Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, Little Green
Speaker 1: Men taught me how to do the bop. I'm Jonvin
Speaker 1: Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about life beyond the bounds of yeah, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about in a couple of episodes before, but we're
Speaker 1: specifically talking about how do we search for life and
Speaker 1: and be sure that we found it and that it
Speaker 1: definitely came from capital somewhere capital else. Yeah. We're not
Speaker 1: just talking about alien life, but alien life that we
Speaker 1: definitely didn't put there. Yeah. Yeah. So this is important
Speaker 1: because of multiple things. One, we're very curious about whether
Speaker 1: or not there is life outside of our planet. The
Speaker 1: odds are pretty good, considering the vastness of the universe
Speaker 1: that life also exists somewhere else. Whether it exists somewhere
Speaker 1: within our detectable range of view is another question. And
Speaker 1: then we also are hoping to maybe even learn more
Speaker 1: about the origins of life on Earth, particularly from any
Speaker 1: indications of life on our our nearby neighboring planetary and
Speaker 1: moon bodies. Right, yeah, I mean one thing that would
Speaker 1: be interesting would be if you go to other objects
Speaker 1: in the Solar System and you find life forms there
Speaker 1: that are based in DNA. You could say, ah, this
Speaker 1: may be a piece of evidence for the theory that
Speaker 1: DNA precedes the evolution of or the origin of all life. Right.
Speaker 1: The DNA is a necessary component. You didn't have it
Speaker 1: the other way around. You didn't have life that it
Speaker 1: eventually got. DNA is a molecule. But there's another way
Speaker 1: you could read finding life with DNA, which is that
Speaker 1: what if it just came from some other DNA based life? Right?
Speaker 1: What if? What if we also thought we had discovered
Speaker 1: the smoking DNA gun on a surface such as Mars,
Speaker 1: only to find out, much to our chagrin later on,
Speaker 1: that whoops a daisy, it actually hits a ride on
Speaker 1: the very probe we sent there, and in fact came
Speaker 1: from you know, uh, dubuke, debuke, quite debuke, just random place. Well,
Speaker 1: then let's say it came from Peoria, okay, our Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Speaker 1: No matter where it comes from. That this is more
Speaker 1: than just a problem of like corrupting our data samples
Speaker 1: and our senses of childlike wonder. Uh. You know, if
Speaker 1: we bring earth life along with us to a place,
Speaker 1: how can we be sure that we won't be committing
Speaker 1: unintentional genocide on whatever life forms might happen to be
Speaker 1: native to that place to begin with? Right, So this
Speaker 1: this is sort of the problem of something like kud
Speaker 1: zoo here in the southeast. Right. Kud Zoo is not
Speaker 1: native to the southeast United States, but anyone who has
Speaker 1: spent any time, particularly north of Atlanta, is very familiar
Speaker 1: with kud zoo. It's this creeping vine. It was brought
Speaker 1: in specifically to try and help curtail erosion on hillsides.
Speaker 1: I know this because the place where I grew up
Speaker 1: absolutely covered and cut zoo over one place. I very
Speaker 1: often see it, especially in my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and I go back there is in like former construction
Speaker 1: sites and digging sites, places where there have been a
Speaker 1: large large sections of earth carried away by earth movers
Speaker 1: are flattened. Then there will, you know, years later, be
Speaker 1: kud zoo all over it. I specifically remember a telephone
Speaker 1: pole outside of Oakwood, Georgia, which is where I grew
Speaker 1: up that because of the way the vines had grown
Speaker 1: up the pole and along some of the wires, it
Speaker 1: looked like Godzilla, and so we called it Cudzilla. And uh,
Speaker 1: but the point that I'm making here is that cuts
Speaker 1: do is is an invasive species that has killed a
Speaker 1: lot of the native plants by covering them up. You know,
Speaker 1: it's competing for the same resources, right, and it's a
Speaker 1: really effective and growing exactly. So the fear is that
Speaker 1: we could potentially bring something from Earth to another planet
Speaker 1: where it would be uh capable of adapting to those
Speaker 1: conditions and edging out any sort of indigenous life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is the subject that we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about today typically goes under the name interplanetary contamination
Speaker 1: exactly for the process, and we're also going to be
Speaker 1: talking about the process of trying to prevent this, which
Speaker 1: is often known as planetary protection. Yeah. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like a microbial version of the prime directive. The prime
Speaker 1: directive of course being in star trek, the thing where
Speaker 1: you say that you will do no harm, that you
Speaker 1: will not interact with with other stuff there, with other
Speaker 1: life forms out there, unless like it's really important or
Speaker 1: there's like a chick you want to get up with,
Speaker 1: or exactly unless the PLU calls for it, right, totally, totally,
Speaker 1: but but at a microbial level, you know, that's basically
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, so we're not talking about bringing
Speaker 1: life forms like multicellular complex organisms like rabbits, and the
Speaker 1: probe isn't going to be having an infestation of badgers.
Speaker 1: I mean, honey badgers are are a real problem, especially
Speaker 1: in Far Cry four, but maybe water bears though, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: there you go. But now we're we're specifically telling about
Speaker 1: microbial life and or or things that aren't even life
Speaker 1: yet but would be very interesting if we were to
Speaker 1: find them in a place other than Earth, like what
Speaker 1: they call organic molecules, right, the building blocks that indicate
Speaker 1: perhaps the presence or uh the one, one time presence
Speaker 1: of life, and maybe that the things we discover on
Speaker 1: other planets aren't life but are rather remnants of what
Speaker 1: used to be life sure, or or you know, write
Speaker 1: all that DNA stuff that we were talking about, uh
Speaker 1: earlier in this very episode and also for a couple
Speaker 1: episodes before this. You know, either amino acids or nucleo bases,
Speaker 1: nuclear tides, whatever you want to call them that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, and uh, or I mean something as
Speaker 1: simple as methane, right, sure, yeah, something that that's considered
Speaker 1: an organic moloch exactly. So interplanetary contamination, it actually works
Speaker 1: both ways. We'll talk about that a little bit more
Speaker 1: later on. But there is like forward contamination and backward contamination,
Speaker 1: and that essentially means are we taking stuff to another
Speaker 1: planet or are we bringing stuff back to our planet
Speaker 1: from somewhere else. But interplanetary contamination is a big deal.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's something that lots of smart people have
Speaker 1: talked about, and in fact, there are agreements between nations
Speaker 1: not to do that thing. Uh. The Outer Space Treaty,
Speaker 1: which we have talked about multiple times on this show. Right,
Speaker 1: we've talked about Outer Space Treaty for as far as
Speaker 1: it goes with the idea of can you own property
Speaker 1: in space, the idea that the Moon is no one
Speaker 1: property you just because you put a flag there. The
Speaker 1: answer is yes, you can if you buy it from me, right,
Speaker 1: if you're, if you're not, if you're, if you're not
Speaker 1: too upset about handing money over to a total scam artist,
Speaker 1: you two can own landscape on the moon. Uh. So
Speaker 1: for The Outer Space Treaty actually has a section that
Speaker 1: covers the idea of interplanetary contamination, and its specifically reads
Speaker 1: UH that states parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies
Speaker 1: of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies,
Speaker 1: and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their
Speaker 1: harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of
Speaker 1: the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter, and
Speaker 1: where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose. Now
Speaker 1: that's specifically backwards contamination. Well, it mentions both. It mentions
Speaker 1: forward and backward contamination. So it says that we will
Speaker 1: avoid quote they're harmful contamination. They're referring to the Moon
Speaker 1: and other celestial bodies. And then it also says, don't
Speaker 1: don't mess up Earth when you come back, which is
Speaker 1: what happens, of course in Dawn of the Dead or
Speaker 1: not neither the Living Dead. Yes, a space probe returning
Speaker 1: from Venus comes into the atmosphere and then and then
Speaker 1: hilarity ensues. Yeah, some sleepy people decided to have a party.
Speaker 1: They're coming to get you, Barbara. In addition, the Committee
Speaker 1: on Space Research, also known as Coast bar has created
Speaker 1: the Coast bar Planetary Protection Policy, using the Outer Space
Speaker 1: Treaty as sort of their starting point. And here in
Speaker 1: the United States, NASA has a division that's dedicated to
Speaker 1: this pursuit as well. It's called the Planetary Protection Office.
Speaker 1: Its slogan is all of the planets, all of the time,
Speaker 1: which you know is an ambitious at all. You know, like,
Speaker 1: no no pressure there, NASA. You can fool all of
Speaker 1: the planets some of the time, some of the planets
Speaker 1: all the time, but you can't fool all the planets
Speaker 1: all the time. Also, it just reminds me of that
Speaker 1: of that hyperbole and a half quote to clean all
Speaker 1: the things, like clean all the planets. Yes, but so
Speaker 1: we mentioned there are two main types of planetary contamination.
Speaker 1: It can be either going out or coming in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the going out part we'll talk about more detail soon.
Speaker 1: The coming back part, Uh, that's that's something that's already happened, right,
Speaker 1: We brought samples back from the Moon. Sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you believe NASA that we've been there, well, I
Speaker 1: mean I want to put you in a very uh,
Speaker 1: very frustrating scenario. Imagine you have just been to outer
Speaker 1: space and you made it back to Earth safely, and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my god, I went to outer space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I want some mac and cheese. I want to
Speaker 1: hug my dog. Like no, nope, you are going to
Speaker 1: sit in a container and wait for a long time,
Speaker 1: for like a month. Yeah. So in the Apollo missions, uh,
Speaker 1: the returning equipment and astronauts had to undergo a thirty
Speaker 1: day quarantine period after each time, after each mission, just
Speaker 1: to make certain that nothing brought back would be harmful
Speaker 1: to life here on Earth, because he can't be too careful.
Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty people were pretty sure that there
Speaker 1: wouldn't be anything incredibly dangerous, but you don't know. It
Speaker 1: may be that the soils would have contained some sort
Speaker 1: of highly dangerous carcinogen or something. Yeah, better safe than sorry.
Speaker 1: This is funny. I mean I what I just said
Speaker 1: was based on what the Apollo astronauts had to do.
Speaker 1: What what is the process? Now? So let's say you
Speaker 1: return from the I S. S. Do you have to
Speaker 1: go through quarantine today? I'm sure there's I know there's
Speaker 1: a period of observation, but it's like a couple of days.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's as long as thirty days because
Speaker 1: you're not typically bringing anything back with you that's extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: in nature, right, you are aboard the I S S. Now,
Speaker 1: there might be some some pretty far out people on
Speaker 1: the I S S. But they aren't so far out
Speaker 1: as to be not of this Earth. Yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 1: uh and and as long as you're not demonstrating like
Speaker 1: a clear case of space madness, it just takes me
Speaker 1: back to ren and stimpy with the creamy new Guta Center.
Speaker 1: So uh so the obviously creepy pasta obviously. Uh we'd
Speaker 1: also love to get our hands on any kind of
Speaker 1: life that originated from outside of the Earth. But if
Speaker 1: we were to do so, our hands, grimy, grimy hands
Speaker 1: are metaphorical hands, literal complex instrumentation hands, right, So we'd
Speaker 1: love to be able to take possession of life that
Speaker 1: originated from outside of our our own planetary home, right,
Speaker 1: but that obviously could come with a substantial risk, lots
Speaker 1: of different risks. We could in fact have the opposite
Speaker 1: of what we were talking about earlier, where you know,
Speaker 1: if we were to bring something from Earth to another
Speaker 1: planet and it were to uh to to really multiply
Speaker 1: in an uncontrollable fashion, the same thing could put ventually
Speaker 1: happened bringing something from another planet back here on Earth,
Speaker 1: and that could be bad. So uh, most people say
Speaker 1: that the obvious solution for that is to use a
Speaker 1: system of containment that you never allow whatever it was
Speaker 1: you brought back from another planet to escape a controlled, contained,
Speaker 1: you know, uh facility, So which makes perfect sense. You know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be like, hey, we found martian daisies, let's
Speaker 1: plant it on Earth and see what happens next to
Speaker 1: all of our major food crops. There's a school right
Speaker 1: down the road that would really use some some beautifications. Oh,
Speaker 1: the Martian daisies are eating all the small animals. That's
Speaker 1: probably not anything to worry about, you know. And then
Speaker 1: you get some horrible science fiction film, and there are
Speaker 1: a couple of different scenarios we sort of mentioned the
Speaker 1: different ideas. One is that we send a probe out
Speaker 1: to uh, another celestial body, and we end up getting
Speaker 1: some sort of result that suggests that yes, we've found life,
Speaker 1: or we found organic compounds that suggest the presence of life,
Speaker 1: only to find out that whoops, we may have brought
Speaker 1: that with us. So that's one of the really frustrating uncertainty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's something that's happened. It's not like this is
Speaker 1: this is new this or or or just a theory orhypothetic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then there's also the scenario that we've we mentioned before.
Speaker 1: We send a probe there, it brings some sort of
Speaker 1: organic material life forms to a distant body, and then
Speaker 1: they flourish there and edge out any life or eradicate
Speaker 1: any signs of life on that planet, and then we
Speaker 1: never know if life was there or not. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: our microbes are like the europa version of the alien xenomorphs.
Speaker 1: Maybe like everything that they exhale it's just acid and
Speaker 1: it's terrible. Yeah, but I mean, wouldn't it be fun
Speaker 1: to find out? Uh? Then scenario three, of course, is
Speaker 1: that we send some sort of probe or mission someplace,
Speaker 1: it comes back and then we get space Mono and
Speaker 1: there's a George Romero film that breaks out as a result, which,
Speaker 1: while it sounds groovy, is probably not something you actually
Speaker 1: want to live through. I mean, you want to live
Speaker 1: through it, but you don't want to experience it. Right,
Speaker 1: It's preferable overall if it's going to happen. If it's
Speaker 1: going to happen, you want to live through through it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean it really depends. I mean,
Speaker 1: season two of Walking Dead, you probably just wanted to
Speaker 1: be like, just ended. I didn't want to live through that. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we've got this concern that we've articulated now that
Speaker 1: there are multiple reasons we might want to be concerned
Speaker 1: about microbial life being transported from one planetary body or
Speaker 1: solar system object to another um and we can all
Speaker 1: pretty much agree that that's something that could possibly happen
Speaker 1: and that we should be concerned about. But how concerned
Speaker 1: about it should we be? Well, I mean we've already
Speaker 1: seeing people say we can allow something like the Curiosity
Speaker 1: rover to make its way over to locations that are
Speaker 1: theoretically at least within its its range of roving to
Speaker 1: check out potential water because of these very concerns, right,
Speaker 1: because we know that there's stuff on the Curiosity and
Speaker 1: that we we don't want. Yeah, that the Curiosity wasn't
Speaker 1: completely sterile. So because of that, we cannot allow the
Speaker 1: Curiosity Rover to come in contact with the water supply
Speaker 1: and potentially contaminate it. So it's very frustrating because you
Speaker 1: can see where the water is and the rover is
Speaker 1: within range of it, and if you could just get
Speaker 1: over there and and do some measurements, legally speaking, you
Speaker 1: might even be able to tell if there is life
Speaker 1: or or evidence of past life within that area where
Speaker 1: there's water. I mean, that seems like that's gonna be
Speaker 1: our best, our best option of finding something close to
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars, but we can't do it. So
Speaker 1: that's one reason people concerned about it, because we've already
Speaker 1: kind of seen the limitation of what we're able to
Speaker 1: do with the tools that are on Mars right now.
Speaker 1: There's also a pressing concern that the agreements we talked about,
Speaker 1: that official Space treaty, that's an agreement between nations, between governments.
Speaker 1: It's not an agreement between private industries, as many want
Speaker 1: to be. Asteroid miners have frequently reminded us. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: private industry isn't beholden to those same restrictions and could
Speaker 1: potentially go and muck everything up for everybody. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: private space industry, by the way, is poised to get
Speaker 1: huge or huger like soon. Um. You know, we've talked
Speaker 1: about that asteroid exploration thing before and about Mars one before,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure that Mars one is super defunct
Speaker 1: at this point, um, But an announcement from SpaceX this
Speaker 1: very week, the last week of April, indicates that private
Speaker 1: Mars exploration in general is certainly not dead. Elad Musk
Speaker 1: really wants to send an unpersoned Dragon to spacecraft, which
Speaker 1: is the upcoming descendant of the Dragon one spacecraft two
Speaker 1: Mars in eighteen eighteen. Y'all. That's like so soon, um,
Speaker 1: And he's he's putting the pressure on because in teen
Speaker 1: Mars will be just thirty five point eight million miles
Speaker 1: away from Earth and that is the closest we will
Speaker 1: be to the Red planet between now and so. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so soeen might be when private spacecraft touches down on Mars.
Speaker 1: Hat to it, by the way, to Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works Now a new video and podcast series
Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works for for for covering that particular topic.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I've actually heard that. Uh. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if this was a joke or not, but someone
Speaker 1: on Twitter said, did you know Elon Musk wants to
Speaker 1: retire on Mars? And I was thinking, is this real?
Speaker 1: And I never bothered to actually check, but it totally
Speaker 1: sounds like something he would say, even if it were
Speaker 1: just in Jennifer kind of a joke. Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the the point here is that if we are
Speaker 1: going to legislate private companies about this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: we should probably get on that like yesterday. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: obviously these concerns we're talking about if you want to
Speaker 1: answer some pretty big questions like was there ever life
Speaker 1: on Mars? Is there still life on Mars? And other
Speaker 1: celestial bodies. We're using Mars because that's probably the one
Speaker 1: that we're going to be hitting first, but there are
Speaker 1: other like there are there are certain other moons in
Speaker 1: the Solar system that are also potential uh targets for
Speaker 1: for where we think life is most likely to exist
Speaker 1: if it exists elsewhere in our solar system. Um, but
Speaker 1: can we get some legislation in there so that we
Speaker 1: make sure we don't destroy that evidence before we have
Speaker 1: a chance to actually look for it. Well, this sort
Speaker 1: of leads us to the question of what we can
Speaker 1: actually do to prevent it. I mean, just short of
Speaker 1: not ever going to other objects if we're if we're
Speaker 1: going to be right, yeah, if we're going to be
Speaker 1: conjugating with other objects in our Solar system, exploring them
Speaker 1: or even colonizing them. Is it just inevitable that we're
Speaker 1: going to contaminate them with our microbes or are there
Speaker 1: steps we can take to reasonably uh two, with reasonable
Speaker 1: confidence say that we're not doing that right because because
Speaker 1: legislation is lovely, but the practical scientific end has to
Speaker 1: come up with a practical scientific way of making that go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's the thing, spoiler alert folks, because I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and tell you right now, there is
Speaker 1: no way that we can be certain that we can
Speaker 1: explore and certainly not colonize another planet or moon without
Speaker 1: contaminating it to some degree. The other real question is
Speaker 1: how bad would it be. We don't know. But if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be bringing, like especially for colonization, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna be bringing a whole bunch of stuff with you
Speaker 1: that has organic material involved in it, like food, and
Speaker 1: you know us, then not us in this room, I'm
Speaker 1: not going but you know human beings, Well, that's colonization.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should take a step back first and look
Speaker 1: at exploration. Yeah, I mean, even even just a rover
Speaker 1: as we are apt to send out to places we
Speaker 1: have not been before. Um and and and you know,
Speaker 1: so when when we want things to not have bacteria
Speaker 1: on them, we usually sterilize them. And that seems like
Speaker 1: a pretty good thing. Like every time I go in
Speaker 1: to get another facial tattoo, like, you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: some kind of sterilization system in place, right, we can
Speaker 1: blows the cockroach parts off of the needle, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we can we can do we can blow the
Speaker 1: cockroach parts off of rovers as well. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: remind me not to go to your tattoo artist. So
Speaker 1: I was wondering how space agencies do this, and I
Speaker 1: looked it up. Actually, NASA has a page that's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting where it explains its own strategies before for sterilizing
Speaker 1: equipment specifically bound for Mars through the Mars Exploration rover programs,
Speaker 1: and that would include Spirit and opportunity. So objects we
Speaker 1: put on Mars, we had to sterilize them before they went.
Speaker 1: How did we do that? Uh? So this is funny.
Speaker 1: They had a mandate to carry quote no more than
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand bacterial spores on any surface from which
Speaker 1: the spores could get into the Martian environment. I just
Speaker 1: imagine that some poor schmooze job. Who's got a count? Man?
Speaker 1: But come on, that's interesting. The mandate is not perfectly sterile.
Speaker 1: It's no more than three hundred thousand spores. It's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, no box of cereal is completely without rat hair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta have a little you know, one part pavilion.
Speaker 1: That's not so bad. So they've got that mandate, But
Speaker 1: how do they actually accomplish it? Well? While the spacecraft
Speaker 1: are being assembled, First of all, technicians are going to
Speaker 1: be constantly wiping down surfaces with alcohol solution. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is sort of stage one. You just you're constantly wiping
Speaker 1: alcohol on them to sterilize the surfaces, kill whatever microbs
Speaker 1: are there. Uh. And they also conduct microbiology samples to
Speaker 1: make sure there aren't too many organisms present on the
Speaker 1: surfaces at multiple stages along the construction of these spacecraft.
Speaker 1: And then they take all of the heat tolerant components,
Speaker 1: which aren't all of the components, but it's you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the outer ones. They heat tolerant components,
Speaker 1: and they heat them to a hundred ten degrees celsius
Speaker 1: or two and thirty degrees fahrenheit. And then they've also
Speaker 1: got a central box containing the roverse computer and main
Speaker 1: electronic components, and that's kept sealed and all the ventilated
Speaker 1: air that goes through it is heavily filtered to make
Speaker 1: sure that if you've got any microorganisms inside the electronics box,
Speaker 1: they don't get out once they're on the other a
Speaker 1: little little microbe jail, MicroB jail forever. And then they
Speaker 1: also say that on this mission they went out of
Speaker 1: the way to prevent any non sterilized part of the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle from accidentally getting to Mars, which I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting that this is something you do actually have
Speaker 1: to worry about, but they did because so think about
Speaker 1: it like this. As the rocket launches, it frequently it
Speaker 1: at several stages has to separate from a stage of
Speaker 1: its launch vehicle. You know, it discards part of the
Speaker 1: rocket and throws it away, and the last part of
Speaker 1: the rocket that it discards, the third stage of the
Speaker 1: Delta launch vehicle, is going to be on the trajectory
Speaker 1: with the spacecraft heading out of orbit right. And so
Speaker 1: if you just left it like that, the part of
Speaker 1: the the last part of the rocket that it separates with,
Speaker 1: would basically be on a course to follow the spacecraft
Speaker 1: to Mars. And so instead what they do is they
Speaker 1: start their journey going the wrong way, not totally the
Speaker 1: wrong way, but not quite on a direct on a
Speaker 1: direct trajectory to hit Mars, so that the if they
Speaker 1: separate and the object follows them, the launch vehicle part
Speaker 1: will float off in that direction, and then after ten
Speaker 1: days they make a course correct and to meet Mars
Speaker 1: in its orbit. That's good because it reminds me of
Speaker 1: that picture of the rocket taking off and the little
Speaker 1: frog attached attached to the rocket, and and we could
Speaker 1: have ended up with the frog on Mars, right, But
Speaker 1: not with this program, nor that frog is lost in space. Now.
Speaker 1: Apparently for some past probes, like the Viking Lander, they
Speaker 1: had an even higher standard of sterility, which was pretty
Speaker 1: much actual like full sterilization. They would blast the whole
Speaker 1: thing in a high temperature oven for several days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the numbers that I read were a hundred and eleven
Speaker 1: point seven degrees celsius for thirty hours. But the electronics
Speaker 1: on the most recent probes probably could not stand up
Speaker 1: to that. No, they're not not not quite the same
Speaker 1: caliber as the ones from the Viking. So that we
Speaker 1: we go through actually less rigorous sterilization on planetary rovers
Speaker 1: and probes than we used to write. Now, here's the
Speaker 1: thing is that not all, not all the stuff we've
Speaker 1: sent out has been completely sterilized. Uh. And even when
Speaker 1: you your sterilization method is effective and you're reasonably sure
Speaker 1: that you're beneath below that three thousand bacterial spores metric
Speaker 1: there's it doesn't It doesn't magically clean off all the
Speaker 1: organic carbon molecules that may or may not be attached
Speaker 1: that material. Those could still be on the probe, which
Speaker 1: if there are enough of them, it could be enough
Speaker 1: to throw off our our you know, instrumentation and give
Speaker 1: you a false positive. So there's still the possibility that
Speaker 1: stuff that isn't actually life but rather are the building
Speaker 1: blocks for life here on Earth could hit your ride,
Speaker 1: and even if you've done the sterilization approach, they could
Speaker 1: throw things off because it's it's the same source stuff
Speaker 1: is what you're looking for when you're doing these particular
Speaker 1: types of experiments. Now, one of the ways we could
Speaker 1: try to limit this possibile the is to go to
Speaker 1: these places but not actually land on them, to do
Speaker 1: essentially fly bys orbits that kind of stuff. Look at
Speaker 1: the various bodies from a distance. Um. And the problem
Speaker 1: with that method, of course, is that you can see
Speaker 1: a lot of things from a distance that indicate the
Speaker 1: building blocks for life. But unless you're catching space people
Speaker 1: go into the space mall on your camera, you're probably
Speaker 1: not close enough to actually get a real idea. The
Speaker 1: problem with not landing on a planet is that you're
Speaker 1: not landing on it. Yeah, you're not able to physically
Speaker 1: interact with the environment and either verify or or discard
Speaker 1: a hypothesis, right like, without actually landing and taking samples
Speaker 1: and and testing those samples, you can just make a
Speaker 1: kind of educated guess. And even that's kind of like saying,
Speaker 1: I want you to meet my friend, but you can
Speaker 1: only drive around the block around this house right now.
Speaker 1: You might you might see that when you think about
Speaker 1: you might see that lights are on in the house,
Speaker 1: and you may draw the conclusion, well that you know,
Speaker 1: Joe's friend is probably home, or you might see that
Speaker 1: all the lights are off and you think Joe's friend
Speaker 1: is either not home or is it sleep Essentially, right like,
Speaker 1: there's certain things that there's certain conclusions you can draw,
Speaker 1: but you're not certain of any of them. Same thing
Speaker 1: as problems is problematic with this unless you honk your
Speaker 1: horn really loud and Joe's friend comes out of the house. Right,
Speaker 1: if you were to honk your hornet at at Mars
Speaker 1: or one of the moon's out there that we suspect
Speaker 1: could potentially house life and little microbes came out and
Speaker 1: formed a giant like emoji like picture, and then that
Speaker 1: would work. Yeah, that would be something somehow, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a highly likely scenario now, so one crush
Speaker 1: all of my dreams. Another thing we could try to
Speaker 1: do is reduce contamination to a level that's below the
Speaker 1: precision of our instrumentation. So, in other words, be reasonably
Speaker 1: sure that the amount of stuff from Earth that is
Speaker 1: attached to a probe is so minute, there's so little
Speaker 1: of it that it is unlikely the instrumentation aboard the
Speaker 1: probe would even detect it. So if we were to
Speaker 1: detect any organic compounds, it would likely be from wherever
Speaker 1: we sent the probe rather than from Earth itself. The
Speaker 1: problem is we're getting better and better and making sensitive instrumentation,
Speaker 1: so it requires cleaner and cleaner probes to make absolutely
Speaker 1: certain that it's not an earth bound or earth originated,
Speaker 1: uh organic compound that we're picking up as opposed to
Speaker 1: something from Mars or wherever. Another difficult thing to to
Speaker 1: design a test for is whether the sterilization that we've
Speaker 1: done on a spacecraft has gotten it truly clean. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is especially true in the nineteen seventies. Like
Speaker 1: we're learning a little bit better now, but but it's
Speaker 1: it's real hard to to test the cleanliness of an
Speaker 1: object because most lab procedures for for testing macro real
Speaker 1: contamination revolve around culturing samples of the material to see
Speaker 1: if anything grows in those lab cultures, And lots of
Speaker 1: microbes really resist being cultured in labs. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to reproduce in lab either, So I understand.
Speaker 1: Uh So, so that method might not be a good
Speaker 1: indication of what can contamination we might be sending out,
Speaker 1: and especially what contamination we might have sent out in
Speaker 1: the past. Now this tells me that, um, some microbes
Speaker 1: are a lot like some at lanterns. They really really
Speaker 1: resist getting cultured. Whole theater jokes. Okay, so, uh, if
Speaker 1: we go back to the other half of that colonizing, Now,
Speaker 1: clearly we've already said that just sending an unmanned probe
Speaker 1: or rover or whatever is and making certain that we
Speaker 1: do not contaminate the destination is already really hard. It's
Speaker 1: an order of magnitude harder to do that as a
Speaker 1: colonization mission, right right, Well, I mean anywhere we go,
Speaker 1: where we're going to be pooping, yeah, we will probably
Speaker 1: start to run into this problem. And wherever we go,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, we're there, yeah, exactly right right, I
Speaker 1: mean we're gonna be eating and pooping and all sorts
Speaker 1: of doing all the human things at that because that's
Speaker 1: what humans do at that location. And unless you've created
Speaker 1: a habitat that is completely sealed off from the surrounding
Speaker 1: environment to the point where you even begin to question
Speaker 1: why did we come here, It's like it's like going
Speaker 1: to an exotic location and staying inside your hotel room
Speaker 1: the whole time. I mean, what's the point at that
Speaker 1: at that stage? But wouldn't that be the most hilarious
Speaker 1: conundrum if you So we do discover some kind of
Speaker 1: microbial life on Mars and and we're like, sure it
Speaker 1: didn't come from poop, but it might have come from Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is why we have to be thankful that The
Speaker 1: Martian is just a work of fiction, because otherwise Mark
Speaker 1: Whatley ruined it for everybody. Um So it's interesting. Also,
Speaker 1: this is not just the plot to The Martian. It's
Speaker 1: also the plot to star Trek to the Wrath of
Speaker 1: con Or at least part of the plot. So stick
Speaker 1: with me here because this is actually it's instrumental to
Speaker 1: things that happened. If it weren't for the fact that
Speaker 1: the Federation also wanted to make absolutely certain that any
Speaker 1: any experiments involving terraforming, in this case not not colonizing
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but terraforming a planet did not
Speaker 1: destroy any life forms at all. If it weren't for
Speaker 1: that fact, there wouldn't have been a story to the movie.
Speaker 1: Because what happens is um uh Commander pav Pavel Chekhov
Speaker 1: goes along with the crew of the USS Reliant. He
Speaker 1: is no longer part of the Enterprise crew. He's on
Speaker 1: the Reliance crew, and they go to uh I think
Speaker 1: SETI alpha five. They don't know that it's Set Alpha five,
Speaker 1: but they go to SETI alf of five, which happens
Speaker 1: to be where Khan has been uh chilling marooned for
Speaker 1: the last several years um and strangely enough, Cohn recognizes
Speaker 1: Chekhov despite the fact that Chekhov was not part of
Speaker 1: the crew in in Space Seed, the episode that con
Speaker 1: showed up and but never find that. And then so
Speaker 1: they go They go there because they're looking for a
Speaker 1: planet that is devoid of life in order to use
Speaker 1: as a testing facility for the Genesis Project, which is
Speaker 1: this terraforming project, right, And uh, if it weren't for
Speaker 1: the idea that we have to find a lifeless planet,
Speaker 1: the rest of the movie never would have happened. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: they actually go down beam down to the surface of
Speaker 1: the planet to check, which might not be the best
Speaker 1: way to avoid bringing life to a lifeless planet. I
Speaker 1: don't know. No, By the what is it the twenty
Speaker 1: four century? Humans no longer shed skin cells or pop
Speaker 1: or poop or breathe or you know, anything like that.
Speaker 1: All the thing, all those organic functions that we used
Speaker 1: to have. That's that's that's so twenty century. So but
Speaker 1: you know what happens in the movie, of course, is
Speaker 1: they test the Genesis Project and discover that it can
Speaker 1: turn a dead planet into a lush, life supporting world
Speaker 1: in a matter of hours, which is essentially the stuff
Speaker 1: of magic. It's we have no technology even remotely close
Speaker 1: to being able to do that. But it is interesting
Speaker 1: that it was related to the topic we're talking about
Speaker 1: right now. But that leads us to another question. Okay,
Speaker 1: science fiction aside, is this something that we should actually
Speaker 1: be concerned about in the first place? Is it as
Speaker 1: big a deal as the Outer Space Treaty and these
Speaker 1: various organizations would have us believe. And that depends upon
Speaker 1: whom you ask. You know, um, there's a nature. Geoscience
Speaker 1: ran a couple of different articles on this very subject,
Speaker 1: and the first one was written by Alberto G. Firing
Speaker 1: and I'm probably butchering the names. I apologize and dark
Speaker 1: Shoals Macouch, who published a piece titled the Overt Protection
Speaker 1: of Mars, and in that article they argued that we're
Speaker 1: making way too big a deal about possibly contaminating the
Speaker 1: Red planet, and their arguments were numerous. One of them
Speaker 1: was that the way you said though with your own
Speaker 1: you make it sound like they're like, ah, what the
Speaker 1: heck I mean? I admit I get really cavalier in
Speaker 1: the section because uh, I don't agree with their their perspective,
Speaker 1: but I should say that their their paper uh is
Speaker 1: not written in the snarky tone that my notes are
Speaker 1: written in. I think they make some good points. Yea,
Speaker 1: there's some there's some decent points. They say that the
Speaker 1: restrictions are making it very difficult to explore Mars, and
Speaker 1: we've said there there's a case for that. The Curiosity
Speaker 1: Rover example is is that that's an actual, real historical
Speaker 1: example we could point to. And they argue that we're
Speaker 1: holding back scientific progress in an effort to protect something
Speaker 1: that might not even be there. They also say it
Speaker 1: adds to the expense of these missions to make certain
Speaker 1: that the stuff we send up is sterilized. Um. And
Speaker 1: they say, hey, you know what science has shown that's
Speaker 1: pretty plausible that life could cling to a rock that's
Speaker 1: been jettisoned into space through some event and then travel
Speaker 1: to another planet and then survived the trip down to
Speaker 1: that planet. And since that does seem to be possible, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's probably true that tons of Earth microbes over the
Speaker 1: millennia have already gone to Mars through natural means, and
Speaker 1: that means that they're already there. The Earth microbes that
Speaker 1: were so worried about bringing to Mars have been there
Speaker 1: for millions of years. Yeah, we're I mean, we've definitely
Speaker 1: found bits of what we're pretty sure our Mars stuff
Speaker 1: here on Earth resulting from what we assume we're primordial impacts.
Speaker 1: There's no reason to think that bits of Earth that
Speaker 1: broke off after meteors or asteroids or comets or whatever
Speaker 1: impacted us would not have similarly made their way over
Speaker 1: to Mars and to other planets in the Solar System
Speaker 1: and etcetera. Uh. And you know, maybe before the building
Speaker 1: blocks of life and or early forms of life happened here,
Speaker 1: but maybe after. Without a time machine that's way more
Speaker 1: advanced than the way back machine, we may never know. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: even if those rock samples that we found are not
Speaker 1: bit of Mars, we're really pretty sure that like some
Speaker 1: and or pounds of Martian micro meteorites land here on
Speaker 1: Earth every year. So so this this kind of transfer
Speaker 1: happens also, I mean, depending on even if we don't
Speaker 1: see it very often, when you think about it over
Speaker 1: geological time or the age of the Solar System, transfer
Speaker 1: of matter between planetary bodies probably happens fairly frequently. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: on that scale certainly. And so if if we're imagining
Speaker 1: there's a case where microbial life can be transported from
Speaker 1: one body to the other and then survive for a
Speaker 1: significant amount of time once it gets there. I mean,
Speaker 1: not like dying eighteen hours after it arrives on Mars.
Speaker 1: Um then that's probably already happened. Yeah, And speaking about
Speaker 1: dying eighteen hours after it arrives on Mars, one of
Speaker 1: the other arguments that said is, hey, Mars might really
Speaker 1: suck if you're a living thing like that, that's almost
Speaker 1: beyond a speculation. I mean, Mars would suck, but Mars
Speaker 1: is crappy, yeah, for for for our our style of living.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I'm not a I'm not a
Speaker 1: particularly lush, lux luxurious kind of guy, but even for me,
Speaker 1: Mars is a little sparse for my taste. But then again,
Speaker 1: we don't know. I mean, the life finds a way, yea.
Speaker 1: So they said that if Mars is at a point
Speaker 1: where it cannot sustain Earth life, then microbes probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: survive very long in the Martians surface. Ancient Earth life,
Speaker 1: assuming some had actually landed on the planet in the past,
Speaker 1: probably died out once the conditions on Mars became too hostile.
Speaker 1: It probably adapted for a while, and then once it
Speaker 1: reached a certain point, could no longer survive, and any
Speaker 1: life form from Earth today would die out pretty quickly
Speaker 1: due to the same conditions. So bring all the Earth
Speaker 1: life you like, it's not gonna have a chance to
Speaker 1: contaminate anything. It'll die first. Or they argue it's possible
Speaker 1: that Mars could support Earth like life on it. And
Speaker 1: if in which case, all that stuff that's been going
Speaker 1: that we just talked about, that's been going in there
Speaker 1: over the geological time, yeah, it means that already contaminated.
Speaker 1: It's already there, right, and that Martian and Earth life
Speaker 1: maybe may have coexisted for millions of years at this point.
Speaker 1: Or it could be that one had output had had
Speaker 1: replaced the other. That's impossible to know. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: even a hypothesis that's popular that says that, you know,
Speaker 1: Earth life may have come from Mars. It's not like
Speaker 1: we have strong evidence for this, but it's a possibility
Speaker 1: that's taken seriously right now. If you look at that argument,
Speaker 1: they're essentially saying, so either Mars can't support Earth life,
Speaker 1: in which case there's no issue, or Mars can support
Speaker 1: Earth life in which case it's already there, so contaminating
Speaker 1: is a non problem. Stop making us worry about it.
Speaker 1: We want to send stuff up there like crazy. Uh. Then,
Speaker 1: in the subsequent edition of Nature Geoscience, Catherine A. Conley
Speaker 1: and John D. Rummel wrote a rebuttal titled Appropriate Protection
Speaker 1: of Mars. So you can probably tell from the title
Speaker 1: that they disagreed with a previous argument. They also, by
Speaker 1: the way, we're part of these organizations we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, so you know they have a specific point
Speaker 1: of view on this um. But I mean, good point
Speaker 1: they might bring up here. What about science? Yeah, they
Speaker 1: said that they are those protective measures, while certainly uh, comprehensive,
Speaker 1: are vital if we are to understand the potential for
Speaker 1: life on Mars, as well as gain insight to the
Speaker 1: origins of life on Earth. If we do contaminate Mars
Speaker 1: with Earth life, then we never are able to answer
Speaker 1: definitively the question, does was their life on Mars? If so,
Speaker 1: did it share a common ancestor with life on Earth?
Speaker 1: Was it, in fact the ancestor to life on Earth?
Speaker 1: Or perhaps was Earth the ancestor to life on Mars.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be able to answer any of those questions
Speaker 1: because we have already fouled the test results right. In fact,
Speaker 1: they said that if we don't have strong policies, then
Speaker 1: scientists end up studying their own contamination rather than anything
Speaker 1: pertaining to the actual planet or moon or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. Yeah, so this sounds like they're they're looking
Speaker 1: out for the future. I mean, the goal here is
Speaker 1: just saying like we want to uh, to be as
Speaker 1: careful as possible to make things as friendly as possible
Speaker 1: for future research, or or you might say like we
Speaker 1: decided to send this team in to see how big
Speaker 1: this forest is, and the way we're figuring it out
Speaker 1: as we're cutting it all down as we go through, like, well,
Speaker 1: what was the point of that? Yeah, And it highlights
Speaker 1: how how we we don't have a second chance in
Speaker 1: these kinds of experiments. It's not like if we muck
Speaker 1: up the first Mars, there's a second Mars that we
Speaker 1: can just be like, oh, just throw that one out
Speaker 1: to the go to the next one. What I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and I guess the next one is like
Speaker 1: Europa or something like that exactly. But but yes, that
Speaker 1: would that would not be what I would like to
Speaker 1: call scientifically great, Well, it sounds like you've bought into
Speaker 1: that NASA shill line. You don't even accept the existence
Speaker 1: of anti Mars Mars too. Uh yeah, I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a total anti Mars denier. No, that's why we we
Speaker 1: we've wove in is very complex. No, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: about anti Mars. Sometimes it's always on the exact opposite
Speaker 1: side of the Sun from Earth. That's why you don't
Speaker 1: see it. I think my nose just started bleeding. Is
Speaker 1: it flat? Is it a flat planet? Flat Mars? They're
Speaker 1: all flat planets. They all flow down here. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a This was one of those fun topics
Speaker 1: to kind of take a look at because it's it's
Speaker 1: it's come up a lot before and it's never gone
Speaker 1: into full depth. Yeah, it's something that we've mentioned a
Speaker 1: few times, but we really wanted to kind of explore
Speaker 1: the whole question further. And I do side more on
Speaker 1: the caution part of the equation, because, yeah, I get
Speaker 1: the frustration because we're at a stage now where we're
Speaker 1: capable of doing a lot more more than we've ever
Speaker 1: done in the history of mankind. That the private space
Speaker 1: industry has has boosted our ability to reach destinations far
Speaker 1: beyond what the official, governmental backed bodies were able to do.
Speaker 1: But we can't allow that to just turn space into
Speaker 1: a new wild West. If we want to answer these questions.
Speaker 1: If we ultimately decide these questions aren't that important, then
Speaker 1: that's another factor. I will be very sad if that
Speaker 1: day comes, but or that it's just physically impossible for
Speaker 1: us to answer them given the constraints, Given the constraints
Speaker 1: you have, given that that microubs are really determined to
Speaker 1: be places, and and it could even be that that
Speaker 1: there could be microbes on Mars, but they might be
Speaker 1: in a very localized region, and unless we just happened
Speaker 1: to target region by sheer luck, we never find it. Right.
Speaker 1: That's that's a possibility. It's not necessarily likely, but it
Speaker 1: is possible that the the evidence we're looking for is
Speaker 1: contained within a certain region on the planet. And and
Speaker 1: that makes it even more tricky for us to get there.
Speaker 1: Before finally people said, look, you had your chance. We're
Speaker 1: building a condo there. We've we've got a lot of shallow,
Speaker 1: frozen puddles to jump in if we're going to try
Speaker 1: to find the one I think the microbes I think
Speaker 1: I just came up with an idea for a movie,
Speaker 1: and it's essentially the Martian meets Break into Electric Boogaloo,
Speaker 1: where there's the development uh company that wants to come
Speaker 1: in and build Martian condos, and then there's the scrappy
Speaker 1: youth group that really want to protect the pristine environment
Speaker 1: of Mars, and they do it through breakdancing, your stunt, silence, globus.
Speaker 1: All I need you to do is promise you'll buy
Speaker 1: a get to the Premier, all right, So that kind
Speaker 1: of wraps up this discussion. If you guys have any
Speaker 1: thoughts about this, maybe you're thinking you guys are making
Speaker 1: way too big a deal about this, let me tell
Speaker 1: you why we should not worry about it. Or maybe
Speaker 1: you have a very passionate argument to protect the pristine
Speaker 1: nature of these places. Until we have definitively or as
Speaker 1: close to definitively as possible, answered the questions we have,
Speaker 1: write us and let us know. I want to hear
Speaker 1: your thoughts about it. Also, if you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes that kind of thing, get in touch
Speaker 1: with us. The email address to use as f W
Speaker 1: thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop us
Speaker 1: a line on social media like Twitter where we are
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