November 27, 2014 • 39 mins
A lot of great thinkers are warning that if humans are to survive as a species we are going to have to find another planet to live on. Terraforming, or engineering a planet to maintain all of the ingredients to sustain life, seems to be the answer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hang, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there, Chandler's
over Chuck Shoulder in the window, Free things all weird.
(00:21):
I'm hot and your cold. Uh yeah, I'm cold. One
of us is Mars and one of us is being this.
That a book Chuck from Mars. It's the best seller
in the podcast co host segment of Barnes and Noble.
Are those still around? Yeah? They got like three books
(00:44):
in three stores. That one click and clack, by the way,
r P R I P legend. Man, that was a
sad one. Was he click or clack? You know? Always
got that confused? Um it was Tom right, I want
to say click but um but as Tom who died
and his younger brother Ray still around. Yeah, it was
(01:04):
a great show man. Yeah, my house is off to
MPR for like immediately like lowering the flag and making
a big deal out of it, I mean like it
was cool. Yeah, he certainly taught us a thing or
two if they did about just everything we know, kind
of being natural goose leaving it in everything. So hats
off to you, sir, so Chuck. Moving along to terraforming, Um,
(01:29):
did you know that a recent study found that even
if we instituted a global one child policy like China,
but global sure, which is less than a hundred years
away now, Um, it's like eighty five years away, that's
(01:51):
not that far, we'd be able to keep the population
at about current levels. A lot of people would say
the current level is too much as it is. But
if we didn't do anything and continued on this pace
of growth, we've hit about twelve billion people. By that
is a ton of people. It's a lot of folks.
(02:11):
There's a that's a lot of stretch on resources for agriculture,
for fuel, energy, all that kind of stuff, and it's
it's caused a lot of people numbers like this, studies
like this. It's caused a lot of people to say, Um,
how are we going to support all of these people? Yeah?
Did you know a lot of people poo poo that notion.
(02:33):
Oh yeah, I had no idea when I did that
little video and overpopulation. A lot of people are like,
this is not a problem, this is a conspiracy. There's
a there's a there's a definite division between camps. There's
the gloom and doom camp who say like, we're screwed,
and then there's the other camp who says we'll always
technologically advance our way out of trouble like this, right,
(02:56):
is that what you're saying. I don't know what the
point was. I think there's just there's a camp that
says overpopulation is not an issue like people say it is. Well,
I think a few people redistributed people. It's possible that
that could alleviate overpopulation if it is a thing, But
I think most people I can't even say that. Some
(03:17):
people would say that agriculture has what's called a carrying capacity,
and we've talked about mouth this before, um, and that
we are possibly stretching it right now. UM. So a
lot of people, the ones who do believe in the
overpopulation problem, are starting to look to the stars and saying, hey, man,
let's figure out how to exploit other planets too, so
(03:39):
the human race can survive. Isn't that what Interstellar is about?
That new movie? Yeah, And and it was totally I
didn't think, like, oh, Interstellar, this will be timely, like
the two just happen to coincide. Is about terraforming, or
is it just like, hey, go find a place that's hospitable. Well,
according to what Michael Caine says in the preview, it's
about just going to find a hospitable plan which is
(04:00):
a search that is currently underway and has been for
a while through NASA's Kepler Um Observatory. They've been looking
for exoplanets, and supposedly right now they have. They're eighteen
hundred and fifty four confirmed exoplanets, forty one undred and
seventy three unconfirmed, and all of them are between ten
(04:21):
light years and twenty five thousand light years from Earth.
Pretty far it is right now, it's it's prohibitively far.
But there are planets out there that exist in what's
called the Goldilocks zone, which is they orbit a star
and they're just far enough away from the star that
they're not going to burn to a crisp, but they're
(04:41):
not so far away that you're going to freeze to death.
Hence the Goldilocks zone. Not too hot, not too cold,
got it. That's cute. So that's one thing we could do.
We could go find a planet that's like ready made
for us to live on. If it I doubt that
exists though. Yeah, and plus, even if we did find it,
like I said, the closest exo planet that we know of,
(05:01):
I think is about ten light years away. That means
it would take a photon, which travels at the speed
of light, ten years to get there. We can't travel
anywhere near the speed of light, so it might as
well not exist, so all you know, we're not so. Alternately,
a lot of people are proposing to take a planet
or a moon or an asteroid or something and turn
(05:23):
it into something habitable for us, and that's terraforming. Yeah,
find a nice little fixer upper planet, go in there
and flip it and move humanity there to ruin it.
Maybe have a meltdown in front of the cameras, make
a couple of stupid things, cliffhangers. Boom, you've got yourself
(05:44):
a serious that's right, terraforming. We did a short video
about this once about a hundred years ago, where we
explained it in sixty seconds. We should just try that again, No,
just press play and sit back. We also did one
of lunar building a lunar base. Yeah almost at a
lunar base on the Moon, but that's redundant. Yeah. Uh,
(06:07):
and that's another idea, is what we could just build
lunar bases and stuff. I think Russia is doing that, right.
They announced in May or June they want to build
a like habitable base up there, right. They plan to
spend several hundred million dollars and put it on the
Moon and just start mining the Moon. They want to
get a jump on the rest of the humanity. And
(06:28):
it's pretty smart. But building a lunar base, or building
a base anywhere, a floating city on venus or anything
like that, that's not terraforming. That's building a base somewhere
or floating city somewhere. Yeah, we're talking about changing the
atmosphere of a planet and more. Yeah, which requires a
substantial amount of energy, a lot of foresight, and and
(06:50):
a tremendous amount of patients and money. Yeah I have money.
But I mean if if you take money and the
amount of time, I would say the amount of time
is more depressed seeing them the amount of money you're
going to have to sink into it, because what we're
talking about is stuff that's not going to take place
until millennia have passed. Yeah, there's all sorts of ranges
(07:12):
of how long it might take the terror form of
planet from a thousand years to twenty years. I saw, yeah,
for Mars to for us to be able to go
to Mars and take off a helmet and be like.
Michio Kaku has a very cheap idea. Have you ever
(07:34):
seen his little short video he explains in sixty seconds?
What is he what's his idea? He's like, you know,
there's lots of CEO two under the surface, and all
we have to do is heat that up a little
bit and jump start the process, and then it creates
a what he called a catalytic effect and it just
sort of sustains itself. Well, it's yeah, so that's called
what he's talking about is called the standard paradigm that
(07:57):
Mars has not CEO two on the planet, that if,
like he says, you can just melt it, it will
create an atmosphere that traps heat. You know, we have
a problem with c O two on this planet, which
is another reason people say we need to go find
another planet and create a greenhouse effect, and that will
trap heat, which would melt more c O two and
(08:18):
more and more, and it will just create this cycle.
Do there what we don't want to do here exactly
jumps started. Let's let's talk about Mars. Man, You've got
some time to wrap about Mars and and why Mars
is frequently pointed to as an ideal locale for terraforming. Yeah,
if you listen to our April episode on Mars, then
you know a lot about mars um. But we're gonna
(08:40):
recap some of it. Mars is a very cold, dried,
dusty place now, but it used to be wet and
warm and a lot more like Earth than a lot
of surrounding planets. So they think we can just get
it back to that state, then we've got a good start.
Probably the key to Mars, more than anything else, that
makes it a the likeliest candidate for terra for me,
(09:02):
is that the Martian day is twenty three point seven hours.
I think it's almost exactly like Earth's day, right, getting
shorter or no, twenty four point seven hours, I'm sorry,
twenty four hours and thirty seven minutes something, yes, point
seven is thirty seven minutes, isn't sure. I just wanted
to give it a relatable So it's close. It's it's
(09:25):
very close to the Earth day um, and that indicates
that it spits so if Mars is already spinning, it
has a huge leg up over the competition in the
terraforming contest. So many many years ago, Mars was wet,
there was volcanic activity, and it was getting bombarded by asteroids.
(09:46):
That right, that did two things chuck, two huge things
for Mars. One, these asteroids were bringing in gases or
compounds that Mars needed to have an atmosphere, right, it
was applying the planet with it. And then the volcanic
activity was taking these, um, these compounds and elements that
(10:07):
were locked into rock and stuff like that and recycling
them back into the atmosphere, which was sustaining the atmosphere, right, Yeah,
which was great as long as that was going on.
But once those volcanoes stopped and it was lousy with volcanoes.
Once they stopped doing their recycling, gig uh, it basically
absorbed all that stuff and locked it in the the planet. Yeah,
(10:31):
the same thing would happen here, apparently, like if we
didn't have volcanic activity. Um, what volcanoes do. One of
the things they performs atmospheric recycling, which is taking this
stuff that you normally have an atmosphere that's been absorbed
by by the soil or by rock and boiling it,
melting the rock and spewing it out as a gas
back in the atmosphere. And like you said, when Marsh
(10:53):
stopped doing that, it's the recycling process stopped, and all
of a sudden you just had a static atmosphere that
slowly was stripped away. Another part of the problem was
Mars cool that the core, and that means it lost
its magnetic field, so the upper atmosphere was not being
held in place any longer by the magnetosphere, so the
(11:14):
solar winds were just stripping it away, and all of
a sudden, Mars had this very thin atmosphere that wasn't
they couldn't trap heat any longer, and the whole planet,
like you said, got really dry and really cold like
we know it today. That's right, and uh, completely uninhabitable. UM.
A couple of other things Mars doesn't have going for it.
UM is it's not very close. It's what like six
(11:39):
months away to get there. Yeah, I guess yeah. I
think it's like a six month trip to get to Mars. Uh.
And that's a long way to go if you want
to make regular trips. It's cost prohibitive, yes, but compared
to the Moon, which you can get to like lickt
ease play that's like a weekender six months is that's
pretty distant. Um. But the fact again, the fact that
(12:03):
Mars has this history of um being able to hold
an atmosphere and surface water, two huge factors in an
a habitable planet. UM and the fact that, uh there's
stuff that's necessary for life, like c O two and
things like that trapped on the planet already in a
frozen form really just kind of is a is a
(12:27):
bright flashing neon signed to people saying, hey, man, come
terra formed me. That's right. We'll talk about some of
the steps that you have to take to terra form
a planet like Mars right after this. Okay, so Mars
is a good it's a good, nice old house that
has good bones. Oh yeah, it's a great analogy, and
(12:49):
we want to restore it to its former moist wet glory,
which sounds really gross. Some people can't even hear the
word moist. You know. Yeah, there's a whole it's like
a yeah, I don't mind it. Uh so meetchokaku is
has the right idea. There are polar ice caps on Mars,
(13:10):
which have a lot of CEO two, And if you
jump start those and start to melt them, let's say,
with solar reflective mirrors, bounce that sun over there that way. Uh,
that might be a good way to get things started, right,
And it's not going to take too terribly much energy
um to melt those that sequestered c c O two
(13:32):
because carbon dioxad. Basically what those polar ice caps are
is dry ice. Like Mars has dry ice all over it.
That's from the atmosphere that was frozen, right, that's right,
and um, dry ice sublimates that a hundred negative a
hundred and nine degrees fahrenheight. Right, So if you can
just direct some mirrors at it and just raise it
(13:53):
to that temperature, all that c O two is going
to go from ice and vaporizing to gas and it's
going to float up and hang in that thin atmosphere.
And like we said, once you have that c O
two in that thin atmosphere, you've just started this chain
reaction that's going to create a cycle where the planet
gets warmer and warmer, and the more and more CEO
(14:13):
two sublimates and joins the atmosphere and you have a
runaway greenhouse effect. Apparently the at the peak the calculations
of the amount of c O two on Mars uh
says that you would have a surface temperature of about
a hundred and fifty eight degrees fahrenheight. That's great. Yeah,
it's a little hot, but that means water can be sustained. Um,
(14:37):
that means that with that atmosphere, the air pressure will
be increased, because right now the air pressure on Mars
is pretty low too. I think it's about one percent
of sea level here on Earth, which is another challenge. Yeah,
well maybe once it's that hot, we can introduce hyper
thermophiles because and I we'll get to Venus. But that's
one of the ideas for Venus. And the idea is
(15:00):
you want you can't just plot humans down immediately. What
what you're gonna have to start with is some basic
form of life, some kind of bacteria perhaps that just
starts doing its thing and uh chowing down on CEO
two and the making oxygen, and uh pretty soon, like
(15:20):
many thousands of years later, humans might be able to
live there. Right. One of the that's that's almost like
the intermediate steps. So the first step is to get
an atmosphere back on Mars. And to get an atmosphere
back on Mars, you take Mitchio Cacus mirrors and melt
the polar for his mirrors. But yeah, right, it's just
nice to say his name. Uh. And you melt the
(15:43):
polar ized caps of dry ice, and you create this atmosphere,
and you allow water to to melt onto the surface,
and then you add something like I think the likeliest
candidate to cyano bacteria, which is incorrectly referred to as
blue green algae. Who says that? Who says, what? Blue
green algae? That's the other term for it. But it's
(16:04):
not analogy. It's like a protozoan, I think or something.
It's a prokaryote, not a eukaryote like algae. Got man,
I feel nerdy right now. It's the oldest fossil on Earth.
I mean, that's kind of where it all began, right,
That's what gave Earth. It's oxygen. So we're saying, hey,
why not try the same thing on Mars. Got a
bunch of CEO two on Mars a runaway greenhouse effect. Well,
(16:28):
it just so happens that Ciano bacteria eats CEO two,
and not only does it eat CEO two, it converts
that stuff into oxygen as a waste product. So all
of a sudden, you have something, a living organism on
Mars that's converting the atmosphere into something breathable for us
humans here on Earth. The problem is you have to
(16:50):
have water present for Ciano bacteria to live. But you're
gonna have that water because you've melted the ice caps.
You've melted the ice caps to get the CEO to release,
which is like negative a hundred nine. You need to
raise the temperature to at least thirty two degrees to
start melting the water, which requires even more energy. Where
you're gonna get that, well, you're not gonna introduce any
(17:12):
sound of bacteria until you have that water. Like that's
the first goal. You can't have life without water exactly.
But once you do get the water going, which again
you could use orbital mirrors, but you just have to
concentrate them a little more to reflect more energy into
a tighter spot. Um, you've got the cyanobacteria chomping away
at the CEO two. It's producing oxygen. Some conservative estimates
(17:33):
that i've seen are once you have the oceans or
the surface water on Mars, which staggeringly to me, we
could do in a couple hundred years. Supposedly, that's nuts, man,
Think about that, Like, Mars could be turned from a
desert into a place with service water in a couple
hundred years. That's not that far away, it's not. But
(17:55):
after that, it would take about forty thou years for
enough oxygen to be introduced in the atmosphere for a
human to possibly walk around on Mars. Yeah, this is
why it's so like far fetched to me. Well, it's
science fiction. It is far fetched. But if you take
a long view of humanity and say, yeah, I mean
there's no reason. What was the man in the extinction episode?
(18:18):
How long does the average species last? Wasn't it like
ten million years? We'll say it is even one million years.
That means humans will be around supposedly. I'd be surprised
well beyond forty thousand years. So we need to be
thinking like in in these terms, because there's no way
Earth is gonna last another forty tho years for us
(18:41):
unless we just radically re engineer ourselves. Yeah, I'm I
get I don't. I never thought of myself as a
dim and glimmer. But I must be because I don't
I don't know if humans will be around forty years.
I guess we'll see. Yeah, all right, we won't see that.
But I mean, technically, it should only take an existential
(19:01):
existential catastrophe to get rid of humans, Like we shouldn't
just necessarily die off as a species. It should It
should take something like physics experiment gonnawry, or a nuclear
war or biochemical attacks, something like that. Man will do it, yes,
(19:24):
it would be as self injury, probably suicide, I guess, well,
not suicide murder, murder humanity. So then there's two other things.
And there's a guy named Martin Fogg who wrote a
book called Terraforming Engineering Planetary Environments, and he basically laid
out what you have to do to get Mars going um.
(19:45):
And again, Mars is the easiest one to do because
it has that planetary rotation already. But additionally there's two
other things you have to handle. One is UM, the
atmospheric pressure. So apparently even at best Mars would um,
it would be a lot like existing on a mountaintop
(20:05):
here on Earth, Like the air would be thin. You'd
be like living on the top of Mountain Everest. You
kind of you'd have to bring your own oxygen, you
would so like, But maybe Tibetans and Ethiopian highlanders would
make like great early inhabitants of you know, a terraform Mars,
because they're already used to that kind of thing exactly.
(20:25):
The other thing is is you need nitrogen. Nitrogen is
vital of life and the atmosphere, and there's not much
nitrogen o Mars. No, So they're saying, well, then all
you have to do is start directing commets ammoniu based
ice sterroids I think is what they call them. Yeah,
because I don't know if everyone knows this. Commets are
I think one of the articles liking it two giant snowballs.
(20:47):
And if you sent a comet and exploded it before
it hit the planet, uh in theory would send ice everywhere,
which would be pretty cool. But you need a lot
of commets, you you. It's not just like one comment
you're done, no one, and done doesn't apply to there
for man, we have to figure out how to steer
these comments that way, which apparently is not I mean,
(21:10):
using um astrophysics. I guess that's not it's not all
the remo possibility to steer a comment and then hit
it with a nuclear device to blow it up so
that it explodes into shards and then rains down on Mars.
A lot of things can go wrong though. Yeah, you know,
it's frought with complications and comments, but it is a
(21:31):
viable way to introduce nitrogen to Mars, and it should
ideally stick around, especially once you have an atmosphere um
so that's Mars. It's probably the way we're gonna go.
Keep an eye out because in a couple of centuries
there'll probably be some sas on Mars. Yeah, and I
think that guy that you mentioned too says, even if
(21:52):
we do manage to do this, it's going to be
a constant process of reintroducing, uh, these these elements, these
volatile elements to keep that atmosphere going. I don't I
don't know if if Mitchocoko was right, if it would
ever like self sustain. Well, it could if you do
that standard paradigm of creating a runaway greenhouse effect. What
(22:13):
Martin Fogus saying is, why would you want to do that,
because then you have a greenhouse effect that you have
to deal with. I was wondering, and then you have
to rein that in exactly, he takes a longer view
of just slowly introducing stuff again and again to to
to create this Martian atmosphere over a longer period, but
(22:34):
um in a more granular way, right, Like more more
directed than just creating a runaway greenhouse effect. That makes
more sense, a little more focused. So we'll talk about
some of Mars's rivals for the terraforming game right after this.
So I guess I'm Venus, and so I'm always hot
(23:01):
because Venus is a very hot place. It's um very
unlike Mars. But some people say Venus has a few
things going for it. Namely, it's super close, closest planet
to us. Uh. We have similar almost well not identical,
but very similar size and mass and a very thick atmosphere,
just like Earth does. So there's a lot of similarities there. Um,
(23:26):
But you're sort of working in the opposite direction of Mars.
Is You've got a cool Venus down a lot, and
there's lots of wacky ideas on how to do that,
one of which is, what would you do if you
were hot? Put up a big shade? Yeah, like one
of those little umbrellas in a tiki drink. Yeah, just
a giant one. Yes. Basically, the idea is to block
(23:48):
all sunlight from Venus and cool it um And apparently
in about a hundred years, venus is atmosphere which is
pretty substantial, like you said, and almost all CEO two
would freeze and fall to the surface. Well, there's a
lot of sulphururic acid there is, but um, this this
(24:09):
atmosphere would freeze and create a surface layer, just like
on Mars, like how the CEO two is locked in
the polar ice caps would be doing the same thing
with Venus. Then you'd have to go in and deal
with this frozen atmosphere, which is kind of a thing,
but you could use it to your advantage, Chuck, because
the leg up like I said that Mars has over
(24:30):
Venus is that the Martian day is about twenty four
hours long, right, Well, the Venusian day is about a
hundred and sixty days long, which means it rotates way
too slowly for us to be habital for us. So
if you take this atmosphere and you freeze it, and
you create this frozen hulk of a planet, you can
(24:51):
actually make it spin faster if you can blow the
atmosphere off into space in a directed manner. Yeah, and
actually inshow correction, that's a hundred and sixteen uh days
is the length of their day day. There you go.
(25:11):
But I think anything over a hundred you just call
a big problem. Yeah, it's too long. So if you
can figure out how to blow the atmosphere, the now
frozen atmosphere off of Venus in the direction that it's
already rotating, you could conceivably spin up speed up the
rotation of Venus. Yeah. One of the other problems with
Venus is is there's no water. Um. And as everyone knows,
(25:34):
like we said, you need water for life. But then
we come back to our common idea of driving these
comics and exploding them and creating water that way. And
then the hyperthermals which I mentioned thermophiles sorry that I
mentioned earlier, are these organisms that can thrive in really
hot temperatures. Um, and we're talking really hot. I think
(25:55):
that the service temperature of Venus is something like eight
hundred degrees fahrenheight eight in seventy two, which is four
d and sixty seven degrees celsius. Yeah. The problem is
we We haven't found anything on Earth, any hypotherrmophiles that
can handle that kind of temperature and pressure yet, but
they think they exist. Yeah. Did you mention the pressure
of the atmosphere on Venus. It's two hundred times the
(26:17):
pressure at sea level here on Earth. It's a problem
as well. But if you could find a hypo hyper
thermophile that could sustain that and a sulfur and then
they do though, Yeah, and then yeah, because I think
some of them are by thermal vents under underwater, you know,
they surf sulfur. We just haven't found any of that
can sustain that kind of heat and pressure yet. It's
(26:38):
only one way to find out, and that's the launch
them towards Venus and see what happens. Basically, in fact,
the planet is what you're talking about. Yeah. Um, so
the problem with all of this is is too to
freeze Venus, it's going to require a lot of energy
to reflect all all the light from the surface. Uh too,
(26:59):
bit the frozen atmosphere out in the space is going
to require even more. Basically, it would require the amount
of energy that the Sun puts out in an entire year.
It is crazy, It is crazy. Now but have you
ever heard of the Cardassian scale? Sure, so then you
know there's type one, Type two, and Type three civilizations,
and a Type one civilization uses all of the available
(27:23):
energy from the star. So, like all of this energy
that hits the Earth normally from the sun, if you
could harness all that, you'd be a Type one civilization.
We're not even there yet. Type to civilization could harness
all of the energy at the that's created at the star,
not just the stuff that makes it to your planet.
And if you could harness that, if you're a Type
(27:43):
too civilization, you could be doing this kind of terraforming,
no problem. But no sweat man. But I mean, if
you think about it, if you have a couple of
like leaps forward in understanding, a couple of geniuses are
born and live and advance human understanding over the course
of a few generations, you could conceivably hit something like
that in a hundred years. So, I mean, it's not
(28:06):
it's not out of the wrong possibility that we could
be doing stuff like this a hundred two hundred years
from now. Yeah, venus. Another idea they have instead of
these huge giant um shade sales would be to have
a big, floating, pressurized geodesic sphere city that people basically
would use the atmosphere because the atmosphere is okay above
(28:29):
the sulfur cast of that is but um. That would
provide shade and then eventually it would cool the planet
down enough. Just by creating a shadow. They'd be simultaneously
sucking the CEO two out of the atmosphere and breaking
it down into carbon and oxygen as well, supposedly, so
be doing like two things at once. It's not a
bad idea. Yeah, sounds efficient, a little more efficient. And
(28:52):
apparently if you pressurized um like a indoor city or
something like that, a floating city, and put it into
NUS atmosphere, it would naturally float in the atmosphere. It
would stay put. Yeah, I think that was the same
for the The solar mirror wouldn't have to be attached
to anything either off off of Mars. I think it
(29:13):
would just be held in place by I think gravity
and what solar bubble gum. And then of course, chuck
there is the moon. Seems pretty unlikely. The one thing
that the moon has going for it is its proximity. Basically, Yeah, basically,
it's like the moon is close. It's small, so you're
(29:36):
not gonna have to spend a lot of money getting there.
And it's because it's small, you're not gonna spend a
ton of money fixing it up. It's the budget terraforming idea.
I guess the Russians are already be living there at
this point. Um. I don't know if the moon is
very viable though, Well, you'd have to again bombard it
with something to get it to spin faster, because right
(29:57):
now it's days Earth days right. Yeah, they said like
a hundred comments at least about the size of Haley's comment. Yeah,
to get it just spinning faster, and perhaps knock it
off its axis a bit and give it seasons, which
would be nice. Like we have here on Earth, and
my money's on Mars. It's got everything you need except
for nitrogen, and that you can just deliver however you like.
(30:19):
I kind of like the shell idea that you sent along,
kin Roy. He's an engineer who's basically says, why don't
we just in case a small planet and a huge
shell made of kevlar and steel and dirt, Yeah, and
just create like a huge geodesic dome around a planet.
I guess the question is where are you gonna get
all that dirt? I don't know, because that is the
(30:41):
it's it's an essentially greedy you're mostly sitting dirt. Then
you create an atmosphere between the shell and the dirt. Yeah,
where where's all that dirt coming from? Adobe? Adobe sphere?
I don't know. I think that's a pretty neat idea.
I'd be, you know, I too, be all artificial that
you have to have artificial light because you're inside a
(31:03):
dome um and apparently you would have like air locks
and stuff to account for, like the vacuum. I don't
know about that though. That sounds like he was saying
the atmosphere be just thin enough for gravity, would be
just light enough so that humans could fly around. I
swear he added that I saw that. He's like, just
as sweeten the pod a little more, yea, to make
(31:24):
it that much more cool, you'll be able to fly.
So anyway, we'll eventually ruin this planet and need something.
Hopefully we'll have had the foresight to have started terraforming
in time. Well, they're they're already working on it, are they. Well,
people are talking about it, proposing ideas theoretical ideas. I
don't think they're like building. They should be the asteroid Slinger.
(31:47):
They should have started in the nineteenth century. They're building
a comet sling in Texas as we speak. If you
want to know more about terraforming, you can take that
word in the search part how stuff works out com
And since I said search bar, it's time for Chuck
a very special edition Thanksgiving edition of That's right. We
(32:17):
are here to say thanks because it's around Thanksgiving, because
my friend, it is Thanksgiving. Is it Thanksgiving Day? Yes? Well,
of course it's the thurs Day unless you're in Canada
and in which case happy late belated Thanksgiving. Yes, because
they do. There's in like October weirds. I think so too.
So who do we have to think? Yeah, I mean
(32:38):
we have. For those of you who have never heard
this segment, we have listeners that send us gifts from
time to time and it is always very much appreciated
and very nice, and so here they are. Yeah, I'm
gonna start with the second page. If you want to
start with the first base, sure you go ahead, Chuck Uh.
Anthony Savino sent us from his Etsy shop Swiss Chisel,
a lap laptop and business card holders made out of
(33:00):
old wine barrel staves, and he makes all kinds of
stuff out of these things. So check out a store
which is Swiss Chisel. Yes, and Matt Perky from Evolved
Workforce dot com sent us some mugs. Matt's aim is
to refine drug testing for states where marijuana is legal,
(33:20):
so he can get an idea of what your intoxication
is immediately after something like an accident or whatever. Yeah,
I was wondering about that well, because he's legalizing, like
if your job, you know, if you have to get
drug tested, this guy's on it. Interesting. Evolve workforce dot
com is that where the mug came from? Okay, I
thought that was a hint. New York, New York. The
(33:40):
band sent us a promo CD, which is terrific. So
we always like getting music from our musician friends, so
thanks for that. Yep. Mike do Deck from the Clicky
Post dot com c l I c K Y p
O s T send us Cube pen holders of his
own making. He also sent us some awesome pilot Metropolitan
Fountain pens and Rhodeo dot pads. Mike is a pen
(34:02):
person and he wanted to share his his passion with us,
So thank you very much. Mike. All right, we have
an anonymous gift so one sent us a postcard from
the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia, along
with the junior Federal Agent badges for all three of us,
and have mine in my wallet. Ye you really do,
don't you do? Huge thank you to Chloe the candy maker,
(34:22):
who is also a ghost tour guide, who sent us
tons of amazing candy from mckinaw Island, Michigan, where I
used to go sometimes as a child, so I was
very happy to get this. Y. Yeah, and um, we
want to say good luck and safe travels to you
and your sister and your world tour Chloe, be safe.
Big thanks to Annie from Brisbane, Quinsland, Australia send us
(34:44):
a megacre package for real of Australian treats. Uh. Tim
TAM's I think you love those things, right man? I
went crazy for this and Carmelo Kids were pretty good
as well. Violet Crumble's picnic Boost Hero. There was some
weird stuff in there, but there God, man 've got
some crazy candies. Uh. Thanks to Andrew Parr for an
entire puzzle dedicated to Stuff you should Know in the
(35:07):
World of Puzzles win Or two thousand fourteen issue. It
was awesome. Oh boy, this is one of my favorites.
Rob henion Um from sin Us those awesome stuff you
should know bookends made from industrial fasteners and they are
super cool. They're really heavy and they're awesome. And you
can get information at more Metal Welding at gmail dot
(35:27):
com or more metal dot Etsy dot com. It's like
quality quality stuff. Uh. Kevin pelo Quinn from Kevin polo
Quinn dot com. That's k E v I N p
e l o q u I N and Red Dad Tease.
I think those are both of his sites. Uh. He
gave us an amazing illustration of Steve Zesu from The
Like Aquatic looking pensively toward the horizon, which I have
(35:50):
up in my cubicle. Oh, I wonder where that was from.
That's from Kevin pelo Quinn. Uh. Lauren and Megan from
Chopsticks for Salamanders. They've got a pretty cool cause they
sent him. Uh sent us stay less steal reusable chopsticks.
And this is a big deal because chopsticks are honestly,
they're kind of a problem. Uh. They sell these to
help prevent destruction of forests um from those little cheap
(36:12):
wooden ones. And they're the same forests where they where
they get these the wood for these things, where salamanders live.
And so every year sixty billion pairs of chopsticks are
thrown away and a lot of salamanders are having their forests,
forests and habitats destroyed because of your sushi addictions, which
I have as well. So get some of these. You
(36:33):
can learn more at Chopsticks for Salamanders dot org. Nice. Um,
we got a postcard. It's been a while since we
did this. We got a postcard from one of our
announcing the birth of one of our newer fans, Clyde
Avery Thomas, who was born at one fifty eight am
on January sixteenth, two thousand fourteen, in Traverse City, Michigan.
I thought, you say it's like six by now. He
(36:53):
probably is, but um, he most likely came out a
little frost bitten because it's cold up there. But congratulations
to and Drew and Janelle Thomas on the birth of
your son. Yeah, and happy first birthday pretty soon, pretty soon. Uh.
Mike and Cassidy Lord from Athens Georgia who send it's
a postcard from Cambodia. Um while in Borneo, I know,
(37:14):
wrapped your mind around that interesting? Uh. Sarah Austin gave
us a very chic and rugged handmade leather cardholder wallets,
which are pretty awesome. Rachel Crandall for the line drawing
of stuff you should know written in Gallifrayan. It's the
language apparently that uh time lords and doctor who of
the time Lords. So I'm not a Doctor Who fan,
(37:36):
but I appreciated the gift. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
Julie from Austin, Texas sent as a postcard from the
Shed Aquarium in beautiful Chicago, Illinois. Thank you, Julie. Oh boy,
Lois Olsen. This is my favorite gift I've gotten. Very
simple but awesome. The mini quilts they are. It's basically
a little tiny not a tiny. It's a small place
(37:58):
matt that you use in place of a coast right,
it's mug rugs bigger than a coaster, smaller than a placement. Yeah,
a little rectangular thing. And I often at dinner will
have like maybe a beer, maybe a glass of water,
maybe a cup of coffee, shot of whiskey, and I
put everything down on my little mug rug and if
anything spills, it soaks it up. It's better than a coaster.
It doesn't stick like a coaster. It's like it's gonna
(38:18):
revolutionize the coaster industry. I love them. So thank you
Lois Olsen for that. Thank you to Brett Arnold, who
won our horror fiction contest if you'll remember, he sent
us a copy of his book Avalon and you can
get Avalon on Amazon dot com. And then lastly, for
this one, UM, we want to thank Joe and Lynda
Heckt for sending us tons of stuff, including customized stuff
(38:40):
you should know mugs with hints to UM podcast topics
that they'd like to hear stuff about. They put them
on a mug and have them made and send them
to us mugs. They send us copy of the DVD
American Amazon. They gave us ten bucks to watch it
O man. So they're the best. They are very great people.
So thank you to everybody, and we still have more
people to think left. Um eventually. Yeah, that's this is
(39:04):
part one, right, but we are grateful for each and
every one of you and all of you listeners out there,
whether you send us stuff or not. We're thankful to
all of you and we hope you're having a wonderful
holiday no matter where you are in the world. Agreed,
Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving. You all for more on this
(39:26):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hang, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there, Chandler's
over Chuck Shoulder in the window, Free things all weird.
(00:21):
I'm hot and your cold. Uh yeah, I'm cold. One
of us is Mars and one of us is being this.
That a book Chuck from Mars. It's the best seller
in the podcast co host segment of Barnes and Noble.
Are those still around? Yeah? They got like three books
(00:44):
in three stores. That one click and clack, by the way,
r P R I P legend. Man, that was a
sad one. Was he click or clack? You know? Always
got that confused? Um it was Tom right, I want
to say click but um but as Tom who died
and his younger brother Ray still around. Yeah, it was
(01:04):
a great show man. Yeah, my house is off to
MPR for like immediately like lowering the flag and making
a big deal out of it, I mean like it
was cool. Yeah, he certainly taught us a thing or
two if they did about just everything we know, kind
of being natural goose leaving it in everything. So hats
off to you, sir, so Chuck. Moving along to terraforming, Um,
(01:29):
did you know that a recent study found that even
if we instituted a global one child policy like China,
but global sure, which is less than a hundred years
away now, Um, it's like eighty five years away, that's
(01:51):
not that far, we'd be able to keep the population
at about current levels. A lot of people would say
the current level is too much as it is. But
if we didn't do anything and continued on this pace
of growth, we've hit about twelve billion people. By that
is a ton of people. It's a lot of folks.
(02:11):
There's a that's a lot of stretch on resources for agriculture,
for fuel, energy, all that kind of stuff, and it's
it's caused a lot of people numbers like this, studies
like this. It's caused a lot of people to say, Um,
how are we going to support all of these people? Yeah?
Did you know a lot of people poo poo that notion.
(02:33):
Oh yeah, I had no idea when I did that
little video and overpopulation. A lot of people are like,
this is not a problem, this is a conspiracy. There's
a there's a there's a definite division between camps. There's
the gloom and doom camp who say like, we're screwed,
and then there's the other camp who says we'll always
technologically advance our way out of trouble like this, right,
(02:56):
is that what you're saying. I don't know what the
point was. I think there's just there's a camp that
says overpopulation is not an issue like people say it is. Well,
I think a few people redistributed people. It's possible that
that could alleviate overpopulation if it is a thing, But
I think most people I can't even say that. Some
(03:17):
people would say that agriculture has what's called a carrying capacity,
and we've talked about mouth this before, um, and that
we are possibly stretching it right now. UM. So a
lot of people, the ones who do believe in the
overpopulation problem, are starting to look to the stars and saying, hey, man,
let's figure out how to exploit other planets too, so
(03:39):
the human race can survive. Isn't that what Interstellar is about?
That new movie? Yeah, And and it was totally I
didn't think, like, oh, Interstellar, this will be timely, like
the two just happen to coincide. Is about terraforming, or
is it just like, hey, go find a place that's hospitable. Well,
according to what Michael Caine says in the preview, it's
about just going to find a hospitable plan which is
(04:00):
a search that is currently underway and has been for
a while through NASA's Kepler Um Observatory. They've been looking
for exoplanets, and supposedly right now they have. They're eighteen
hundred and fifty four confirmed exoplanets, forty one undred and
seventy three unconfirmed, and all of them are between ten
(04:21):
light years and twenty five thousand light years from Earth.
Pretty far it is right now, it's it's prohibitively far.
But there are planets out there that exist in what's
called the Goldilocks zone, which is they orbit a star
and they're just far enough away from the star that
they're not going to burn to a crisp, but they're
(04:41):
not so far away that you're going to freeze to death.
Hence the Goldilocks zone. Not too hot, not too cold,
got it. That's cute. So that's one thing we could do.
We could go find a planet that's like ready made
for us to live on. If it I doubt that
exists though. Yeah, and plus, even if we did find it,
like I said, the closest exo planet that we know of,
(05:01):
I think is about ten light years away. That means
it would take a photon, which travels at the speed
of light, ten years to get there. We can't travel
anywhere near the speed of light, so it might as
well not exist, so all you know, we're not so. Alternately,
a lot of people are proposing to take a planet
or a moon or an asteroid or something and turn
(05:23):
it into something habitable for us, and that's terraforming. Yeah,
find a nice little fixer upper planet, go in there
and flip it and move humanity there to ruin it.
Maybe have a meltdown in front of the cameras, make
a couple of stupid things, cliffhangers. Boom, you've got yourself
(05:44):
a serious that's right, terraforming. We did a short video
about this once about a hundred years ago, where we
explained it in sixty seconds. We should just try that again, No,
just press play and sit back. We also did one
of lunar building a lunar base. Yeah almost at a
lunar base on the Moon, but that's redundant. Yeah. Uh,
(06:07):
and that's another idea, is what we could just build
lunar bases and stuff. I think Russia is doing that, right.
They announced in May or June they want to build
a like habitable base up there, right. They plan to
spend several hundred million dollars and put it on the
Moon and just start mining the Moon. They want to
get a jump on the rest of the humanity. And
(06:28):
it's pretty smart. But building a lunar base, or building
a base anywhere, a floating city on venus or anything
like that, that's not terraforming. That's building a base somewhere
or floating city somewhere. Yeah, we're talking about changing the
atmosphere of a planet and more. Yeah, which requires a
substantial amount of energy, a lot of foresight, and and
(06:50):
a tremendous amount of patients and money. Yeah I have money.
But I mean if if you take money and the
amount of time, I would say the amount of time
is more depressed seeing them the amount of money you're
going to have to sink into it, because what we're
talking about is stuff that's not going to take place
until millennia have passed. Yeah, there's all sorts of ranges
(07:12):
of how long it might take the terror form of
planet from a thousand years to twenty years. I saw, yeah,
for Mars to for us to be able to go
to Mars and take off a helmet and be like.
Michio Kaku has a very cheap idea. Have you ever
(07:34):
seen his little short video he explains in sixty seconds?
What is he what's his idea? He's like, you know,
there's lots of CEO two under the surface, and all
we have to do is heat that up a little
bit and jump start the process, and then it creates
a what he called a catalytic effect and it just
sort of sustains itself. Well, it's yeah, so that's called
what he's talking about is called the standard paradigm that
(07:57):
Mars has not CEO two on the planet, that if,
like he says, you can just melt it, it will
create an atmosphere that traps heat. You know, we have
a problem with c O two on this planet, which
is another reason people say we need to go find
another planet and create a greenhouse effect, and that will
trap heat, which would melt more c O two and
(08:18):
more and more, and it will just create this cycle.
Do there what we don't want to do here exactly
jumps started. Let's let's talk about Mars. Man, You've got
some time to wrap about Mars and and why Mars
is frequently pointed to as an ideal locale for terraforming. Yeah,
if you listen to our April episode on Mars, then
you know a lot about mars um. But we're gonna
(08:40):
recap some of it. Mars is a very cold, dried,
dusty place now, but it used to be wet and
warm and a lot more like Earth than a lot
of surrounding planets. So they think we can just get
it back to that state, then we've got a good start.
Probably the key to Mars, more than anything else, that
makes it a the likeliest candidate for terra for me,
(09:02):
is that the Martian day is twenty three point seven hours.
I think it's almost exactly like Earth's day, right, getting
shorter or no, twenty four point seven hours, I'm sorry,
twenty four hours and thirty seven minutes something, yes, point
seven is thirty seven minutes, isn't sure. I just wanted
to give it a relatable So it's close. It's it's
(09:25):
very close to the Earth day um, and that indicates
that it spits so if Mars is already spinning, it
has a huge leg up over the competition in the
terraforming contest. So many many years ago, Mars was wet,
there was volcanic activity, and it was getting bombarded by asteroids.
(09:46):
That right, that did two things chuck, two huge things
for Mars. One, these asteroids were bringing in gases or
compounds that Mars needed to have an atmosphere, right, it
was applying the planet with it. And then the volcanic
activity was taking these, um, these compounds and elements that
(10:07):
were locked into rock and stuff like that and recycling
them back into the atmosphere, which was sustaining the atmosphere, right, Yeah,
which was great as long as that was going on.
But once those volcanoes stopped and it was lousy with volcanoes.
Once they stopped doing their recycling, gig uh, it basically
absorbed all that stuff and locked it in the the planet. Yeah,
(10:31):
the same thing would happen here, apparently, like if we
didn't have volcanic activity. Um, what volcanoes do. One of
the things they performs atmospheric recycling, which is taking this
stuff that you normally have an atmosphere that's been absorbed
by by the soil or by rock and boiling it,
melting the rock and spewing it out as a gas
back in the atmosphere. And like you said, when Marsh
(10:53):
stopped doing that, it's the recycling process stopped, and all
of a sudden you just had a static atmosphere that
slowly was stripped away. Another part of the problem was
Mars cool that the core, and that means it lost
its magnetic field, so the upper atmosphere was not being
held in place any longer by the magnetosphere, so the
(11:14):
solar winds were just stripping it away, and all of
a sudden, Mars had this very thin atmosphere that wasn't
they couldn't trap heat any longer, and the whole planet,
like you said, got really dry and really cold like
we know it today. That's right, and uh, completely uninhabitable. UM.
A couple of other things Mars doesn't have going for it.
UM is it's not very close. It's what like six
(11:39):
months away to get there. Yeah, I guess yeah. I
think it's like a six month trip to get to Mars. Uh.
And that's a long way to go if you want
to make regular trips. It's cost prohibitive, yes, but compared
to the Moon, which you can get to like lickt
ease play that's like a weekender six months is that's
pretty distant. Um. But the fact again, the fact that
(12:03):
Mars has this history of um being able to hold
an atmosphere and surface water, two huge factors in an
a habitable planet. UM and the fact that, uh there's
stuff that's necessary for life, like c O two and
things like that trapped on the planet already in a
frozen form really just kind of is a is a
(12:27):
bright flashing neon signed to people saying, hey, man, come
terra formed me. That's right. We'll talk about some of
the steps that you have to take to terra form
a planet like Mars right after this. Okay, so Mars
is a good it's a good, nice old house that
has good bones. Oh yeah, it's a great analogy, and
(12:49):
we want to restore it to its former moist wet glory,
which sounds really gross. Some people can't even hear the
word moist. You know. Yeah, there's a whole it's like
a yeah, I don't mind it. Uh so meetchokaku is
has the right idea. There are polar ice caps on Mars,
(13:10):
which have a lot of CEO two, And if you
jump start those and start to melt them, let's say,
with solar reflective mirrors, bounce that sun over there that way. Uh,
that might be a good way to get things started, right,
And it's not going to take too terribly much energy
um to melt those that sequestered c c O two
(13:32):
because carbon dioxad. Basically what those polar ice caps are
is dry ice. Like Mars has dry ice all over it.
That's from the atmosphere that was frozen, right, that's right,
and um, dry ice sublimates that a hundred negative a
hundred and nine degrees fahrenheight. Right, So if you can
just direct some mirrors at it and just raise it
(13:53):
to that temperature, all that c O two is going
to go from ice and vaporizing to gas and it's
going to float up and hang in that thin atmosphere.
And like we said, once you have that c O
two in that thin atmosphere, you've just started this chain
reaction that's going to create a cycle where the planet
gets warmer and warmer, and the more and more CEO
(14:13):
two sublimates and joins the atmosphere and you have a
runaway greenhouse effect. Apparently the at the peak the calculations
of the amount of c O two on Mars uh
says that you would have a surface temperature of about
a hundred and fifty eight degrees fahrenheight. That's great. Yeah,
it's a little hot, but that means water can be sustained. Um,
(14:37):
that means that with that atmosphere, the air pressure will
be increased, because right now the air pressure on Mars
is pretty low too. I think it's about one percent
of sea level here on Earth, which is another challenge. Yeah,
well maybe once it's that hot, we can introduce hyper
thermophiles because and I we'll get to Venus. But that's
one of the ideas for Venus. And the idea is
(15:00):
you want you can't just plot humans down immediately. What
what you're gonna have to start with is some basic
form of life, some kind of bacteria perhaps that just
starts doing its thing and uh chowing down on CEO
two and the making oxygen, and uh pretty soon, like
(15:20):
many thousands of years later, humans might be able to
live there. Right. One of the that's that's almost like
the intermediate steps. So the first step is to get
an atmosphere back on Mars. And to get an atmosphere
back on Mars, you take Mitchio Cacus mirrors and melt
the polar for his mirrors. But yeah, right, it's just
nice to say his name. Uh. And you melt the
(15:43):
polar ized caps of dry ice, and you create this atmosphere,
and you allow water to to melt onto the surface,
and then you add something like I think the likeliest
candidate to cyano bacteria, which is incorrectly referred to as
blue green algae. Who says that? Who says, what? Blue
green algae? That's the other term for it. But it's
(16:04):
not analogy. It's like a protozoan, I think or something.
It's a prokaryote, not a eukaryote like algae. Got man,
I feel nerdy right now. It's the oldest fossil on Earth.
I mean, that's kind of where it all began, right,
That's what gave Earth. It's oxygen. So we're saying, hey,
why not try the same thing on Mars. Got a
bunch of CEO two on Mars a runaway greenhouse effect. Well,
(16:28):
it just so happens that Ciano bacteria eats CEO two,
and not only does it eat CEO two, it converts
that stuff into oxygen as a waste product. So all
of a sudden, you have something, a living organism on
Mars that's converting the atmosphere into something breathable for us
humans here on Earth. The problem is you have to
(16:50):
have water present for Ciano bacteria to live. But you're
gonna have that water because you've melted the ice caps.
You've melted the ice caps to get the CEO to release,
which is like negative a hundred nine. You need to
raise the temperature to at least thirty two degrees to
start melting the water, which requires even more energy. Where
you're gonna get that, well, you're not gonna introduce any
(17:12):
sound of bacteria until you have that water. Like that's
the first goal. You can't have life without water exactly.
But once you do get the water going, which again
you could use orbital mirrors, but you just have to
concentrate them a little more to reflect more energy into
a tighter spot. Um, you've got the cyanobacteria chomping away
at the CEO two. It's producing oxygen. Some conservative estimates
(17:33):
that i've seen are once you have the oceans or
the surface water on Mars, which staggeringly to me, we
could do in a couple hundred years. Supposedly, that's nuts, man,
Think about that, Like, Mars could be turned from a
desert into a place with service water in a couple
hundred years. That's not that far away, it's not. But
(17:55):
after that, it would take about forty thou years for
enough oxygen to be introduced in the atmosphere for a
human to possibly walk around on Mars. Yeah, this is
why it's so like far fetched to me. Well, it's
science fiction. It is far fetched. But if you take
a long view of humanity and say, yeah, I mean
there's no reason. What was the man in the extinction episode?
(18:18):
How long does the average species last? Wasn't it like
ten million years? We'll say it is even one million years.
That means humans will be around supposedly. I'd be surprised
well beyond forty thousand years. So we need to be
thinking like in in these terms, because there's no way
Earth is gonna last another forty tho years for us
(18:41):
unless we just radically re engineer ourselves. Yeah, I'm I
get I don't. I never thought of myself as a
dim and glimmer. But I must be because I don't
I don't know if humans will be around forty years.
I guess we'll see. Yeah, all right, we won't see that.
But I mean, technically, it should only take an existential
(19:01):
existential catastrophe to get rid of humans, Like we shouldn't
just necessarily die off as a species. It should It
should take something like physics experiment gonnawry, or a nuclear
war or biochemical attacks, something like that. Man will do it, yes,
(19:24):
it would be as self injury, probably suicide, I guess, well,
not suicide murder, murder humanity. So then there's two other things.
And there's a guy named Martin Fogg who wrote a
book called Terraforming Engineering Planetary Environments, and he basically laid
out what you have to do to get Mars going um.
(19:45):
And again, Mars is the easiest one to do because
it has that planetary rotation already. But additionally there's two
other things you have to handle. One is UM, the
atmospheric pressure. So apparently even at best Mars would um,
it would be a lot like existing on a mountaintop
(20:05):
here on Earth, Like the air would be thin. You'd
be like living on the top of Mountain Everest. You
kind of you'd have to bring your own oxygen, you
would so like, But maybe Tibetans and Ethiopian highlanders would
make like great early inhabitants of you know, a terraform Mars,
because they're already used to that kind of thing exactly.
(20:25):
The other thing is is you need nitrogen. Nitrogen is
vital of life and the atmosphere, and there's not much
nitrogen o Mars. No, So they're saying, well, then all
you have to do is start directing commets ammoniu based
ice sterroids I think is what they call them. Yeah,
because I don't know if everyone knows this. Commets are
I think one of the articles liking it two giant snowballs.
(20:47):
And if you sent a comet and exploded it before
it hit the planet, uh in theory would send ice everywhere,
which would be pretty cool. But you need a lot
of commets, you you. It's not just like one comment
you're done, no one, and done doesn't apply to there
for man, we have to figure out how to steer
these comments that way, which apparently is not I mean,
(21:10):
using um astrophysics. I guess that's not it's not all
the remo possibility to steer a comment and then hit
it with a nuclear device to blow it up so
that it explodes into shards and then rains down on Mars.
A lot of things can go wrong though. Yeah, you know,
it's frought with complications and comments, but it is a
(21:31):
viable way to introduce nitrogen to Mars, and it should
ideally stick around, especially once you have an atmosphere um
so that's Mars. It's probably the way we're gonna go.
Keep an eye out because in a couple of centuries
there'll probably be some sas on Mars. Yeah, and I
think that guy that you mentioned too says, even if
(21:52):
we do manage to do this, it's going to be
a constant process of reintroducing, uh, these these elements, these
volatile elements to keep that atmosphere going. I don't I
don't know if if Mitchocoko was right, if it would
ever like self sustain. Well, it could if you do
that standard paradigm of creating a runaway greenhouse effect. What
(22:13):
Martin Fogus saying is, why would you want to do that,
because then you have a greenhouse effect that you have
to deal with. I was wondering, and then you have
to rein that in exactly, he takes a longer view
of just slowly introducing stuff again and again to to
to create this Martian atmosphere over a longer period, but
(22:34):
um in a more granular way, right, Like more more
directed than just creating a runaway greenhouse effect. That makes
more sense, a little more focused. So we'll talk about
some of Mars's rivals for the terraforming game right after this.
So I guess I'm Venus, and so I'm always hot
(23:01):
because Venus is a very hot place. It's um very
unlike Mars. But some people say Venus has a few
things going for it. Namely, it's super close, closest planet
to us. Uh. We have similar almost well not identical,
but very similar size and mass and a very thick atmosphere,
just like Earth does. So there's a lot of similarities there. Um,
(23:26):
But you're sort of working in the opposite direction of Mars.
Is You've got a cool Venus down a lot, and
there's lots of wacky ideas on how to do that,
one of which is, what would you do if you
were hot? Put up a big shade? Yeah, like one
of those little umbrellas in a tiki drink. Yeah, just
a giant one. Yes. Basically, the idea is to block
(23:48):
all sunlight from Venus and cool it um And apparently
in about a hundred years, venus is atmosphere which is
pretty substantial, like you said, and almost all CEO two
would freeze and fall to the surface. Well, there's a
lot of sulphururic acid there is, but um, this this
(24:09):
atmosphere would freeze and create a surface layer, just like
on Mars, like how the CEO two is locked in
the polar ice caps would be doing the same thing
with Venus. Then you'd have to go in and deal
with this frozen atmosphere, which is kind of a thing,
but you could use it to your advantage, Chuck, because
the leg up like I said that Mars has over
(24:30):
Venus is that the Martian day is about twenty four
hours long, right, Well, the Venusian day is about a
hundred and sixty days long, which means it rotates way
too slowly for us to be habital for us. So
if you take this atmosphere and you freeze it, and
you create this frozen hulk of a planet, you can
(24:51):
actually make it spin faster if you can blow the
atmosphere off into space in a directed manner. Yeah, and
actually inshow correction, that's a hundred and sixteen uh days
is the length of their day day. There you go.
(25:11):
But I think anything over a hundred you just call
a big problem. Yeah, it's too long. So if you
can figure out how to blow the atmosphere, the now
frozen atmosphere off of Venus in the direction that it's
already rotating, you could conceivably spin up speed up the
rotation of Venus. Yeah. One of the other problems with
Venus is is there's no water. Um. And as everyone knows,
(25:34):
like we said, you need water for life. But then
we come back to our common idea of driving these
comics and exploding them and creating water that way. And
then the hyperthermals which I mentioned thermophiles sorry that I
mentioned earlier, are these organisms that can thrive in really
hot temperatures. Um, and we're talking really hot. I think
(25:55):
that the service temperature of Venus is something like eight
hundred degrees fahrenheight eight in seventy two, which is four
d and sixty seven degrees celsius. Yeah. The problem is
we We haven't found anything on Earth, any hypotherrmophiles that
can handle that kind of temperature and pressure yet, but
they think they exist. Yeah. Did you mention the pressure
of the atmosphere on Venus. It's two hundred times the
(26:17):
pressure at sea level here on Earth. It's a problem
as well. But if you could find a hypo hyper
thermophile that could sustain that and a sulfur and then
they do though, Yeah, and then yeah, because I think
some of them are by thermal vents under underwater, you know,
they surf sulfur. We just haven't found any of that
can sustain that kind of heat and pressure yet. It's
(26:38):
only one way to find out, and that's the launch
them towards Venus and see what happens. Basically, in fact,
the planet is what you're talking about. Yeah. Um, so
the problem with all of this is is too to
freeze Venus, it's going to require a lot of energy
to reflect all all the light from the surface. Uh too,
(26:59):
bit the frozen atmosphere out in the space is going
to require even more. Basically, it would require the amount
of energy that the Sun puts out in an entire year.
It is crazy, It is crazy. Now but have you
ever heard of the Cardassian scale? Sure, so then you
know there's type one, Type two, and Type three civilizations,
and a Type one civilization uses all of the available
(27:23):
energy from the star. So, like all of this energy
that hits the Earth normally from the sun, if you
could harness all that, you'd be a Type one civilization.
We're not even there yet. Type to civilization could harness
all of the energy at the that's created at the star,
not just the stuff that makes it to your planet.
And if you could harness that, if you're a Type
(27:43):
too civilization, you could be doing this kind of terraforming,
no problem. But no sweat man. But I mean, if
you think about it, if you have a couple of
like leaps forward in understanding, a couple of geniuses are
born and live and advance human understanding over the course
of a few generations, you could conceivably hit something like
that in a hundred years. So, I mean, it's not
(28:06):
it's not out of the wrong possibility that we could
be doing stuff like this a hundred two hundred years
from now. Yeah, venus. Another idea they have instead of
these huge giant um shade sales would be to have
a big, floating, pressurized geodesic sphere city that people basically
would use the atmosphere because the atmosphere is okay above
(28:29):
the sulfur cast of that is but um. That would
provide shade and then eventually it would cool the planet
down enough. Just by creating a shadow. They'd be simultaneously
sucking the CEO two out of the atmosphere and breaking
it down into carbon and oxygen as well, supposedly, so
be doing like two things at once. It's not a
bad idea. Yeah, sounds efficient, a little more efficient. And
(28:52):
apparently if you pressurized um like a indoor city or
something like that, a floating city, and put it into
NUS atmosphere, it would naturally float in the atmosphere. It
would stay put. Yeah, I think that was the same
for the The solar mirror wouldn't have to be attached
to anything either off off of Mars. I think it
(29:13):
would just be held in place by I think gravity
and what solar bubble gum. And then of course, chuck
there is the moon. Seems pretty unlikely. The one thing
that the moon has going for it is its proximity. Basically, Yeah, basically,
it's like the moon is close. It's small, so you're
(29:36):
not gonna have to spend a lot of money getting there.
And it's because it's small, you're not gonna spend a
ton of money fixing it up. It's the budget terraforming idea.
I guess the Russians are already be living there at
this point. Um. I don't know if the moon is
very viable though, Well, you'd have to again bombard it
with something to get it to spin faster, because right
(29:57):
now it's days Earth days right. Yeah, they said like
a hundred comments at least about the size of Haley's comment. Yeah,
to get it just spinning faster, and perhaps knock it
off its axis a bit and give it seasons, which
would be nice. Like we have here on Earth, and
my money's on Mars. It's got everything you need except
for nitrogen, and that you can just deliver however you like.
(30:19):
I kind of like the shell idea that you sent along,
kin Roy. He's an engineer who's basically says, why don't
we just in case a small planet and a huge
shell made of kevlar and steel and dirt, Yeah, and
just create like a huge geodesic dome around a planet.
I guess the question is where are you gonna get
all that dirt? I don't know, because that is the
(30:41):
it's it's an essentially greedy you're mostly sitting dirt. Then
you create an atmosphere between the shell and the dirt. Yeah,
where where's all that dirt coming from? Adobe? Adobe sphere?
I don't know. I think that's a pretty neat idea.
I'd be, you know, I too, be all artificial that
you have to have artificial light because you're inside a
(31:03):
dome um and apparently you would have like air locks
and stuff to account for, like the vacuum. I don't
know about that though. That sounds like he was saying
the atmosphere be just thin enough for gravity, would be
just light enough so that humans could fly around. I
swear he added that I saw that. He's like, just
as sweeten the pod a little more, yea, to make
(31:24):
it that much more cool, you'll be able to fly.
So anyway, we'll eventually ruin this planet and need something.
Hopefully we'll have had the foresight to have started terraforming
in time. Well, they're they're already working on it, are they. Well,
people are talking about it, proposing ideas theoretical ideas. I
don't think they're like building. They should be the asteroid Slinger.
(31:47):
They should have started in the nineteenth century. They're building
a comet sling in Texas as we speak. If you
want to know more about terraforming, you can take that
word in the search part how stuff works out com
And since I said search bar, it's time for Chuck
a very special edition Thanksgiving edition of That's right. We
(32:17):
are here to say thanks because it's around Thanksgiving, because
my friend, it is Thanksgiving. Is it Thanksgiving Day? Yes? Well,
of course it's the thurs Day unless you're in Canada
and in which case happy late belated Thanksgiving. Yes, because
they do. There's in like October weirds. I think so too.
So who do we have to think? Yeah, I mean
(32:38):
we have. For those of you who have never heard
this segment, we have listeners that send us gifts from
time to time and it is always very much appreciated
and very nice, and so here they are. Yeah, I'm
gonna start with the second page. If you want to
start with the first base, sure you go ahead, Chuck Uh.
Anthony Savino sent us from his Etsy shop Swiss Chisel,
a lap laptop and business card holders made out of
(33:00):
old wine barrel staves, and he makes all kinds of
stuff out of these things. So check out a store
which is Swiss Chisel. Yes, and Matt Perky from Evolved
Workforce dot com sent us some mugs. Matt's aim is
to refine drug testing for states where marijuana is legal,
(33:20):
so he can get an idea of what your intoxication
is immediately after something like an accident or whatever. Yeah,
I was wondering about that well, because he's legalizing, like
if your job, you know, if you have to get
drug tested, this guy's on it. Interesting. Evolve workforce dot
com is that where the mug came from? Okay, I
thought that was a hint. New York, New York. The
(33:40):
band sent us a promo CD, which is terrific. So
we always like getting music from our musician friends, so
thanks for that. Yep. Mike do Deck from the Clicky
Post dot com c l I c K Y p
O s T send us Cube pen holders of his
own making. He also sent us some awesome pilot Metropolitan
Fountain pens and Rhodeo dot pads. Mike is a pen
(34:02):
person and he wanted to share his his passion with us,
So thank you very much. Mike. All right, we have
an anonymous gift so one sent us a postcard from
the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia, along
with the junior Federal Agent badges for all three of us,
and have mine in my wallet. Ye you really do,
don't you do? Huge thank you to Chloe the candy maker,
(34:22):
who is also a ghost tour guide, who sent us
tons of amazing candy from mckinaw Island, Michigan, where I
used to go sometimes as a child, so I was
very happy to get this. Y. Yeah, and um, we
want to say good luck and safe travels to you
and your sister and your world tour Chloe, be safe.
Big thanks to Annie from Brisbane, Quinsland, Australia send us
(34:44):
a megacre package for real of Australian treats. Uh. Tim
TAM's I think you love those things, right man? I
went crazy for this and Carmelo Kids were pretty good
as well. Violet Crumble's picnic Boost Hero. There was some
weird stuff in there, but there God, man 've got
some crazy candies. Uh. Thanks to Andrew Parr for an
entire puzzle dedicated to Stuff you should Know in the
(35:07):
World of Puzzles win Or two thousand fourteen issue. It
was awesome. Oh boy, this is one of my favorites.
Rob henion Um from sin Us those awesome stuff you
should know bookends made from industrial fasteners and they are
super cool. They're really heavy and they're awesome. And you
can get information at more Metal Welding at gmail dot
(35:27):
com or more metal dot Etsy dot com. It's like
quality quality stuff. Uh. Kevin pelo Quinn from Kevin polo
Quinn dot com. That's k E v I N p
e l o q u I N and Red Dad Tease.
I think those are both of his sites. Uh. He
gave us an amazing illustration of Steve Zesu from The
Like Aquatic looking pensively toward the horizon, which I have
(35:50):
up in my cubicle. Oh, I wonder where that was from.
That's from Kevin pelo Quinn. Uh. Lauren and Megan from
Chopsticks for Salamanders. They've got a pretty cool cause they
sent him. Uh sent us stay less steal reusable chopsticks.
And this is a big deal because chopsticks are honestly,
they're kind of a problem. Uh. They sell these to
help prevent destruction of forests um from those little cheap
(36:12):
wooden ones. And they're the same forests where they where
they get these the wood for these things, where salamanders live.
And so every year sixty billion pairs of chopsticks are
thrown away and a lot of salamanders are having their forests,
forests and habitats destroyed because of your sushi addictions, which
I have as well. So get some of these. You
(36:33):
can learn more at Chopsticks for Salamanders dot org. Nice. Um,
we got a postcard. It's been a while since we
did this. We got a postcard from one of our
announcing the birth of one of our newer fans, Clyde
Avery Thomas, who was born at one fifty eight am
on January sixteenth, two thousand fourteen, in Traverse City, Michigan.
I thought, you say it's like six by now. He
(36:53):
probably is, but um, he most likely came out a
little frost bitten because it's cold up there. But congratulations
to and Drew and Janelle Thomas on the birth of
your son. Yeah, and happy first birthday pretty soon, pretty soon. Uh.
Mike and Cassidy Lord from Athens Georgia who send it's
a postcard from Cambodia. Um while in Borneo, I know,
(37:14):
wrapped your mind around that interesting? Uh. Sarah Austin gave
us a very chic and rugged handmade leather cardholder wallets,
which are pretty awesome. Rachel Crandall for the line drawing
of stuff you should know written in Gallifrayan. It's the
language apparently that uh time lords and doctor who of
the time Lords. So I'm not a Doctor Who fan,
(37:36):
but I appreciated the gift. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
Julie from Austin, Texas sent as a postcard from the
Shed Aquarium in beautiful Chicago, Illinois. Thank you, Julie. Oh boy,
Lois Olsen. This is my favorite gift I've gotten. Very
simple but awesome. The mini quilts they are. It's basically
a little tiny not a tiny. It's a small place
(37:58):
matt that you use in place of a coast right,
it's mug rugs bigger than a coaster, smaller than a placement. Yeah,
a little rectangular thing. And I often at dinner will
have like maybe a beer, maybe a glass of water,
maybe a cup of coffee, shot of whiskey, and I
put everything down on my little mug rug and if
anything spills, it soaks it up. It's better than a coaster.
It doesn't stick like a coaster. It's like it's gonna
(38:18):
revolutionize the coaster industry. I love them. So thank you
Lois Olsen for that. Thank you to Brett Arnold, who
won our horror fiction contest if you'll remember, he sent
us a copy of his book Avalon and you can
get Avalon on Amazon dot com. And then lastly, for
this one, UM, we want to thank Joe and Lynda
Heckt for sending us tons of stuff, including customized stuff
(38:40):
you should know mugs with hints to UM podcast topics
that they'd like to hear stuff about. They put them
on a mug and have them made and send them
to us mugs. They send us copy of the DVD
American Amazon. They gave us ten bucks to watch it
O man. So they're the best. They are very great people.
So thank you to everybody, and we still have more
people to think left. Um eventually. Yeah, that's this is
(39:04):
part one, right, but we are grateful for each and
every one of you and all of you listeners out there,
whether you send us stuff or not. We're thankful to
all of you and we hope you're having a wonderful
holiday no matter where you are in the world. Agreed,
Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving. You all for more on this
(39:26):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com
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