WEBVTT - Astonishing Science of 2014 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.920 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:16.760 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:19.760 we're doing a couple of episodes here. These are kind 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:23.480 of round up episodes of science that occurred or came 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.439 to fruition in two thousand fourteen. We're recording this at 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.960 the tail end often, so it's possible, uh, in the 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.000 two weeks that follow that we'll make contact with aliens 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:37.440 or or some other major groundbreaking thing will happen and 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:40.400 we will have missed it just because they didn't occur 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:43.080 or they didn't publish the study for some reason until 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:45.680 the last two weeks of the year, in which case 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:48.800 we apologize. Also, we want to say this is what 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:50.760 we're doing here. We're not trying to to to put 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:54.720 out an exhaustive, perfect set in stone, launch it into 0:00:54.720 --> 0:01:00.959 space list of this is the science. It's more this 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:03.120 is these are some of the big stories that impressed 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.920 us that we think probably resonated with you. And also 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:09.520 some of this is, uh, we have some smaller studies 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:11.080 on here that you might have missed, and we're going 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:13.640 to point out why they're amazing and worth taking a 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:15.840 second glance at. Yeah, I think you covered it. Um. 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:17.560 This is a two part of the first is going 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:21.800 to focus more on astonishing science, and the second part 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:25.039 is just going to be more extraordinary science. So again, 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.080 as you said, this is not an exhaustive list, but 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:30.520 it's a couple of things that may be familiar to you, 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.200 probably are, and a couple of things that will make 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:36.920 you perhaps gonna you know, cock your head to the 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:41.200 side and say, ah, has reframed my understanding of existence 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:44.800 or perhaps not. Um. In any case, let's go ahead 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:47.720 and launch into it. And when I say launch into it, 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:52.040 of course I am referring to the Mars Science Laboratory, 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:57.880 also called Curiosity. Yeah, Curiosity was really really one of 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:02.280 the m v p s for science. And uh, you know, 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.800 even if it wasn't interesting, it wasn't a really fun 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:08.600 topic to discuss. We'd have to mention it here because 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.919 he's just snow getting around curiosity. Um never, no, never, 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:17.000 now Now. Certainly, NASA's Curiosity rover has actually been on 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:20.520 the surface of Mars since August. But this was a 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:23.120 very good good year for our eyes and ears on 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:25.799 the Red planet. Um. We'll see I don't even know 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:27.919 where to start on this one. You know, well, maybe 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.840 we should just kind of say the main mission for 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:36.600 Curiosity is to answer the question could Mars have one 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.680 time Harvard life? So everything that it does, all the 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:44.639 data that it reports back on is trying to scratch 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:48.520 at this question. So two years later, we're beginning to 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:52.920 see some of this information put together from the pieces 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:56.760 of the puzzle. And that's what's so fascinating about where 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.919 we are right now, because it wasn't just the spec 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:03.400 tagular landing that it pulled off, that in and of 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:08.239 itself was a milestone um. But now we are seeing 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:12.440 Curiosity cruise around there like it's a little wally, kind 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.160 of lonely looking on that planet and reporting back some 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:19.840 things like, hey, there are some key chemical ingredients for 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.120 life in the gray powder that it's been analyzing and 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.680 it drilled out of the John Kline Rock outcrop. We're 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:33.000 talking about sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon and these, 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:36.520 as we know, become really important in terms of building life. 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:42.640 And Curiosity has been assessing the Martian radiation environment, helping 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:46.400 scientists to better understand the hazards that radiation may post. 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.560 So we're talking about dangers that could be posed to 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.880 indigenous microbes and human visitors should that occur. And it 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:57.560 was determined that the amount of radiation the Red planet 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:02.800 has exceeds NASA's career. That's for astronauts. Get to now, right, 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:05.320 good to know, Good to know. Now, I'm gonna go 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:07.080 a little over the top here for a minute and 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:12.720 say that just as Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:14.760 the will of God, so too did the Little Rover 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.560 spend much of two thousand fourteen en route to the 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:21.640 Martian Mount Sharp curiosity that already had already two point 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:24.000 discovered many of the key elements necessarily for life on 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.000 on Mars in the past carbon oxytion, hydrogen, phosphorus, nitrogen 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:30.800 uh in standing water, which we'll get to in a minute. 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:33.640 But the emergence of life also requires a great deal 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.120 of time, and it's reported by Mark Kaufman in the 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:40.400 New York Times, scientists previously only predicted a habitable period 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.760 of mere centuries or you know, a few thousand years, 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:46.960 which which is nothing basically, when you're talking about the 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.760 window for life to emerge on a planet, but with 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:54.560 curiosities findings, we discovered a strong new evidence here that 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:57.680 gael Crater had large bodies of water for millions or 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:00.200 even tens of millions of years, to say nothing of 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:06.680 lingering water underground. So this year, in among other other 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.840 things from curiosity, the window for ancient life on Mars 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:14.279 expanded significantly, giving us a vision possible vision of a 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:16.919 of a blue Mars three point five to four billion 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:19.560 years ago, which is pretty cool. They also found an 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.760 ancient stream bed where water once flowed roughly knee deep 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:25.120 for thousands of years at a time, So again more 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:29.480 mounting evidence that water had been present and perhaps for 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:33.279 a significant amount of time now most recently. And these 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:38.039 are early days so we don't have the full perspective 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:42.360 on this yet, this sort of armchair perspective. But methane 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:48.160 was discovered on the planet mid December here, and this 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:53.360 is really important because since uh, we know living organisms 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:58.640 produce methane, then that gives sign to some pause to 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:01.400 scratch their head and say, m what possibly could be 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:05.000 the reason for this methane here found on Mars. So 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:07.440 over the course of four measurements and two months on Mars, 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:12.200 average methane levels increased tenfold before quickly dissipating. But this 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.919 cause of the fluctuation is really unknown right now. It 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:20.680 could have been created by a geological process known as serpentinization, 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.440 which requires both heat and liquid water, or it could 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.279 be the product of life in the form of microbes 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:33.120 releasing methane as waste product. Right now, according to Paul 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:37.200 Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, it's too much 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:39.680 of a single point measurement for us to really jump 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:44.039 to any conclusions. It's pretty amazing, though, and with a 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.240 lot of these studies, especially when we get into water 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:49.960 on Mars and UH, We've been gradually learning a lot 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:53.039 about Mars and its history over the years, so it's 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:55.159 it's easy to kind of, you know, ease into some 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:59.080 of this information and not realize just how how groundbreaking 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:01.760 it is and how much how much more we know 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:05.960 about the Red planet versus UH ten twenty years ago. UM. 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:08.840 Out of that same press conference, UH, it was also 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.360 they also broke down some information from May, some findings 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:14.240 from May in which the rover drilled into a piece 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:18.440 of Martian rock called Cumberland and found UH some ancient 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:21.520 water hidden within it, and then the onboard instruments were 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:25.000 able to analyze the sample, and uh I subsequently reveilt 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:27.800 a lot about the probable history of water on Mars. 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:32.880 Measured the ratio of deuterium, which is heavy hydrogen um 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:37.280 to normal hydrogen, and that that D t H ratio, 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.880 as they got, allows us to gauge how long it 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:43.200 takes for water molecules to escape because lighter HAWL hydrogen 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.040 molecules fly towards the upper atmosphere fear more freely UH 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.800 than the heavy hydrogen ones do. So the D two 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:53.600 H ratio in Cumberland is about half the ratio found 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:57.320 in the Martian atmosphere water vapor today and so NASA 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:00.120 scientists believe that this suggests that the planet lost uch 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:03.800 of its surface water after this rock form. So the 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:05.840 idea here is that most of the Martian water likely 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:08.400 disappeared before the Convent Cumberland rock form about three point 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:12.120 nine billion to four point six billion years ago. So again, 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:16.200 just another insight into the history of Mars. And uh 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:18.600 I want to drive home with this uh and in 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:21.400 another entry that we're gonna mention that with a with 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.480 a project like Curiosity, you have a lot of stuff 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.400 is done in advance obviously, and you're shooting the arrow 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:32.000 off into the future, um, rolling the dice in some respect, 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:35.960 um to see how everything's gonna land, sometimes literally. And 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:38.000 then there's a lot of data you get back, and 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:41.280 sometimes that data is crunched for you know, for for 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.920 for quite a long time afterwards. So just as curiosity 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.320 is still ongoing the data that it's sent back and 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:52.199 is sending back, there's a continual process of going over 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:54.800 writ and comparing and figuring out exactly what it means. Yeah, 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:58.320 and there have been some criticisms levied at the project 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:00.960 to say that it's not as focus as it should be. 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:06.560 But I would say, here's this monumental uh project, that's 0:09:06.600 --> 0:09:09.920 that's the first for humanity, you know, for Mars, and 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:14.800 and having this data collection rover, you're probably gonna have 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.080 some unfocused moments as you try to figure out exactly 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.000 what is present and how to interpret that data and 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:24.360 what direction to go in after you interpret it. Indeed, 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:26.400 I mean there are several different experiments on board, there 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:29.120 are multiple tools that the scientists are able to use, 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:32.679 so it's it's gonna get pulled in different directions. Now, 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:35.760 the most important thing I think that happened is that 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.600 on Mars the rover took a selfie. Oh I forgot 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.400 about this, Yeah yeah, sent it back like hey, look 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.000 at me. Well in two thousand thirteen, it's supposed to 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:50.440 drew a penis. Uh, well, and so did I. Yeah. Yeah, 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:52.920 you know, we all get bored. We take selfies, we 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.960 draw penises. It's just how it goes. So when we 0:09:56.000 --> 0:10:00.079 send a robotic emissary out there through the void to 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.080 an alien world, it's just gonna happen. Indeed, all right, 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:04.920 we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back, 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:18.720 we are going to discuss Rosetta. All right, we're back. Yes, 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:22.599 the Rosetta mission from the e s A. This this 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:26.760 is a big one. And if it rivals curiosity just 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:30.719 and if not surpasses it in terms of the scientific findings, 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.960 the the drama even of getting getting this little guy there, 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:37.840 uh and and just the the audacity of the experiment 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:40.280 as a whole. Yeah, we're talking about a ten year 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:42.800 mission in the making. When in two thousand and four 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:47.400 the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta spacecraft. Again, we're 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:52.360 talking about a circuitous six point four billion kilometer trek 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:56.160 across the Solar System, crossing the Asteroid Belt, and traveling 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:59.640 into deep space more than five times Earth's distance from 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:04.840 then on to the periodic comment known as Commet sixty 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:09.440 seven P. And now, once the spacecraft got close enough 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:11.920 to the comment, the idea was to do the unthinkable, 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:14.160 which is just to throw a little lander on it 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:17.000 and on top of it. No big deal. Yeah, I 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:19.240 mean this is this is this is like one of 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.360 those just sci fi meats reality kind of scenarios, right 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:23.959 that we were going to send this thing out. It's 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.160 gonna spend ten years hibernating to get there. And then 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.680 not only is it going to uh be the be 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.280 the first mission in history to rendezvous with the comment, 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.080 because we've had fly byes in the past. Uh and 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:38.880 not only is going to escort it as it orbits 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.439 the Sun, it's going to deploy a lander to its surface. 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:45.280 We're going to land on a comet. That was that 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:50.360 was the plan, and uh, it mostly mostly came out Okay, Yeah, 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.480 it had some um some sort of high stakes moments 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.040 where it wasn't sure whether or not it was going 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:01.800 to happen. The Harpoons does sign to attach to the 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.600 comment from the lander did not fire, and so that 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:08.160 was a bit of a problem in trying to get 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.120 a bead on the actual comment and and um and 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:14.160 find some stasis. Yeah, it's an issue with the descent 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:18.080 thrusters as well. And so what was supposed to be 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.800 a smooth landing and in a very anchored landing, Uh, 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:23.840 there in a nice area where could get plenty of 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:28.960 solar radiation to repowers batteries. Instead it tumbles across the 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:32.280 surface and it hits a crater wall. And here it 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:34.840 is a position where it can only receive a quarter 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:38.120 of the sunlight necessary to sufficiently charge its batteries once 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:42.280 it runs out of juice. And how much juice? Sixty 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:46.160 hours of juice. So this was this was a fairly 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:50.040 big blow to the immediate future of the of of it, 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:51.920 so that the science just had to double down and say, oh, 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.640 all right, we got sixty hours of juice. Let's figure 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.640 out as much as we can about this comment. Yeah, 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.520 there were so many zen moments I think that people 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:02.920 had to tap into in the control room, I imagine, 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.360 because by the time that it deployed from the rocket 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:08.960 with something like seven hours right to make its way 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.960 to actually land onto the comment for seven hours. That's 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:14.760 white knuckling, you know, hoping that it makes it, and 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:17.199 then when it is bouncing around, saying, oh, I hope 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:21.240 that it actually stays. And then look it's it's got 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.120 some screws that is digging into the surfaces anchoring. But 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:26.680 now it's anchored at an angle that it can't take 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:32.560 advantage of the full sun spectrum. So, as you say, 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:35.199 we got sixty hours, let's get to work. Yeah, it 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:40.959 landed on November twelve, and last contact was November um 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.720 last contact contact as of now, and we'll get more 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:45.560 into that later. But in the sixty hours, we did 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:47.120 find out a lot about this comment. We found out 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:49.600 things we didn't expect. Yeah, and why would you want 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:51.480 to study a comment in the first place. Well, they 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.640 are icy bodies that are regarded as fossils from the 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:57.880 times when the Solar system was originating, So this could 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:04.120 provide scientists with some prime, mordial prime material to work with. Yeah, 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.040 I'm sure everyone has seen the stunning images that we 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:09.960 received back of the comet, you know, these sort of desolate, gray, 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:14.240 dark images, but still very very inspiring. We found, for instance, 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.800 that if this was not a smooth, whole shaped body 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.280 like we thought it would be. Instead, it's an odd 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:24.040 shaped coal black lump. Possibly two commets that merge together 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:26.480 at some point in the past, because it kind of 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.160 kind of looks kind of looks like two things, just 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:32.040 sort of two big awful rocks crunched together to a 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:34.520 certain extent. Found out that the surface is hotter than 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.440 we guessed and surprisingly ice free. The first inch of 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:41.080 the surface crust is porous, dusty, and contains almost no 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.800 ice um. Now the commet is only two point five 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:48.000 miles wide, but it expels so much water that it 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:51.280 could quote fill an Olympic size swimming pool in about 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.040 a hundred days. So bear all that in mind when 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:56.320 you think about the challenges of landing on this thing, 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.160 landing on the surface that you it turned out to 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.200 be drastically different than what you thought it was going 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:03.040 to be. Yeah, and then all of a sudden you 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:06.160 have all of this information, like the isotopes, what do 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.400 they look like in that water? Do they match up 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.640 with Earth? It could it be comments or asteroids or 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:16.200 both that seated life on Earth. All of these questions 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.560 hang in the distance, and it's possible that we may 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:22.360 be able to answer them over a period of time 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:25.920 sorting through that data. Now, something that I'm not sure 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:30.200 if it was widely reported on is that this comment stinks. 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:35.360 It's got barnyard smells. Um. Sensor devices of the Rosetta 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:41.120 spacecraft orbiting the comment sniffed out the gas molecules of 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.800 and According to Katherine Altwig, she's the head of the 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:49.560 Rosina project at the Center for Space Inhabitability, she says, 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:52.600 the perfume of sixty seven ps quite strong, with the 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:58.440 odor of rotten eggs, hydrogen sulfide, horse stable ammonia, and 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:02.840 the pungent, suffocating odor of formalde hyde. This is mixed 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:06.040 with a faint, bitter almond like aroma of hydrogen side 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:12.120 who knew? Nice. I'm always interested to hear what other 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:15.360 planets smell like. There's a I think I can't remember 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:17.440 if we did a video about this at some point 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:19.920 in the past. I know we did a blog Stinky planets, Yeah, 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.640 stinky comments. Yeah. Because the stats are out there, you know, 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:25.840 people say this, this planet smells like this, this one 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:28.560 like that. Sometimes the answer is a little more entertaining 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:30.120 than other times. A lot of there's a lot of 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:34.280 sulfur out there. Oh, I'm sure anyway it it might smell, 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.440 but it has a pleasant singing voice. And that's because 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.560 the magnetic field of the comment oscillates at forty to 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:43.200 fifty millet hurts and the sound is too low for 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.000 human ears to hear it. But uh, the e s 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:49.200 a increase the pitch a thousand times and they were 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:52.720 able to make this song more hearable, and they actually 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.080 put it off on SoundCloud. I'll make sure I linked 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.360 to it on the landing page for this episode. But 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.360 does it have no No, it does not. It's it's 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.680 very very ambient in space music. And how do space 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:07.320 music post about this? Why not? Um? But they yeah, 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:09.320 they took the data and then it was compiled by 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:13.439 German composer Manuel Smiffed. Uh, so it's it's very pleasant, 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.280 very space it seems it sounds like the kind of 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.800 music a comet would have kicking around in it. Now, 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:23.240 we should probably discussed a few cultural aspects of Rosetta 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:28.080 as well, including Filet, the name of the lander. Yeah, indeed, uh, 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:31.840 Rosetta is of course named for the famed Rosetta stone, 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:36.480 the pivotal Greek Egyptian hieroglyphic artifact um, which of course 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:40.720 was vital in our understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics and what 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:42.800 they meant, because we had basically the same text in 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:45.679 both Greek and Egyptian. And the idea with Rosetta is 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.280 that we would gain a better understanding of commas. We 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:51.600 learned the language of comments in the same way that 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.000 the Rosetta stone allowed us to learn the language of 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:57.840 the ancient Egyptians. And the rover is likewise named for 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.760 the filet obelisk, which bears a bilingual Greek and Egyptian 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:06.520 hieroglyphic inscription as well. Now, Rosetta was not without its scandal, 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:10.359 and it's not anything Rosetta did, but it has to 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.439 do with a scientist who was wearing a particularly colorful 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:19.720 shirt when interviewed about Rosetta. That's right, Rosetta scientist Dr 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:24.800 Matt Taylor UM wore a rather colorful um button up 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.600 shirt with a lot of kind of pin up ladies 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.879 on its scannily clad ladies, half naked ladies. Yeah and 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:33.800 uh and then you know he's a he's a bearded dude. Uh, 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:37.719 tattoos sleeved on each arm. And afterwards it was kind 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.520 of an outcry from from some from some scientists and 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:43.280 also people just observing saying, whoa, what's who? This is? 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:45.520 The guy's the voice of your mission, and he's he's 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:50.119 dressed like he's in a he just came out of Margharitaville. 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:54.679 What's what's going on? Yeah, historical moment. Uh, kind of 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.120 a sexist shirt. That's that's the criticism loved at him. 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:02.480 But uh, yeah, I mean he took the criticism to heart, 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:06.479 and it would appear that he just he just was 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.919 a bit clueless about it. Yeah. He did a very heartfelt, 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:12.639 you know, tearful apology about it and was sorry that 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:16.160 he'd upset people and that the press had really dove 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:18.399 into this a lot too, because, I mean, is if 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:22.480 the science, if this wasn't fascinating and and mind blowing enough, 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:25.879 they had to find another angled report on. But they 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.600 even talked to his sister and she said, you know, basically, 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.560 he he's a guy who's so devoted to his work, 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:34.840 but he's also the kind of guy who will lose 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:37.760 track of where his car or his car keys might be. Uh, 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:39.680 and so he can maybe be a little a little 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.320 clueless about some of the uh. The finer points of 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:46.199 life outside of the science environment, but didn't realize that 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:50.080 his half naked lady shirt would be distracting. Yeah, but 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:53.119 you know, Carl Sagan was putting just straight up naked 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:56.840 pictures on other probs we've sent out into the Oh, 0:19:56.920 --> 0:19:59.600 come on, that is not He did not send a 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:04.960 bargain kin up out there on the Pioneer plant. I'm 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:09.840 just saying, mind drawing possible a possible um foothold if 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:13.199 one were to really, you know, get defensive about that 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:16.040 shirt choice. Yeah, yeah, you know, we have a lot 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:18.679 of young people that listen to this podcast. We have 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.200 some middle aged people listen to podcasts. We have old 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:23.520 people who listen to the podcasts. We have immortal people 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:26.760 listening to You may very well be it's very possible 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:28.680 that someone out there listening to this podcast could live, 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:33.560 if not uh forever for centuries. And it would be 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:35.760 my dream if someone like say Aubrey de Gray we're 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:38.000 listening to this and he is, of course the bio 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:40.720 gerontologists that I have a slight crush on, who talks 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:43.760 about maintaining the body like a classic car, and that 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:47.359 the first person to live to five hundred years old 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:50.640 has already been born. Yeah, yeah, I mean the degrays. 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:52.919 The whole thing is like basically saying, all right, we 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:57.480 have this war against death. Well, let's break that war 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:00.280 down into battles, because wars are fought in battles. So 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:04.440 he divides it up into these these seven winnable battles 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:07.600 engagements against the enemy. And if you can figure out 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:11.119 how to knock off each of these problems, then you 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:13.960 have the whole thing solved. Well, and what could could 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:17.840 be better than replacing your blood with younger blood That 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:21.800 would actually have some very beneficial effects. And uh. In 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:24.840 the nineteen fifties, Clive McKay of Cornell University in Ithaca, 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:27.040 New York, he was the first to sort of figure 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:29.960 out that some of this might come into play. He 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:34.159 stitched together the circulatory system of an old and young mouse, 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:39.320 a technique called hetero chronic parabiosis, and he found that 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:43.280 the cartilage of the old mice soon appeared younger than 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:45.639 would be expected. That was the first sort of clue 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:48.080 that something could be going on here. And then in 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:51.560 two thousand and five, Thomas Rando at Stanford University in 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:54.560 California and his team found that young blood returned the 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.919 liver and skeletal stem cells of old mice to a 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:02.560 more youthful state during heterochronic parabiosis, and the old mice 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:05.920 were also able to repair injured muscles as well as 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:09.560 young mice. So here's the spooky thing about this too. 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:12.640 They found that young mice that received old blood appeared 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:17.760 to age prematurely. Wow, so it works both ways. Yeah. Well, Now, 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:19.640 one thing I love about about these findings, of course, 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:22.160 is that it it just goes into that classic idea 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:24.879 that that maybe old people could drink the blood of 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:28.560 the young and sustain their life and opens the door 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:32.240 that one to normalizing it to normalizing and one day 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:36.399 making it possible that old rich men uh no longer 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:39.120 have to just sleep with young women and marry them 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:43.320 and and take obtain their youth. That way, they can 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:45.760 actually drink their blood or not will not drink it, 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:48.920 but they can, um, they can take things from their 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:52.919 blood and make themselves younger. Yeah. I think in the 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:55.800 more recent news item that was posted this year that 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:58.159 when I put it up on Facebook, I think I 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:03.240