Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's even here to dates here in spirit,
Speaker 1: so it's a short stuff. Let's go Martian rock. Yeah, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we did one recently on not just set, but you
Speaker 1: know how humans might respond to what the protocols are
Speaker 1: for talking to aliens. I don't remember what we named it,
Speaker 1: but um we mentioned this in passing in that episode
Speaker 1: because we're talking today about a particular chunk of rock
Speaker 1: that was discovered on December twenty seven and Antarctica, and
Speaker 1: it's called a l H eight four zero zero one,
Speaker 1: and a l H stands for the Alan Hills region
Speaker 1: of Antarctic, or was found zero zero one stands for
Speaker 1: the fact that it was the first rock discovered of
Speaker 1: the season and it was the five collecting season. So
Speaker 1: that's where the eighty four comes from. And you might say, hey,
Speaker 1: that's great, that's interesting. What's so remarkable about a l
Speaker 1: A zero zero one? And I think we should talk
Speaker 1: about that in depth real quick. Let's in depth real quick. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should for sure. Shout out geologist ROBERTA. Score, who
Speaker 1: was the person who was out on a snowmobile and
Speaker 1: saw this thing for the first time. Every time she
Speaker 1: found when she'd be like, Score didn't think way too
Speaker 1: much of that kind of please with myself. Uh. So okay,
Speaker 1: So ROBERTA. Score finds this thing. Uh, they bring it
Speaker 1: back and it's um kind of Raiders of the Lost
Speaker 1: Dark style, uh, stuck in storage for a remarkably long
Speaker 1: time because they didn't really know what they had on
Speaker 1: their hands until n when they finally, you know, you
Speaker 1: started kind of looking into this thing a little bit
Speaker 1: more and they said, wait a minute, everybody. This rock
Speaker 1: is from Mars and it was formed when the Earth
Speaker 1: was still molten, about four and a half billion years ago. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the way they figured it is that there was
Speaker 1: some cataclysmic event that sent this rock launching out into
Speaker 1: space and it sort of bumped around for about sixteen
Speaker 1: million years and uh then eventually found our solar system,
Speaker 1: what like thirteen thousand years ago. Yeah, and it got
Speaker 1: pulled into Earth's gravity and eventually it deorbited in landed
Speaker 1: in Antarctica. Yeah. Why is it? It's so funny. It
Speaker 1: just seems like that stuff never lands in a suburban
Speaker 1: neighborhood in Alabama or something. You know, I think it
Speaker 1: has plenty of times, but we've just so developed that
Speaker 1: and moved so much earth, we just have no idea
Speaker 1: what what those rocks are. We're just pushing them out
Speaker 1: of the way. And I guess there, even though it
Speaker 1: seems like there's people everywhere, there's still a lot more
Speaker 1: land where people aren't around for something to land on.
Speaker 1: Definitely for the ocean, of course. And then also took
Speaker 1: remember the only person to ever be struck by a
Speaker 1: meteorite I think was a woman in Alabama and like
Speaker 1: the fifties or sixties remembered, Yeah, I don't think it
Speaker 1: was Alabama. So it's it's raining meteorites in Alabama apparently. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this thing was special. They realized it was from Mars,
Speaker 1: and so they started to really take a much closer
Speaker 1: look at it. And the first thing they discovered that
Speaker 1: really kind of knocked their socks off were these orange
Speaker 1: grains locked inside of it that they tested and they
Speaker 1: found were made of carbonate. Uh. And they know here
Speaker 1: on Earth, carbon it forms when water that has carbon
Speaker 1: in it flows through cracks in a rock. That water
Speaker 1: evaporates and leaves and that carbon remains. And so they said,
Speaker 1: hold on a second here, if this thing has carbon,
Speaker 1: which is an essential ingredient of life, then that might
Speaker 1: mean this could be proof of life on Mars. And
Speaker 1: it also says everybody that there was water flowing on Mars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another vital ingredient for life. Right, So this kind of
Speaker 1: got their attention and focused it towards the idea you that, uh,
Speaker 1: perhaps there was some sort of evidence of life in
Speaker 1: this rock. And they started looking very closely at it,
Speaker 1: and as the BBC put it in an article that
Speaker 1: we read, um, they noticed near the carbonate grains, worms
Speaker 1: and sausages that looked just like Earth bacteria, except much smaller,
Speaker 1: and that really got their juices flowing. So now, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you have a team at the Jet
Speaker 1: Propulsion Laboratory who are studying a four and a half
Speaker 1: billion year old piece of Mars, uh, investigating it for
Speaker 1: possibly having harbored life at one point, right, And we
Speaker 1: should point out that there were obviously was something like this.
Speaker 1: There were people that were on what you would call
Speaker 1: or what I believe you called team believe or team believer,
Speaker 1: but of course also people who said, no, this thing
Speaker 1: was probably contaminated uh here on Earth like some kind
Speaker 1: of terrestrial contamination and that explains what we're finding here.
Speaker 1: So you had to sort of groups of I guess
Speaker 1: for of a better word, naysayers and believers, and they
Speaker 1: were studying this thing really closely. Yeah, and I say
Speaker 1: we take a break and come back and talk about
Speaker 1: what each team figured out. Let's do it. So, Chuck
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan famously said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, right,
Speaker 1: And the idea of chunk of Mars bearing evidence of
Speaker 1: microbial life, ancient, billions of year old microbial life, is
Speaker 1: a really extraordinary claim. So there was a lot of
Speaker 1: push among team believer to um find extraordinary evidence to
Speaker 1: back this up. And like you said, there was this
Speaker 1: idea that perhaps this had been contain amanated terrestrially. And
Speaker 1: there was a study that was conducted by an entirely
Speaker 1: different group of people from what I can tell, that
Speaker 1: looked at other Martian rocks that had been found in
Speaker 1: the Alan Hills area of Antarctica that had been processed
Speaker 1: at the same jet propulsion lab in a search for
Speaker 1: something that looked like what was showing up on the
Speaker 1: a l H eight four zero zero one rock, and
Speaker 1: they didn't find anything. So that right there kind of
Speaker 1: bolstered the idea that this rock was special and unique
Speaker 1: and it hadn't necessarily been contaminated here on Earth. That's right.
Speaker 1: So that's one positive step forward for life on Mars.
Speaker 1: Uh More and more people I think started to kind
Speaker 1: of fall into the team believer camp um. But there
Speaker 1: was one person, a specialist in uh microscopy or scoppy
Speaker 1: what are you saying, I am going to say, microscope?
Speaker 1: Oh well, alright, fancy pants, feeling like grape poupon here?
Speaker 1: Do you look that your micro mic groscope? I do
Speaker 1: when I examined my grape poupon. Uh So. Uh So
Speaker 1: this person joined the team um basically saying or advising them, Hey,
Speaker 1: we may want to hold our horses here because we
Speaker 1: don't want to make fools of ourselves by going public
Speaker 1: with some findings that I don't even know if I believe.
Speaker 1: And uh she started looking through this thing, obviously through
Speaker 1: a microscope, and when you get down there in microscopic land,
Speaker 1: it's they describe it on the BBC as terrain, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool, like the terrain of this rock.
Speaker 1: And saw these little black grains on the rims of uh,
Speaker 1: these carbonate globes and they were very very tiny, just
Speaker 1: nanometers in size, and she learned that these were magnetic
Speaker 1: crystals made of iron oxide and iron sulfide, which was
Speaker 1: another big aha moment. Yeah, they're like really tiny compasses.
Speaker 1: They're magnetic um. And it turns out here on Earth
Speaker 1: they're actually a byproduct of a specific kind of magneto
Speaker 1: tactic bacteria. It's a cool word once you master it,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a byproduct. It's a process of life
Speaker 1: that produces these little magnetites. It can also be created
Speaker 1: in other ways, right, non organically, non biologically. But to
Speaker 1: do that, to create these little magnetites nanometers across um,
Speaker 1: non biologically, it requires really really high temperature, really really
Speaker 1: high pH and uh an environment that's not at all
Speaker 1: hospitable for life. But that also means it's an environment
Speaker 1: not at all hospitable for liquid water. And since they
Speaker 1: had basically essentially confirmed that liquid water had deposited those
Speaker 1: cars that carbon um, it would have had to have
Speaker 1: been liquid water that um. I guess, how's whatever bacteria
Speaker 1: that might have created those magnetites. It was to put
Speaker 1: it differently, it was another check in favor of the
Speaker 1: idea that something living had once been on this rock, right,
Speaker 1: found by someone from Team naysayer? Yeah who who? Again
Speaker 1: like she had come on too, I think to kind
Speaker 1: of save her colleagues from embarrassment. She started out as
Speaker 1: a genuine scientist is supposed to She attempted to debunk
Speaker 1: this um, not to be a jerk, but to again like,
Speaker 1: that's what scientists are supposed to do. I think from
Speaker 1: what I could tell, she was also taking it upon
Speaker 1: herself too. She wanted to be the one rather than
Speaker 1: say other scientists who might not be nearly as kind
Speaker 1: or gentle about it. Yeah, team they say gives it
Speaker 1: a negative connotation. Team septic Yeah yeah, I might as
Speaker 1: well have said team poopoo pants. I like all three.
Speaker 1: Uh So the team believer gets back on board to
Speaker 1: do some more studying. They found organic molecules called policyclic
Speaker 1: aromatic hydrocarbons p A h is that are in these
Speaker 1: carbonate deposits that they had originally found. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You can find this stuff, uh in the cosmos. You
Speaker 1: can find it here on planet Earth when you char
Speaker 1: your meat on a grill. Uh. They are the you
Speaker 1: know you might have heard that if you grill things
Speaker 1: in a certain way with big charred grilled marks, there
Speaker 1: can be carcinogen carcinogenic compounds. That's what that is. Um,
Speaker 1: And that just occurred to me. That's probably why you
Speaker 1: don't grill food. Huh. Yeah, I'm not really happy about
Speaker 1: the taste of charred stuff. But also I don't own
Speaker 1: a grill, so that kind of profudes me from groom.
Speaker 1: All right, so there's a lot of stuff. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's what the p a h s are. But um,
Speaker 1: they're created as a byproduct of life, which is sort
Speaker 1: of the key as far as this rock is concerned. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they found this stuff like when things decay is
Speaker 1: like an oil deposits and cold deposits. Yeah, from when
Speaker 1: microbes decay and become fossilies. Right. So here's the thing again,
Speaker 1: just like those magnetites, phs can exist and be created
Speaker 1: non organically, right, This is how they're part of cosmic
Speaker 1: dust and all that stuff. Um. But again, the way
Speaker 1: that these they showed up in this rock really made
Speaker 1: this team say, you know, this is exactly what you
Speaker 1: would expect. Um, this this these p a h is
Speaker 1: to be deposited in this form if it had been
Speaker 1: deposited by a decaying microbe rather than happening non organically. Right,
Speaker 1: So again another big check in another box that supports
Speaker 1: the idea that life had once been inhabiting this rock
Speaker 1: that was from Mars. Okay, so at this point, it's
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, it's ninety six, it's the summertime. They
Speaker 1: don't have definitive proof, but they did submit findings in
Speaker 1: a paper in the in Science and the journal Science.
Speaker 1: It was reviewed by a various steam panel, which did
Speaker 1: include Mr Sagan or Dr Sakean. Yeahs their doctor, Reverend
Speaker 1: Sagan esquire uh, and then NASA got involved and grilled them,
Speaker 1: and they finally decided, all right, I think we at
Speaker 1: least have enough to make a public announcement that we
Speaker 1: have possibly discovered life on or evidence of past life
Speaker 1: on Mars. And old Billy Clinton got up there made
Speaker 1: that announcement, and it was a really really big deal,
Speaker 1: as you would expect, I think. Uh. The BBC reports
Speaker 1: that within just a few days a million people had
Speaker 1: seen the Science paper online. And this is a science paper.
Speaker 1: It's not generally the kind of thing that most of
Speaker 1: the public will like click on and download and read,
Speaker 1: and people were really into it. There were news crews
Speaker 1: around the block in Houston trying to get a look
Speaker 1: at this thing. Yeah, in the first week, there were
Speaker 1: more than a thousand stories that NASA counted on on
Speaker 1: the announcement, UM, and they suggested that the scale of
Speaker 1: the coverage across the world actually eclipse and exceeded the
Speaker 1: coverage of the first moon landing. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: it was a really big deal. I mean, think about it. Chuck,
Speaker 1: the President of the United States, arguably back then the
Speaker 1: leader of the free world, UM said, hey, some of
Speaker 1: our scientists think that they found evidence of ancient life
Speaker 1: on Mars, said it out loud in the Rose Garden
Speaker 1: at the White House. So yeah, it was a huge deal,
Speaker 1: and the public received it pretty well and pretty enthusiastically. Again,
Speaker 1: they're talking about microbes that existed, uh, sixteen million years
Speaker 1: or more ago on Mars, but it was still evidence
Speaker 1: of life. In the scientific community, however, it was not
Speaker 1: received quite so well. Yeah. You know, I think since then,
Speaker 1: all the evidence has been looked over and there is
Speaker 1: there's still team they say, or sorry, Team Skeptic, The
Speaker 1: team poop poop Pants is very much alive, as is
Speaker 1: are a team believer and the jury is still out.
Speaker 1: It's there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that point to
Speaker 1: it being life on mar Ours, and I think that
Speaker 1: definitely sort of helped kick off a lot of our
Speaker 1: subsequent research and interest on Mars. Just that first little hint.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you could point like a direct
Speaker 1: line to funding or anything like that, but it wouldn't
Speaker 1: surprise me. No, you actually can. I read that. It
Speaker 1: actually created the field of astrobiology, which is pretty well
Speaker 1: funded today. Yeah, so it was a really big deal.
Speaker 1: And the fact that the jury is still out, like
Speaker 1: you said, means that somewhere, I believe in Houston, Uh,
Speaker 1: we have a meteorite that contains evidence of life elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the universe. We just not everybody believes that's what
Speaker 1: it is. And they probably put in the grate and
Speaker 1: rolled it back next to the ark of the Covenant.
Speaker 1: That's right, you got anything else and nothing else? Good one,
Speaker 1: everybody sure stuff is out. Stuff you Should Know is
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