Speaker 1: Lord Veda requires all of these necropsies to be completed
Speaker 1: by the end of the day. The surgical droids says,
Speaker 1: these are substantial specimens. We might require more time two episodes.
Speaker 1: Even Lord Vader is not a fan of two parts.
Speaker 1: He says, the anatomy of the alien specimens are quite involved,
Speaker 1: and if we're to perform a complete analysis, will need
Speaker 1: more time. Okay, fine, but the adults better be extremely infotaining.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: you know, the last couple of years, Rob, you really
Speaker 1: leaned into the holidays. But most of those holidays were
Speaker 1: towards the end of the year, the wintertime holidays, the
Speaker 1: hibernation holidays, thanks Giving, Christmas, of course Halloween. But we
Speaker 1: do that all the time. And and I think I
Speaker 1: get the sense that you are so strongly leaning into
Speaker 1: the holidays that it has continued into the month of May. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm bringing that spirit, uh into May, especially
Speaker 1: for today's holiday, Uh May the Fourth, as in May
Speaker 1: the Fourth be with you, which is of course the
Speaker 1: one day each year that everyone gets to go crazy
Speaker 1: for Star Wars in addition to plan, addition to all
Speaker 1: the other days. I guess. But um, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't know that even though I
Speaker 1: think my son and I had gotten super into Star
Speaker 1: Wars this at this point last year, I think we
Speaker 1: kind of forgot about May the fourth being a thing.
Speaker 1: Like May the fourth was never a thing when I
Speaker 1: was a Star Wars fan as a kid that I
Speaker 1: know of, so it kind of blew right past me. Um.
Speaker 1: But but this time, I I kind of realized that
Speaker 1: the last minute, Oh my goodness, May fourth is next week.
Speaker 1: It's it's Star Wars Day. It's just uh, just open season.
Speaker 1: We should do some Star Wars as content. You know,
Speaker 1: I would have guessed, even as obsessed with Star Wars
Speaker 1: as you were last year, and I guess continuing into
Speaker 1: this year, uh, that May the fourth wouldn't be your bag.
Speaker 1: I would I would expect that May the fourth would
Speaker 1: kind of irritate you, would be one of those cute
Speaker 1: little things that gets under your skin. Am I wrong? Um? No? No,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I don't have any problem with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially since there's like new stuff coming out.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, if that's if this sets the deadline
Speaker 1: for for the Bad Batch animated series to come out
Speaker 1: and makes them, you know, put it out, then I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we have it. Otherwise stuff would just keep
Speaker 1: getting delayed, right right, Okay, yes, just wedge you on
Speaker 1: into our calendars. Yeah, maybe they'll come up with another
Speaker 1: Star Wars holiday this year. Well, some to say that there's, well,
Speaker 1: we have May the Fourth as it Made a fourth
Speaker 1: be with you, and then some say there's Revenge of
Speaker 1: the Fifth, which is tomorrow. But I don't know, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know how how crazy that. Maybe there's something
Speaker 1: for the sixth as well. But I think I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be appropriate that it will continue after today,
Speaker 1: because we originally planned for this to be one episode,
Speaker 1: but then as we were working on the notes, we
Speaker 1: were like, oh, wait a minute, we've got like, you know,
Speaker 1: a fifty thousand pages of content or whatever it is
Speaker 1: we've got now, so so this will definitely be at
Speaker 1: least Tuesday and Thursday of this week. It is a
Speaker 1: it is a week long Made the fourth, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that is well, it should be. So Obviously we've talked
Speaker 1: about Star Wars a bit here on the show in
Speaker 1: the past, whether it be a discussion of you know,
Speaker 1: the question could Jupiter be blown up by the Death
Speaker 1: Star uh, and I think the answer was probably not.
Speaker 1: We've also talked about the Mighty Sarlac, and we also
Speaker 1: did a weird house cinema episode on e Walks the
Speaker 1: Battle for Indoor. But in this episode, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: the old my monster science approach to the some of
Speaker 1: the aliens from the Star Wars universe, you know, using
Speaker 1: some sort of some bit of fantastic biology and then
Speaker 1: using that as a way to discuss real world terrestrial
Speaker 1: biology and finding where things line up where they don't, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Now standard disclaimer here we are Star Wars fans, but
Speaker 1: we are not Star Wars experts. We're probably not going
Speaker 1: to perfectly reflect cannon or legend uh with regards to
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe with accuracy. Here. We haven't read
Speaker 1: every scientific meditation on Star Wars, and we don't know
Speaker 1: the extended universe perfectly. But we'll do the best we
Speaker 1: can here and we'll have some fun with the topic.
Speaker 1: But we fully invite you to get mad about it. Well,
Speaker 1: there's no reason to get mad about it. This is
Speaker 1: all too too fun. But yes, certainly, um feel free
Speaker 1: to write in if if you have any actually, he's
Speaker 1: uh to share with us regarding the creatures we're talking
Speaker 1: about here today. Well put, all right, Well let's start
Speaker 1: with your first selection, Joe, what did you choose from
Speaker 1: the the vast and exotic Star Wars universe? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: to set the stage, the film is The Empire Strikes Back.
Speaker 1: It's that mid movie section, the chase where han Leia,
Speaker 1: Chewy and C three po are on the run from
Speaker 1: the impure Real Fleet in the Millennium Falcon. This is
Speaker 1: after they have evacuated the Hawth base and there are
Speaker 1: a group of star destroyers that are chasing the Millennium
Speaker 1: Falcon and they chase it into an asteroid field. This
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite parts when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I still love it today. There's a kind of it
Speaker 1: almost becomes like a James Bond car chase or like
Speaker 1: Smokey and the Bandit where you know, they're like the
Speaker 1: scene where the cars are zipping around, you know, through
Speaker 1: obstacles and around traffic, but it's in space and instead
Speaker 1: of other cars and a bunch of barrels and just
Speaker 1: street you know, uh, tomato carts in the way and stuff.
Speaker 1: It is asteroids and of course this is extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: Their space rocks crashing all around and uh, the Falcon
Speaker 1: eventually manages to evade its imperial pursuers and it hides
Speaker 1: in a cave on a large asteroid. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is a great sequence in a just a great
Speaker 1: Star Wars film. It's one of those like out of
Speaker 1: the frying pan into the fire moments where actually it's
Speaker 1: like into a third frying pan or front because everyone's
Speaker 1: gotten out of hot. You've had that tremendous battle sequence
Speaker 1: with all of its ins and outs. Then you have
Speaker 1: the asteroid field, and then what happens next is, uh,
Speaker 1: it comes from an entirely different direction. Well, that's one
Speaker 1: of the great things about the story structure of the
Speaker 1: Empire Strikes Back is that you know you're cutting between
Speaker 1: the different characters and the things they're doing. But when
Speaker 1: you're with han Leia Chewi and c three p O,
Speaker 1: it's just one frying pan to another. Every time they
Speaker 1: get to a new place, they think that they're finally
Speaker 1: safe now, but then they realize that the floor is
Speaker 1: teflon and things start heating up and it's just on
Speaker 1: to the next crisis. But in this cave we get
Speaker 1: some creature encounters. So first the Millennium falcon is swarmed
Speaker 1: by a flock of nasty winged creatures with ring shaped
Speaker 1: sucker mouths and there they look sort of like sulfurous
Speaker 1: leech bats. These are called minox Han and Chewy seem
Speaker 1: to be familiar with them like that they once they
Speaker 1: see them, Hans says, uh, my Knox, yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: he talks about them like they're very common nuisance animals
Speaker 1: for space travelers. He says that they're chewing on the
Speaker 1: power cables, like yeah, that's what they always do. And
Speaker 1: so our heroes they leave the ship, they go outside,
Speaker 1: go down the ramp and start walking around outside with
Speaker 1: these little oxygen masks on while they're trying to blast
Speaker 1: the My Knox off. But then they encounter and it's
Speaker 1: another realizing you're actually in another frying pan moment when
Speaker 1: it is revealed that the cave that they're hiding in
Speaker 1: is no cave at all. It is a giant carnivorous
Speaker 1: worm of some kind and they have essentially parked down
Speaker 1: its gullet, and of course there's a great escape sequence
Speaker 1: where they have to rock it out between its closing
Speaker 1: jaws just in time. Is the teeth are coming together? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a fabulous looking creature to this big alien
Speaker 1: whlish worm monster. Yeah, one of the best, This giant
Speaker 1: worm creature on the asteroid. It is not named in
Speaker 1: the movie. I mean they say what the minox are.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like it's almost as if in Star
Speaker 1: Wars that's like saying, oh rats, we've got rats here,
Speaker 1: we've got my knox, but they never say what this
Speaker 1: thing is. I looked it up and some plenty of
Speaker 1: the Elder of the Galaxy has given its species of designation.
Speaker 1: It is called an exo gorth or alternately a space slug.
Speaker 1: And Robot got some pictures attached here for you to
Speaker 1: look at. Of course, we've seen the movie, so we
Speaker 1: know what it looks like. It's is this giant Uh
Speaker 1: have have to be honest and say, somewhat phallic looking
Speaker 1: worm comes up out of the hole. It's got the
Speaker 1: big jaws clamping after the ship, so it seems to
Speaker 1: be actively wanting to eat the space ship. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I found another image that I think is from
Speaker 1: one of the Marvel Star Wars comics, and it's a
Speaker 1: panel I I really don't know the context of how
Speaker 1: this happens, but there's a panel in a comic somewhere
Speaker 1: where a star destroyer flies into a giant Exo Gorth's mouth.
Speaker 1: That doesn't look like it's going to end well for
Speaker 1: for anybody involved there, but something that the the the
Speaker 1: the ex it looks like that's that's too big of
Speaker 1: a mouthful. Yeah. Now, there's something very interesting about both
Speaker 1: of these alien species, the Minox and the Exo gorths uh.
Speaker 1: And it's something that I've actually thought about for a
Speaker 1: long time. I remember having this thought, maybe not when
Speaker 1: I very first saw Star Wars when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: but at some point it occurred to me that these
Speaker 1: are the only aliens I can think of in the
Speaker 1: Star Wars movies that are not found on a planet,
Speaker 1: but in outer space itself, on the barren terrain of
Speaker 1: an asteroid with no atmosphere, living in the vacuum. These
Speaker 1: are vacuum dwellers. Yeah, And I think it was that
Speaker 1: way for a long time. Eventually, they also introduced a
Speaker 1: creature called a purgle that came around. I think it
Speaker 1: was introduced in Star Wars Rebels, one of the animated series,
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling it's going to show up
Speaker 1: in some live action stuff in the near future. But
Speaker 1: they're like a deep space whale like organism with its
Speaker 1: kind of a squid, like a combination between a space
Speaker 1: squid and a space whale. And they're capable of entering
Speaker 1: hyperspace even but they're kind of they have a lot
Speaker 1: in common with the design of the Exo Gorth. They're
Speaker 1: kind of like the noble Exo Gorth. The picture you
Speaker 1: attached looks mad, he's got like the downturned eyebrow. He
Speaker 1: looks like he's he's looking for a fight. Well, they
Speaker 1: they explore this kind of like whale like nature where
Speaker 1: if you're if you're not treating them right, if you're
Speaker 1: abusing them, then yeah, they can be quite dangerous, but
Speaker 1: if you try to understand them, then you realize that
Speaker 1: they have this very passive and beautiful nature. Oh, I
Speaker 1: can see that. So it's like the you know, somebody
Speaker 1: says about the dog, like, oh, he doesn't like strangers,
Speaker 1: but when you warm up to him, you know he's a,
Speaker 1: he's a real cuddlebug. Yeah. So anyway, for this entry
Speaker 1: of our Aliens Star Wars Alien neck Ropsy, I wanted
Speaker 1: to to think about the idea of vacuum dwellers as
Speaker 1: a as a proposal as a concept. Uh. Now, Star Wars,
Speaker 1: obviously it is not hard science fiction. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not trying to create a scientifically grounded experience. It's a fantasy.
Speaker 1: And that's fine. I mean, you've got no problem at
Speaker 1: all with with soft science fiction and space fantasy. I
Speaker 1: love that stuff. Uh. And there are plenty of elements
Speaker 1: in this sequence that are really nothing like what we'd
Speaker 1: expect to find in reality. So I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: a couple of other examples of that before we get
Speaker 1: back to the idea of a vacuum dwelling organism and
Speaker 1: consider the plausibility of that. One example of how this
Speaker 1: doesn't really resemble reality in any recognizable way is the
Speaker 1: idea of how dense the asteroid belt in the Empire
Speaker 1: strikes back is how it's just crammed with rocks that
Speaker 1: are moving really close to each other and slamming together
Speaker 1: all the time, And how this compares to the one
Speaker 1: example of a real asteroid belt that we know about.
Speaker 1: And this is a standard feature of sci fi movies.
Speaker 1: It's not just Empire strikes back. I mean I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times there are space battles in an
Speaker 1: asteroid belt that is just a mine field, this densely
Speaker 1: packed obstacle course of of giant boulders that are going
Speaker 1: to smash into your ship and kill you. And the
Speaker 1: ships have to frantically dodge around through the slamming rocks
Speaker 1: while they dog fight. Yeah, it's a great sequence, but
Speaker 1: it is just um maddening just how how tired everything is,
Speaker 1: and and it just seems like a complete nightmare that
Speaker 1: anyone would I mean, it seems like it should be
Speaker 1: a Butcher Cassidy and the Sundance Kid kind of moment, right,
Speaker 1: Like why would the Thaie fighters even chase them in there?
Speaker 1: Like how? Because how could you expect to survive unless
Speaker 1: you were like a fourth sensitive pilot of some sort,
Speaker 1: you know, or like the greatest pilot of all time,
Speaker 1: like like a Han Solo. Yeah, they'd be crazy to
Speaker 1: follow us, wouldn't they. And I know when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I pictured the asteroid belt of our Solar
Speaker 1: system being like this, probably because of especially Empire, but
Speaker 1: more generally movies like this that it's just you know,
Speaker 1: it's just tight with rocks. But now we know that
Speaker 1: is not the case. I was trying to find what
Speaker 1: is the actual density of the asteroid belt in terms
Speaker 1: of asteroids of an appreciable size. I found an explainer
Speaker 1: about this from Scientific American that's older. It's from nine
Speaker 1: so our our our knowledge might be a little bit
Speaker 1: updated since then. But this, I feel like gives you
Speaker 1: a good idea to asks several experts about this, this
Speaker 1: question of the density of the asteroid belt. First of all,
Speaker 1: there was an interesting story in it that's relayed by
Speaker 1: Tom Garrels of the University of Arizona, who said that quote,
Speaker 1: some scientists were seriously concerned about the possible high density
Speaker 1: of objects in the asteroid belt, which lies between the
Speaker 1: orbits of Mars and Jupiter, when the first robotic spacecraft
Speaker 1: were scheduled to be sent through it. The first crossing
Speaker 1: of the asteroid belt took place in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies when the Pioneer ten and Pioneer eleven spacecraft journey
Speaker 1: to Jupiter and beyond. The danger lies not in the
Speaker 1: risk of hitting a large object. In fact, such a
Speaker 1: risk as minuscule because there is a tremendou this amount
Speaker 1: of space between Mars and Jupiter, and because the objects
Speaker 1: there are very small in relation. Even though there are
Speaker 1: perhaps a million asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter,
Speaker 1: the chance of a spacecraft and not getting through the
Speaker 1: asteroid belt is nearly negligible. And then there was an
Speaker 1: updated thought that came in after that from David Morrison
Speaker 1: of NASA AMES who said, quote, there were more than
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter,
Speaker 1: but these objects are distributed within the huge volume of
Speaker 1: the asteroid belt. Their average spacing is several million kilometers.
Speaker 1: Collisions are thus extremely rare. An average one kilometer asteroid
Speaker 1: suffers one collision every few billion years, or maybe one
Speaker 1: or two collisions over the lifetime of the Solar System.
Speaker 1: The spacing is also so large that seen from one asteroid,
Speaker 1: even the nearest one kilometer asteroid would likely be too
Speaker 1: faint to be visible without a telescope. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: extreme distances between these objects, not because there aren't a
Speaker 1: lot of objects. There are, but the you know, space
Speaker 1: is gigantic, so the space between them is also gigantic.
Speaker 1: If you were to fly into an asteroid belt, it's
Speaker 1: actually unlikely you would even notice it. You probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: see any asteroids while you were flying through it. Though,
Speaker 1: I did think about something that could make another interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some movie has done this, but it could
Speaker 1: make a different kind of threat of traveling through an
Speaker 1: asteroid belt interesting. I think the more likely risk while
Speaker 1: flying through an asteroid belt is not that you would
Speaker 1: be smashed between giant space rocks while you're trying to
Speaker 1: dodge through them, but the chance that you would hit
Speaker 1: an invisibly tiny micro asteroid at high speed, and it
Speaker 1: would be like a bomb because of the kinetic energy
Speaker 1: of the impact because it's going so fast and you're
Speaker 1: going so fast. Though I guess, of course, it would
Speaker 1: depend on how fast you were going and what angle
Speaker 1: you hit it at relative to its own trajectory. I mean,
Speaker 1: a head on collision with a with a tiny asteroid
Speaker 1: could be catast traffic. Yeah, but there's another thing in
Speaker 1: the sequence that doesn't make sense if you try to
Speaker 1: bring hard sci fi rules to it, which is the
Speaker 1: part where they're in the cave and the minox show
Speaker 1: up in that great moment where I think Leiah is
Speaker 1: looking out the window and then suddenly the big sucker
Speaker 1: comes down and got which I was talking to Rachel
Speaker 1: about this earlier this morning, and she says, when she
Speaker 1: saw that part in the theater when the Star Wars
Speaker 1: remasters or remake, not remakes, the whatever you call him.
Speaker 1: The remasters came out in the nineties or the earlier.
Speaker 1: I guess it was the nineties. Yeah, that she just
Speaker 1: like screamed in the theater, just like Bloody Murder screamed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's startling and gross totally. It's like, it still gets
Speaker 1: me when I watched the movie. It's very suddenly that
Speaker 1: noise it makes. It's like when the head pops out
Speaker 1: of the boat and Jaws, you know, when when Richard
Speaker 1: Dreyfuss is like down in the water looking at it.
Speaker 1: It gets you every time. But anyway, so there's yeah,
Speaker 1: the minox come out, and so Han and she we
Speaker 1: and lay a walk outside of the Millennium Falcon in
Speaker 1: their regular clothes wearing little oxygen masks. So this is
Speaker 1: another one of those space fantasy things, because this would
Speaker 1: not work on a real asteroid. The vacuum would kill you.
Speaker 1: Pretty quickly, even if you had a little oxygen mask.
Speaker 1: So I found a good explainer on this. This was
Speaker 1: also a Scientific American article. This was written by Anna
Speaker 1: Goslin in two thousand eight. And of course, one thing
Speaker 1: we should be clear about is that a vacuum, in
Speaker 1: as the term is generally used, is defined as a
Speaker 1: region of space with extremely low gas pressure. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: sort of a conventional definition because even in outer space,
Speaker 1: there's not nothing in space. You're still going to have
Speaker 1: a few random hydrogen atoms floating around and stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's pressure so low that it's negligible. So once you
Speaker 1: walk out of the Millennium Falcon, once you are exposed
Speaker 1: to the low pressure environment of a vacuum of space,
Speaker 1: several things are going to happen pretty quickly. One is
Speaker 1: that because of the lower pressure, gases tend to expand,
Speaker 1: and this includes the gases that are trapped in your body,
Speaker 1: trapped in your lungs. So if you're holding your breath
Speaker 1: or inhaling, this expanding gas is going to cause trauma
Speaker 1: in the lungs, tearing up gas exchange tissues. Also, the
Speaker 1: low pressure will cause water to boil at a lower
Speaker 1: temperature and in the case of a vacuum, this means
Speaker 1: water boils at a temperature lower than your body temperature,
Speaker 1: which translates to swelling in the body, rapid evaporation of
Speaker 1: water vapor from the easiest escape roots in your body,
Speaker 1: and primarily this will be things like the holes in
Speaker 1: your face, like your mouth, nose, and eyes, and this
Speaker 1: rapid boiling off of water will of course cause very
Speaker 1: low temperatures around these holes in your face. I think
Speaker 1: about the way that you know, the rapid evaporation of
Speaker 1: water cools your body through sweat, except take that to
Speaker 1: the extreme, like literally your tongue might freeze. And if
Speaker 1: records of what has happened to animals that are exposed
Speaker 1: to a vacuum or any indication, you also might simultaneously defecate, urinate,
Speaker 1: and projectile vomit. Wow, So even event horizon scaled back
Speaker 1: a little bit on what this would be like. Yes. Now,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, sometimes movies make it look like
Speaker 1: if you were exposed to a vacuum, you would explode,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't seem to be true. It actually does
Speaker 1: seem like you could survive being in a vacuum for
Speaker 1: maybe a few minutes, I mean, it would depend on
Speaker 1: a number of factors, but you could Most people could
Speaker 1: probably survive being exposed to a vacuum for some amount
Speaker 1: of times, like a few minutes, less than five minutes maybe,
Speaker 1: but it would require somebody else who is not exposed
Speaker 1: to a vacuum helping you. Because we have seen this
Speaker 1: in in sci fi. I think that's basically what happens
Speaker 1: in a event horizon. And I think the and yeah,
Speaker 1: the Expense has has has explored this as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like one of the reasons you would need somebody
Speaker 1: to help you is that you would you would very
Speaker 1: rapidly lose consciousness. The low pressure would also cause bubbles
Speaker 1: to form in your blood vessels, which would interfere with
Speaker 1: oxygen circulation. And I think the estimate is that this
Speaker 1: leads to rapid unconsciousness, probably in something like ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds after you're exposed to the vacuum, and then
Speaker 1: so you lose consciousness, you probably collapse and it would
Speaker 1: go on to kill you within a few minutes if
Speaker 1: you're not repressurized. This article by Anna Gosline shares a
Speaker 1: story of a human who actually survived vacuum exposure. So
Speaker 1: I just want to read this part quote. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, a technician inside a vacuum chamber at Johnson
Speaker 1: Space Center in Houston accidentally depressurized his space suit by
Speaker 1: disrupting a hose. After twelve to fifteen seconds, he lost consciousness.
Speaker 1: He regained it at twenty seven seconds after his suit
Speaker 1: was re pressurized to about half that of sea level.
Speaker 1: The man reported that his last memory before blacking out
Speaker 1: was of the moisture on his tongue beginning to boil,
Speaker 1: as well as a loss of taste sensation that lingered
Speaker 1: for four days following the incident. So all that to say,
Speaker 1: Han Chewy and Leiah, these are experienced space travelers. They
Speaker 1: would know better than to try to walk out into
Speaker 1: the vacuum of space without a pressure suit. Now, I
Speaker 1: want to be fair. I have seen some righteous nerds
Speaker 1: on the Internet arguing that, well, maybe because we we
Speaker 1: now we know from what happens later in the movie,
Speaker 1: that actually they were not in a cave on an asteroid.
Speaker 1: They were in the exo Gorth's gullet. And maybe the
Speaker 1: exo Gorth's gullet creates its own pressurized atmosphere. And okay,
Speaker 1: let's say I grant that. Uh. Maybe, but I thought
Speaker 1: the whole point was that they thought they were in
Speaker 1: a cave on an asteroid, not in the belly of
Speaker 1: a giant worm. So it doesn't seem like they would
Speaker 1: go outside without a pressure suit. Yeah. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess if maybe they're like the ship's readings were like, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't actually need a suit to go outside in
Speaker 1: this this weird cave, and they're like, Okay, that's fine. Cool.
Speaker 1: They really wasn't thinking about it that hard, Like they
Speaker 1: weren't asking, well, why would that be? Why would a
Speaker 1: cave that it's supposedly open to the to the void
Speaker 1: have these unique conditions? Um? But I guess if I
Speaker 1: was gonna play Devil's advocate and try and like sort
Speaker 1: of stitch everything together, I could and then maybe, yes,
Speaker 1: maybe this giant space slug. Uh. It's it's gastric environment
Speaker 1: closely mimics a terrestrial world and just you know, the
Speaker 1: atmosphere is a little off. Um, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: or maybe that's maybe that's so one of the ways
Speaker 1: that it gets its its food right, it just waits
Speaker 1: for spaceships to land inside its belly. And uh. And
Speaker 1: since spaceships are hard to digest. It needs to have
Speaker 1: an inviting environment that lures the precious meat beings out
Speaker 1: of the spaceship, right, Yeah, it gets gets gets them
Speaker 1: out there. I mean, it does have fog rolling around,
Speaker 1: so it almost looks like you're out on the moor
Speaker 1: once you leave spaceship. I wonder also how fog rolling
Speaker 1: around would work in a vacuum. It doesn't seem very
Speaker 1: vacuum like. It's almost as if they weren't really thinking
Speaker 1: of it and in pure physical terms as a vacuum,
Speaker 1: which would make a lot of sense. Again, because this
Speaker 1: is space fantasy, I just wanted to say also, I
Speaker 1: I found a picture on the Internet of the model
Speaker 1: of the the giant exit Worth's teeth while it was
Speaker 1: being created along with the I l M model maker
Speaker 1: Lauren Peterson inside the mouth looking at it, and he
Speaker 1: just looks just exploding with joy while chasing at the
Speaker 1: teeth he has created. He kind of he also in
Speaker 1: this picture he's got long hair and a big beard.
Speaker 1: He almost looks like a human ewalk. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: looking at these old photos of these like these these
Speaker 1: seventies guys working on these models for this, uh, for
Speaker 1: for these films. It's pretty great. But yeah, it's pure
Speaker 1: joy on this NaN's face. Than I wanted to come
Speaker 1: back to the question that I brought up earlier about
Speaker 1: the vacuum dwellers. When we imagine finding alien life forms,
Speaker 1: not in space fantasy, but in reality. Of course, we
Speaker 1: always imagine finding them on a planet, a planet with
Speaker 1: an atmosphere. But I was wondering, is it biochemically and
Speaker 1: evolutionarily conceivable that there could be such thing as an
Speaker 1: alien dwelling directly within the void, within the you know,
Speaker 1: the howling emptiness of space. Could there be creatures of
Speaker 1: the vacuum? And so I was looking around trying to
Speaker 1: find some good sources on this. I didn't come across
Speaker 1: any like direct scientific papers, though, if any listeners know
Speaker 1: of any that I couldn't find and want to send
Speaker 1: in my way, please do. The best thing I came
Speaker 1: across was actually an interesting BBC article from sixteen by
Speaker 1: the science writer Philip Ball, one of my my favorite
Speaker 1: science writers, who wrote probably the best book I've ever
Speaker 1: read on quantum physics, which is called Beyond Weird. I
Speaker 1: wreck commended it, uh. I think A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: during a summer reading episode. But in this article, Ball
Speaker 1: starts off by pointing to a study published in the
Speaker 1: journal Science by Cornelia Minair at All. Mine Air is
Speaker 1: a professor at the University of Nice in France, and
Speaker 1: it's a study called ribos and related sugars from ultra
Speaker 1: violet Irradiation of Interstellar ice analogs. And so to read
Speaker 1: from the summary from from the journal Science on this quote,
Speaker 1: Astrobiologists have long speculated on the origin of prebiotic molecules
Speaker 1: such as amino acids and sugars. Mine art at All
Speaker 1: demonstrated that numerous prebiotic molecules can be formed in an
Speaker 1: interstellar analog sample containing a mixture of simple ices of water, methanol,
Speaker 1: and ammonia. They irradiated the sample with ultra violet light
Speaker 1: under conditions similar to those expected during the formation of
Speaker 1: the Solar system. This yielded a wide variety of sugars,
Speaker 1: including ribos, a major constituent of ribonucleic acid or RNA.
Speaker 1: And of course, as we've discussed on the show before,
Speaker 1: RNA is one of the important, uh you know, long
Speaker 1: organic molecules that is considered a possible precursor of the
Speaker 1: original formation of life on Earth the first cell, and
Speaker 1: of course RNA is used is used in life forms today,
Speaker 1: it's in the cells in your body. And this is
Speaker 1: not the only study of this kind showing that some
Speaker 1: molecules important to the formation of a biological sphere, such
Speaker 1: as sugars and amino acids, can be formed in space,
Speaker 1: maybe even just on little tiny grains of ice floating
Speaker 1: around in space by themselves, not on a planet at all,
Speaker 1: that they can be formed in these types of scenarios
Speaker 1: by radiation acting on precursor compounds. So another example would
Speaker 1: be that um researchers for decades have have found evidence
Speaker 1: of amino acids in meteorites that apparently these amino acids
Speaker 1: were formed in deep space, and the Rosetta mission which
Speaker 1: intercepted a comet was a comet six in space. In
Speaker 1: the Rosetta orbiter detected the presence of the amino acid glycine,
Speaker 1: along with methylamine and ethylamine from a spectrometry reading of
Speaker 1: the of the comet. So it's possible that important molecules
Speaker 1: and molecules that are necessary for the early stages of
Speaker 1: chemical evolution before the formation of the first cell were
Speaker 1: not formed on Earth, but in space and then somehow
Speaker 1: delivered to Earth, maybe on the backs of icy comets
Speaker 1: that smashed into the Earth's surface when the planet was young.
Speaker 1: And of course this is all hypothetical. We still don't
Speaker 1: know for sure how the first life on Earth came
Speaker 1: to be. We actually talked about one very interesting model
Speaker 1: of this on a recent episode, the one we did
Speaker 1: about the Nile Inundation, where we discussed the idea that
Speaker 1: the first cells might have been created by the presence
Speaker 1: of pre biotic molecules like lipids and nucleic acids in
Speaker 1: areas on the surface of the Earth that are repeatedly
Speaker 1: subjected to wet dry cycles. And if you want the
Speaker 1: details on on the reasoning behind that, you can go
Speaker 1: back and listen to that episode. What was it called,
Speaker 1: I believe the title we went with was the Nile
Speaker 1: Inundation God's Water in Life, because there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of mythology in there, but also just a lot about
Speaker 1: the the the annual flooding of the Nile and how
Speaker 1: it factors into the environment and the history of the region. Right,
Speaker 1: So we don't know how for sure how it happened,
Speaker 1: but the process of chemical evolution leading from those organic
Speaker 1: molecules to the formation of the first cell, meaning a
Speaker 1: cell capable of replication and metabolism. That's generally assumed to
Speaker 1: have happened somewhere on Earth or in a or on
Speaker 1: another planet like Mars maybe, and then seated to Earth
Speaker 1: through some kind of collision and travel of rocks through space,
Speaker 1: and that could be in hydrothermal vents or in puddles
Speaker 1: or what have you. But it's usually assumed to have
Speaker 1: happened on Earth. But Philip Ball rights quote, there is
Speaker 1: a more intriguing possibility. Life itself might not have needed
Speaker 1: a warm and comfortable planet bathed in sunlight to get going.
Speaker 1: If the raw ingredients were already out there in interplanetary limbo.
Speaker 1: Might life have started there too? Interesting question? And of
Speaker 1: course there's another question, which is a follow up. If
Speaker 1: it were possible for life to form in space rather
Speaker 1: than on a planet, would it also be possible to
Speaker 1: for that life to evolve into complex forms out there
Speaker 1: in space? Um. Now, there are some reasons that this
Speaker 1: does seem unlikely on its face, So a bunch of
Speaker 1: Philip Ball's article ends up focusing on ways that alien
Speaker 1: life forms could have the benefits of a home planet
Speaker 1: while existing in interstellar space, and the primary idea he
Speaker 1: explores here is life on rogue planets, meaning planets that
Speaker 1: are ejected from their solar systems and float through the
Speaker 1: interstellar void alone or maybe with some moons in tone
Speaker 1: uh and you you might think that without a home star,
Speaker 1: these worlds would be guaranteed to be barren, But internal
Speaker 1: heating from residual formation heat and radioactive elements in the core,
Speaker 1: and possible title interactions with the moons that are along
Speaker 1: for the ride, this could possibly be enough to sustain
Speaker 1: a biosphere, perhaps in an iced over ocean. But this
Speaker 1: isn't really what we're talking about, right We're we're looking
Speaker 1: for something that could live in space itself, or on
Speaker 1: the surface of an asteroid exposed to the vacuum where
Speaker 1: there's no atmosphere, no ocean, just the raw hell of
Speaker 1: the infinite. Now and exploring this part of the article,
Speaker 1: Ball notes something that I had read about before, but
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about until I was reading this, which
Speaker 1: is that um the astronomer Fred Hoyle, who did a
Speaker 1: lot of important work in in twentieth century astronomy, but
Speaker 1: now is probably best remembered in the popular consciousness for
Speaker 1: coining the term Big Bang, which he meant as an insult,
Speaker 1: like a ridicule of the theory, because he was a
Speaker 1: supporter of the steady state theory of the universe, which
Speaker 1: is now known to be wrong, like the the We
Speaker 1: know that the universe is thirteen point eight billion years old,
Speaker 1: and and we called the process of expansion leading to
Speaker 1: the universe we know today the Big Bang. After this,
Speaker 1: after this negative appellation from Hoyle, But anyway, Hoyle actually
Speaker 1: wrote a science fiction novel that was published in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine called The Black Cloud, and supposedly it's quite good,
Speaker 1: though I've never read it. But the premise is that
Speaker 1: there is a giant cloud of intelligent gas that floats
Speaker 1: around through outer space, and when it encounters Earth, it
Speaker 1: sort of doesn't know what to make of life that
Speaker 1: inhabits a planet, and it becomes a threat to us.
Speaker 1: But Hoyle did not have a plausible theory for how
Speaker 1: a such a sentient space gas would would come to evolve.
Speaker 1: I think it's just a mystery in the book. But
Speaker 1: Ball looks at this question of what the chemical basis
Speaker 1: of space based life could be and concludes that despite
Speaker 1: the difficulties of the environment, it seems like carbon molecules
Speaker 1: are still probably the best bet for creating biology. The
Speaker 1: most common alternative put forward to carbon based biology is
Speaker 1: silicon and I will know that when I looked up
Speaker 1: the the exo gorth on Wikipedia. Wikipedia tells me that
Speaker 1: the exo go is a silicon based life form. And also,
Speaker 1: I think that in addition to eating humans and spaceships
Speaker 1: and stuff, it eats rocks, you know, eats the minerals
Speaker 1: of asteroids. So I think it's the case it's supposed
Speaker 1: to have like a mineral and energy diet that perhaps
Speaker 1: occasionally supplements. But you know, another thing I was thinking
Speaker 1: about is that, Okay, two things. I guess on one level,
Speaker 1: it could be eat biting at a spaceship just because
Speaker 1: it's there, or out of defense, it doesn't really want
Speaker 1: to eat it, you know, in the same way that
Speaker 1: you'll have animals in the wild that will attempt to
Speaker 1: take a bite out of something, you know, defensively even
Speaker 1: if it's not part of their diet. But also the
Speaker 1: curious mouth. Yeah so, but but here's another thing. If
Speaker 1: the inside of the the of the creature here is
Speaker 1: essentially an ecosystem um. Is it possible that it it
Speaker 1: is like grabbing things in order to sort of not
Speaker 1: feed itself, but to supply and feed the ecosystem within it,
Speaker 1: And then it somehow gets so much sort of residual
Speaker 1: nutrition from that ecosystem, like it kind of has. It's
Speaker 1: almost like a hive maintaining a um like like a
Speaker 1: domestic crop within itself, except its domestic crop is just
Speaker 1: like this swampy world. Oh my god. So when it
Speaker 1: eats a millennium falcon, that's like it's poop yogurt, like
Speaker 1: the probiotics stuff it's trying to supply its interior mine
Speaker 1: ox and like the mossy organisms that line its gullet
Speaker 1: and produce all that fog we see with some nice
Speaker 1: power cables to chew on and and I guess presumably
Speaker 1: humans to feast on whenever they die. Yeah, maybe it
Speaker 1: feeds on swamp fog. And but it needs a you know,
Speaker 1: a ripe swamp environment there, and occasionally, yeah, it needs
Speaker 1: some needs some new stuff to add to the to
Speaker 1: the genetic pool. You're so good at world building. This
Speaker 1: is this is great a future Star Wars writers, I
Speaker 1: hope you're taking notes. But anyway, So back to Philip
Speaker 1: Ball's article. So he he echoes the sentiments of many
Speaker 1: experts I've read who have deep familiarity with chemistry, who
Speaker 1: generally say that carbon is just so much better at
Speaker 1: building complex molecules than silicon. Uh, silicon really does not
Speaker 1: seem like a very good candidate for creating life. Again,
Speaker 1: maybe our imagination is being limited in some way, but
Speaker 1: but it really looks like carbon is the good stuff
Speaker 1: if if we're fine, if we're gonna find life elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the universe. A lot of astrobiologists seem to think
Speaker 1: that carbon is just the way it's going to be.
Speaker 1: For example, Ball quotes an astrobiologist named Charles Cockle of
Speaker 1: the University of Edinburgh who thinks that, yeah, alien life
Speaker 1: could be very different. Maybe there's a lot that is
Speaker 1: hard for us to imagine, but that whatever it is,
Speaker 1: it's going to be carbon based, and it's going to
Speaker 1: require water, and that this will be a universal norm
Speaker 1: no matter what plan it or part of space you're on. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he does he does admit quote, I have a
Speaker 1: quite conservative view, which science generally proves is misguided. But
Speaker 1: he he holds the view. Nonetheless, so when looking for
Speaker 1: carbon molecules to form the precursors to life, we already
Speaker 1: know that a substantial number of them can be and
Speaker 1: are readily formed in the vacuum and in deep space.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned already, both sugars and amino acids. We
Speaker 1: have evidence that both of these things can be formed
Speaker 1: outside the environment of a planet, maybe on the surface
Speaker 1: of a comet or just an ice grain floating around
Speaker 1: in a dust cloud in space. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. These sugars
Speaker 1: like ribos or important ingredients in forming nucleic acids. So
Speaker 1: uh so, like this is the stuff you would need.
Speaker 1: And typically these things are formed through simple chemical and
Speaker 1: photochemical processes. So Ball mentions a typical chemical reaction called
Speaker 1: Strekker synthesis that could be responsed well for the formation
Speaker 1: of amino acids in space, but also that these things
Speaker 1: can be formed by exposure of precursor chemicals to radiation,
Speaker 1: typically ultra violet light. Now this part I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: Ball rights quote. It looks at first as though these
Speaker 1: reactions should not take place in deepest space without a
Speaker 1: source of heat or light to drive them. Molecules encountering
Speaker 1: one another in frigid dark conditions do not have enough
Speaker 1: energy to get a chemical reaction started. It's as if
Speaker 1: they run into a barrier that is too high for
Speaker 1: them to jump over. However, in the nineteen seventies, the
Speaker 1: Soviet chemist Vitality golden Sky showed otherwise, some chemicals could
Speaker 1: react even when chilled to just four degrees above absolute zero,
Speaker 1: which is about as cold as space gets. They just
Speaker 1: needed a bit of help from high energy radiation such
Speaker 1: as gamma rays or electron beams like the cosmic rays
Speaker 1: that whiz through all of space. And so maybe there
Speaker 1: is some hope for for deep space stimulation of the
Speaker 1: chemical reactions that lead to life given these types of
Speaker 1: inputs like like gamma rays or cosmic rays. Given these
Speaker 1: inputs which are possible in outer space, Goldanski found evidence
Speaker 1: that some long chain molecules could form, such as formaldehyde
Speaker 1: chains that are several hundred molecules long. But there's a
Speaker 1: there's a catch. There's the downside. While space can form
Speaker 1: these precursor molecules, the molecules encounter another problem, which is
Speaker 1: continued exposure to the same radiation sources that formed them
Speaker 1: in the first place. Ball sides uh this this guy
Speaker 1: Charles Cockle again saying that they are just as likely
Speaker 1: to smash molecules as they are to form them. Potential
Speaker 1: biomolecules progenitors of proteins and RNA say, would be broken
Speaker 1: apart faster than they were being produced. And to come
Speaker 1: back to the Nile episode, this reminds me of what
Speaker 1: we talked about in that episode with theories about the
Speaker 1: formation of life on Earth and the role of water,
Speaker 1: because again, water would play this stimulating and destructive role
Speaker 1: in the in the early chemical evolution of life. Water
Speaker 1: is a key ingredient in Earth based models of chemical evolution,
Speaker 1: but it also easily destroys the delicate organic molecules it creates,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons that it's been hypothesized
Speaker 1: that there are these wet dry cycles that Uh that
Speaker 1: would have allowed the first cells to come together. So
Speaker 1: ultimately that the experts that Ball consults here seem to
Speaker 1: think it's pretty unlikely that we would see in these
Speaker 1: really cold environments in deep space, like on the surfaces
Speaker 1: of ice creams. Even though these precursor molecules to life
Speaker 1: can be formed, it seems unlikely that these environments would
Speaker 1: form enough complex molecules and have them survive long enough
Speaker 1: to kick off chemical evolution and really really bring together
Speaker 1: space based life. But I want to get into another
Speaker 1: option in just a second here that could explain where
Speaker 1: something like this organism comes from. But before that, I
Speaker 1: was just wondering also, like, Okay, why the complex morphology
Speaker 1: of the exo coreth Uh? You know? Complex? More So,
Speaker 1: it's got like a body with different parts like the
Speaker 1: animals we see on Earth. It's got a mouth with teeth,
Speaker 1: and it's got something that looked like little eyes talks,
Speaker 1: and it's got a head and a tail, and it's
Speaker 1: it's very differentiated. Uh. Complex morphology arises on Earth, I
Speaker 1: think as a reaction to complex environments. Right, Like if
Speaker 1: you look at all the body parts on an animal,
Speaker 1: these are parts that have arisen in response to different
Speaker 1: qualities and challenges of the environment in which the animal evolved.
Speaker 1: Animals need to I mean not all animals. I guess
Speaker 1: there were sessile animals, but most animals that move they've
Speaker 1: had these different parts because they need to move around
Speaker 1: and do different types of things. They have different types
Speaker 1: of predators and prey, etcetera. The asteroid in the Empire
Speaker 1: strikes Back does not seem to me to be a
Speaker 1: complex environment, like so if anything was living there in reality,
Speaker 1: I feel like I could more easily imagine a sort
Speaker 1: of map of bacteria just harvesting radiation on the surface
Speaker 1: of the asteroid rather than rather than like a complex,
Speaker 1: differentiated large animal. But that that makes me think, well,
Speaker 1: what if these organisms didn't first evolve in space? But
Speaker 1: this is this is sort of a transplant operation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this would seem to make more sense, right, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea that it's it's worm shaped because this worm shape
Speaker 1: that it has once served it well in a non
Speaker 1: asteroid environment exactly. So, I think all of our listeners
Speaker 1: now probably know about the animal I'm about to bring up,
Speaker 1: but but it's worth revisiting the details. The mighty tarte grade,
Speaker 1: also known as the water bearer, a truly all inspiring organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're absolutely incredible. Tarte Grades are animals. They're not
Speaker 1: bacteria or fungus. They are animals like us. They're even
Speaker 1: bilateral animals. They have bilateral symmetry like we do. So
Speaker 1: they're not like sponges. But they are extremely tiny tarte
Speaker 1: grades are ubiquitous within Earth's biosphere. You'll find them on
Speaker 1: the highest mountain peaks, in marine caves, in moss in Antarctica.
Speaker 1: They're basically everywhere, and as far as I can find
Speaker 1: evidence of they are the only known animal that has
Speaker 1: been documented to survive prolonged exposure to the raw vacuum
Speaker 1: of space, and they do it apparently by taking specific
Speaker 1: steps to avoid some of the nastiness that we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier when we were talking about humans being exposed
Speaker 1: to a vacuum. Now, of course one of their main
Speaker 1: defense mechanisms has got to be just that they're they're
Speaker 1: so cute, Like they imagined that one day they would
Speaker 1: be discovered by humans, and if they were not so cute,
Speaker 1: we would not take so kindly to to uh to
Speaker 1: finding out that this is really their planet and we're
Speaker 1: just on it um. But they're they're so adorable, you
Speaker 1: you kind of don't get Earth jealous. Yeah, the what
Speaker 1: was the German description that the decline uh vassa baron
Speaker 1: the tiny water bears, yeah, or the little moss piglets
Speaker 1: some people. Yeah, they look like across I think I've
Speaker 1: seen somewhere described as a cross between a caterpillar and
Speaker 1: a teddy bear. That's pretty accurate. I keep seeing them
Speaker 1: pop up in animated shows recently. Really. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: was watching the show with the Fam and there was
Speaker 1: a race of creatures in another world that were clearly
Speaker 1: based on on water bears. And then there was another
Speaker 1: cartoon we were watching where they were like futuristic mutated
Speaker 1: water bears that live in the water and if they
Speaker 1: get in the water, you drink the water, then they
Speaker 1: get in your brain and start controlling you stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Clearly they strike a chord. Yeah, I mean there's something
Speaker 1: about the way they look and the way that we've
Speaker 1: already started describing them that, um it lends itself well
Speaker 1: to further imagination. Yeah. So about their hardiness and ability
Speaker 1: to survive, to survive a vacuum. I was reading a
Speaker 1: New York Times article about water bears by corn Melia Dean,
Speaker 1: and this article discusses the tarte grad's ability to survive
Speaker 1: unbelievably harsh environmental conditions. So, if a tartar grade encounters
Speaker 1: extreme drought or sudden changes in temperature or water salinity,
Speaker 1: or other types of environmental threats, the tartar grade can
Speaker 1: enter a kind of hibernation state where it's metabolism throttles
Speaker 1: down to zero point zero one percent of its standard rate,
Speaker 1: so that's one ten thousand of its regular metabolism. During
Speaker 1: this process, almost all of the water content is avoided
Speaker 1: out of the tartar grade's body, and the tartar grade
Speaker 1: curls up into this dehydrated shell state called a ton
Speaker 1: spelled t u n so. Cornelia Deane writes, quote, tons
Speaker 1: can be subjected to atmospheric pressure six hundred times the
Speaker 1: surface of Earth and they will bounce right back. They
Speaker 1: can be chilled to more than three hundred degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 1: below zero for more than a year, no problem. The
Speaker 1: your p and Space Agency once sent tons into space.
Speaker 1: Two thirds survived simultaneous exposure to solar radiation and the
Speaker 1: vacuum of space. This is not something that can be
Speaker 1: said of any other animal that I know about. I
Speaker 1: think this is the only one we're aware of, and
Speaker 1: it really seems like this dehydration is one of the
Speaker 1: main keys to survival in the state, because with all
Speaker 1: the water evacuated, you won't get these rapid boiling and
Speaker 1: freezing effects of water content that can occur in space
Speaker 1: that led to some of the really gross outcomes we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. In fact, the evacuation of the
Speaker 1: water content, counterintuitively apparently even affects the Tarte grades ability
Speaker 1: to survive exposure to extreme radiation. You wouldn't think those
Speaker 1: things were correlated, but Dean writes, quote, when cosmic radiation
Speaker 1: hits water in a cell, it produces a highly reactive
Speaker 1: form of oxygen that damages cell d n A. The
Speaker 1: ton doesn't have this problem. Tons have been reconstituted after
Speaker 1: more than a century and brought back to life as
Speaker 1: tartar grades looking not a day older. So no frozen
Speaker 1: tongue for the tartar grade and no radiation damage either.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're looking for a candidate for
Speaker 1: something that could possibly take hold of life in the void,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying a tart grade could like take up
Speaker 1: life on an asteroid. It seems like eventually it would
Speaker 1: just like its window for life would close. But using
Speaker 1: our imaginations here and this might be trending in the
Speaker 1: right direction, And I want to take it a step further,
Speaker 1: because did you know that there are probably Tarta grades
Speaker 1: on the Moon not native to the Moon. I want
Speaker 1: to be very clear, they're from Earth, but they're on
Speaker 1: the Moon now, possibly still alive, and in this this
Speaker 1: ton state just awaiting the possibility to get splashed with
Speaker 1: water again. Right. So I was reading about this in
Speaker 1: an article on vox by Brian Resnick called Tartar Grades
Speaker 1: the toughest animals on Earth have crash landed on the Moon. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was from twenty nineteen, and it covers the fact
Speaker 1: that I think this is actually drawing from an article
Speaker 1: that was Gulian Wired in twenty nineteen that had some
Speaker 1: interviews with the people involved. But the short version is
Speaker 1: that in April of nineteen, there was a lunar lander
Speaker 1: called a Baracheet, which was scheduled to become the first
Speaker 1: privately funded spacecraft ever to land on the Moon. It
Speaker 1: was originally a competitor for the Google Lunar X Prize,
Speaker 1: with that window had passed, but the mission was still
Speaker 1: scheduled and it was controlled by a group called Israel
Speaker 1: Aerospace Industries that was based out of Yehoo Di Israel,
Speaker 1: and after landing on the surface, it was planned to
Speaker 1: take some readings of the Moon's magnetism, but Unfortunately, there
Speaker 1: was a mission failure. There was a critical computer error
Speaker 1: I think during its descent or before, and the probe
Speaker 1: ended up crash landing on the Moon. And so you
Speaker 1: would think, okay, well the craft was destroyed, end of story.
Speaker 1: But there was something on the craft. There was something
Speaker 1: much of interest aboard. There was a small installation created
Speaker 1: by a group called the arch Mission Foundation, and speaking
Speaker 1: to Daniel Oberhouse of Wired, the group claims that they
Speaker 1: believed their cargo may have survived the crash, and their
Speaker 1: cargo it included several things. I mean, the idea was
Speaker 1: they were trying to send up to the Moon a
Speaker 1: record of Earth civilization that could last for billions of years.
Speaker 1: So maybe like if humanity goes extinct and aliens ever
Speaker 1: get to the Moon, they could find some records of
Speaker 1: Earth from this little from this little installation on this
Speaker 1: lunar lander. And so part of it was a library
Speaker 1: of information that was etched onto a nickel metal disc
Speaker 1: that had like a bunch of English Wikipedia pages and
Speaker 1: some some classic books. But it also had samples of
Speaker 1: human tissue like human blood, and it had tarte grades.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I hope they screenshotted essentially screenshot at Wikipedia
Speaker 1: at a time when there were no like trolley entries
Speaker 1: at a incorrect information because there's a cut off period
Speaker 1: there and now it's it's up there on the moon,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah. I wonder how many uh citation needed
Speaker 1: tags the aliens are going to run into. But to
Speaker 1: read from Resinus article here quote, many of those tarte
Speaker 1: grades are coated in a protective resin, much like how
Speaker 1: amber preserves long dead mosquitoes that were once trapped in
Speaker 1: tree sap. According to Wired, a co creator of the
Speaker 1: library believes the disc survived the crash. In the best
Speaker 1: case scenario, Barascheet ejected the Archmission Foundation's Lunar Library during
Speaker 1: impact and it lies in one piece somewhere near the
Speaker 1: crash site. Wired reports, so water bears on the Moon
Speaker 1: at least potentially may maybe still viable. So I would
Speaker 1: say this is still not super plausible if you're if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be really strict about it, But to play
Speaker 1: our hand as far as we can, I'm going to
Speaker 1: say that I think the Exo Gorth was originally some
Speaker 1: type of extremely hardy water bear type creature that crash
Speaker 1: landed via spaceship on an asteroid and a heavily populated
Speaker 1: stretch of space and somehow adapted to the new environment
Speaker 1: over millions of years of evolution. I'm still not quite
Speaker 1: sure how it survives without an atmosphere. That doesn't seem
Speaker 1: very possible, because while the tarte grade can for a while,
Speaker 1: it's only able to survive that through entering this cryptobiotic
Speaker 1: state the ton uh So it's it's harder to imagine
Speaker 1: an organism do in its life and doing full metabolism
Speaker 1: while simultaneously being exposed to the vacuum um. Maybe if
Speaker 1: the exo gorth and the my knock have some kind
Speaker 1: of biology that allows them to live without water content,
Speaker 1: because it seems like one of the main problems with
Speaker 1: being exposed to the vacuum and trying to live is
Speaker 1: that the organisms were thinking of are sort of heterogeneous
Speaker 1: mixtures of different states of matter. They've got some gas contents,
Speaker 1: some liquid content, and some solid content, and that that
Speaker 1: just doesn't all hold together super well when exposed to
Speaker 1: a vacuum. The low pressure messes with your liquid and
Speaker 1: your gas contents. Plus, I mean, I can't honestly say
Speaker 1: that it seems like the exo Gorth in the movie
Speaker 1: is all is purged of water because I think, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned, it's got fog and it's in its belly,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's very swampy in there. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: a dry heat um. You know, it almost as a
Speaker 1: sonotype environment. It would be interesting to see if there
Speaker 1: was like a treatment of this where where one of
Speaker 1: these exo Goths is actually like a vacation destination where
Speaker 1: you you know, you go to just sweat it out.
Speaker 1: But as far as I know that that does not
Speaker 1: currently exist. Another awesome idea that man, they should hire
Speaker 1: you to write one of these upcoming movies. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: go that far um at any rate. The Exo go
Speaker 1: certainly one of the cooler alien monster type species that
Speaker 1: that we discover in the Star Wars movies, and a
Speaker 1: great reveal as well. Always love that scene where you
Speaker 1: finally see the whole thing like just you know, leaping
Speaker 1: out of that hole in the asteroid trying to grab
Speaker 1: the millennium falcon. I love how it bends over as
Speaker 1: it bites. Yeah, and I guess another thing that's wonderful
Speaker 1: about it is that it's not certainly not a cheap
Speaker 1: creation like it has they put a lot of skill
Speaker 1: and a lot of love into creating it. But it
Speaker 1: also kind of looks like an oven mit, you know,
Speaker 1: so it it has this, it's it's basic um body
Speaker 1: shape is uh is a big hand puppet, you know,
Speaker 1: but but they make it into something that is uh
Speaker 1: you know that it goes beyond hand puppets. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it's still kind of simultaneously hits both
Speaker 1: those uh uh those frequencies For me, I love it.
Speaker 1: Give me more monsters like that puppets models, uh instead
Speaker 1: of the computer animation. Please. All right, well, I think
Speaker 1: we have time for at least one more uh consideration
Speaker 1: here in the episode. So for my selection for today,
Speaker 1: basically I went to my son and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: Joe and I are doing these episodes on creatures from
Speaker 1: the Star Wars world. What should we cover? And without
Speaker 1: any deliberation, he said, toe grout Is. He's been obsessed
Speaker 1: with toe groot Is over the past year, often discussing
Speaker 1: their key anatomical features, their leak wu and their mon trails. Uh,
Speaker 1: just wondering aloud, what do they feel like? What do
Speaker 1: you know? What is there? How flexible are they? What? Um,
Speaker 1: how do they move? As the as individual toe groutes
Speaker 1: get older and so forth, and so it was a
Speaker 1: very popular discussion area. So I owe it to him
Speaker 1: to consider them. Here. Now are these the creatures? These
Speaker 1: are humanoid creatures, right, so they're they're like sentient humanoid,
Speaker 1: not like some space monster. And they have a kind
Speaker 1: of they have a biological feature that kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a long hat or head dress. Yep, they have Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have these, uh, these appendages on their head that
Speaker 1: do look like head dress and certainly strike that that
Speaker 1: chord when you're looking at them, and they are yeah,
Speaker 1: so basically, yeah, that you have two different sets. So
Speaker 1: you have the man trails and these are two large
Speaker 1: cone like horns on the top of their head, sometimes
Speaker 1: said to be hollow. And then you have the leaku.
Speaker 1: These are three fleshy appendages also called head tails that
Speaker 1: protrude downward, two on either side beneath the montrels, and
Speaker 1: one behind the head. Uh. These are sometimes compared to
Speaker 1: the head appendages of the Twilights, which I believe you're
Speaker 1: familiar with these from Return of the Jedi, Yes, from
Speaker 1: Jab of the Huts, little lackey guy. Yeah. But while
Speaker 1: the leaku of the twilex uh, you know, are are
Speaker 1: supposed to contribute to communication, like they have like subtle
Speaker 1: movements that they make with them. Uh. The Leaku of
Speaker 1: the toe Gruta seem mostly motionless, though with varying degrees
Speaker 1: of rigidity. They might have to do with age or
Speaker 1: environmental conditions or in many cases like what you know,
Speaker 1: what what degree of flexibility is inherent in the makeup,
Speaker 1: special effects or in the computer animations being used. You know,
Speaker 1: this is funny because I was sort of considering picking
Speaker 1: the Twilight actually because I was thinking about, oh, the
Speaker 1: weird like head tails, those things, until I saw you
Speaker 1: had picked this. So I feel like we got our
Speaker 1: head tail bases covered. You're gonna be the Leku and
Speaker 1: Montrale's expert here. I feel like there's a little more
Speaker 1: to talk about with with the tagrudas because you have
Speaker 1: you have these two different features going on. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: in case you don't know, you're not you don't know
Speaker 1: offhand who I'm talking about with the dogrutas, I should
Speaker 1: point out the two most notable togrutas in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars galaxy, both of whom were Jedi. So there's Jedi
Speaker 1: Masters Shocked tie UH hero general of the Clone Wars
Speaker 1: and UH she fought in pivotal battles on Genosis, Camino,
Speaker 1: and Corrassant and served as the Jedi representative on the
Speaker 1: world of Camino. And she was killed at the close
Speaker 1: of the Clone Wars by Darth Vader. But the even
Speaker 1: more famous Uh toe groot of character is Jedi Commander
Speaker 1: as Katano, hero of the Clone Wars, later a rebel operative. UH.
Speaker 1: She was the padawan of Anakin Skywalker. And she was
Speaker 1: voiced by Ashley Extein on the Clone Wars and later
Speaker 1: played in live action by Rossario Dawson. I would say
Speaker 1: she's not only the most beloved Star Wars character of
Speaker 1: the modern era, but probably at this point one of
Speaker 1: the most beloved Star Wars characters of all time. Like,
Speaker 1: she's she's up there? Wait, why do I not know
Speaker 1: this character? What does she? What does she? What properties
Speaker 1: is she from? So she pops up in the Clone
Speaker 1: Wars animated series. Um, the long the long run, not
Speaker 1: the initial one. Um, you know that that was very
Speaker 1: short form. This is the uh, the later one, the
Speaker 1: computer animated version. Oh, I mean I like, I like
Speaker 1: all the the Clone Wars animated, but but yeah, this
Speaker 1: one was was particularly good. Enjoyed going through all that
Speaker 1: with my son over the past years. But yeah, she's
Speaker 1: introduced in that series early on as as Anakin's padawan,
Speaker 1: and you follow her throughout this whole series. She kind
Speaker 1: of grows up and then as you know, as a
Speaker 1: as an adult. She's a character in the Rebels series,
Speaker 1: and she finally popped up as a live action character
Speaker 1: in the second season of The Mandalorian and she's gonna
Speaker 1: have her own spin off series, etcetera. She's in all
Speaker 1: the stuff I haven't seen, right, right, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's just a really well fleshed out character. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: just a strong female character and uh, an alien character
Speaker 1: with a lot of depth to them. You know, so
Speaker 1: often in the Star Wars universe where we're just focusing
Speaker 1: on the human characters amid the aliens, and here we
Speaker 1: have one of the aliens. Yeah, I mean, you gotta
Speaker 1: love Han Solo, Princess Lea and all them, but we've
Speaker 1: got enough humans. I'm gonna have some real creatures as heroes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So coming back to their biology, Yeah, for the most part,
Speaker 1: they're they're very, very human, but they do have these
Speaker 1: mon trials and the leeku, So what are they doing? What?
Speaker 1: What are they for? Well, as far as the leeku go, again,
Speaker 1: they seem to play a role in communication uh in
Speaker 1: other species, but not so in the toegrew or they
Speaker 1: don't seem to to move around or anything. Now, they
Speaker 1: do seem to grow throughout their life. And there does
Speaker 1: seem to be some degree of sexual dimorphism in that
Speaker 1: they're longer in females than in males. Um. So obviously
Speaker 1: they could have evolved to aid in mate selection to
Speaker 1: communicate fitness to potential mates. Uh. They are quite colorful
Speaker 1: and I cut catching after all. Uh. And you know
Speaker 1: we see this in the wattles of various bird species
Speaker 1: for instance. And uh, I think I think leeku are
Speaker 1: quite comparable to waddles uh in other species like goats, however,
Speaker 1: wattles or castles, as have sometimes known, are generally thought
Speaker 1: to have no purpose. I was reading about this in
Speaker 1: a book book by Sue Weaver titled The Goat Just
Speaker 1: all about goats and how they work? Yea about the
Speaker 1: parts that have no purpose? Yeah, pretty much. It seems
Speaker 1: it seems as if wattles or tassels have no purpose.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that you have this feature in this
Speaker 1: alien humanoid species that ultimately has no purpose. But maybe
Speaker 1: but you know, is a part of of of their
Speaker 1: anatomy and is you know, factored into their own ideas
Speaker 1: of beauty and representation. Now, as for the montrals, we
Speaker 1: have a far more specific purpose in the Star Wars lore. Uh,
Speaker 1: they allow an individual to sense the movement of objects
Speaker 1: around them through echolocation and um in consens up to
Speaker 1: eighty two feet or roughly twenty fives Now. Echolocation is
Speaker 1: of course the location of objects by reflected sound, used
Speaker 1: in a number of terrestrial birds and mammals, either used
Speaker 1: in the hunting of prey or in the navigation of
Speaker 1: their environments such as trees and caves. Um. Now, I
Speaker 1: was looking around it some possible parallels, and I think
Speaker 1: a good comparison for the to gruta might actually be
Speaker 1: the shrew, which uses that colocation quote for habitat assessment
Speaker 1: at close range, according to why do Shrew's twitter communication
Speaker 1: or simple echo based orientation by Siemens at All published
Speaker 1: in the Royal Society Biology Letters from two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: So again, this would be a situation where the shrew
Speaker 1: or perhaps that took ruta is not using its echolocation
Speaker 1: like say like a bat, you know, to hunt in
Speaker 1: a you know, a nighttime environment. They would be using
Speaker 1: it more as a way to assist in their understanding
Speaker 1: of their immediate environment. Now, okay, so we were with
Speaker 1: these possible echolocation horns again we're talking about the montrels
Speaker 1: on the took rudas. But this actually come brings us
Speaker 1: back to the leak of those uh those those tales
Speaker 1: that are hanging down um because sometimes waddles are used
Speaker 1: by organisms such as the umbrella bird to aid in
Speaker 1: the production of sounds. So perhaps that's what's going on
Speaker 1: with the took root as well. I don't think we
Speaker 1: ever see or hear at too groot of doing this,
Speaker 1: but I was wondering if possibly, like that's the reason
Speaker 1: for this combination of headgear, like the leakup would have
Speaker 1: been used at least originally to create sounds that would
Speaker 1: aid in echolocation that was then picked up by the montrels.
Speaker 1: Oh like you also see I think in some marine mammals,
Speaker 1: like some of the equipment on the front of their
Speaker 1: head is not just used for receiving the sounds, but
Speaker 1: for producing the sounds. Yeah, so so again there's nothing.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything in the shows too to
Speaker 1: support this idea. Maybe it's somebody's written about it, uh
Speaker 1: and gone to this this area. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, okay, on one hand, maybe it's
Speaker 1: simply out of our range of hearing as a supposedly
Speaker 1: you know, human viewer of this space drama. Um. Or
Speaker 1: it could have to do with the fact that the
Speaker 1: two to grooted that we spend the most time with
Speaker 1: our our our fourth sensitive and their Jedi trained, so
Speaker 1: perhaps most of the time they have little use for
Speaker 1: these um more archaic since features, but then again for sensitivity.
Speaker 1: Would you know it would open up a new sense
Speaker 1: realm for an individual, But I don't mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that would mean you would just completely abandon
Speaker 1: another sense realm, you know, even if it was decreased
Speaker 1: or or partially um you know, atrophied, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: due to evolution. Well, you know, I think about in
Speaker 1: the very first Star Wars movie, how a large part
Speaker 1: of what the forces shown to do is to aid
Speaker 1: in the guidance of actions without the use of senses.
Speaker 1: So when when Luke is training with Obi Wan Kenobi
Speaker 1: while they're on the way to the Death Star, they
Speaker 1: put the blast shield down on the helmet so that
Speaker 1: he can't see the remote while he's training with it,
Speaker 1: he's supposed to be able to tell what's there without
Speaker 1: using his primary sense of his eyes. Same way, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he turns off his targeting computer when he's
Speaker 1: aiming the proton torpedoes into the death Star. He somehow
Speaker 1: is is abandoning or surrendering is either natural or technologically
Speaker 1: aided senses in in almost as a kind of supplication
Speaker 1: to the power of the force. Right, It's like you
Speaker 1: put the blast shield down or you turn off the
Speaker 1: targeting computer as a sign of faith. Is showing that
Speaker 1: you you truly forsake these senses and you trust the
Speaker 1: force totally. Well, there you go, there's there's precedent for
Speaker 1: it after all. So anyway, it's a fun exercise I
Speaker 1: think to you know, to look at something like that
Speaker 1: on a on a fictional alien species that you know
Speaker 1: it's clearly there, mostly because it looks cool, but try
Speaker 1: to imagine what what could it have done? What what
Speaker 1: could its purpose actually be? And again some of it
Speaker 1: is baked into the cannon already, the idea that there
Speaker 1: is some of these worst sense features of some sort.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's fun to then try and break
Speaker 1: it down further and imagine exactly what they were doing
Speaker 1: and what it would be like, uh to have uh,
Speaker 1: those those montreles and leku um, you know, without getting
Speaker 1: into my son's additional concerns over well, what do they
Speaker 1: feel like? How flexible? I'm sorry, this is unacceptable. We
Speaker 1: need an answer, Rob, What do they feel like? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess you could say, what does the
Speaker 1: wattle of a bird or or the tassels of a goat?
Speaker 1: What do they feel like? I guess they would be
Speaker 1: kind of fleshy and awesome. Um yeah, the horns would
Speaker 1: be kind of rigid. Uh yeah, And I guess it
Speaker 1: would depend on, you know, how how old they are
Speaker 1: and how you know, if they did they lotion? Do
Speaker 1: they lotion? There? There they're leaku enough to keep them,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, from getting too dried out.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like the self care manuals for
Speaker 1: the tokruta. It's like, hey, you know, remember to oil
Speaker 1: your oil your leaku don well, the Jedi tended. They
Speaker 1: seem to take pretty good care of themselves. How often
Speaker 1: you see like a truly scruffy Jedi, That's true. One
Speaker 1: thing I always noticed, Obi Wan Kenobi's beard is so
Speaker 1: well trimmed and sculpted. Yeah, I think you just have
Speaker 1: that extra you have that extra time on your hands,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, you know, even as even as an
Speaker 1: old Jedi, he took the time. Yodo was pretty scruffy, um,
Speaker 1: especially towards the end, but he was ancient, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he's earned it. Okay, should we call part one there?
Speaker 1: Because we've got plenty more alien the cropsies from the
Speaker 1: Star Wars universe to to come back and explore next time.
Speaker 1: That's right, we have there's a more fun specimens to
Speaker 1: discuss and to die sect. Uh So in the meantime,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone, what are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on on giant Star Wars space worms and uh fleshy
Speaker 1: appendages to alien species? Uh, you know, let us know
Speaker 1: of anything we missed, any details uh that we're not
Speaker 1: aware of from from Cannon or extended universe that might
Speaker 1: uh you know, further fill in some of the holes
Speaker 1: here and uh yeah, In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: such as the past episodes where we talked about the
Speaker 1: Death Star blowing things up or or or certainly the
Speaker 1: Mighty Star Lack, you can find them in the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed, which you can find
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: We just asked the rate review and subscribe huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio produce Sir Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
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