December 30, 2015 • 48 mins
You may have heard that NASA discovered evidence of flowing water on Mars. We take a look at previous discoveries involving H2O and the Red Planet as well as ask what does this new discovery mean?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. He there. Forward Thinking is back. Don't call
it a comeback. We've been here for years. I'm Jonathan
Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick, and we wanted to announce
(00:22):
that the podcast is back and thank thank you people
for your support. We received numerous emails, tweets, Facebook messages,
pretty much anyway you guys could get in touch with us.
I think we saw smoke signals one day asking where
the heck is the podcast? Where's the video series? So
quick update. We do Forward Thinking in seasons and season
(00:44):
three had just come to an end in October two
thousand fifteen, and then there was discussion about whether or
not season four would happen, and that discussion happened well
above our heads. We all wanted to do it. Lots
of people wanted to do it. In fact, at the
end of the day, everyone said they wanted to do it.
So we're not sure exactly what the hold up is,
but it's all solved now. So now that we're back,
(01:04):
we have a couple of podcasts that we actually recorded
before we went on hiatus and kind of sat around
in our vault and we want to release the first
of those today. It's all about water on Mars. Yeah,
so this was recorded in was it early October? Very
early October? This was recorded several months ago, And that's
why you might hear us referring to things being in
(01:26):
the news that are not currently in the news, but
we're in the news at the time this was recorded,
for example, water on Mars. But I hope you will
enjoy the episode anyway, because I do think it is
very interesting, and we hope you will stay tuned for
new episodes that we're going to start recording very soon.
Right one more in the can, and then after that
(01:46):
it's all new territory. We have no idea where we're going,
no more than you do. And we don't even know
when we're recording yet because it's been so long since
we've all three sat down at this table. Guys, it's
been months since the three of us have been at
this table together. I'm kind of I'm kind of reclemped. Yeah,
it's a little it's a little overwhelming. It's a little
overwhelming for some of us more than others, because we
(02:07):
some of us have a podcast to record immediately after this. Sorry, Joe,
we're gonna wrap this up, so let's get right into
the water on Mars episode. And guys were so happy
that we're back. Can't wait to talk to you about
the future more really soon. Hey there, and welcome to
Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks at the future and says,
(02:29):
letting the days go by water flowing underground. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
I'm I'm Joe McCormick. Jonathan. I don't know if you noticed,
but right before this podcast I was quoting, uh, talking heads.
I did not notice. You were talking about the social
media platform Tumbler, which I cannot think of without thinking of, well,
I'm a tumbler. Nice. Yeah, As it turns out, I
(02:54):
had selected that one mirror moments before you and Lauren
came into the studio, so there was no collusion there.
It's I try to make these a surprise for everyone
in the room besides myself. I mean sometimes I'm surprised too,
if at any rate, Hey, let's talk about some water
on Mars, y'all. Yeah, well that was that was a
big headline a week ago. Yeah, when I was when
(03:15):
I was on vacation, and you guys were holding down
the fort um. I noticed, I, guys, I was in
a place where I think the internet got their last Tuesday.
Maybe I was in a place where it just information
just doesn't get there as quickly as everywhere else. So
I knew that there was going to be an announcement
(03:37):
that that NASA had something to announce that had something
to do with Mars. I was convinced they had found
Matt Damon. I thought that's what had happened. I thought
it was all just an elaborate, uh marketing scheme for
the Martian And it turns out that's only part of it. Well,
I mean NASA is talking to Ridley Scott and mentioned
(04:00):
that later on. But yeah, I know they had this big,
big press release that was like water is totes probably
on Mars, guys. Yeah, which, depending on how closely you've
been paying attention for the last several decades, you might
have thought, haven't we known this for a while? Yeah.
I thought that they discovered water on Mars quite a
(04:21):
few times, and they sort of have we keep discovering it,
found it again, I guess. I guess here's the real problem.
Here's the reason why they have to keep announcing it.
We haven't brought a flag up there yet, so until
you have the flag, it's not really official. So that's
the no alright. So here's the actual announcement. This, This
(04:42):
is what was actually announced that that they had uncovered
the most compelling evidence so far that liquid water under
certain conditions still flows on or just below the surface
of Mars. And we'll talk about what that means a
little bit later, but before we do that, I thought
it might be cool to to talk about why is
this a big deal in the first place, and also
(05:03):
kind of lead up to the other discoveries that you
are alluding to, Joe, the ones that you know, haven't
we heard about water on Mars before? And the answer
is yes. But there's reasons why this particular announcement is exciting.
So in general, the conditions on Mars are not favorable
for water for multiple reasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And we're
(05:26):
talking about liquid water. Liquid water because it's pretty cold, yep.
So usually if you're talking about pure water, it would
be an ice form. It wouldn't be in liquid form, right,
it would freeze. And now occasionally, in some places on
Mars it does get above the freezing point. For fresh water.
The the warmest conditions on the equator of Mars can
(05:47):
sometimes get to like seventy degrees fahrenheit, which sounds nice. Sure,
that's very pleasant. It's like San Francisco. Mars is basically
San Francisco most of the time. It's more like Antarctica
or worse. That is that is true, yes, um, and
depending on when you go to San Francisco can seem
that way. Also, unlike San Francisco, uh, Mars has no atmosphere,
(06:11):
and so that's a very thin one. Yes, that's the
other side of the problem. So the very cold temperature
means that water either freezes, but the thinness of the
atmosphere also means that the boiling point for water is
very low, so very quickly and easily sublimates directly into
a gas, the water vapor. And then you have another issue,
(06:32):
which is that Mars, mars is gravity is not as
great as Earth's's, like thirties seven percent something along those lines,
somewhere in that range, and so some of that water
vapor gets boiled off into space and does not come
back to the water cycle. Right, It's not trapped the
way that it is here on Earth. Yes, so these
conditions all mean that that's why it's not totally covered
(06:56):
in water, right, that it's not wet, why it's not
wet exactly. So, But we have talked about water on
Mars many times before. And when I say we, I
mean human beings, I don't mean just this podcast. We
talked about Mars many times before. Yes, we have Mars
is awesome, uh, and we're doing stuff all the time.
I think we're gonna have another episode that links more
(07:16):
directly with the Martian in the near future to talk
about the technology in that uh, in that story. But
let's talk about the various observations and hypotheses about water
and Mars. Sure, well, people thought there was water on
Mars really before we had any good reason to think so. Yeah.
Back in the nineteenth century, there was an astronomer named
(07:38):
Giovanni Schiaparelli who described the appearance of certain physical features
on Mars as canally, not cannoli, which is what you're
supposed to take but you leave the gun, but cannally canally,
meaning channels. Now, the word canally looks a lot like
the English word canals, right, So there were some people
(08:00):
who translated canally into canals. Canals, however, implies that this
is a manufactured structure built right something that humans or
you know whatever beings Martians I guess in this case,
have dug out on purpose, right, as opposed to channels,
which could have been carved out through natural processes. Uh. So,
as we know, if there's even the slightest misstatement that
(08:23):
could be construed as the existence of life on Mars,
somebody's going to run with it. Yes, even before there
was a Facebook, there were moments like these. Uh in
this case, I know that literally anything happened before face. Yeah.
Can you just imagine what Perceval Lowell would have done
with Facebook. Perceval Lowell's American was an American businessman who
had an interest in astronomy, and he interpreted canally as
(08:47):
being canals and ran with that idea, really really pushed
the idea that Mars was a planet that had a sophisticated,
uh technologically advanced civilization that had this complex system of
canals carved into it that allowed the denizens of Mars,
the Martians, to transport goods and you know, vehicles and
(09:09):
get water to distant locations using this system. He really
went with that idea, despite the fact that no one
in the scientific community had actually proposed it at that point. However,
the idea kind of took hold for a while, um,
not just in popular circles, but then the scientific community
began to say, well, in all, it's possible that maybe
(09:31):
these are our actual structures and not just natural formations.
And if that's the case, then clearly there is some
form of intelligent life there. Yeah, so we should take
a better look at it. So let's develop some better telescopes. Yep.
And this happened very slowly. Obviously, it wasn't like an
overnight thing, although you know, it's easiest to look at
Mars when it's nighttime. In the nineteen twenties, some improvements
(09:53):
in telescope technology gave us a better look at the
red planet, and that's when scientists began to observe the
geological formations that led them to believe there were snow
caps at the polls, and that there were canals or
channels one or the other that actually had liquid in
them on the surface of Mars. During that time, that
was what they believe because their telescopes were not so
sensitive that they could actually see into these channels. They
(10:16):
could just see the patterns that are yeah, that that
looked like they were channels or canals. You couldn't really
be certain, but they were making a best guess, uh today,
I mean, if if there are canals, there have got
to be gondola's and and opera singers. I mean, there's
a whole like domino effect that goes on here. There's
probably you know, a giant casino that caters to those
(10:40):
folks like the Venetian Is that I guess it would
be the Martian Um anywhere. Yeah, I mean, you know,
we we see how this just leads to rampant speculation. Uh.
At any rate, Time magazine at that at that point
reported that the scientific belief was that not only was
their water on Mars like flow water, but also there
(11:01):
was an atmosphere, a thick, warm atmosphere on Mars and
vegetation on Mars. British astronomer PM Rives postulated there could
even be intelligent life on the planet. This was all
based upon just casual observation using the best technology they
had at the time. They didn't have any obviously, they
had no evidence of such things. They were just drawing
(11:23):
conclusions based upon what little detail they could see sure,
and and this would persist for the next couple of decades. Yeah.
By the nineties, there was still a belief that snow
would form at the polls, so that there was a
precipitation of snow, and that they would then melt during
the Martian summer and reform in the winter. And photographs
seemed to indicate that there was some vegetation on Mars.
(11:44):
They were actually looking at this area around Mars where
there was some brown and green coloration and they thought
that that was uh indicative of vegetation. Um. By the
nineteen sixties we had developed better close up imagery of Mars,
and scientists were beginning to revise their opinions about water
on Mars um. In fact, they began to dismiss earlier
(12:08):
ideas entirely, sometimes perhaps a little too readily. They dismissed
the idea that there was snow on Mars. This isn't okay, No,
there's not. There's no precipitation going on here. The areas
we're looking at, at the poles on Mars, those can't
be snow. It's most likely that's frozen carbon dioxide, not water. However,
(12:28):
in Texas, the McDonald Observatory claimed to have found conclusive
proof of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere. Now, did
y'all know that I just went to the McDonald Observatory
couple of weeks ago. That you went to the actual
McDonald observatory, Right, You didn't just stare at a fast
food restaurant. No? No? In Texas? Yeah we um, My
wife Rachel and I went to Big Ben National Park
(12:51):
and McDonald Observatory is just north of there. That's really cool.
So we looked through the telescopes. I got to see
Saturn in its moons and that must have been actacular.
It was amazing. There was a close up of the
terminator line on the moon and uh and stand uh
it certainly is, but it was really cool. If you
(13:14):
ever get a chance to go to the McDonald Observatory
for one of their star parties or other events, I
highly recommended Russell. I'll I'm definitely putting that on my list.
I have never The only observatory I've ever gone to
is the one that's at um the telescope that's at
Firm Bank here in Atlanta, and I would love to
to travel to a few different places and check out
some other ones. Uh. So the observatory, the McDonald Observatory
(13:38):
used US spectrometers and we'll talk more about them a
little bit later, and that's what allowed them to detect
water vapor. Uh. They made observations in nineteen sixty nine
through nineteen seventy and then decided they needed to take
a more concentrated approach to this, and they focused on
it from nineteen seventy two to nineteen seventy four, over
(13:58):
the course of what was nearly a full Martian Year,
and in that they were able to detect different varying
amounts of water vapor throughout the Martian Year. They were
always tiny, but then Mars's atmospheres very thin, as we've said,
so you wouldn't expect there to be a lot of
water vapor. But they were able to detect it throughout
that time. But by the nineties seventies, we were starting
(14:20):
to send stuff towards Mars. Yeah, and sometimes it would
get there. H So I had the Viking program right, yep, yep.
I recently heard a podcast in which they they they
do a trivia at the end of it's a skeptic
SKYDDV Universe. Give him a shout out because I love
that show. But they do a trivia thing at the
very end where the host quizzes the other folks on
(14:43):
the podcast. They are not given the questions ahead of time.
They have to try and figure out they're given a selection.
They have to figure out which one of the selection
they're given is fiction and which ones are science. There's
one fiction and then the rest are science. And one
of the science ones was that there have been already
missions sent to Mars, but only eighteen have been successful.
(15:04):
Those are the ones that actually don't count the fly by's,
so they didn't count fly by missions, just just one
sent specifically to Mars, either an orbiter or a lander
you know, or rover or anything like that. So less
than fifty success rate. Uh so this is a big deal.
In the nineteen seventies, specifically in the Viking two orbiter
sent back data that showed frozen water at the north
(15:27):
pole of Mars, and new theories emerged that suggested there
was probably a level of perma frost beneath the surface
of Mars, so you have regular covering up a level
of perma frost, and they even thought there might be
the possibility that the poles, it's not just that there's
ice form there, but rather there's an enormous body of
(15:48):
ice that is concealed by Regulus, and it's more or
less like a giant iceberg, except in the ground as
opposed to floating in the ocean. So I thought that
was pretty cool. That's upping ahead because obviously we studied
Mars quite a bit over the decades. But in the
nineteen nineties, orbiters sent by NASA and the European Space
Agency discovered more evidence of water, at least in the
(16:11):
form of ice. Not not flowing water, but ice on Mars.
There appeared to be evidence for precipitation and flowing water
as well in Mars's past, if not the present. So
they saw areas like geological formations that that suggested there
was definitely some flowing water at some point in Mars's past,
probably a weather cycle of some sort, precipitation of some sort,
(16:35):
but they could not they did not directly observe any
of that, you know, happening present day. So the conclusion
was perhaps this was something that happened in the distant past,
and since then had things had changed. Um skip ahead
to two thousand and eight. That's when the Phoenix Lander
dug up some bright material that disappeared over the course
of a few days, and NASA concluded that it was
(16:57):
in fact water ice. It also detected the presence of
water vapor within the Martian atmosphere, and the rover's Spirit
and Opportunity also uncovered evidence of ice. Curiosity even drove
through an ancient river bed that held water billions of
years ago but no longer, so it didn't have to
ford a river or anything. In twenty fifteen, this year,
(17:19):
the year that we're recording this, before the most recent
evidence was made public, NASA announced a hypothesis that billions
of years ago, the northern hemisphere of Mars was essentially
an enormous ocean, uh that a large portion of it,
at any rate, was underwater. So they drew this conclusion
based upon data that was gathered by the European Southern
(17:40):
Observatories Very Large Telescope in Chile and the W. M.
Keck Observatory and NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. So
scientists calculated that one time there was enough water on
Mars to cover the entire planet, and an average depth
of four hundred fifty feet or about a hundred thirty
seven But the way that water works is usually not
that it's ring an entire planet. Yeah, it was actually
(18:02):
based upon their their guesses, because again these are all hypotheses.
No one was around back then to check up on
their their work. That the northern hemisphere sections of it
were probably just a gigantic ocean, and that this ocean
had depths that would reach more than a mile or
one point six kilometers in some places. Uh. If that's correct,
(18:23):
that would mean that the ocean would have covered about
nine of Mars's surface, And you can compare that to
something like the Atlantic Ocean here on Earth that covers
sevent of the Earth's surface, keeping in mind that Mars
is of course smaller than Earth. It's not like one
to one um comparison. Also, the Curiosity rover uncovered evidence
(18:43):
that water could be in liquid form on the Martian
surface due to salts in the Martian soil. We'll talk
more about this in a minute too. So the salts
could dissolve in water, and when you dissolve salts and water,
that lowers the freezing temperature of that water. So if
you are if you have the right type of salts,
you can lower, you can significantly lower that that freezing
(19:04):
temperature um and so under those conditions, at least and
at least temporarily, the there could be liquid water on
Mars's surface. Uh. And the general hypothesis, which will talk
more about again in a little bit, was that the
materials on the surface of Mars could actually absorb water
(19:25):
vapor in the atmosphere and turn into liquid water that way.
So it's not like it's not like the ice was
melting and then flowing through, but rather that it was
being rained down on exactly. It was more that it
was kind of almost like a condensation sort of thing,
except you know, really absorption, not condensation. Uh. So that's that,
(19:47):
that's kind of everything leading up to the most recent announcement.
So what was the most recent announcement. Well, it was
the newest and strongest evidence of flowing water on Mars,
and it was it was actually search that was published
in the Nature Geoscience paper on September and then it
was picked up by by NASSA, which gave a press
(20:10):
release on it and then did a big announcement and
had a big media what would you call it a
media buffet or or or a lot of maybe water
cooler talk Martian water coolers. Yeah, and uh, I wanted
to point out, Yeah, the lead author of the study
(20:30):
was a graduate student from our own Georgia Tech right
here in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. Go Bulldogs, wolf Wolf Well,
our city's owned Georgia Tech. Uh, and he was named
Legendra Oja. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. If not,
I'm sure all gets an email. But anyway, what was
this new evidence? Of course, Jonathan, you brought up the
(20:51):
idea of fording a river. I I did hope when
we first heard about this, the Curiosity Rover had come
up to a river and then was given the option,
l do you want to build a raft board it
or give the ferryman to barrels of salt pork. Oh.
I thought it was gonna be like the Mars equivalent
of Oregon Trail, Like, oh, the Curiosity Rover has got
(21:12):
dysentery and and broke a lego hair wheels were lost. Yeah,
now it has to go shoot a Mars bear. Yeah,
that's a great game. So yeah, that was not what happened. Obviously,
the Curiosity Rover did not come across a large body
of water on Mars. That's not how this discovery was made. No,
in fact, it wasn't the Curiosity rover at all, but
(21:34):
it was following up on the same lead you mentioned
earlier about the yeah, the hydrated salts in the soil
of Mars. So the evidence came from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,
the m r O, and what it was looking into
was that on some downhill slopes on Mars you can
see dark streaks that have been given the name recurring
(21:55):
slope Linneer or RSL, and these dark streaks have a
tendency to grow darker and move downhill in the warmer seasons,
and on Mars, the warm season means when the temperature
is above negative ten degrease fahrenheit or negative twenty three
degrees celsius, absolutely balmy. And then of course when the
(22:16):
weather on Mars gets colder again, they fade away. And
there are a lot of these things, there are thousands
of them, and imaging instrument on the mr O is
captured images of rs L s at dozens of sights
on the surface of Mars. Right, so that leads to
the question what could be causing this this discoloration, if
you will, this change of of the color of the
(22:38):
soil on Mars through the warmer months and then the
retreat of that in the winter months. And when we
want to try to figure out what is going on
with changes in in the color of an object, we
can use a spectrometer, right, So there's an imaging spectrometer
called the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging spectrometer for Mars or the
(22:58):
cruisum chrism to uh that these researchers used to determine
that the darkened streaks were hydrated salts. And of course
what does the spectrometer do uses what we know about
how different types of molecules or or materials absorb different
spectra of light, and then it looks at the colors
of light to determine what molecules are probably present in
(23:20):
the object it's looking at. Yes, we use this a
lot in in astronomy, also in chemistry obviously, but in
astronomy in order to kind of get an idea of
what distant bodies may be composed of if we aren't
able to get direct access to those things. Yeah, so
when they looked at the RSL locations that were I
guess you could call them waxing, the ones that are
(23:41):
growing wider and darker. They detected hydrated salts with with
the chrism, and then they looked at the same sites
when the rs l s had retreated, and they did
not detect hydrated salts with the spectrometer. So it looks
like salts equal streaks. No salts equals no streets. Interesting.
(24:02):
So this kind of goes back to what that previous
hypothesis I mentioned from earlier stated, the idea that there
are these these materials, these salts on mars that occasionally
absorb water through some means, whether it's through the water
vapor or something else that we're not yet aware of,
lower the freezing temperature of that water, which allows it
(24:24):
to be in liquid form rather than just water vapor
or ice. Yeah, and so you're familiar with how salt
changes the freezing temperature of water if you've ever seen
a salted road or just poured salt on an ice
cube for fun, or had ice cream which has salt
in it to you know, help it get all ice creamy.
Except that the hydrated salts detected in this research weren't
(24:45):
just standard earth salt, which would be in a cl
or sodium chloride, the table salt we all know and
love and pour in our mouths directly. So sodium chloride
can lower the freezing temperature of water a good bit
based on how much salt is mixed in with the water. So,
according to our House to Works article on this, a
(25:05):
ten percent salt solution freezes at twenty degrees fahrenheit or
negative six degrees celsius, and a solution freezes at two
degrees fahrenheit or negative sixteen. I tried to see what
the lowest was. I found one website saying that that
if you get to the point where the water is
completely saturated with salt and will not absorb any more salt,
(25:28):
the freezing temperature will go all the way down to
negative six degrees fahrenheit or negative got you, so, yeah,
Obviously you're limited by the chemicals um that are are
dissolved within the water, right And and if it reaches
saturation and the freezing point is still uh is still
(25:49):
higher than the low temperature, then it's still good. Freeze
table salt wouldn't cut it on Mars. But according to
the authors of the Nature Geoscience paper, this announcement is
baced on the data returned from the imaging spectrometer makes
it look like these hydrated salts found on the downhill
flows or minerals called perclorates. UH specifically quote a mixture
(26:12):
of magnesium perclorate, magnesium chlorate, and sodium perchlorate. Why is
this significant because these perclorates are salts on steroids. When
it comes to changing the properties of water, some percolorates
can lower the freezing temperature of water below negative ninety
four degrees fahrenheit or negative seventy degrees celsius. So having
(26:34):
liquid water at that temperature is it's hard to imagine. Yeah, yeah,
now the evidence is not. We should specify that there
are strong flowing rivers somewhere on the surface of marks,
really super super cold flowing rivers. These this is flowing water,
but it's probably only a and and I want to
(26:55):
quote the NASA press release here a shallow subsurface flow
with enough water wicking to the surface to explain the darkening.
So a more apt analogy would be to think of
water sort of flowing through a sponge instead of rushing
over the top of a surface. So that then leads
(27:17):
us to a question that we don't necessarily have an
answer for yet, although we have some good hypotheses about it.
Where is this water coming from? That's a good question.
We don't know. You mentioned earlier. The hypothesis was that
it was being absorbed from the atmosphere. But a tough
thing about that is our data on the Martian atmosphere
says that it's not wet. There's very very little water
(27:40):
vases pretty dry in the Martian atmosphere, not enough that
the soil would really be able to absorb it. So
unless our data is not accurate about that, it's probably
not coming from the atmosphere, or maybe that that our
data is coming from a part of the atmosphere that's
different from the lower atmosphere where these salts could be
absorbing water vapor from. But let's say that our data
(28:02):
is correct. If it's not coming from above, it would
necessarily have to be coming from below. And that's another
cool possibility. It could be that there are aquifers under
the ground on the surface of Mars that when the
warmer months come along, warmer months Mars months. When the
warmer times come along, the aquifers under the ground unfreeze.
(28:23):
They melt, and then some of the water seeps up
to be absorbed by these perchlorate's, by these salts near
the surface of the planet, and then we get the
wet salts. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So, uh, you know,
I love that when we get announcements like these, it
leads to more questions for us to to ask and
(28:45):
an attempt to answer. And some of these questions we
may ultimately be able to answer through direct observation or
or through various tests. There are other questions that might
end up being um a little tough for to answer,
at least in the the foreseeable future. Uh. One of
the big questions we have is does this mean that
(29:10):
there could actually be life on Mars. That's a pretty
big one. That's a giant question. It's definitely what all
the media people want to know. I watched a couple
of interviews with the lead author of this paper, the
guy from Georgia Tech, and there were all these reporters
were asking questions about the discovery, but the thing they
(29:31):
wanted to know was does this mean there's life on Mars?
And it seemed to me like he didn't really have
a very strong opinion on that, and he was more
interested in talking about the you know, the planetary science,
and you know, yeah, I mean it's like if you
go to someone whose discipline is in one area of
science and you ask them something of that's in an
(29:53):
unconnected science, then I think the answer is probably gonna
be pretty much the same, like, well, I guess not
what I was studying at all or not, or I
don't care. Well, my album there's a there's a couple
of different um kind kind of arguments that one could make. Yeah.
(30:14):
One one thing I saw was there was a really
good New York Times article by Kenneth Chang covering this discovery,
and it it had quotes from scientists both pro and
con the idea that this would lend credence to life
on Mars. One of the cons came from a NASA
astrobiologist named Christopher McKay Christopher P. McKay uh and to
(30:35):
the New York Times, he said, the short answer for
habitability is that it means nothing. So he points out
that the water would be way too salty to support life,
at least any life that we have ever observed here
on Earth. Yeah, And he cites the example of a
pond in Antarctica called the Don Juan Pond, which sounds
really cool. Yeah, it's like it's a hot tub. This
(31:01):
it's the sexiest, coldest, saltiest pond and Antarctica. Yeah, and
it it remains liquid even in freezing temperatures because of
the presence of high levels of calcium chloride. But it
is not a very life friendly pond. Right, So in
this case we talk about how conditions on Mars are
still incredibly um uh tough for any living creature, that
(31:26):
even even microbes that we've encountered here on Earth. So
not just the brininess of the water, which is already
a huge issue, but also the temperatures of Mars and
the radiation that that the surface of Mars ends up
being subjected to. So all of these things mean that
it doesn't mean that there's not life on Mars. It
(31:48):
just means that we haven't found enough evidence to make
us feel confident one way or the other. Yeah, But
there there are also arguments that go the other way.
The same New York Times article talked to the geophysicist
named David E. Stillman, who made the point that some
water might be saltier than other water on Mars. In
(32:09):
the same way that some water on Earth is saltier
than other water. You might not want to live in
the Dead Sea, but you could live in some other
body of water like the Pacific. Yeah, And so it's so.
The idea was that the streaks that only appear in
the warmest conditions would require less salt to melt, meaning
that maybe they could harbor life even if some other
streaks couldn't. Yeah. There could also be pockets of water
(32:32):
under the surface of Mars that are warmed through geological
processes that were not aware of yet that could support life,
and we just haven't been able to observe those yet.
That's a possibility. Although it's one of those it's like
it could be there or it could not be there
to not Yeah. So it's not even not like it's
(32:54):
not a counter argument so much as saying, again, this
is not this is not a smoking gun in either direction,
right uh. The astrophysics blogger Ethan Siegel, who I follow
also wrote a short piece about this, and he just
pointed out that some life forms on Earth do take
advantage of really salty conditions, like the desert salt bush,
(33:16):
which apparently sucks up salts to help it retain moisture
and dry places. And so he wrote, quote, while large
multicellular life doesn't appear to be the norm on Mars,
single celled salt rich life might be extant today. First
to get the salt, then you get the power, then
you get the microbes. So I think that's how it goes.
(33:38):
I'm pretty sure. Well, okay, so we've got a rover
on Mars. Why don't we just tell it to go
check this out? Well, especially since it's relatively close to
the to the one of the areas that was being
observed that that led to this discovery. It's just thirty
miles away, curiosity rover forty kilometers away from that location.
We don't want it to get stuck in the mud. Obviously,
(34:00):
the real the real reasons that it's illegal. Um, here's
the crazy It is illegal. There are no necessarily laws
on Mars, but there are laws on Earth about what
we can do on Mars. And one of those laws
was the Outer Space Treaty, which we have talked about
previously on this podcast. There are all sorts of conditions
(34:21):
within that treaty that indicated what you could and couldn't
do an outer space like you're not supposed to weaponize
outer space. You can't claim a celestial body as the
property of a nation. You can't do that. Well, one
of the other things that is covered in this outer
Space Treaty is the idea of contamidating an alien planet
(34:42):
or alien body of some sort with life from Earth.
It's the prime directive basically, Yeah, prime directive down to
the single celled organism level. So you know, even even
Kirk and Picard would both say that, all right, sometimes
you gotta break the prime directive. Well, they would liberally
break this this particular part of the primee directive. Uh,
(35:05):
because you know, human beings were just big old microbe
clouds walking around and when we when we encounter other people,
we share microbes and we take home some of our
buddies microbes whenever we say goodbye, and that just if
you like, Right now, in this little tiny room, it's
microbe soup, and in the curiosity probably has some Earth
(35:27):
microbes on it. Yeah. So microbes are incredible. They can
be incredibly resilient. Right, We've seen microbes that can survive
in near vacuum conditions. We've seen microbes that can survive
at at really severe temperatures either really hot or really cold, uh,
in lots of different conditions. So because we know that
we cannot be certain that the Curiosity Rover is completely
(35:50):
free of microbes, and the sterilization processes we have, we
can't even be certain that those would eliminate all microbes
from the rover. Part of the problem is that if
we really really wanted to be sure, we would be
using methods that could damage the rover itself. So you
have to balance out, like, well, how can we be
reasonably certain that the material is sterilized versus make sure
(36:11):
we don't fry the insides of this thing? Uh And
that's really a legitimate worry in in UH in space explorations.
So we have the Curiosity Rover. It could technically go
and collect samples like it has the ability to do that,
but legally speaking, we can't do that because you might
contaminate that sample with microbes from Earth, which one would
(36:37):
mess up any kind of analysis here. Doing you might
end up getting a false positive because you detect microbes
and it turns out that those just hitched a ride
with you in the first place. This is very similar
to when we thought that we had discovered methane and
the atmosphere of Mars, and it turned out that was
likely something that came along with the actual spacecraft and
not something that was native to the planet. Um. Then
(36:59):
there is also the worry that you could introduce microbes
into the uh the biome of a different planet like Mars,
and they could potentially harm or eradicate any indigenous life forms.
So there there's we found life on Mars and we
killed it all. Yeah, which, hey, we got a long
(37:21):
storied past of that kind of stuff and human history,
but we would rather not continue that particular part of
our our development. So that's why the curiosity rover can't
go and sample this stuff. It would be against the law.
And and this is going to be a big challenge
moving forward, this idea of how do we balance finding
(37:43):
out whether life exists on this planet and the concern
about contaminating or destroying that life in the process. And
it's not an easy question to answer. Meanwhile, while we're
having those discussions, we're also having discussions about colonizing Mars
and again and human beings big being big old microbe
(38:03):
you know, clouds. We would have to worry about contamination
there as well, uh, and you could argue, well, these
are two separate lines of inquiry that maybe somewhere further
down the line, we'll we'll have to have them intersect
so that we can come to what is a satisfying conclusion.
It may even mean rati amending the treaty, these Outer
(38:25):
Space Treaty in such a way that we can make
allowances for certain things like colonization. Um, but I think
we've got a couple of decades yet to worry about that.
How unless you're part of Mars one where you are
convinced that in the next decade you're gonna start launching
people there, which I think we've pretty much covered as
being we're highly skeptical of. That is their policy now
(38:47):
that they will have launched people by a few months ago,
I think it was actually the launching of people would
be in the decade um. But I think that they
would have at least did preparations for launch of some
of the habitats and other materials. But from why I understand,
they have raised somewhere less than five thousand dollars, which
(39:12):
is nothing when it comes to space exploration. UM. So yeah,
that's that's kind of where we are is. I do
think it was a pretty exciting announcement. Um. I think
I think very much like the the lead researcher, I
think that, uh, the focus has been partially on the
(39:32):
wrong part of it. Not maybe not wrong. Wrong might
be the too strong the word to say, but no, no no, no,
I mean it certainly is important for the implications for life.
I think it's just people want an answer. Does this
mean they want to get you to quote to say, yeah,
there's life on Mars now and it's the it's the
sexy headline. It's a little bit harder to get the
common person really excited about salts, so yeah, but it's
(39:57):
unless they're like caramel Sea salters. Yeah, you know, King
of Pops. But yeah, no, it's it's it's I I
think that, uh, that a lot of the focus has
been more on that life question, which obviously is a
really big interesting question, um, and not so much on
how This is yet another example of how science is
(40:19):
supposed to work. That we make observations, we develop hypotheses,
We try to make further observations to see if those
hypotheses are well founded or not. We test that using
whatever methodology we can. That is reliable, and then we
continue to refine our ideas. This sort of incremental uh,
(40:40):
increase and knowledge is incredibly important. It's just not as
exciting as those breakthrough moments that we tend to associate
with being you know, important with the capital I write. Yeah,
To be honest, they very rarely happened. Most of the time.
It is a series of incremental improvements that ultimately results
and something that in hindsight you say, oh, here's the
(41:02):
big breakthrough. But that's not ever or at least very
rarely the case. Now, one thing we said earlier, you know,
I mentioned The Martian, which was a novel and now
a movie obviously with with Matt Damon starring in it,
uh and Ridley Scott directed it uh and and kind
of joked about how this whole announcement was just a
(41:22):
marketing campaign for the film, which I don't obviously really believe.
But it turns out that uh, director Ridley Scott must
have like the bat line into NASA, right. Yeah. So
the research of course has been kicking around in for
a while. It's been in the works before this paper
was published, and NASA supposedly showed Ridley Scott these photos
(41:45):
and talked to him about this evidence like a couple
of months ago, right around when the excitement about his
film The Martian started started picking up. But the film
was already far enough along in production that Scott couldn't
use the information to to change the course of the film. So, hey,
that's pretty cool. Like I would like to be a
film director who gets phone calls from NASA to be like, hey,
(42:08):
there's this upcoming research. Do you want to use it
in your movie. I would like to be a non
film director who gets calls from NASA letting me know
what the future holds. Would you direct, non film director
being anything other than a film you, I mean, I'd
be me just as a non film director, a director
of things other than films. I'd be a director of
(42:29):
the FBI. Sir, NASA's on the phone, they say that
they found h I'm meeting with the cigarette smoking man.
Uh speaking of conspiracy theories? All right. So, so there
was this interview with Ridley Scott about the subject in
The New York Times, and Scott also through in this
(42:52):
kind of bond Mott about humanity's doom being very soonly forthcoming.
He stated that he doesn't think that we're going to
last more than half a century. Um, so we don't
really so that singularity in that twenty to forty years
stuff is starting to all sound kind of futile. Now yeah, yeah, so,
so whether or not there's life on Mars, it doesn't
(43:13):
matter to us because we're all going to die in
the next fifty years. And he said, I quote, I'm
not being pessimistic. I think we've done it. So start
getting rifles and find some forest retreat up there. Huh
so interesting, Like he has movies that are set in
the future, but he doesn't think we'll ever reach a
future where those movies would ever be where there's science fiction, John,
(43:36):
I guess so their fantasy there. Yeah? Uh so. Hey, Now,
has anyone here actually seen the Martian yet film? No? No,
I haven't seen it either. But I've read the book
and I have not read the book either. It's a
very fast read. It's entertaining. I do recommend it. I
think the science and technology in the book are are
pretty good. And we'll do an episode. Like I said,
(44:00):
at talking about what it's funny, you said, pretty good.
I feel like I've heard people praising that up and down. First,
there's absolutely like, uh, like abnormal levels of fidelity. I
would I would agree with that. I would agree it's abnormal.
That being said, there's there's one thing in particular that
the writer himself has admitted was a quote unquote hand
(44:21):
waving gesture to explain away something that was problematic because
he could not science it. He couldn't science his way
out of it. And we'll talk about that when we
do an episode about the Martian and the science and
technology in it. But overall, yes, the science and in
that movie and in the book are quite good, and
(44:43):
they rely on things that exist today, So it doesn't
require the invention of all new technology. That technology is
better than what we have today, but it doesn't require
inventing like the transmogrifire to make everything work. Uh. At
any rate, Well, we'll talk about that in a future episode. UM,
hopefully after some of us had a chance to to
(45:05):
see the movie. Um. I I am looking forward to it.
The first time I saw a preview for it, it
convinced me that I had to read the book. So
I read the book first and now I'm hoping to
see the movie this week. So at any rate, Water
on Mars cool information doesn't necessarily mean there is life
on Mars in any form, doesn't mean there's not either.
(45:28):
We will have to wait to learn more in the
future and find a way of doing it so that
we're not actually destroying what we're looking for in the process.
And it's it's not an easy solution, Like there's nothing
that's leaping out at us right now, here's one we
could sterilize Earth before we send the probe. Yeah, one
(45:50):
of the things that Joe and I talked about before
we even came in here was that even if we
found life on Mars, we wouldn't necessarily know where that
life originated. I mean, we might, but we wouldn't necessarily
because we've talked before on the show about the idea
of the pan spermia hypothesis, the possibility that life on
Earth and maybe life in other places in the Solar
(46:11):
System or even other places in the galaxy shares a
common origin and that it may have been through various
impact events or something like that traded between different bodies.
So if you were to go to Mars and find
something there, let's say you found something there that looked like,
in some strange way, like a piece of Earth life.
(46:32):
You know that it had. It was DNA based, It
was different enough for us to be reasonably certain it
did not hitch a ride aboard whatever you know, the
tool we used to discover it on Mars, and yet
it was similar enough where it appeared there was a
common ancestor. Yeah. Yeah, And so then I can even imagine,
(46:52):
though maybe a microbiologist could tell us why this wouldn't
be the case. I could at least imagine a scenario
where we would be looking at the U and saying,
don't know if this hitch deride from Earth, or if
Earth's life hitched a ride from Mars, or if both
came from a third source or two separate sources that
ultimately share a source further back, like this gets super complicated. Uh.
(47:16):
And now, granted, some of these questions get range from
science almost into the realm of philosophy, because it may
turn out that some of them are unanswerable by our
our methodologies, that we just don't have the capacity to
go to that level of precision to answer them reasonably.
But I certainly think it's an interesting thought experiment. And
(47:41):
of course it's too early to even say anything on
the subject right now, because we haven't discovered life, any
evidence of life on Mars, but we will keep looking
in various ways. And guys, if you guys have any
suggestions for future topics of forward thinking, maybe something that
you've always wondered about, or there's a maybe some interesting
science and in the news that you think we should cover,
(48:02):
let us know. Send us an email the addresses f
W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you
can drop us a line on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook.
At Twitter and Google Plus, we are FW thinking over
on Facebook, you can just search fw thinking. We will
pop up there. You can leave us a message and
we will talk to you again and really soon. For
(48:27):
more on this topic in the future of technology, I'll
visit forward Thinking dot com. H brought to you by Toyota.
Let's go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. He there. Forward Thinking is back. Don't call
it a comeback. We've been here for years. I'm Jonathan
Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick, and we wanted to announce
(00:22):
that the podcast is back and thank thank you people
for your support. We received numerous emails, tweets, Facebook messages,
pretty much anyway you guys could get in touch with us.
I think we saw smoke signals one day asking where
the heck is the podcast? Where's the video series? So
quick update. We do Forward Thinking in seasons and season
(00:44):
three had just come to an end in October two
thousand fifteen, and then there was discussion about whether or
not season four would happen, and that discussion happened well
above our heads. We all wanted to do it. Lots
of people wanted to do it. In fact, at the
end of the day, everyone said they wanted to do it.
So we're not sure exactly what the hold up is,
but it's all solved now. So now that we're back,
(01:04):
we have a couple of podcasts that we actually recorded
before we went on hiatus and kind of sat around
in our vault and we want to release the first
of those today. It's all about water on Mars. Yeah,
so this was recorded in was it early October? Very
early October? This was recorded several months ago, And that's
why you might hear us referring to things being in
(01:26):
the news that are not currently in the news, but
we're in the news at the time this was recorded,
for example, water on Mars. But I hope you will
enjoy the episode anyway, because I do think it is
very interesting, and we hope you will stay tuned for
new episodes that we're going to start recording very soon.
Right one more in the can, and then after that
(01:46):
it's all new territory. We have no idea where we're going,
no more than you do. And we don't even know
when we're recording yet because it's been so long since
we've all three sat down at this table. Guys, it's
been months since the three of us have been at
this table together. I'm kind of I'm kind of reclemped. Yeah,
it's a little it's a little overwhelming. It's a little
overwhelming for some of us more than others, because we
(02:07):
some of us have a podcast to record immediately after this. Sorry, Joe,
we're gonna wrap this up, so let's get right into
the water on Mars episode. And guys were so happy
that we're back. Can't wait to talk to you about
the future more really soon. Hey there, and welcome to
Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks at the future and says,
(02:29):
letting the days go by water flowing underground. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
I'm I'm Joe McCormick. Jonathan. I don't know if you noticed,
but right before this podcast I was quoting, uh, talking heads.
I did not notice. You were talking about the social
media platform Tumbler, which I cannot think of without thinking of, well,
I'm a tumbler. Nice. Yeah, As it turns out, I
(02:54):
had selected that one mirror moments before you and Lauren
came into the studio, so there was no collusion there.
It's I try to make these a surprise for everyone
in the room besides myself. I mean sometimes I'm surprised too,
if at any rate, Hey, let's talk about some water
on Mars, y'all. Yeah, well that was that was a
big headline a week ago. Yeah, when I was when
(03:15):
I was on vacation, and you guys were holding down
the fort um. I noticed, I, guys, I was in
a place where I think the internet got their last Tuesday.
Maybe I was in a place where it just information
just doesn't get there as quickly as everywhere else. So
I knew that there was going to be an announcement
(03:37):
that that NASA had something to announce that had something
to do with Mars. I was convinced they had found
Matt Damon. I thought that's what had happened. I thought
it was all just an elaborate, uh marketing scheme for
the Martian And it turns out that's only part of it. Well,
I mean NASA is talking to Ridley Scott and mentioned
(04:00):
that later on. But yeah, I know they had this big,
big press release that was like water is totes probably
on Mars, guys. Yeah, which, depending on how closely you've
been paying attention for the last several decades, you might
have thought, haven't we known this for a while? Yeah.
I thought that they discovered water on Mars quite a
(04:21):
few times, and they sort of have we keep discovering it,
found it again, I guess. I guess here's the real problem.
Here's the reason why they have to keep announcing it.
We haven't brought a flag up there yet, so until
you have the flag, it's not really official. So that's
the no alright. So here's the actual announcement. This, This
(04:42):
is what was actually announced that that they had uncovered
the most compelling evidence so far that liquid water under
certain conditions still flows on or just below the surface
of Mars. And we'll talk about what that means a
little bit later, but before we do that, I thought
it might be cool to to talk about why is
this a big deal in the first place, and also
(05:03):
kind of lead up to the other discoveries that you
are alluding to, Joe, the ones that you know, haven't
we heard about water on Mars before? And the answer
is yes. But there's reasons why this particular announcement is exciting.
So in general, the conditions on Mars are not favorable
for water for multiple reasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And we're
(05:26):
talking about liquid water. Liquid water because it's pretty cold, yep.
So usually if you're talking about pure water, it would
be an ice form. It wouldn't be in liquid form, right,
it would freeze. And now occasionally, in some places on
Mars it does get above the freezing point. For fresh water.
The the warmest conditions on the equator of Mars can
(05:47):
sometimes get to like seventy degrees fahrenheit, which sounds nice. Sure,
that's very pleasant. It's like San Francisco. Mars is basically
San Francisco most of the time. It's more like Antarctica
or worse. That is that is true, yes, um, and
depending on when you go to San Francisco can seem
that way. Also, unlike San Francisco, uh, Mars has no atmosphere,
(06:11):
and so that's a very thin one. Yes, that's the
other side of the problem. So the very cold temperature
means that water either freezes, but the thinness of the
atmosphere also means that the boiling point for water is
very low, so very quickly and easily sublimates directly into
a gas, the water vapor. And then you have another issue,
(06:32):
which is that Mars, mars is gravity is not as
great as Earth's's, like thirties seven percent something along those lines,
somewhere in that range, and so some of that water
vapor gets boiled off into space and does not come
back to the water cycle. Right, It's not trapped the
way that it is here on Earth. Yes, so these
conditions all mean that that's why it's not totally covered
(06:56):
in water, right, that it's not wet, why it's not
wet exactly. So, But we have talked about water on
Mars many times before. And when I say we, I
mean human beings, I don't mean just this podcast. We
talked about Mars many times before. Yes, we have Mars
is awesome, uh, and we're doing stuff all the time.
I think we're gonna have another episode that links more
(07:16):
directly with the Martian in the near future to talk
about the technology in that uh, in that story. But
let's talk about the various observations and hypotheses about water
and Mars. Sure, well, people thought there was water on
Mars really before we had any good reason to think so. Yeah.
Back in the nineteenth century, there was an astronomer named
(07:38):
Giovanni Schiaparelli who described the appearance of certain physical features
on Mars as canally, not cannoli, which is what you're
supposed to take but you leave the gun, but cannally canally,
meaning channels. Now, the word canally looks a lot like
the English word canals, right, So there were some people
(08:00):
who translated canally into canals. Canals, however, implies that this
is a manufactured structure built right something that humans or
you know whatever beings Martians I guess in this case,
have dug out on purpose, right, as opposed to channels,
which could have been carved out through natural processes. Uh. So,
as we know, if there's even the slightest misstatement that
(08:23):
could be construed as the existence of life on Mars,
somebody's going to run with it. Yes, even before there
was a Facebook, there were moments like these. Uh in
this case, I know that literally anything happened before face. Yeah.
Can you just imagine what Perceval Lowell would have done
with Facebook. Perceval Lowell's American was an American businessman who
had an interest in astronomy, and he interpreted canally as
(08:47):
being canals and ran with that idea, really really pushed
the idea that Mars was a planet that had a sophisticated,
uh technologically advanced civilization that had this complex system of
canals carved into it that allowed the denizens of Mars,
the Martians, to transport goods and you know, vehicles and
(09:09):
get water to distant locations using this system. He really
went with that idea, despite the fact that no one
in the scientific community had actually proposed it at that point. However,
the idea kind of took hold for a while, um,
not just in popular circles, but then the scientific community
began to say, well, in all, it's possible that maybe
(09:31):
these are our actual structures and not just natural formations.
And if that's the case, then clearly there is some
form of intelligent life there. Yeah, so we should take
a better look at it. So let's develop some better telescopes. Yep.
And this happened very slowly. Obviously, it wasn't like an
overnight thing, although you know, it's easiest to look at
Mars when it's nighttime. In the nineteen twenties, some improvements
(09:53):
in telescope technology gave us a better look at the
red planet, and that's when scientists began to observe the
geological formations that led them to believe there were snow
caps at the polls, and that there were canals or
channels one or the other that actually had liquid in
them on the surface of Mars. During that time, that
was what they believe because their telescopes were not so
sensitive that they could actually see into these channels. They
(10:16):
could just see the patterns that are yeah, that that
looked like they were channels or canals. You couldn't really
be certain, but they were making a best guess, uh today,
I mean, if if there are canals, there have got
to be gondola's and and opera singers. I mean, there's
a whole like domino effect that goes on here. There's
probably you know, a giant casino that caters to those
(10:40):
folks like the Venetian Is that I guess it would
be the Martian Um anywhere. Yeah, I mean, you know,
we we see how this just leads to rampant speculation. Uh.
At any rate, Time magazine at that at that point
reported that the scientific belief was that not only was
their water on Mars like flow water, but also there
(11:01):
was an atmosphere, a thick, warm atmosphere on Mars and
vegetation on Mars. British astronomer PM Rives postulated there could
even be intelligent life on the planet. This was all
based upon just casual observation using the best technology they
had at the time. They didn't have any obviously, they
had no evidence of such things. They were just drawing
(11:23):
conclusions based upon what little detail they could see sure,
and and this would persist for the next couple of decades. Yeah.
By the nineties, there was still a belief that snow
would form at the polls, so that there was a
precipitation of snow, and that they would then melt during
the Martian summer and reform in the winter. And photographs
seemed to indicate that there was some vegetation on Mars.
(11:44):
They were actually looking at this area around Mars where
there was some brown and green coloration and they thought
that that was uh indicative of vegetation. Um. By the
nineteen sixties we had developed better close up imagery of Mars,
and scientists were beginning to revise their opinions about water
on Mars um. In fact, they began to dismiss earlier
(12:08):
ideas entirely, sometimes perhaps a little too readily. They dismissed
the idea that there was snow on Mars. This isn't okay, No,
there's not. There's no precipitation going on here. The areas
we're looking at, at the poles on Mars, those can't
be snow. It's most likely that's frozen carbon dioxide, not water. However,
(12:28):
in Texas, the McDonald Observatory claimed to have found conclusive
proof of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere. Now, did
y'all know that I just went to the McDonald Observatory
couple of weeks ago. That you went to the actual
McDonald observatory, Right, You didn't just stare at a fast
food restaurant. No? No? In Texas? Yeah we um, My
wife Rachel and I went to Big Ben National Park
(12:51):
and McDonald Observatory is just north of there. That's really cool.
So we looked through the telescopes. I got to see
Saturn in its moons and that must have been actacular.
It was amazing. There was a close up of the
terminator line on the moon and uh and stand uh
it certainly is, but it was really cool. If you
(13:14):
ever get a chance to go to the McDonald Observatory
for one of their star parties or other events, I
highly recommended Russell. I'll I'm definitely putting that on my list.
I have never The only observatory I've ever gone to
is the one that's at um the telescope that's at
Firm Bank here in Atlanta, and I would love to
to travel to a few different places and check out
some other ones. Uh. So the observatory, the McDonald Observatory
(13:38):
used US spectrometers and we'll talk more about them a
little bit later, and that's what allowed them to detect
water vapor. Uh. They made observations in nineteen sixty nine
through nineteen seventy and then decided they needed to take
a more concentrated approach to this, and they focused on
it from nineteen seventy two to nineteen seventy four, over
(13:58):
the course of what was nearly a full Martian Year,
and in that they were able to detect different varying
amounts of water vapor throughout the Martian Year. They were
always tiny, but then Mars's atmospheres very thin, as we've said,
so you wouldn't expect there to be a lot of
water vapor. But they were able to detect it throughout
that time. But by the nineties seventies, we were starting
(14:20):
to send stuff towards Mars. Yeah, and sometimes it would
get there. H So I had the Viking program right, yep, yep.
I recently heard a podcast in which they they they
do a trivia at the end of it's a skeptic
SKYDDV Universe. Give him a shout out because I love
that show. But they do a trivia thing at the
very end where the host quizzes the other folks on
(14:43):
the podcast. They are not given the questions ahead of time.
They have to try and figure out they're given a selection.
They have to figure out which one of the selection
they're given is fiction and which ones are science. There's
one fiction and then the rest are science. And one
of the science ones was that there have been already
missions sent to Mars, but only eighteen have been successful.
(15:04):
Those are the ones that actually don't count the fly by's,
so they didn't count fly by missions, just just one
sent specifically to Mars, either an orbiter or a lander
you know, or rover or anything like that. So less
than fifty success rate. Uh so this is a big deal.
In the nineteen seventies, specifically in the Viking two orbiter
sent back data that showed frozen water at the north
(15:27):
pole of Mars, and new theories emerged that suggested there
was probably a level of perma frost beneath the surface
of Mars, so you have regular covering up a level
of perma frost, and they even thought there might be
the possibility that the poles, it's not just that there's
ice form there, but rather there's an enormous body of
(15:48):
ice that is concealed by Regulus, and it's more or
less like a giant iceberg, except in the ground as
opposed to floating in the ocean. So I thought that
was pretty cool. That's upping ahead because obviously we studied
Mars quite a bit over the decades. But in the
nineteen nineties, orbiters sent by NASA and the European Space
Agency discovered more evidence of water, at least in the
(16:11):
form of ice. Not not flowing water, but ice on Mars.
There appeared to be evidence for precipitation and flowing water
as well in Mars's past, if not the present. So
they saw areas like geological formations that that suggested there
was definitely some flowing water at some point in Mars's past,
probably a weather cycle of some sort, precipitation of some sort,
(16:35):
but they could not they did not directly observe any
of that, you know, happening present day. So the conclusion
was perhaps this was something that happened in the distant past,
and since then had things had changed. Um skip ahead
to two thousand and eight. That's when the Phoenix Lander
dug up some bright material that disappeared over the course
of a few days, and NASA concluded that it was
(16:57):
in fact water ice. It also detected the presence of
water vapor within the Martian atmosphere, and the rover's Spirit
and Opportunity also uncovered evidence of ice. Curiosity even drove
through an ancient river bed that held water billions of
years ago but no longer, so it didn't have to
ford a river or anything. In twenty fifteen, this year,
(17:19):
the year that we're recording this, before the most recent
evidence was made public, NASA announced a hypothesis that billions
of years ago, the northern hemisphere of Mars was essentially
an enormous ocean, uh that a large portion of it,
at any rate, was underwater. So they drew this conclusion
based upon data that was gathered by the European Southern
(17:40):
Observatories Very Large Telescope in Chile and the W. M.
Keck Observatory and NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. So
scientists calculated that one time there was enough water on
Mars to cover the entire planet, and an average depth
of four hundred fifty feet or about a hundred thirty
seven But the way that water works is usually not
that it's ring an entire planet. Yeah, it was actually
(18:02):
based upon their their guesses, because again these are all hypotheses.
No one was around back then to check up on
their their work. That the northern hemisphere sections of it
were probably just a gigantic ocean, and that this ocean
had depths that would reach more than a mile or
one point six kilometers in some places. Uh. If that's correct,
(18:23):
that would mean that the ocean would have covered about
nine of Mars's surface, And you can compare that to
something like the Atlantic Ocean here on Earth that covers
sevent of the Earth's surface, keeping in mind that Mars
is of course smaller than Earth. It's not like one
to one um comparison. Also, the Curiosity rover uncovered evidence
(18:43):
that water could be in liquid form on the Martian
surface due to salts in the Martian soil. We'll talk
more about this in a minute too. So the salts
could dissolve in water, and when you dissolve salts and water,
that lowers the freezing temperature of that water. So if
you are if you have the right type of salts,
you can lower, you can significantly lower that that freezing
(19:04):
temperature um and so under those conditions, at least and
at least temporarily, the there could be liquid water on
Mars's surface. Uh. And the general hypothesis, which will talk
more about again in a little bit, was that the
materials on the surface of Mars could actually absorb water
(19:25):
vapor in the atmosphere and turn into liquid water that way.
So it's not like it's not like the ice was
melting and then flowing through, but rather that it was
being rained down on exactly. It was more that it
was kind of almost like a condensation sort of thing,
except you know, really absorption, not condensation. Uh. So that's that,
(19:47):
that's kind of everything leading up to the most recent announcement.
So what was the most recent announcement. Well, it was
the newest and strongest evidence of flowing water on Mars,
and it was it was actually search that was published
in the Nature Geoscience paper on September and then it
was picked up by by NASSA, which gave a press
(20:10):
release on it and then did a big announcement and
had a big media what would you call it a
media buffet or or or a lot of maybe water
cooler talk Martian water coolers. Yeah, and uh, I wanted
to point out, Yeah, the lead author of the study
(20:30):
was a graduate student from our own Georgia Tech right
here in Atlanta, Georgia Tech. Go Bulldogs, wolf Wolf Well,
our city's owned Georgia Tech. Uh, and he was named
Legendra Oja. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. If not,
I'm sure all gets an email. But anyway, what was
this new evidence? Of course, Jonathan, you brought up the
(20:51):
idea of fording a river. I I did hope when
we first heard about this, the Curiosity Rover had come
up to a river and then was given the option,
l do you want to build a raft board it
or give the ferryman to barrels of salt pork. Oh.
I thought it was gonna be like the Mars equivalent
of Oregon Trail, Like, oh, the Curiosity Rover has got
(21:12):
dysentery and and broke a lego hair wheels were lost. Yeah,
now it has to go shoot a Mars bear. Yeah,
that's a great game. So yeah, that was not what happened. Obviously,
the Curiosity Rover did not come across a large body
of water on Mars. That's not how this discovery was made. No,
in fact, it wasn't the Curiosity rover at all, but
(21:34):
it was following up on the same lead you mentioned
earlier about the yeah, the hydrated salts in the soil
of Mars. So the evidence came from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,
the m r O, and what it was looking into
was that on some downhill slopes on Mars you can
see dark streaks that have been given the name recurring
(21:55):
slope Linneer or RSL, and these dark streaks have a
tendency to grow darker and move downhill in the warmer seasons,
and on Mars, the warm season means when the temperature
is above negative ten degrease fahrenheit or negative twenty three
degrees celsius, absolutely balmy. And then of course when the
(22:16):
weather on Mars gets colder again, they fade away. And
there are a lot of these things, there are thousands
of them, and imaging instrument on the mr O is
captured images of rs L s at dozens of sights
on the surface of Mars. Right, so that leads to
the question what could be causing this this discoloration, if
you will, this change of of the color of the
(22:38):
soil on Mars through the warmer months and then the
retreat of that in the winter months. And when we
want to try to figure out what is going on
with changes in in the color of an object, we
can use a spectrometer, right, So there's an imaging spectrometer
called the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging spectrometer for Mars or the
(22:58):
cruisum chrism to uh that these researchers used to determine
that the darkened streaks were hydrated salts. And of course
what does the spectrometer do uses what we know about
how different types of molecules or or materials absorb different
spectra of light, and then it looks at the colors
of light to determine what molecules are probably present in
(23:20):
the object it's looking at. Yes, we use this a
lot in in astronomy, also in chemistry obviously, but in
astronomy in order to kind of get an idea of
what distant bodies may be composed of if we aren't
able to get direct access to those things. Yeah, so
when they looked at the RSL locations that were I
guess you could call them waxing, the ones that are
(23:41):
growing wider and darker. They detected hydrated salts with with
the chrism, and then they looked at the same sites
when the rs l s had retreated, and they did
not detect hydrated salts with the spectrometer. So it looks
like salts equal streaks. No salts equals no streets. Interesting.
(24:02):
So this kind of goes back to what that previous
hypothesis I mentioned from earlier stated, the idea that there
are these these materials, these salts on mars that occasionally
absorb water through some means, whether it's through the water
vapor or something else that we're not yet aware of,
lower the freezing temperature of that water, which allows it
(24:24):
to be in liquid form rather than just water vapor
or ice. Yeah, and so you're familiar with how salt
changes the freezing temperature of water if you've ever seen
a salted road or just poured salt on an ice
cube for fun, or had ice cream which has salt
in it to you know, help it get all ice creamy.
Except that the hydrated salts detected in this research weren't
(24:45):
just standard earth salt, which would be in a cl
or sodium chloride, the table salt we all know and
love and pour in our mouths directly. So sodium chloride
can lower the freezing temperature of water a good bit
based on how much salt is mixed in with the water. So,
according to our House to Works article on this, a
(25:05):
ten percent salt solution freezes at twenty degrees fahrenheit or
negative six degrees celsius, and a solution freezes at two
degrees fahrenheit or negative sixteen. I tried to see what
the lowest was. I found one website saying that that
if you get to the point where the water is
completely saturated with salt and will not absorb any more salt,
(25:28):
the freezing temperature will go all the way down to
negative six degrees fahrenheit or negative got you, so, yeah,
Obviously you're limited by the chemicals um that are are
dissolved within the water, right And and if it reaches
saturation and the freezing point is still uh is still
(25:49):
higher than the low temperature, then it's still good. Freeze
table salt wouldn't cut it on Mars. But according to
the authors of the Nature Geoscience paper, this announcement is
baced on the data returned from the imaging spectrometer makes
it look like these hydrated salts found on the downhill
flows or minerals called perclorates. UH specifically quote a mixture
(26:12):
of magnesium perclorate, magnesium chlorate, and sodium perchlorate. Why is
this significant because these perclorates are salts on steroids. When
it comes to changing the properties of water, some percolorates
can lower the freezing temperature of water below negative ninety
four degrees fahrenheit or negative seventy degrees celsius. So having
(26:34):
liquid water at that temperature is it's hard to imagine. Yeah, yeah,
now the evidence is not. We should specify that there
are strong flowing rivers somewhere on the surface of marks,
really super super cold flowing rivers. These this is flowing water,
but it's probably only a and and I want to
(26:55):
quote the NASA press release here a shallow subsurface flow
with enough water wicking to the surface to explain the darkening.
So a more apt analogy would be to think of
water sort of flowing through a sponge instead of rushing
over the top of a surface. So that then leads
(27:17):
us to a question that we don't necessarily have an
answer for yet, although we have some good hypotheses about it.
Where is this water coming from? That's a good question.
We don't know. You mentioned earlier. The hypothesis was that
it was being absorbed from the atmosphere. But a tough
thing about that is our data on the Martian atmosphere
says that it's not wet. There's very very little water
(27:40):
vases pretty dry in the Martian atmosphere, not enough that
the soil would really be able to absorb it. So
unless our data is not accurate about that, it's probably
not coming from the atmosphere, or maybe that that our
data is coming from a part of the atmosphere that's
different from the lower atmosphere where these salts could be
absorbing water vapor from. But let's say that our data
(28:02):
is correct. If it's not coming from above, it would
necessarily have to be coming from below. And that's another
cool possibility. It could be that there are aquifers under
the ground on the surface of Mars that when the
warmer months come along, warmer months Mars months. When the
warmer times come along, the aquifers under the ground unfreeze.
(28:23):
They melt, and then some of the water seeps up
to be absorbed by these perchlorate's, by these salts near
the surface of the planet, and then we get the
wet salts. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So, uh, you know,
I love that when we get announcements like these, it
leads to more questions for us to to ask and
(28:45):
an attempt to answer. And some of these questions we
may ultimately be able to answer through direct observation or
or through various tests. There are other questions that might
end up being um a little tough for to answer,
at least in the the foreseeable future. Uh. One of
the big questions we have is does this mean that
(29:10):
there could actually be life on Mars. That's a pretty
big one. That's a giant question. It's definitely what all
the media people want to know. I watched a couple
of interviews with the lead author of this paper, the
guy from Georgia Tech, and there were all these reporters
were asking questions about the discovery, but the thing they
(29:31):
wanted to know was does this mean there's life on Mars?
And it seemed to me like he didn't really have
a very strong opinion on that, and he was more
interested in talking about the you know, the planetary science,
and you know, yeah, I mean it's like if you
go to someone whose discipline is in one area of
science and you ask them something of that's in an
(29:53):
unconnected science, then I think the answer is probably gonna
be pretty much the same, like, well, I guess not
what I was studying at all or not, or I
don't care. Well, my album there's a there's a couple
of different um kind kind of arguments that one could make. Yeah.
(30:14):
One one thing I saw was there was a really
good New York Times article by Kenneth Chang covering this discovery,
and it it had quotes from scientists both pro and
con the idea that this would lend credence to life
on Mars. One of the cons came from a NASA
astrobiologist named Christopher McKay Christopher P. McKay uh and to
(30:35):
the New York Times, he said, the short answer for
habitability is that it means nothing. So he points out
that the water would be way too salty to support life,
at least any life that we have ever observed here
on Earth. Yeah, And he cites the example of a
pond in Antarctica called the Don Juan Pond, which sounds
really cool. Yeah, it's like it's a hot tub. This
(31:01):
it's the sexiest, coldest, saltiest pond and Antarctica. Yeah, and
it it remains liquid even in freezing temperatures because of
the presence of high levels of calcium chloride. But it
is not a very life friendly pond. Right, So in
this case we talk about how conditions on Mars are
still incredibly um uh tough for any living creature, that
(31:26):
even even microbes that we've encountered here on Earth. So
not just the brininess of the water, which is already
a huge issue, but also the temperatures of Mars and
the radiation that that the surface of Mars ends up
being subjected to. So all of these things mean that
it doesn't mean that there's not life on Mars. It
(31:48):
just means that we haven't found enough evidence to make
us feel confident one way or the other. Yeah, But
there there are also arguments that go the other way.
The same New York Times article talked to the geophysicist
named David E. Stillman, who made the point that some
water might be saltier than other water on Mars. In
(32:09):
the same way that some water on Earth is saltier
than other water. You might not want to live in
the Dead Sea, but you could live in some other
body of water like the Pacific. Yeah, And so it's so.
The idea was that the streaks that only appear in
the warmest conditions would require less salt to melt, meaning
that maybe they could harbor life even if some other
streaks couldn't. Yeah. There could also be pockets of water
(32:32):
under the surface of Mars that are warmed through geological
processes that were not aware of yet that could support life,
and we just haven't been able to observe those yet.
That's a possibility. Although it's one of those it's like
it could be there or it could not be there
to not Yeah. So it's not even not like it's
(32:54):
not a counter argument so much as saying, again, this
is not this is not a smoking gun in either direction,
right uh. The astrophysics blogger Ethan Siegel, who I follow
also wrote a short piece about this, and he just
pointed out that some life forms on Earth do take
advantage of really salty conditions, like the desert salt bush,
(33:16):
which apparently sucks up salts to help it retain moisture
and dry places. And so he wrote, quote, while large
multicellular life doesn't appear to be the norm on Mars,
single celled salt rich life might be extant today. First
to get the salt, then you get the power, then
you get the microbes. So I think that's how it goes.
(33:38):
I'm pretty sure. Well, okay, so we've got a rover
on Mars. Why don't we just tell it to go
check this out? Well, especially since it's relatively close to
the to the one of the areas that was being
observed that that led to this discovery. It's just thirty
miles away, curiosity rover forty kilometers away from that location.
We don't want it to get stuck in the mud. Obviously,
(34:00):
the real the real reasons that it's illegal. Um, here's
the crazy It is illegal. There are no necessarily laws
on Mars, but there are laws on Earth about what
we can do on Mars. And one of those laws
was the Outer Space Treaty, which we have talked about
previously on this podcast. There are all sorts of conditions
(34:21):
within that treaty that indicated what you could and couldn't
do an outer space like you're not supposed to weaponize
outer space. You can't claim a celestial body as the
property of a nation. You can't do that. Well, one
of the other things that is covered in this outer
Space Treaty is the idea of contamidating an alien planet
(34:42):
or alien body of some sort with life from Earth.
It's the prime directive basically, Yeah, prime directive down to
the single celled organism level. So you know, even even
Kirk and Picard would both say that, all right, sometimes
you gotta break the prime directive. Well, they would liberally
break this this particular part of the primee directive. Uh,
(35:05):
because you know, human beings were just big old microbe
clouds walking around and when we when we encounter other people,
we share microbes and we take home some of our
buddies microbes whenever we say goodbye, and that just if
you like, Right now, in this little tiny room, it's
microbe soup, and in the curiosity probably has some Earth
(35:27):
microbes on it. Yeah. So microbes are incredible. They can
be incredibly resilient. Right, We've seen microbes that can survive
in near vacuum conditions. We've seen microbes that can survive
at at really severe temperatures either really hot or really cold, uh,
in lots of different conditions. So because we know that
we cannot be certain that the Curiosity Rover is completely
(35:50):
free of microbes, and the sterilization processes we have, we
can't even be certain that those would eliminate all microbes
from the rover. Part of the problem is that if
we really really wanted to be sure, we would be
using methods that could damage the rover itself. So you
have to balance out, like, well, how can we be
reasonably certain that the material is sterilized versus make sure
(36:11):
we don't fry the insides of this thing? Uh And
that's really a legitimate worry in in UH in space explorations.
So we have the Curiosity Rover. It could technically go
and collect samples like it has the ability to do that,
but legally speaking, we can't do that because you might
contaminate that sample with microbes from Earth, which one would
(36:37):
mess up any kind of analysis here. Doing you might
end up getting a false positive because you detect microbes
and it turns out that those just hitched a ride
with you in the first place. This is very similar
to when we thought that we had discovered methane and
the atmosphere of Mars, and it turned out that was
likely something that came along with the actual spacecraft and
not something that was native to the planet. Um. Then
(36:59):
there is also the worry that you could introduce microbes
into the uh the biome of a different planet like Mars,
and they could potentially harm or eradicate any indigenous life forms.
So there there's we found life on Mars and we
killed it all. Yeah, which, hey, we got a long
(37:21):
storied past of that kind of stuff and human history,
but we would rather not continue that particular part of
our our development. So that's why the curiosity rover can't
go and sample this stuff. It would be against the law.
And and this is going to be a big challenge
moving forward, this idea of how do we balance finding
(37:43):
out whether life exists on this planet and the concern
about contaminating or destroying that life in the process. And
it's not an easy question to answer. Meanwhile, while we're
having those discussions, we're also having discussions about colonizing Mars
and again and human beings big being big old microbe
(38:03):
you know, clouds. We would have to worry about contamination
there as well, uh, and you could argue, well, these
are two separate lines of inquiry that maybe somewhere further
down the line, we'll we'll have to have them intersect
so that we can come to what is a satisfying conclusion.
It may even mean rati amending the treaty, these Outer
(38:25):
Space Treaty in such a way that we can make
allowances for certain things like colonization. Um, but I think
we've got a couple of decades yet to worry about that.
How unless you're part of Mars one where you are
convinced that in the next decade you're gonna start launching
people there, which I think we've pretty much covered as
being we're highly skeptical of. That is their policy now
(38:47):
that they will have launched people by a few months ago,
I think it was actually the launching of people would
be in the decade um. But I think that they
would have at least did preparations for launch of some
of the habitats and other materials. But from why I understand,
they have raised somewhere less than five thousand dollars, which
(39:12):
is nothing when it comes to space exploration. UM. So yeah,
that's that's kind of where we are is. I do
think it was a pretty exciting announcement. Um. I think
I think very much like the the lead researcher, I
think that, uh, the focus has been partially on the
(39:32):
wrong part of it. Not maybe not wrong. Wrong might
be the too strong the word to say, but no, no no, no,
I mean it certainly is important for the implications for life.
I think it's just people want an answer. Does this
mean they want to get you to quote to say, yeah,
there's life on Mars now and it's the it's the
sexy headline. It's a little bit harder to get the
common person really excited about salts, so yeah, but it's
(39:57):
unless they're like caramel Sea salters. Yeah, you know, King
of Pops. But yeah, no, it's it's it's I I
think that, uh, that a lot of the focus has
been more on that life question, which obviously is a
really big interesting question, um, and not so much on
how This is yet another example of how science is
(40:19):
supposed to work. That we make observations, we develop hypotheses,
We try to make further observations to see if those
hypotheses are well founded or not. We test that using
whatever methodology we can. That is reliable, and then we
continue to refine our ideas. This sort of incremental uh,
(40:40):
increase and knowledge is incredibly important. It's just not as
exciting as those breakthrough moments that we tend to associate
with being you know, important with the capital I write. Yeah,
To be honest, they very rarely happened. Most of the time.
It is a series of incremental improvements that ultimately results
and something that in hindsight you say, oh, here's the
(41:02):
big breakthrough. But that's not ever or at least very
rarely the case. Now, one thing we said earlier, you know,
I mentioned The Martian, which was a novel and now
a movie obviously with with Matt Damon starring in it,
uh and Ridley Scott directed it uh and and kind
of joked about how this whole announcement was just a
(41:22):
marketing campaign for the film, which I don't obviously really believe.
But it turns out that uh, director Ridley Scott must
have like the bat line into NASA, right. Yeah. So
the research of course has been kicking around in for
a while. It's been in the works before this paper
was published, and NASA supposedly showed Ridley Scott these photos
(41:45):
and talked to him about this evidence like a couple
of months ago, right around when the excitement about his
film The Martian started started picking up. But the film
was already far enough along in production that Scott couldn't
use the information to to change the course of the film. So, hey,
that's pretty cool. Like I would like to be a
film director who gets phone calls from NASA to be like, hey,
(42:08):
there's this upcoming research. Do you want to use it
in your movie. I would like to be a non
film director who gets calls from NASA letting me know
what the future holds. Would you direct, non film director
being anything other than a film you, I mean, I'd
be me just as a non film director, a director
of things other than films. I'd be a director of
(42:29):
the FBI. Sir, NASA's on the phone, they say that
they found h I'm meeting with the cigarette smoking man.
Uh speaking of conspiracy theories? All right. So, so there
was this interview with Ridley Scott about the subject in
The New York Times, and Scott also through in this
(42:52):
kind of bond Mott about humanity's doom being very soonly forthcoming.
He stated that he doesn't think that we're going to
last more than half a century. Um, so we don't
really so that singularity in that twenty to forty years
stuff is starting to all sound kind of futile. Now yeah, yeah, so,
so whether or not there's life on Mars, it doesn't
(43:13):
matter to us because we're all going to die in
the next fifty years. And he said, I quote, I'm
not being pessimistic. I think we've done it. So start
getting rifles and find some forest retreat up there. Huh
so interesting, Like he has movies that are set in
the future, but he doesn't think we'll ever reach a
future where those movies would ever be where there's science fiction, John,
(43:36):
I guess so their fantasy there. Yeah? Uh so. Hey, Now,
has anyone here actually seen the Martian yet film? No? No,
I haven't seen it either. But I've read the book
and I have not read the book either. It's a
very fast read. It's entertaining. I do recommend it. I
think the science and technology in the book are are
pretty good. And we'll do an episode. Like I said,
(44:00):
at talking about what it's funny, you said, pretty good.
I feel like I've heard people praising that up and down. First,
there's absolutely like, uh, like abnormal levels of fidelity. I
would I would agree with that. I would agree it's abnormal.
That being said, there's there's one thing in particular that
the writer himself has admitted was a quote unquote hand
(44:21):
waving gesture to explain away something that was problematic because
he could not science it. He couldn't science his way
out of it. And we'll talk about that when we
do an episode about the Martian and the science and
technology in it. But overall, yes, the science and in
that movie and in the book are quite good, and
(44:43):
they rely on things that exist today, So it doesn't
require the invention of all new technology. That technology is
better than what we have today, but it doesn't require
inventing like the transmogrifire to make everything work. Uh. At
any rate, Well, we'll talk about that in a future episode. UM,
hopefully after some of us had a chance to to
(45:05):
see the movie. Um. I I am looking forward to it.
The first time I saw a preview for it, it
convinced me that I had to read the book. So
I read the book first and now I'm hoping to
see the movie this week. So at any rate, Water
on Mars cool information doesn't necessarily mean there is life
on Mars in any form, doesn't mean there's not either.
(45:28):
We will have to wait to learn more in the
future and find a way of doing it so that
we're not actually destroying what we're looking for in the process.
And it's it's not an easy solution, Like there's nothing
that's leaping out at us right now, here's one we
could sterilize Earth before we send the probe. Yeah, one
(45:50):
of the things that Joe and I talked about before
we even came in here was that even if we
found life on Mars, we wouldn't necessarily know where that
life originated. I mean, we might, but we wouldn't necessarily
because we've talked before on the show about the idea
of the pan spermia hypothesis, the possibility that life on
Earth and maybe life in other places in the Solar
(46:11):
System or even other places in the galaxy shares a
common origin and that it may have been through various
impact events or something like that traded between different bodies.
So if you were to go to Mars and find
something there, let's say you found something there that looked like,
in some strange way, like a piece of Earth life.
(46:32):
You know that it had. It was DNA based, It
was different enough for us to be reasonably certain it
did not hitch a ride aboard whatever you know, the
tool we used to discover it on Mars, and yet
it was similar enough where it appeared there was a
common ancestor. Yeah. Yeah, And so then I can even imagine,
(46:52):
though maybe a microbiologist could tell us why this wouldn't
be the case. I could at least imagine a scenario
where we would be looking at the U and saying,
don't know if this hitch deride from Earth, or if
Earth's life hitched a ride from Mars, or if both
came from a third source or two separate sources that
ultimately share a source further back, like this gets super complicated. Uh.
(47:16):
And now, granted, some of these questions get range from
science almost into the realm of philosophy, because it may
turn out that some of them are unanswerable by our
our methodologies, that we just don't have the capacity to
go to that level of precision to answer them reasonably.
But I certainly think it's an interesting thought experiment. And
(47:41):
of course it's too early to even say anything on
the subject right now, because we haven't discovered life, any
evidence of life on Mars, but we will keep looking
in various ways. And guys, if you guys have any
suggestions for future topics of forward thinking, maybe something that
you've always wondered about, or there's a maybe some interesting
science and in the news that you think we should cover,
(48:02):
let us know. Send us an email the addresses f
W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you
can drop us a line on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook.
At Twitter and Google Plus, we are FW thinking over
on Facebook, you can just search fw thinking. We will
pop up there. You can leave us a message and
we will talk to you again and really soon. For
(48:27):
more on this topic in the future of technology, I'll
visit forward Thinking dot com. H brought to you by Toyota.
Let's go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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