Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, let's talk about life. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: most interesting mysteries about life is how did he get started?
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you go from like a pile
Speaker 1: of rocks and water and all sorts of energy to
Speaker 1: things that actually live and turn into you know, people
Speaker 1: and hamsters. Even more interesting is the question where did
Speaker 1: life get Yeah, we don't even know whether life started
Speaker 1: on Earth. I mean, life could have started somewhere else
Speaker 1: in the universe and then landed here on Earth. We
Speaker 1: could all be aliens, that's right. This is the science
Speaker 1: fiction novel where the twist is that we are all
Speaker 1: the aliens. But it's a deep question not just how
Speaker 1: did life begin, but where did it begin first? And
Speaker 1: it's not guaranteed that just because this life on Earth
Speaker 1: now that it means that life started on Earth. Him
Speaker 1: and I'm Daniel, and this is our podcast Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge explained the universe, in which we take the whole universe,
Speaker 1: find one interesting little nugget and try to explain it
Speaker 1: to you in a way that you could actually understand.
Speaker 1: No jargon, no handwaving, because it's a podcast, just actual
Speaker 1: understandable explanations. We can press it down to thirty five minutes,
Speaker 1: thirty minutes and then stick it in your ear downloaded
Speaker 1: directly into your brain. On the episode today, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about is there or was there ever life
Speaker 1: on Mars? I love this question because it's like Mars
Speaker 1: is the other laboratory for life. You know, we all
Speaker 1: know this life on Earth. It's a deep question about
Speaker 1: how did life start on Earth? And when did it
Speaker 1: start on Earth? And how do you start from like
Speaker 1: a pool of water with molecules in it and lightning
Speaker 1: and get to life? Right? But the other question is
Speaker 1: like does it happen elsewhere? Right? If you have similar
Speaker 1: conditions somewhere else nearby, like the next door planet, then
Speaker 1: you can ask like did it happen there as well? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are we the only planet in our Solar system or
Speaker 1: even the universe who has lives? Lives? Lives? Life? Does Mars?
Speaker 1: Even how a life it stays in the weekends? Mars
Speaker 1: turns out to be pretty dull. Ye. Now, we're not
Speaker 1: interested in Mars is social life. We're interested in was
Speaker 1: there ever life on Mars? And is there life on Mars? Today?
Speaker 1: And it's a deep question because it will tell us
Speaker 1: a lot about how life starts and what the chances
Speaker 1: are for life to start if you have the basic ingredients.
Speaker 1: You mean, we could have neighbors right now looking at us.
Speaker 1: There could be right now life on Mars. Yeah. Oops,
Speaker 1: I just spoiled the answer to the whole podcast. They're
Speaker 1: probably not looking at us, but there may very well
Speaker 1: be life on Mars today. Whether it came from Earth,
Speaker 1: or whether it started on Mars, or whether life staro
Speaker 1: Mars and then came to Earth all open questions. So
Speaker 1: this is a big question and it's pretty ingraining in
Speaker 1: our popular culture. You know, Martians, little green men, aliens
Speaker 1: from Mars, and so we wanted to know if you
Speaker 1: guys out there knew with the answer to this question
Speaker 1: whether there is life on Mars. Yeah. So before you
Speaker 1: hear these answers, think to yourself, what do you know
Speaker 1: about life on Mars? What do you believe or what
Speaker 1: do you hope for life on Mars. I went out
Speaker 1: and I asked random people on the UC Irvine campus
Speaker 1: what they thought about this question. Um, I think it's possible.
Speaker 1: It's possible. Ye could be if you know that water
Speaker 1: has been found, um, not like human beings. Possibly, yes,
Speaker 1: what kind of life do you measure even like bacteria. Even, yes,
Speaker 1: I think it's possible. I believe like even if you've
Speaker 1: never seen it or discoverd it doesn't mean it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean like it doesn't exist. Right, So most people said maybe, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: most people are pretty open to the idea. You know,
Speaker 1: they thought that probably is life on Mars. They know
Speaker 1: that there's water on Mars. So the takeaway here is
Speaker 1: that NASA has done an excellent job with their pr
Speaker 1: you know, they spend billions of dollars, they make these discoveries,
Speaker 1: and they educate the public about it. Right, everybody has
Speaker 1: heard about these discoveries they've made about discovering water on Mars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People are just captivated about this idea, right, Like they
Speaker 1: just have to say Mars or we're going to Mars,
Speaker 1: or there's water on Mars, and people just kind of
Speaker 1: instantly pay attention. Yeah, absolutely, because it's right there. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea of aliens being alive somewhere in the universe
Speaker 1: is fascinating, but it's kind of remote. You know, it's distant, like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe there's life around Alpha Centauri or some other crazy galaxy.
Speaker 1: You can talk about that in the abstract, but they're
Speaker 1: so far away they will never get here, right, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. But if there's life on Mars, I mean,
Speaker 1: Mars is a hop, skip and a jump away, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a few months to get to Mars.
Speaker 1: So life on Mars we could actually go there and
Speaker 1: we could study it. They could come here. It's an
Speaker 1: amazing opportunity to learn about life. It's real, it's close by.
Speaker 1: I mean you're assuming they haven't been here already, that's right.
Speaker 1: It could be there are Martians among us. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: the Martian, right, maybe martial. Maybe we're all Martians. I
Speaker 1: am yeah, I am a Martian. I am totally just
Speaker 1: like Matt Damon in that movie. You know. As a
Speaker 1: note about the Martian, I heard that a huge fraction
Speaker 1: of people who saw the movie the Martian thought it
Speaker 1: was a documentary. No, I thought it really happened, and
Speaker 1: they were pretty disappointed when they discovered what that's science fiction. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. For all the people do know about Mars,
Speaker 1: you know that there's water on, etcetera. They seem to
Speaker 1: have the impression that we have the capability to go
Speaker 1: there today, which certainly is not the case. It's a
Speaker 1: big testament to that story and that movie is that
Speaker 1: everything was sort of based on real science, right. I
Speaker 1: mean all of the technology about getting there and living there,
Speaker 1: it's all sort of available technology. That was kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: You look like Matt Damon also, actually do you mean
Speaker 1: to tell you that? Yeah? Or maybe Matt Damon is
Speaker 1: the Martian version of me. That's right, Yeah, Matt Damon
Speaker 1: is the Martian horn Hite child. I'm sure he tells
Speaker 1: that to everybody, right, That's that's how he introduces themselves.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Yeah, Yeah, there's that fascination with Mars. I
Speaker 1: guess it's just kind of our next door neighbor, right,
Speaker 1: it's sort of the next planet over. That's not you know,
Speaker 1: boiling for being to flow to the Sun. It's just
Speaker 1: like the next one over. Yeah, And people have been
Speaker 1: looking at Mars for a while because it's so close
Speaker 1: and so, you know, telescopes became more available. People started
Speaker 1: pointing them at Mars, and pretty early on they saw
Speaker 1: some interesting stuff, which led to crazy speculation. You know,
Speaker 1: people saw lines on Mars that corresponded to what they
Speaker 1: thought were canals, which they thought was evidence of like civilization.
Speaker 1: And that's pretty exciting, right, And I like to imagine
Speaker 1: what was it like to be those people. You're you know,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the neighboring planet for the first time.
Speaker 1: You could see anything, right, you could see like huge
Speaker 1: civilizations and airships and all sorts of crazy stuff, or
Speaker 1: you could see nothing but dust and rubble. I mean
Speaker 1: that moment when you first get get a bide at
Speaker 1: a scientific apples really exciting time. And so for them
Speaker 1: to look through those telescopes and see something that looks
Speaker 1: like civilization, that must have been pretty exciting. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's maybe something a lot of people don't know, is
Speaker 1: that you can go out in a typical night and
Speaker 1: look out into the sky and see Mars like you
Speaker 1: can see the next planet over. Yeah. Yeah, And not
Speaker 1: only can you see you can see its color. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not just like a tiny dot in the sky.
Speaker 1: You could see it's reddish, like you are seeing the
Speaker 1: surface of another planet. It's incredible. Yeah, that's amazing. So
Speaker 1: I thought, before we would dig into this idea of
Speaker 1: life and Mars, I thought it'd be cool to just
Speaker 1: kind of um talk a little bit about some facts
Speaker 1: about Mars. So it did some extensive research online or
Speaker 1: does that mean you just looked at Wikipedia. Yeah, uh, well,
Speaker 1: I thought it was cool that Mars is about only
Speaker 1: about half of the diameter of Earth. It's actually smaller
Speaker 1: than Earth, like we are the bigger brother. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: got a small scoop of planet stuff. Yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: it a lot smaller. And that has consequences because it
Speaker 1: means that the gravity on Mars is us Right, you
Speaker 1: stand on surface of Mars. That's basically an instant diet
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, you'll weigh less, you can jump, you
Speaker 1: can jump higher. Yeah, you can stand on Mars and
Speaker 1: eat Mars bars and still you can eat twice as
Speaker 1: many um. But it's not just because it's smaller. It's
Speaker 1: also less dense, Like it's a planet. It's half the
Speaker 1: size of the Earth, but the planet itself, like the rock,
Speaker 1: it's less dense. Yeah, it's like fluffier. Yeah, it's fluffier. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that must be connected, right, because the more
Speaker 1: stuff there is, the more gravity there is, the more
Speaker 1: it gets compressed. Like the interior of the Sun must
Speaker 1: be denser than the interior of Jupiter, which must be
Speaker 1: denser than the interior of the Earth. Right, So I
Speaker 1: think there must be a connection between the size of
Speaker 1: the planet and the density of the interior. Oh right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And another interesting fact that read was that Mars does
Speaker 1: have an atmosphere. You can go there and there's wind
Speaker 1: and there's an atmosphere around it, but it's only about
Speaker 1: one percent of the atmosphere we have here. Try. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mars does not have much of an atmosphere, which is
Speaker 1: pretty important for supporting life. Yeah, okay, And the last
Speaker 1: cool fact I read was that a day on Mars, like,
Speaker 1: if you're standing on Mars, a day for you would
Speaker 1: last one day in thirty seven minutes. That's right. That's
Speaker 1: sounded kind of amazing to me, because you know, the
Speaker 1: length of the day on the planet is just determined
Speaker 1: by how fast it spins. And you know, these planets
Speaker 1: could spin at any speed, and so the fact that
Speaker 1: it lasts just about an Earth day, it's spinning it
Speaker 1: just about the same speed it's the Earth, right, And
Speaker 1: it turns out a lot of the planets you're spinning
Speaker 1: it at approximately the same speed. We all sort of
Speaker 1: spun out at the same rate. Yeah, but does that
Speaker 1: make you like want to go to Mars and imagine
Speaker 1: you'll get like an extra few minutes every day. Well,
Speaker 1: not only would you weigh less, you would have some
Speaker 1: extra climb in your hand every day. Imagine what you
Speaker 1: can do with an extra thirty seven minutes every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the commute, the like nine months each way commute might
Speaker 1: be kind of killer though, but no traffic, right, Sometimes
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm on the four or five for
Speaker 1: nine months anyway. So if you're like, might as well
Speaker 1: go to Mars, you know. Cool. So that's that's our
Speaker 1: sister planet, and it's sort of the same size. It's
Speaker 1: very close by were blue, Mars is red, So there's
Speaker 1: sort of the interesting parallel that people think about, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you think about where life can exist in the universe,
Speaker 1: there are these little slices. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: be a certain distance from the Sun in order to
Speaker 1: not be broiled on the surface, right, but you can't
Speaker 1: be too far away. It's because you can't be too cold.
Speaker 1: You have to have liquid water, and so there's these
Speaker 1: narrow regions around each star. They call it the habitable
Speaker 1: zone where liquid water can exist on the surface, and
Speaker 1: Earth certainly in it. And Mars is right there, you know,
Speaker 1: like there's not that much in the Solar System. Aren't
Speaker 1: that many planets inhabitable zone, and so Mars is a
Speaker 1: great candidate. Yeah, so it's it's sort of it's warm
Speaker 1: and bombing, and it's not sort of extreme like some
Speaker 1: of these other planets, right, Like, if you go to
Speaker 1: Venus or Mercury or Jupiter, you would just die instantly.
Speaker 1: What don't you that's right. I wouldn't call Mars warm
Speaker 1: and bombing unless you have in charge of the advertising
Speaker 1: for Martian vacations. It's definitely cold, Okay, Mars is sub freezing, right,
Speaker 1: package jacket folks, and don't bring your swimsuit because Mars
Speaker 1: is subfreezing. But on the scale of like you know,
Speaker 1: Pluto or Jupiter or whatever, it's definitely warm and bomby.
Speaker 1: So from that perspective, I think we're legally allowed to
Speaker 1: say that. What I mean is that we can imagine
Speaker 1: ourselves being there and visiting and not dying instantly. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: humans with appropriate life support could exist on the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars. What's fascinating is that the service of Mars
Speaker 1: today is cold and sub freezing and very thin atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But it didn't used to be that way. In fact,
Speaker 1: Mars a long time ago used to be much more
Speaker 1: like Earth. It used to be a you know, it
Speaker 1: would be an excellent candidate for life billions of years ago. Wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's hear more about that. But first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. So you're saying that at some point Mars
Speaker 1: was a lot different than it is now, like it
Speaker 1: was more hospitable to life, Like it was actually sort
Speaker 1: of more closer to what Earth looks like. Now, that's right.
Speaker 1: We think based on evidence we see on the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars now, you know, like the way the rocks
Speaker 1: look and and the geological patterns, that Mars used to
Speaker 1: be much more like Earth, almost covered with oceans like
Speaker 1: there used to be huge amounts of liquid water on
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars. Estimates vary from between thirty to
Speaker 1: seventy of the surface of Mars used to be covered
Speaker 1: in water like Us, just like Earth. Right, So Mars
Speaker 1: would have been kind of a blue planet, not a
Speaker 1: red planet, billions of years ago. And in addition, it
Speaker 1: had a rich atmosphere much more than it does today.
Speaker 1: And the atmosphere is key because an atmosphere is like
Speaker 1: a blanket for a planet. I mean, you know that
Speaker 1: emitting gases into our atmosphere is what's causing global warming. Well,
Speaker 1: if you don't have any atmosphere at all, you can't
Speaker 1: keep any heat near the surface. So you need some
Speaker 1: sort of atmosphere just to trap the sunlight, you know,
Speaker 1: to accumulate some heat and to prevent yourself from being
Speaker 1: basically as cold as outer space. To Mars a long
Speaker 1: time ago had a pretty robust atmosphere, which meant the
Speaker 1: surface temperature was enough for liquid water, for example. So
Speaker 1: that's a big difference. It just had this thin layer
Speaker 1: of gas and that sort of protects acts like a shield,
Speaker 1: like a bubble that lets you have liquid water on
Speaker 1: the surface. Yeah, and it protects you against a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. Not only does it keep you warm, but
Speaker 1: it prevents impacts from asteroids and meteors and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: because when they hit the Earth, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: an elfin hitting a water bed or something. It creates
Speaker 1: a big splash in the atmosphere instead of getting all
Speaker 1: the way down to the ground, right, and it probably
Speaker 1: hurts too. Yeah. I think elephants like jumping on water
Speaker 1: and what you're talking about. UM, But no, atmospheres are
Speaker 1: very important, UM. For sustaining life, I mean life needs
Speaker 1: to breathe, right, and also for keeping the temperature warm
Speaker 1: enough and for protecting yourself against impact from from rocks
Speaker 1: from space. So so marts you usually have these huge
Speaker 1: oceans and sort of an atmosphere is like we do,
Speaker 1: probably clouds, you know, beaches, um. So that's why we
Speaker 1: think that maybe there could have been life. That's right,
Speaker 1: as far as we know from a biological point of view, right,
Speaker 1: what does it take to make life? Well, it takes
Speaker 1: basic organic molecules, and those exist on Mars today, so
Speaker 1: we're sure that they existed a long time ago. It
Speaker 1: takes liquid water, right, it takes an energy source meaning
Speaker 1: the sun um. And we don't really know what else
Speaker 1: it takes. I mean, you can't have too many toxins,
Speaker 1: you can't be blasted by radiation. Um. But we don't
Speaker 1: really know. The deep question about in biology right now
Speaker 1: is if you have all that stuff and you let
Speaker 1: it sort of smooth around for millions of years or
Speaker 1: billions of years, how often do you get life? You know,
Speaker 1: is it one in a trillion, or is it every
Speaker 1: other time? Or is it Planets that have that condition
Speaker 1: eventually get microbial life we just don't know the answer.
Speaker 1: It's like somebody makes the same ingredients we had here
Speaker 1: in Earth, and the question is did little micro's pop
Speaker 1: up in the middle of it? That's right, and you know,
Speaker 1: my instinct is that it must have. And one piece
Speaker 1: of evidence we have is that on Earth, it seems
Speaker 1: like life started pretty soon after those conditions formed. You know,
Speaker 1: once we had an atmosphere and the liquid water and
Speaker 1: the temperature is about right, it didn't take very long
Speaker 1: for life to start. So that suggests that it's not
Speaker 1: like a one in a bazillion chance and millions of
Speaker 1: years you suggests that, you know, it's likely to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: think about all the molecules in an ocean, right, all
Speaker 1: the organic molecules bumping against each other. You might think
Speaker 1: it's so improbable for it to bump into each other
Speaker 1: and form RNA and that something that would happen to
Speaker 1: be self replicating and build from there. Yeah, it's improbable,
Speaker 1: but you've got tend to the you know, huge number
Speaker 1: of atoms bumping against each other for millions of years.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of tries, right. If it's like you know,
Speaker 1: monkeys on a typewriter banging away. Eventually one of them
Speaker 1: is going to produce Hamlet. Yeah, it's a good picture
Speaker 1: of of of a creator for the universe. Get a
Speaker 1: bunch of monkeys banging molecules around. Oh look, i'mde Dna,
Speaker 1: the creator. Sometimes it does seem like a like an
Speaker 1: idiot monkey. Yeah, I agree. Welcome to blasphemy by Jorhand Daniel.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of why we think that maybe there
Speaker 1: could have been life because it looked just like the Earth.
Speaker 1: It had the right conditions, but then all of that
Speaker 1: went away at some point because the Mars we see
Speaker 1: now it looks like a big, big old desert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why we think that Mars was a great laboratory
Speaker 1: for answering this question. Right, If life existed on Mars
Speaker 1: billions of years ago, when the conditions were great, that
Speaker 1: tells you a lot about the chances for life to start.
Speaker 1: If life didn't exist on Mars billions of years ago,
Speaker 1: that tells you a lot about the chances for life
Speaker 1: to start. Right. But as we alluded earlier in the podcast,
Speaker 1: we don't actually know if life started on Mars or
Speaker 1: life started on Earth. Right, it could have started in
Speaker 1: either place. We should talk about that before we talk
Speaker 1: about the great disaster of Mars. You mean, like, so
Speaker 1: Mars used to look like Earth. Maybe life started there
Speaker 1: and somehow made it over here exactly, And so you
Speaker 1: might be thinking, Hold at a second, how could microbial
Speaker 1: life like build a spaceship, launch it and come over
Speaker 1: to Earth. That's ridiculous, right, Why is that ridiculous? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Bacteria don't seem to build technology, or
Speaker 1: develop space ships or launched themselves into space very often.
Speaker 1: I mean, not that we're aware of. Bacteria are secretly
Speaker 1: exploring the universe. We don't little tiny rocket ships. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but actually it happens, and it happens sort of accidentally.
Speaker 1: And the way it happens is that you could have
Speaker 1: like a piece of life, you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: of bacteria on a rock, and that rock you get
Speaker 1: knocked into space by the impact of an asteroid. So
Speaker 1: you know, rock number one, come from space, blast onto
Speaker 1: the plane, a huge explosion. Stuff flies everywhere. Some of
Speaker 1: that stuff flies into outer space. Right. You can knock
Speaker 1: a rock off the surface of a planet if you
Speaker 1: hit it hard enough, and it would just go out
Speaker 1: into space, float around the Solar System and land in
Speaker 1: our planet. Yeah, and not all of them, of course,
Speaker 1: would land on our planet. Most of them would just
Speaker 1: float in space forever. But occasionally some of them will it.
Speaker 1: And we know that this happens, like, for a fact,
Speaker 1: we have rocks that we found on Earth that we
Speaker 1: are sure came from Mars, so we know that this
Speaker 1: is a thing. Wait, how do how do we know
Speaker 1: they're from Mars? Do they have a little like a
Speaker 1: made in Mars? It's the return postmark. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: not so complicated. Um No, we can look at it,
Speaker 1: the chemistry of it and the geology of it, and
Speaker 1: they're just totally different from Earth rocks, and there's completely
Speaker 1: consistent with what we think Mars rocks look like. And
Speaker 1: you know, we've sent um robots to Mars. We've studied them,
Speaker 1: so we know something about Martian geology and these rocks
Speaker 1: just could not have formed on Earth and they're totally
Speaker 1: consistent with rocks forming on Mars. So we have in
Speaker 1: our labs rocks from Mars, right Like, we haven't been there,
Speaker 1: but we already have pieces of it. So it's possible
Speaker 1: that maybe you know, there was a little microbe who
Speaker 1: went to sleep at night in his little rock or
Speaker 1: her rock home. Something happened and the next day here
Speaker 1: she woke up on Earth. Yeah that's right, probably the
Speaker 1: next thousands of years. But you know, and microbes can
Speaker 1: live along time and they can just go to sleep,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them can survive crazy things. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are microbes living on the outside of the International
Speaker 1: Space Station right now. It's almost impossible to eradicate all
Speaker 1: life from anything. I mean, you zap it with radiation,
Speaker 1: you'll find a few microbes that are radiation hard. You
Speaker 1: heat them up. You'll find some microbes that really like
Speaker 1: it hot and dry them out. You'll find microbes that
Speaker 1: can live in dry environments. It's crazy. So someone could
Speaker 1: have survived the impact of an asteroid thrown into space,
Speaker 1: surviving the cold and vacuum, survived the entry into Earth,
Speaker 1: and then come out and be like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: my new house. That's right. That thing has a great backstory.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you there was a moment about what
Speaker 1: is it now, twenty years ago when NASA thought they
Speaker 1: actually had discovered evidence of life from a Martian rock,
Speaker 1: right like a rock that came from Mars with evidence
Speaker 1: of life in it. This was a pretty exciting moment.
Speaker 1: People freaked out. Yeah, because NASA went and gave a
Speaker 1: press release and said, we have this rock we're pretty
Speaker 1: sure came from Mars, and when we cut it open,
Speaker 1: we found these things in it that we think could
Speaker 1: only be explained by life. They were these tiny little
Speaker 1: shapes that looked like bacteria. They were much smaller than
Speaker 1: Earth bacteria, but you know, you could imagine maybe this
Speaker 1: is what life looks like on Mars. And so they
Speaker 1: were pretty excited about it. But then what happened They
Speaker 1: discovered that it was not actually microft tracks. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the scientists who suggested it, they still believed that it
Speaker 1: was evidence for life, and to them it was the
Speaker 1: most compelling story. But you know, in science, a pretty
Speaker 1: big claim requires pretty big evidence, right, And so other
Speaker 1: people dug into it and they came up with explanations
Speaker 1: for how you could form those shapes using non organic
Speaker 1: um processes, you know, just geological processes. Crystal formation could
Speaker 1: give you this, and this kind of geology could give
Speaker 1: you that, and so the rock could just naturally have
Speaker 1: these formations. Yeah, they found plausible ways to make the
Speaker 1: same thing without having to have microbial life. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is a bit of a bummer. It's a bummer that
Speaker 1: we're not Martians. Well, it's a bum to not have
Speaker 1: discovered life on Mars. I mean, that would be an
Speaker 1: incredible moment, right to know that there was life on
Speaker 1: another planet. But of course it still wouldn't answer the question.
Speaker 1: Even if you found a rock with life from Mars
Speaker 1: on it, you still wouldn't know did life come to
Speaker 1: Earth from Mars, because then you've established that there's a
Speaker 1: transport mechanism, or did it start on Earth and then
Speaker 1: go to Mars and then come back, right, It wouldn't
Speaker 1: answer that question. Yeah, but there's still also just the possibility.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've proven that you can make these formations
Speaker 1: some other ways, but that doesn't mean that necessarily that
Speaker 1: those were not made by microbes. Right. It could be
Speaker 1: that we're looking at evidence of life on Mars. We
Speaker 1: just can't prove it, right, That's the problem is. And
Speaker 1: before you're going to accept that, you really got to
Speaker 1: have pretty solid evidence. You've gotta have something which is
Speaker 1: unique to life, right, And so before you're going to
Speaker 1: believe that there really is life or was life on Mars,
Speaker 1: I think you gotta really see it. You gotta get there.
Speaker 1: You gotta get some in your hands. You gotta life,
Speaker 1: you know, play with it, see it move. You gotta
Speaker 1: really be convinced. Chickens papers. Make sure it came from
Speaker 1: birth certificate, you know, social Security number exactly. So we
Speaker 1: think there might have been life on Mars a long, long
Speaker 1: long time ago, right, And Mars used to look really different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was more fertile, it was more sort of prone
Speaker 1: to have life, that's right. Yeah it was. It was
Speaker 1: a happy place to be, but not anymore. And the
Speaker 1: thing that happened is that Mars lost its atmosphere. Something
Speaker 1: happened that made it all sort of proof away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The atmosphere, the thing that would keep the surface warm
Speaker 1: and have to have liquid water and you know, provide
Speaker 1: the nutrients that life would need. That atmosphere got blown
Speaker 1: away by the solar wind. See, on Earth, we have
Speaker 1: an atmosphere, and our atmosphere is protected from the solar wind.
Speaker 1: The solar wind is just like a huge flow of
Speaker 1: radiation from the Sun. The thing that protects us from
Speaker 1: the solar wind is our magnetic field, right. Mostly the
Speaker 1: solar wind is charged particles being shot at us from
Speaker 1: the Sun. But charged particles get bent in magnetic field,
Speaker 1: and so our magnetic field mostly deflects them, and some
Speaker 1: of them spiral down. And that's what you see in
Speaker 1: the northern lights, right, is all these charged particles hitting
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. It's like the Sun is shooting a giant
Speaker 1: death ray at us. But we have some sort of
Speaker 1: force field basically, right, we have like a special force
Speaker 1: field that deflects it. Yeah. Literally, the Sun is the
Speaker 1: death Star's fully operational and it's blasting us all the time.
Speaker 1: And if we didn't have the magnetic field, then yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd be in trouble because it would slowly eat away
Speaker 1: at our atmosphere, would just strip it away, which is
Speaker 1: blast walled our oxygen and air, and we'll be totally
Speaker 1: exposed to those rates exactly, and then the temperature on
Speaker 1: Earth would plummet and all of that stuff. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened to Mars. We don't know why, just like
Speaker 1: we don't have a great understanding of why Earth has
Speaker 1: a magnetic field and why it flips. And you know,
Speaker 1: we should do a podcast on that another time. But Mars,
Speaker 1: we think had a magnetic field, which is why it
Speaker 1: had an atmosphere, and then it lost it and it
Speaker 1: might have been that it just cooled down and whatever
Speaker 1: was happening inside Mars that you know, gyro magnetism that
Speaker 1: created the magnetic field inside Mars just sort of stopped
Speaker 1: and it lost its magnetic field, which means it lost
Speaker 1: its its shield from the death star, which means it
Speaker 1: lost its atmosphere dot dot dot, and then it got
Speaker 1: blasted by the death ray from the Sun. And it
Speaker 1: is what it is today, which is pretty barren and inhospitable, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so it has an atmosphere today like you were saying,
Speaker 1: but it's really thin, right. There's hardly any gas surrounding Mars,
Speaker 1: so there's not enough to keep the surface warm. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you go to Mars today, you wouldn't recognize
Speaker 1: it from billions of years ago. You know, if if
Speaker 1: life started on Mars and came to Earth and then
Speaker 1: wanted to go home, it would be like, this is
Speaker 1: not the Mars. I know, what have you done? Who
Speaker 1: turned off the magnetic field? No, it's totally it's a
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic healthscape I'm compared to what it used to
Speaker 1: look like. But there could still be life there now, right,
Speaker 1: That's right. We have not ruled out the possibility that
Speaker 1: there could still be somehow life surviving on the surface, because,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, life finds a way to survive.
Speaker 1: You know, once you have a planet that's just covered
Speaker 1: in gazillions of microbes, they have a huge diversity, and
Speaker 1: even in an enormous cataclysm, it's almost impossible to wipe
Speaker 1: them out completely. Some of them will survive. And so
Speaker 1: even though Mars lost its its magnetic field, it may
Speaker 1: mean that there's no more life on the surface, right,
Speaker 1: because it's no more liquid water on the surface, But
Speaker 1: there could still be life on Mars. Right. What does
Speaker 1: life need? It needs water, it needs nutrients, it needs um,
Speaker 1: you know, not a whole lot of toxins. It needs
Speaker 1: protection from radiation, some sort of a heat source, right,
Speaker 1: A little bit of warmth, yeah, a little bit of warmth,
Speaker 1: but you know, not too much, just enough to have
Speaker 1: your water be liquid basically, and you know, a huge
Speaker 1: caveat Somebody out there is probably thinking, hold on a second,
Speaker 1: they're just talking about Earth like life, right, life like
Speaker 1: it lived, like it exists on Earth. Whoever, you are
Speaker 1: out there driving in your car thinking that we're totally crazy,
Speaker 1: You're right, We're talking about Earth like life, because that's
Speaker 1: the only life we know, and there's a possibility that
Speaker 1: life could exist in completely different forms, you know, that
Speaker 1: doesn't require liquid water and operates on geology called time
Speaker 1: scales and frozen water. But you know, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to put that aside because it's so alien we can't
Speaker 1: even really explore it or consider it or discover it. Right,
Speaker 1: So for now, let's just think about earthlike life. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about what we know about Mars and what
Speaker 1: we can see today. But first let's take a quick break, okay, Daniel,
Speaker 1: So what do we know about Mars today? Like, what
Speaker 1: can we see that might lead us to believe there
Speaker 1: are microbes or maybe little green men hiding hiding under
Speaker 1: the surface that we can't see. Oh I wish they
Speaker 1: were a little green men hiding onto the surface of Mars.
Speaker 1: That would be amazing, right, what a discovery that would be. Well,
Speaker 1: I know there's robots on the surface of Mars. There
Speaker 1: are a few robots driving around Mars, but those are
Speaker 1: Earth robots, Um there are I love these cartoons that
Speaker 1: show like little green men hiding behind rocks to the
Speaker 1: cameras from the rowers, right, like they're there, they're just
Speaker 1: camera shy, yeah exactly. But you know, we have more
Speaker 1: than just robots driving on the surface. We also have
Speaker 1: satellites orbiting Mars and imaging surface and comparing the picture
Speaker 1: today to yesterday. And so we're looking, Yeah, we're looking
Speaker 1: if anything moved on the surface of Mars, and we
Speaker 1: would notice, you know, it would not be hard to
Speaker 1: spot some sort of activity. So we don't see any
Speaker 1: movement or structures built by any civilizations or it just
Speaker 1: looks like a big red rock. Yeah. What we see
Speaker 1: our structures that look like you know, water flow canals
Speaker 1: and geological formations, and so there's some activity on Mars,
Speaker 1: but none of it seems to be like due to life. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So there's no large macroscopic life on Mars, which is
Speaker 1: a bummer, you know, because that would have been awesome.
Speaker 1: Um and you know, maybe Martian scientists could have tossed
Speaker 1: the secrets of the universe, but that's not in the cards,
Speaker 1: right that we can see, Right, that's kind of key.
Speaker 1: On the surface, there aren't any that we can see.
Speaker 1: But but it's hard to imagine though, like a technological
Speaker 1: civilization living under the surface of Mars, and no presence
Speaker 1: on the surface. I mean, imagine that was you. Right,
Speaker 1: you have a civilization on the surface of Mars. It's thriving,
Speaker 1: it's exciting. You know, life is good. You have you know,
Speaker 1: fun plans on the weekend. All of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: lose your magnetic field. The atmosphere starts stripping away, the
Speaker 1: temperatures plummeting. You decided to go underground. Right, Still, you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to have something on the surface to collect,
Speaker 1: like solar power or something. Right, You're gonna leave some
Speaker 1: evidence on the surface of the fact that we used
Speaker 1: to be there. We see nothing, just natural rock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a fun concept for somebody's science fiction novel that
Speaker 1: there could be today technological civilizations on the inside of Mars.
Speaker 1: But I put it on a pretty low probability. Um,
Speaker 1: but there is the possibility that microbial life could have
Speaker 1: survived underground, so there could be an inside of the
Speaker 1: rock instead of the dirt in Mars. There could be little,
Speaker 1: little green microbes. Yeah. And the reason that we think
Speaker 1: that the real possibility is that NASA has discovered water
Speaker 1: on Mars. Liquid water, so not on the surface, because
Speaker 1: on the surface is so cold that if you like
Speaker 1: if you spat it would freeze in a crystal before
Speaker 1: it hit the ground, right or evaporate right or evaporate
Speaker 1: probably is probably more more realistic. But under the ground
Speaker 1: it's warmer and it's protected from you know, all sorts
Speaker 1: of radiation, etcetera, etcetera. And they found evidence of a lake,
Speaker 1: huge lake of liquid water underground. But it's like a
Speaker 1: mile underground. It's not like just under the surface. It's deep,
Speaker 1: deep underground. How did they see it? How did they
Speaker 1: know it's there? Yeah, they can see it by studying,
Speaker 1: by using radar, I think. So they have ground penetrating
Speaker 1: radar and all sorts of clever stuff to see what's
Speaker 1: under the rock. So there could be like martian dolphins
Speaker 1: swimming around in there in these caves. It'd be pretty dark.
Speaker 1: I don't know how dolphins would survive and what they
Speaker 1: would eat. I think much more likely is that there's
Speaker 1: martian microbes right whatever. However, life started billions of years
Speaker 1: ago could have survived on Mars. In turn, in these
Speaker 1: lakes that are underground. Because there's liquid water, the ground
Speaker 1: itself protects them from the radiation of the sun right
Speaker 1: at the prays and so as long as they can
Speaker 1: find some nutrients. And um, you know my wife, she's
Speaker 1: a biochemist. She's always telling me that microbes can eat anything. Right,
Speaker 1: there's nothing, no situation in which microbes can't find something
Speaker 1: to extract energy from. Right. It's the opposite of children.
Speaker 1: They won't eat anything. That's why I keep telling it.
Speaker 1: We should have had microbes for kids and feed if
Speaker 1: only I know, I know. Um. And there's also other
Speaker 1: exciting information, like we actually have some clues that suggest
Speaker 1: that there's life on Mars, not just the possibility. Oh
Speaker 1: there's water, so there further could be there are other
Speaker 1: things you can do look for life on Mars, which
Speaker 1: is to look for biomarkers. Like if life exists, then
Speaker 1: it has to have some sort of metabolism. Right, there's
Speaker 1: like a process there. You know, it's eating something, it's
Speaker 1: pooping something like their breath. Yeah there, yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: so what we've done is we've looked at the atmosphere
Speaker 1: of Mars and we've seen methane in the atmosphere. The
Speaker 1: methane is not long lived, and so if you see
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, it means it was produced fairly recently.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's not long lived like it it
Speaker 1: goes away and it disappears. It breaks down. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not stable. It breaks down the atmosphere under under sunlight
Speaker 1: interaction with other things. Now, so we see these sort
Speaker 1: of clouds methane appear and then they break down. So
Speaker 1: something must be making this methane. Yeah, And there's some
Speaker 1: explanations just you know that are that don't involve life,
Speaker 1: like volcanic activity or whatever whatever. But the interesting thing
Speaker 1: is that the methane produced on Mars varies with the seasons,
Speaker 1: and so like you know, it's more in one season
Speaker 1: and less in another season. Like you know, it's a
Speaker 1: lot more in the summer and less in the winter.
Speaker 1: And that suggests it's very suggestive of some sort of
Speaker 1: biological process, right, as these things like sleep during the
Speaker 1: winter and then wake up in the summer and eat
Speaker 1: and fart a lot, because man, that's what methane is, right.
Speaker 1: You'd be there and be like, m hmm, it's farting season.
Speaker 1: Somehow in this podcast we always end up coming back
Speaker 1: to farts. We should have called this for podcast farts
Speaker 1: in science. Yeah, but our farts Mars called Mars. They're
Speaker 1: called farshions. Um, so that's pretty tantalizing evidence, right, That
Speaker 1: sells there's something going on that produces methane on a
Speaker 1: seasonal scale. And it could just be volcanic activity that's
Speaker 1: triggered by the Sun. There are some it could be
Speaker 1: Mars itself, it's farting. It could be like the planet
Speaker 1: is farting, like releasing we are smelling Mars's buttle exactly.
Speaker 1: That could be the scenario. I think he went too farther.
Speaker 1: I think they might have to edit that one out. Well.
Speaker 1: I like this idea that you brought up the other day,
Speaker 1: which is that, um, you know, we're sending these robots
Speaker 1: to Mars, and you know, we try to clean in
Speaker 1: them and clean them and disinfect them, but it could
Speaker 1: be that we're accidentally sending life to Mars with these robots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: almost certainly actually, because it's almost impossible to completely clean something.
Speaker 1: Right you build on Earth, it's going to be covered
Speaker 1: in Earth microups. I mean, they developed like special sprays
Speaker 1: to disinfect this stuff, like super kill everything sprays, and
Speaker 1: they sprayed on these satellites and then they discover, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of bug on these satellites that eats
Speaker 1: that spread. It's like, I'm young, give me more, right,
Speaker 1: So it's it's and you can shoot it with radiation.
Speaker 1: You can do everything you like. It's almost impossible, which
Speaker 1: means that when we send something to Mars, these rovers,
Speaker 1: we are sending life to Mars. So is there life
Speaker 1: on Mars? Well, almost certainly an earth microbe was sent there. Yes,
Speaker 1: did it survive? Could it? Could it reproduce? Has it
Speaker 1: like tainted Mars is going to colonize Mars and by
Speaker 1: the time we get over there, it's gonna be covered
Speaker 1: in Earth microbes. I don't think so, but you know
Speaker 1: we It sort of muddles the question. And it's actually
Speaker 1: zones on Mars where you're not allowed to send probes
Speaker 1: because they're trying to keep it free from contamination. Wow.
Speaker 1: So that's a huge twist. I mean, the answer to
Speaker 1: the question is their life and Mars. You would think
Speaker 1: it would be no, but the answer is yes, and
Speaker 1: we put it there. I don't know that we can
Speaker 1: say confidently if there are microbes on the surface of
Speaker 1: those rovers, but I wouldn't bet against it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't bet against it. So let me get to say
Speaker 1: this is a total possibility life started on Mars a
Speaker 1: long time ago, came to Earth through some freak asteroid accident,
Speaker 1: evolved into us. We build robots and rocket chips, and
Speaker 1: they put life back on Mars after there was this
Speaker 1: apocalypse there. Yeah, and maybe that was their whole plan.
Speaker 1: They saw this apocalypse coming and they're like, let's ride
Speaker 1: a rock to Earth and then come back in a
Speaker 1: billion years, you know, return to Mars. That's the title
Speaker 1: of the sci fi novel we're writing. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: just think it's a fascinating question. And if we could
Speaker 1: find microbs on Mars, I mean, say we send people
Speaker 1: over there, or we get a sample of it, we
Speaker 1: dig down a mile to even get a sample and
Speaker 1: bring it back, then we could start to answer some
Speaker 1: really interesting questions just by studying that life, right, Like,
Speaker 1: is it um, RNA and DNA based the way our
Speaker 1: life is? Is it similar? If it was totally different,
Speaker 1: completely biochemically different, Wow, that would be fascinating because it
Speaker 1: would mean there's different ways to build life. If it's
Speaker 1: the same, that means either there's only one way to
Speaker 1: build life and it happened in parallel and from places,
Speaker 1: or it started in one place and went to the
Speaker 1: other and man, there's so many amazing threads that you
Speaker 1: could unravel if we just had a sample of that
Speaker 1: lake from underground on on on Mars. Well, and the
Speaker 1: answer in all these cases would be mind blowing. Right,
Speaker 1: we're either super unique, we were either Martians, or there
Speaker 1: is a totally different way to make life. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the facts are there right like right now, there could
Speaker 1: be microbs wiggling around on Mars. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: not that hard to get there. We have the technology,
Speaker 1: we just lacked sort of the political will. You know,
Speaker 1: it's amazing to meet these moments when you have the
Speaker 1: technology and all you need to do is get the money,
Speaker 1: and you could just buy the answers to deep secrets
Speaker 1: about the universe. Right, it cost a few billion bucks
Speaker 1: or whatever, but we could do it. If Congress and
Speaker 1: the President decided this is important, let's do it, that
Speaker 1: you could do it. So we have the opportunity we
Speaker 1: could buy this knowledge. We just aren't all right, Well, tonight,
Speaker 1: if you go out there and look at the night
Speaker 1: s guy, you know, look up in an app of
Speaker 1: where Mars is right now, and if you can look
Speaker 1: at it at night, so you can go out there,
Speaker 1: grab a Mars bars, eat it and look up at
Speaker 1: that red planet and and smell it's farts. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: turn around and send some farts to Mars and maybe
Speaker 1: maybe that's the way they communicate farts is space. On
Speaker 1: that note, if you still have a question after listening
Speaker 1: to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or
Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.