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