WEBVTT - Short Stuff: The Mars Rock with Signs of Life? 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:06.240 Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.959 there's Chuck and Jerry's even here to dates here in spirit, 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:15.120 so it's a short stuff. Let's go Martian rock. Yeah, Chuck, 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.720 we did one recently on not just set, but you 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:21.280 know how humans might respond to what the protocols are 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:24.160 for talking to aliens. I don't remember what we named it, 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:29.000 but um we mentioned this in passing in that episode 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:32.360 because we're talking today about a particular chunk of rock 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:37.000 that was discovered on December twenty seven and Antarctica, and 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:39.760 it's called a l H eight four zero zero one, 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:43.040 and a l H stands for the Alan Hills region 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:46.479 of Antarctic, or was found zero zero one stands for 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:49.120 the fact that it was the first rock discovered of 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:53.040 the season and it was the five collecting season. So 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:56.279 that's where the eighty four comes from. And you might say, hey, 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.800 that's great, that's interesting. What's so remarkable about a l 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.160 A zero zero one? And I think we should talk 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:08.119 about that in depth real quick. Let's in depth real quick. Uh, yeah, 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:12.480 we should for sure. Shout out geologist ROBERTA. Score, who 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:16.759 was the person who was out on a snowmobile and 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:19.319 saw this thing for the first time. Every time she 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:27.160 found when she'd be like, Score didn't think way too 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:31.360 much of that kind of please with myself. Uh. So okay, 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:34.480 So ROBERTA. Score finds this thing. Uh, they bring it 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.680 back and it's um kind of Raiders of the Lost 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:42.440 Dark style, uh, stuck in storage for a remarkably long 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:44.040 time because they didn't really know what they had on 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:48.680 their hands until n when they finally, you know, you 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:51.000 started kind of looking into this thing a little bit 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:55.200 more and they said, wait a minute, everybody. This rock 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:59.920 is from Mars and it was formed when the Earth 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:04.400 was still molten, about four and a half billion years ago. Uh. 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:06.120 And the way they figured it is that there was 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:11.200 some cataclysmic event that sent this rock launching out into 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:15.560 space and it sort of bumped around for about sixteen 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:21.640 million years and uh then eventually found our solar system, 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:24.519 what like thirteen thousand years ago. Yeah, and it got 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:29.240 pulled into Earth's gravity and eventually it deorbited in landed 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.720 in Antarctica. Yeah. Why is it? It's so funny. It 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:35.919 just seems like that stuff never lands in a suburban 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:38.560 neighborhood in Alabama or something. You know, I think it 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.680 has plenty of times, but we've just so developed that 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.000 and moved so much earth, we just have no idea 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:46.560 what what those rocks are. We're just pushing them out 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:48.639 of the way. And I guess there, even though it 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:50.639 seems like there's people everywhere, there's still a lot more 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:53.520 land where people aren't around for something to land on. 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.560 Definitely for the ocean, of course. And then also took 0:02:56.639 --> 0:02:59.320 remember the only person to ever be struck by a 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.080 meteorite I think was a woman in Alabama and like 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:04.760 the fifties or sixties remembered, Yeah, I don't think it 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:10.240 was Alabama. So it's it's raining meteorites in Alabama apparently. Okay, 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:13.040 so this thing was special. They realized it was from Mars, 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:16.640 and so they started to really take a much closer 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.240 look at it. And the first thing they discovered that 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:22.639 really kind of knocked their socks off were these orange 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:26.120 grains locked inside of it that they tested and they 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:29.400 found were made of carbonate. Uh. And they know here 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.480 on Earth, carbon it forms when water that has carbon 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:35.160 in it flows through cracks in a rock. That water 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.160 evaporates and leaves and that carbon remains. And so they said, 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.040 hold on a second here, if this thing has carbon, 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:45.280 which is an essential ingredient of life, then that might 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.960 mean this could be proof of life on Mars. And 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:53.560 it also says everybody that there was water flowing on Mars. Yeah, 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:57.280 another vital ingredient for life. Right, So this kind of 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:01.000 got their attention and focused it towards the idea you that, uh, 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:03.880 perhaps there was some sort of evidence of life in 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.520 this rock. And they started looking very closely at it, 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:09.760 and as the BBC put it in an article that 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:14.640 we read, um, they noticed near the carbonate grains, worms 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:18.760 and sausages that looked just like Earth bacteria, except much smaller, 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:22.080 and that really got their juices flowing. So now, all 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:24.080 of a sudden, you have a team at the Jet 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:26.719 Propulsion Laboratory who are studying a four and a half 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.520 billion year old piece of Mars, uh, investigating it for 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:34.840 possibly having harbored life at one point, right, And we 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:38.240 should point out that there were obviously was something like this. 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.520 There were people that were on what you would call 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.440 or what I believe you called team believe or team believer, 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.520 but of course also people who said, no, this thing 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.840 was probably contaminated uh here on Earth like some kind 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:55.560 of terrestrial contamination and that explains what we're finding here. 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.760 So you had to sort of groups of I guess 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:03.200 for of a better word, naysayers and believers, and they 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:06.080 were studying this thing really closely. Yeah, and I say 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:08.159 we take a break and come back and talk about 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:32.560 what each team figured out. Let's do it. So, Chuck 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:38.320 Carl Sagan famously said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, right, 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:42.960 And the idea of chunk of Mars bearing evidence of 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:46.960 microbial life, ancient, billions of year old microbial life, is 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.680 a really extraordinary claim. So there was a lot of 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:54.880 push among team believer to um find extraordinary evidence to 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.520 back this up. And like you said, there was this 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.839 idea that perhaps this had been contain amanated terrestrially. And 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.080 there was a study that was conducted by an entirely 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.640 different group of people from what I can tell, that 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:10.200 looked at other Martian rocks that had been found in 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.600 the Alan Hills area of Antarctica that had been processed 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.960 at the same jet propulsion lab in a search for 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:19.800 something that looked like what was showing up on the 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:22.960 a l H eight four zero zero one rock, and 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.880 they didn't find anything. So that right there kind of 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.520 bolstered the idea that this rock was special and unique 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.920 and it hadn't necessarily been contaminated here on Earth. That's right. 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.839 So that's one positive step forward for life on Mars. 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.080 Uh More and more people I think started to kind 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.200 of fall into the team believer camp um. But there 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:48.719 was one person, a specialist in uh microscopy or scoppy 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.479 what are you saying, I am going to say, microscope? 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:58.839 Oh well, alright, fancy pants, feeling like grape poupon here? 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:04.520 Do you look that your micro mic groscope? I do 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:09.400 when I examined my grape poupon. Uh So. Uh So 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:16.760 this person joined the team um basically saying or advising them, Hey, 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:19.800 we may want to hold our horses here because we 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:21.800 don't want to make fools of ourselves by going public 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.840 with some findings that I don't even know if I believe. 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:29.600 And uh she started looking through this thing, obviously through 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:34.240 a microscope, and when you get down there in microscopic land, 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.920 it's they describe it on the BBC as terrain, which 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:39.720 is kind of cool, like the terrain of this rock. 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:46.160 And saw these little black grains on the rims of uh, 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:50.000 these carbonate globes and they were very very tiny, just 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:54.280 nanometers in size, and she learned that these were magnetic 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:58.440 crystals made of iron oxide and iron sulfide, which was 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:02.600 another big aha moment. Yeah, they're like really tiny compasses. 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.360 They're magnetic um. And it turns out here on Earth 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:10.000 they're actually a byproduct of a specific kind of magneto 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:14.760 tactic bacteria. It's a cool word once you master it, 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:18.240 and it's it's a byproduct. It's a process of life 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:23.240 that produces these little magnetites. It can also be created 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:28.600 in other ways, right, non organically, non biologically. But to 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:33.320 do that, to create these little magnetites nanometers across um, 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:38.360 non biologically, it requires really really high temperature, really really 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.040 high pH and uh an environment that's not at all 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:46.040 hospitable for life. But that also means it's an environment 0:08:46.080 --> 0:08:49.040 not at all hospitable for liquid water. And since they 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:53.560 had basically essentially confirmed that liquid water had deposited those 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.400 cars that carbon um, it would have had to have 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:01.760 been liquid water that um. I guess, how's whatever bacteria 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.600 that might have created those magnetites. It was to put 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.720 it differently, it was another check in favor of the 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.640 idea that something living had once been on this rock, right, 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:15.640 found by someone from Team naysayer? Yeah who who? Again 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:17.520 like she had come on too, I think to kind 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.720 of save her colleagues from embarrassment. She started out as 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:23.880 a genuine scientist is supposed to She attempted to debunk 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:26.640 this um, not to be a jerk, but to again like, 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.439 that's what scientists are supposed to do. I think from 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:31.320 what I could tell, she was also taking it upon 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:33.880 herself too. She wanted to be the one rather than 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.640 say other scientists who might not be nearly as kind 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:40.839 or gentle about it. Yeah, team they say gives it 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:44.120 a negative connotation. Team septic Yeah yeah, I might as 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:47.559 well have said team poopoo pants. I like all three. 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:51.640 Uh So the team believer gets back on board to 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:56.760 do some more studying. They found organic molecules called policyclic 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:02.199 aromatic hydrocarbons p A h is that are in these 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:06.640 carbonate deposits that they had originally found. And here's the thing. 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:11.160 You can find this stuff, uh in the cosmos. You 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.280 can find it here on planet Earth when you char 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.920 your meat on a grill. Uh. They are the you 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:19.880 know you might have heard that if you grill things 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.360 in a certain way with big charred grilled marks, there 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:27.680 can be carcinogen carcinogenic compounds. That's what that is. Um, 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:29.319 And that just occurred to me. That's probably why you 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:34.439 don't grill food. Huh. Yeah, I'm not really happy about 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:36.800 the taste of charred stuff. But also I don't own 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:38.959 a grill, so that kind of profudes me from groom. 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.679 All right, so there's a lot of stuff. Um. So 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:46.160 that's what the p a h s are. But um, 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:48.839 they're created as a byproduct of life, which is sort 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.600 of the key as far as this rock is concerned. Uh. 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:54.720 And they found this stuff like when things decay is 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.520 like an oil deposits and cold deposits. Yeah, from when 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:02.720 microbes decay and become fossilies. Right. So here's the thing again, 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:07.319 just like those magnetites, phs can exist and be created 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:10.880 non organically, right, This is how they're part of cosmic 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.360 dust and all that stuff. Um. But again, the way 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:17.600 that these they showed up in this rock really made 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.280 this team say, you know, this is exactly what you 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:23.559 would expect. Um, this this these p a h is 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:26.520 to be deposited in this form if it had been 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:32.199 deposited by a decaying microbe rather than happening non organically. Right, 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.160 So again another big check in another box that supports 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:39.600 the idea that life had once been inhabiting this rock 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:42.839 that was from Mars. Okay, so at this point, it's 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:47.079 the mid nineties, it's ninety six, it's the summertime. They 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:51.320 don't have definitive proof, but they did submit findings in 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:54.160 a paper in the in Science and the journal Science. 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:57.559 It was reviewed by a various steam panel, which did 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:02.600 include Mr Sagan or Dr Sakean. Yeahs their doctor, Reverend 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:08.680 Sagan esquire uh, and then NASA got involved and grilled them, 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:10.600 and they finally decided, all right, I think we at 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.720 least have enough to make a public announcement that we 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.559 have possibly discovered life on or evidence of past life 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:21.760 on Mars. And old Billy Clinton got up there made 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:26.360 that announcement, and it was a really really big deal, 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:29.360 as you would expect, I think. Uh. The BBC reports 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:33.559 that within just a few days a million people had 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:37.280 seen the Science paper online. And this is a science paper. 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.640 It's not generally the kind of thing that most of 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:42.040 the public will like click on and download and read, 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:44.960 and people were really into it. There were news crews 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:47.560 around the block in Houston trying to get a look 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:49.920 at this thing. Yeah, in the first week, there were 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.080 more than a thousand stories that NASA counted on on 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:57.560 the announcement, UM, and they suggested that the scale of 0:12:57.600 --> 0:13:01.440 the coverage across the world actually eclipse and exceeded the 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.520 coverage of the first moon landing. So, like you said, 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:06.200 it was a really big deal. I mean, think about it. Chuck, 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.160 the President of the United States, arguably back then the 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:13.120 leader of the free world, UM said, hey, some of 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:16.360 our scientists think that they found evidence of ancient life 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.240 on Mars, said it out loud in the Rose Garden 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:21.319 at the White House. So yeah, it was a huge deal, 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:25.440 and the public received it pretty well and pretty enthusiastically. Again, 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:30.120 they're talking about microbes that existed, uh, sixteen million years 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:33.720 or more ago on Mars, but it was still evidence 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:36.600 of life. In the scientific community, however, it was not 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:40.640 received quite so well. Yeah. You know, I think since then, 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:44.600 all the evidence has been looked over and there is 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:48.960 there's still team they say, or sorry, Team Skeptic, The 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:52.080 team poop poop Pants is very much alive, as is 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:56.240 are a team believer and the jury is still out. 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.120 It's there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that point to 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:00.720 it being life on mar Ours, and I think that 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:04.360 definitely sort of helped kick off a lot of our 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:09.840 subsequent research and interest on Mars. Just that first little hint. 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:11.920 I don't know if you could point like a direct 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.280 line to funding or anything like that, but it wouldn't 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:16.280 surprise me. No, you actually can. I read that. It 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.920 actually created the field of astrobiology, which is pretty well 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:22.400 funded today. Yeah, so it was a really big deal. 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:24.800 And the fact that the jury is still out, like 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:28.960 you said, means that somewhere, I believe in Houston, Uh, 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:34.720 we have a meteorite that contains evidence of life elsewhere 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.640 in the universe. We just not everybody believes that's what 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.440 it is. And they probably put in the grate and 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:42.240 rolled it back next to the ark of the Covenant. 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:46.320 That's right, you got anything else and nothing else? Good one, 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:53.360 everybody sure stuff is out. Stuff you Should Know is 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.800 a production of iHeart Radio. 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