event, everybody runs in with guns in the bio
containment suits. It's kind of like what Data wears in
the episode where he's observing everybody and then he just
rips that mask right off episode. Wait that was a movie,
(24:11):
wasn't sorry the movie? Yeah, these are the kind of
details that are going to get us chewed out after
this panels over. Uh, wait to be afraid to show us.
You have a theory here that I think you should
share with the audience. Hold on, I'm getting to that
all right. Okay, So, so after the Apollo Paulo love
An astronauts. They've been on the moon, they returned to Earth.
They were kept in quarantine in this trailer with a
(24:33):
bathroom and a kitchen. I'm sure it was just great. Uh.
They had to spend twenty one days in here to
make sure, yeah they have bathroom. Uh, to make sure
that they didn't set loose anything that they brought back
with him. And I always wondered, Okay, so what happens
if one of the astronauts does start to show signs
that they have contracted in an infection? I mean, nothing
(24:54):
happened but what would they have done if buzz Alderan
started erupting with parasitic moon worms? And would they just
keep the other two guys in there and just have
like Nixon watching through the window like, oh, I don't know,
I'm not sure, I'm pictures. It's like that scene in
the Thing where like the the one dog right starts
(25:15):
turning and just like tentacles shooting everywhere, ripping the other
dogs apart. They wouldn't have much choice. They just have
to set the whole thing on fire. Well, anyway, fortunately
nothing happened to our brave astronauts. But but why were
people so afraid? I have a pet theory? So this
was July of nineteen sixty nine. And do you all
know what movie came out in nineteen sixty eight? What?
(25:40):
Wo Barbarella? I'm trying to get my okay, I'm sure
Richard Nixon loved Barbaralla. I'm sorry, we're just here we go. No,
it was Night in the Living Dead. Does anybody remember
in Night of the Living Dead what explanation is given
by the scientists on TV who were talking about why
the dead have come back to life? Anybody remember it's
(26:03):
it's radioactive contamination. That's hitching a ride on a probe
that has returned from Venus. The radioactive contamination part doesn't
really make any sense, but I can see how this
might have planted a seed in people's heads. Anyway, So
the procedure into and I'm kidding by the way, I mean,
they've they've been talking at NASA about protecting the planet
(26:24):
for for many years about forward and backward contamination. But
to discount the power that that fiction and popular media
was on on the psyche, I think the idea, yeah, exactly,
the idea was in the zeitgeist. I mean we're seeing
it in U n policy, we're seeing in movies, and
then obviously in actual space missions. What year did the
andromedas trained by Michael Crichton come out? Was that nineteen
(26:47):
sixty nine. I think it might have been so right
around the same time. I mean, this was obviously on
people's minds, and you know, I think for good reason.
But then the procedure after it ended after Apollo fort Team,
when scientists they're like, yeah, we've been to the moon.
The Moon's dead. You know it's dead, We've seen it.
They just weren't really worried about microbial life being there anymore,
(27:08):
and that that makes sense too, because the fear of
backward contamination is one of those things that we don't
even know what all of the numbers to plug into
our risk equation are because we don't know how common
life is out there. I mean, it could be that
all kinds of planetary bodies out there are teeming with
life that we could bring back and could kill us.
(27:29):
Or it could be a totally dead universe except for Earth.
We we just have no idea yet. Are you familiar
with the Drake equation, So let's let's explain it just quickly.
The Drake equation, Well, it's a hypothetical equation in the
history of thinking about technological civilizations in the galaxy. For
you know, you come up with a number of other
technological civilizations in the Milky Way by multiplying together all
(27:52):
these variables like the number of habitable planets, the probability
that life will arise on a habitable planet, the probability
the intelligence will arise from life, And you multiply all
these together and you get your number of planets. But
the problem is most of the variables in the equation
are just a big question mark, and so it's kind
of the same if we were to come up with
(28:12):
a formula for backward and forward contamination. Right. But but
this doesn't mean we should end our concerns, because after all,
scientists are gonna want to do sample returns from all
kinds of objects in the Solar System, and until we know,
it's probably a good idea to practice caution. So we
want to have Mars sample return. We pick up some
soil from Mars, bring it back, pick up some methane
(28:34):
soaked soil from Titan. I love the idea of what
organisms might be like on Titan. They might be the
super cold, slow metabolism, long planning, slow moving organisms that uh,
I don't know. The slow ones are scarier to me.
I'm thinking like a greenland shark basically, yeah, yeah, very sleepy.
But also you let from D and D the land sharks. Yeah,
(28:57):
I don't even know what that is. We're gonna have
to I'll get chewed out for that too. But then
also like water from the Jupiter's moon Europa, like we
talked about earlier, from Saturn's Moonenceladus. But then there's also
the forward contamination concern that we could look at from
the past. Okay, so you got Mars here, this is
(29:17):
the landscape of Mars. What if we want to send
a probe to Mars, what lengths should we go to
to make sure that nothing is alive on that probe
in case there's something alive on Mars to contaminate, or
even just in case that there are places where organisms
we bring with us could settle in and and make
(29:38):
a new home and contaminate our future science. Well, we
have sent landers to Mars before. Of course you'll probably
know that. How about the Viking Landers, right, we said
the Viking Landers one and two down on the surface
of Mars in the nineteen seventies, and at the time
we had very little idea what might be on the
surface of Mars. You had people like Carl Sagan and
(29:59):
saying that they're they're could be microbes there, and if
there is a microbial environment on Mars, we don't want
to destroy it. So we need to put rigorous standards
in place to make sure that the probes we send
are as sterile as dental equipment. They're just you know,
the war. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if
we set our dental equipment on fire. Well, you know this,
(30:19):
this underlies them. You know, one of the one of
the big problems about trying to be to behave um,
you know, with with cleanliness to avoid uh contamination of
other other planets is that it's it's kind of the
wild West. And yeah, the idea of like a sterile
wild West just doesn't doesn't jive with how we operate.
(30:39):
I'd agree that's true. I mean then again, yeah, so
this highlights this tension again like how much how much
time and money should we put into this? How much
does it really matter? Well, I'm glad that you asked, Joe,
because there's two recent examples that will show you how
much or how little it may matter. Remember I was
talking about that there were some missions that were testing
(31:03):
this this han spermia idea. Right. Well, in two thousand
and ten, I don't know if you've heard about this,
but the director of the International Committee against Mars Sample
Return that's a thing. His name's Barry E. D. Gregorio.
He wrote a piece in New Scientist Maggan's magazine about
how there's a Russia. There was a Russian mission that
was going to Phobos Mars Moon, and it was called
(31:25):
the Phobos grunt. I love the name of this mission,
Phobos grunt uh. And it was supposed to be similar
to os Iris recks. It was supposed to go to Phobos.
It was gonna get a sample of the Moon, and
the idea was that while it was there, it was
also going to test transpermia by leaving life behind on Phobos.
That's transpermiama. We transferred deliberately an organism to this place
(31:51):
and it survived. The basic idea being similar to the
rocks thing we were talking about earlier, that that planets
get life forms on from rocks being ejected from meteorites
or asteroid collisions. Okay, but the probe totally failed and
fell back to Earth that it was actually destroyed over
the Pacific Ocean. At the time, this is what six
(32:14):
years ago now, Russia's space program had several space failures
in a row, and the head of their space agency
actually publicly wondered if there were saboteurs at work. So
maybe this committee against Mars sample return was up to
no good. Well that makes me wonder if yeah, so,
do we have planetary protection Ninja's out there are spies
(32:35):
going around trying to enforce it's like the infection guidelines
by sabotaging missions that are not appropriately about abiding by.
That's like Gary Abusey's son in contact, right, wasn't he
like against that? Uh? So there was another one. Unfortunately
it wasn't Russia this time, it was US. We we
committed forward contamination when in eleven we're working on the
(32:58):
Mars Science Laboratory Curia City, were over after it already launched.
They discovered that there was a set of drill bits
that they had put on board and they had not
been sent through their final sterilization step. God, dirty drill bits.
That's horrible. They're very dirty. But it deviated totally from procedures,
so much so that NASA's Planetary Protection officer, who am
(33:19):
gonna talk about later and is the most important woman
in the world. Uh, she recognized this is a problem.
There was a lot of miscommunication. We're gonna trying to
make sure it doesn't happen again. They weren't that concerned
about it because where they were sending this lander two
is a place called the Gale Crater on Mars, and
it was mostly just dead ice. They didn't think it
was possible if there was any life that could be
(33:41):
harbored there, especially as deep as these drill bits were
going to be going down. So they were hoping, crossing
their fingers that they weren't going to commit forward contamination.
But it slipped through the system despite the fact that
we've got cost bar and all these guidelines and every
you know, it comes comes down to just like this.
The brigger is of sterilization because it's one thing to
(34:01):
you go to the dentist and you see that neat
little tray of items there, right, and yeah, it's like,
that's not that big of a deal, right to sterilize
a few different instruments and have like a fresh little
packet of horrible toothpaste to open. But they'll imagine going
on a family vacation, Like, how would you sterilize all that?
You gotta sterilize the van, the clothing for the for
the children, right the toothbrush to the toothpaste the children.
(34:24):
Right there, you highlight a problem is that it's hard
to sterilize people. Um, so what are some protocol options
we we gotta probe We want to send it to Mars,
we want to send it to Titan, and we want
to make sure that it is just pristine has nothing
on it. Well, So one option is we can build
in a clean room. So like those clean rooms you see,
electronics are constructed in people wearing the bunny suits and
(34:47):
then you have to go through decontamination to get in.
Would this be the same as when I'm watching, say
like a drug dealer movie where they have in their underwear,
I think everybody, yeah, Uh no, I I don't think
that they're about people trying to escape from the clean
room with pieces of the lander. But maybe. But so
(35:08):
you can also clean it with solvents like spraight down
with some cleaner, just wipe it out. You can This
is a wonderful phrase that I've heard from several NASA
scientists involved in this. You can bake it out, so
that's dry heat baking of the environment of the thing
you're gonna send. But the problem with that is a
lot of times they have sensitive instruments on them. Uh,
these don't respond very well to a lot of the
(35:31):
sterilization tactics we want to use. So if you have
sensitive equipment and electronics on something, how hot can you
bake it before you damage all that stuff? You can
also encase it in some kind of BioShield essentially put
it in a big plastic bag or plastic container until
it gets out of the atmosphere. Um. You know, there
have been also other methods that have been explored in
(35:52):
the past, I know, like gassing things with killer gas,
ethylene oxide, or radiation bombardment. Though a problem with radiation
bombardment is that's not as effective at killing microbial life
as it is at killing people, you know, larger organisms
like us. And then you go back to the sensitive
instrument aspect of this. I mean, a lot of what
we're talking about is internal stuff that is ideally not
(36:13):
going to be a factor unless the thing explodes or
crashes or gets torn apart by like a large space
monster and and partially consumed. Yeah, I mean you point
out that this is a reason this is all much
harder than it sounds. So you think, like, okay, I
could stare alze, you know, dental equipment again and can
sterilize that white down. You can stare life the whole
of something conceivably, But when you start talking about all
(36:34):
the inside exactly, so if this thing explodes and the
interior components leak out all over the planet, that they've
got to be clean too, and that's so so hard
to do. And then once you enter crude missions missions
with humans on them, there's a whole other stage because
you cannot bake out an astronaut. There's no way to
do it. You bring, you bring microbial life with you.
(36:54):
They can't just wipe you down and make you clean
the stuff that's inside out of us. Well, for one thing,
you poop some of it out. So that introduces the
question of should we poop on Mars? I think this
is a very important thing going forward in human space exploration. Yeah,
this should be a whole department dedicated to that. And
they just have those like doggie bags. Yeah, should you
(37:17):
bring the same ethics to to Mars that you bring
to your neighborhood when you go out and walk your dog,
you pick it up with you. Hopefully you wouldn't be
pooping on the ground in Mars, but yeah, that would
be rough. However, there are current efforts that are in
this area. Specifically, NASA is what we're going to focus on.
So together with the the U N Treaty that we
talked about and co SPAR, there is a basic guideline
(37:41):
idea for how we should go forward. With this stuff,
and it's all overseen by who I mentioned earlier, NASA's
Planetary Protection Officer. She oversees compliance with requirements for each mission,
and she's typically directly involved in the development and planning
stages of all missions that occur in our solar system.
Her name is Katherine Conley. You probably don't hear about
(38:03):
her all that much. I don't know why she's super important.
She makes sure that NASA and all us organizations that
journey into space adhere to that U n Space Treaty.
She's way more important than a Kardashian, Like, I don't
understand why. And I don't mean Star Trek Kardashians, I
mean the the reality TV ones. I'm just I'm surprised
(38:26):
that she's not more high profile. Well, she doesn't represent
like the sexy side of I know, but man, she's important, Like, yeah,
no doubt if it if it weren't for her. She's
like Wilford Brimley and the thing. It's the kind of
office where you immediately know the person occupying the office
once there has been a major scrept exactly. Yeah, we'll
all learn her name when there's some huge catastrophe. But
(38:49):
she just did an interview with Scientific American in the
last couple of years, and she stated that she's actually
less worried about asteroids and you know, not so much
worried about the NASA stuff because they're following these guidelines
we talked about. Uh. The one thing that she's concerned
about our commercial entities sending missions into space, because NASA
isn't supporting all of those, and there's no oversight for
(39:10):
any of them, especially with regards to planetary protection. So
currently the Federal Aviation Administration is in charge of launches
and landings, but only within our atmosphere. There's nobody in
charge of space. So UH, NASA is in a regulatory
agency and they can't do anything about it either. What happens, uh,
(39:31):
if there's a commercial mission, like we mentioned earlier, maybe
they scoop up some dirt off and asteroid or Mars
or something and then accidentally backward contaminate the Earth. This
is the opening of a James Bond movie, right somebody.
It's like Moonraker, except probably hopefully better. Uh Moonraker. I
think if I had to rewatch a Bond film right now,
(39:54):
you would beat Moonraker. Moonraker is the one where a
pigeon does a double take. Can you remember that, Like
he drives by on a car that comes out of
the water and the pigeon. Anyway, we stray from the
subject back back to the requirements that we have for
these space space missions. We have certain cleanliness requirements, as
Joe is talking about right, like how sterile they get,
(40:16):
how much we bake them out, all that kind of stuff.
So here's the question related to Star Trek. Does the
Federation have a cleanliness policy? I couldn't find anything about
this online. Do they have like some clean rooms on
board the ships where they make sure that everything is
like super clean and they don't have to worry about
back order forward contamination? Does anybody know? Oh, yeah, we
(40:39):
have an answer somebody. Oh that's smart. Yeah, because the
transport kills everything that goes through it anyway, including you. Okay, okay,
we were guessing that it had something to do with
the transporters, but we weren't sure. Yeah. Like for me,
I start thinking about cleanliness and transporters, and then I
just go down a rabbit hole thinking about the fly
(40:59):
and like, how do you how do you root out
fly DNA when you have to worry about other like
all the microorganisms that are part of the human body.
But that's a separate that's that's true. Brundle should have
become Brundle gut flora rather than just Brundle fly. The
general rules that we operate under now though, don't have
transporters unfortunately, So we try to avoid unintended encounters with
(41:19):
objects inner solar system, especially those that have a probability
of no more than one in a thousand of their
being life on them. This is the ideal, is that
it's supposed to extend for fifty years after emission arrives
at its protected target. So, but think about all the
organic molecules that could accidentally get on something just from us,
(41:42):
just from us breathing, Like this microphone right now, I'm
getting all kinds of bacteria on it, or shedding your
dead skin, all of them. Right. Yeah. We we basically
walk around life and with with just a cloud of
dead skin falling behind us. We really do so. Similar
to coastpar now, USA actually has five categories that they
use for planetary protection as well. Their main concerns are about,
(42:06):
you know, whether the mission is critical to discovering the
origin of life, how much of a chance there is
that contamination will be a part of it, and they
look at protection requirements from everything from what is referred
to as bio burden reduction UH to clean rooms and
bakeoffs as we talked about earlier. I think instead the
Great British Bakeoff, they should have the Great NASA Bakeoff.
(42:28):
I would watch that just like cooking the Osiris rex
to perfection. But it's pretty rare that they actually sterilize
any of these crafts. The most concerning of these missions,
like I mentioned earlier, are the ones that will return
to Earth after they've brought something back. Now there's unrestricted returns,
and that is when we go to something that has
(42:50):
theoretically no chance of life, like the Moon, like we
just mentioned earlier, they be pretty sure that there's nothing
on the Moon unless there's like transformers buried under their like,
they're at least confident enough to gamble with the life
of everyone on Earth. But the restricted ones are the
ones that we're worried about. Those are the ones where
there is the possibility or a sign of what is
referred to as a non terrestrial replicating organism, so so
(43:13):
life yeah exactly, so we get worried about that. Here's
the reality though, no matter what we do, these missions
will never be a dent secure. Our detection methods are
getting better and better every day, and we're starting to realize, oh, hey,
these missions that we thought were sterile that we sent
off ten years ago, we totally they were filthy. We
(43:35):
sent all kinds of things in space. So well, our
biodetection capabilities are getting better. Yeah exactly. And like I
mentioned earlier to that that U. N. Space Treaty is
just getting old and inadequate. So this stuff really needs
to be reviewed, especially when you've got elon musk firing
rockets up like every week. This. Uh. One more concern
(43:57):
I think we should introduce is the fact that this
is not just at an Earth problem. The forward and
backward contamination problem is a problem that we take with
us anywhere we go. So if we establish a space station,
you know, like a big space station like they have
in I don't know, Mass Effect or something, it's got
people walking all over it, that that is essentially like
a new Earth that has the same considerations with it.
(44:20):
Anytime you leave it, you are taking a forward contamination
risk with you. Anytime you come back to it, you're
taking a backward contamination risk with you. Uh. So this
is it's not so much about the Earth as a rock,
but about humanity and humanity's dwelling space, or not just humanity,
Earth life dwelling space. Okay, but now everything we've talked
(44:41):
about so far has been bio contamination. We've been dealing
with micro organism. But of course there are there are
other ways to contaminate, uh, an alien world, especially if
that alien world, you know, potentially has language, it has
a culture. Could we could culturally contaminate that world with
you know, some of our our our top twenty musical hits, right,
(45:03):
the Van Halen hits exactly as we said before. So
maybe we should start with backward contamination concerns because that's
more clear to us what the risks could be. So
imagine we've got radio telescope array that we have decided to,
you know, listen to a certain patch of sky that
we think might have alien life on it, and we
actually do get a message. Uh you know, they're listening
(45:23):
to the Tao Setti system. It's about twelve light years away,
and this obvious sign of alien intelligence comes through. It
is clearly a message. It's made for us to be
able to decode and understand it, and we do. And
what are the messages contain? Well, imagine it contains like
coded schematics for building some kind of machine. What is
the machine? Or it's maybe the holy text of a
(45:46):
two setti in religion, or it is a statement of intentions,
just like hello, here we are, here's our attitude toward you.
I would argue that any of these things could potentially
be as destructive to humanity as a foreign microbe that
we brought down from Titan or from Mars. We'll just
think back to the primatologist example. If we just if
all we we had was a clear message, an undeniable
(46:09):
message that said, hey we're watching, or hey we've been
we've we've been checking out, Like that alone is enough
to just cause just just cataclysmic dust the world. Well,
I mean, okay, so take this statement of intentions example.
They they're just saying, hey, here we are here, here's
something you need to know about us. What if that
message decodes to we are inbound to your planet at
(46:31):
the speed of light. We're decelerating currently and we'll arrive
within less than one of your Earth years, and we're
going to eradicate every living organism on your planet, even
if they're lying, even if that's not true, you could
potentially cause catastrophic damage to Earth just by spreading the message.
It would be a killer meme. I think that the
(46:52):
counter here would be for for everyone to agree on
a lay down and play dead today. But the day
that we realize the aliens will arrive, everyone just just
just be really still, be really quiet. So we were
talking about this before we were researching this. I remember
this TV show maybe some of you remember it was
called Threshold and it got like maybe I don't know,
like eight episodes. You remember that Bent Spiner was in
(47:14):
it and Peter Dinklage, and it was sort of the
premise of that show was that like through like I think,
like a fourth dimensional entity was like somehow in you know,
transmitting information that was basically designed for us to destroy
ourselves so that they could take over our dimension. Well, yeah,
I mean there are other ways you could do it too.
That what if the coded schematics for the machine are
(47:35):
for a planet killer super weapon. It's a suicide machine
that they trick us into building, and they don't even
have to come here to eradicate us. Or it could
be you know what if the the holy text of
that Taosettian religion is actually very attractive. It's something that
a lot of Earthlings convert to, and it's a you know,
destroy your planet religion. In any of these things I
(47:56):
think could be potentially possible, but you need to consider,
you know, the coroll area of this, which is also
it could go the other way. You could send a
meme from star system to star system that's encoded entirely
in information, but there's no exchange of matter. That could
be potentially very destructive, and we could be sending that
(48:18):
meme entirely by accident. Yeah, like Pristans, a warlike alien species,
receives our hanging their cat poster, and they were they
were about the sublime. They were about it's completely drift
off and just abandon all physical um complications, and they're like, no,
we should hang in here and let's go conquer this planet.
But this brings up what we referred to on our
(48:40):
show a lot, because Robert's a big fan of E
and M. Banks and his culture series. We talk about
outside context problems. If any of you are familiar with that.
We did an episode on cargo cults a couple of
months ago and this was a big one for that.
So think about it in relation to what we're talking
about here with this cultural backward or forward can amination
(49:01):
the society. If a society or civilization encounters a problem
or a threat or or a complication like like we're
we're talking about here, they have no context to prepare
for or effectively deal with. That's an outside context problem.
And as as far as the m banks goes, they're
pretty much always fatal. Like those societies are just yeah,
(49:22):
like in a big trouble or at least transformed in
a really right I mean the restrial example is, you know,
a unless advanced society is out there on the beach
and then a warship shows up or a colonial vessel
shows up, and then you know, what are you gonna do?
You can't to fight is to be annihilated. All you
can do is give in and or meet it halfway
(49:43):
and find a find a way to still retain your
beliefs while accepting these new movies. In the example that
we talked about on the show, and this is real,
cargo cults sprang up all over Pacific island societies after
the Second World War because of this very thing. American
battleships would show up, or maybe planes would land, and
they would see them, and they it was very much
(50:04):
like the beginning of Star Trek into Darkness. They would
literally start worshiping them. They were they were they were
radio towers and airstrips out of bamboo. It's sort of
real life evidence of the principle that technology you don't
understand is magic to you. Yeah. I mean, they were
exposed to the military industrial complex, to the I mean
not not just to the physical manifestation, but to the
(50:24):
network that it represented. And and what can you do, Well,
you neither change or you die, I guess yeah. Um.
And you know, but you extrapolate that out to a
larger scenario with us or maybe another maybe an alien
civilization like that we're beaming cat memes to, uh, and
it gets a little bit more difficult. Yeah. So I
(50:45):
want to think about the potential dangers of this kind
of intellectual contamination between planets, and I'll venture a hypothesis.
I'm not sure if this is true, but it's something
to just think about. It. Could it be true that
any planet occupied by a species intell leigen enough to
understand written language, understand a coded message, and receive it.
With technology, it is possible to spread a meme that
(51:08):
kills that species or potentially kills that planet. Yeah, and
on that note, I want to bring up the Federation again.
I want to get back to the prime directive. So
to join the United Federation of Planets, like generally, well,
you need to have your planet altogether, right, you need
to have a unified culture to a certain extent, everybody,
there's gonna be a certain amount of peace, right. Uh,
(51:29):
and certainly I can. I think there's been a couple
of episodes here and there where that has been an
issue that's come up. Yeah, Planning wants to join the Federation,
but there's still like two factions. You don't share our values, right, So,
but I but I wonder to what extent then, is
a mono cultural world like this is it? Is it
kind of like having an entire field with one crop?
(51:51):
Is it like having an asexual organism that has no
genetic diversity? Uh? It makes it highly susceptible to its
disastrous meme, to a disastrous cultural contamination incidents, far more
vulnerable right, yeah, yeah, in the same way that I
think you could argue that a diverse biosphere with a
(52:11):
lot of biosphere, with lots of genetic diversity and different
types of organisms, would be more resistant to an invasive pathogen.
Could it be possible that a diverse culture is more
resistant to an invasive meme? So on one on one level,
you could well imagine that that something like the Federation
would want to say, hey, make sure you keep your
your population a little bit diverse, make sure you have
(52:33):
you know, sort of a sort of flood barriers of
language there to keep this thing from from disastrous ideas
from running wild. But then, on the other hand, what
is the Federation but a kind of infection itself? Like
it it had it kind of sets back waiting for
the planet to have a certain amount of uniformity and
and monocultural susceptibility to infection in this case of beneficial infection.
(52:56):
So it's its own version of cultural forward contamination. But
but or maybe even inoculation if you want to look
at it, and even alsositive step. All right, So there
you have it. Hey, if you want to learn more
about stuff to blow your mind, if indeed, if you're
interested in booking us for some sort of an appearance,
(53:17):
some sort of a live podcast episode much like the
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(53:39):
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