Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Speaker 1: hoor Cham and today we are going to Mars. We're
Speaker 1: going to find out what it's like there on our
Speaker 1: red sister planet and if we could ever transform it
Speaker 1: to make it livable for billionaires and space colonists. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk to a NASA expert as well as
Speaker 1: a comparative planetologist who specializes in the Mars atmosphere. So
Speaker 1: pack your spacesuit and bring extra sunscreen because we are
Speaker 1: moving to Mars for the next half hour. Here unsigned stuff, enjoy.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, here are some facts you might not know
Speaker 1: about the planet Mars. It's about half the diameter of Earth.
Speaker 1: It takes almost two earth years to go around the Sun.
Speaker 1: The gravity there is forty percent what it is year.
Speaker 1: It's home to the largest mountain in the Solar System,
Speaker 1: which is two and a half times taller than Mount Everest,
Speaker 1: and it's home to the biggest canyon in the Solar System,
Speaker 1: which is five times deeper than the Grand Canyon. On
Speaker 1: February twenty twenty one, that says Mars rover Perseverance recorded
Speaker 1: audio from one of its external microphones. So here's what
Speaker 1: it sounds like to be on Mars. Seems pretty peaceful, right,
Speaker 1: So threecap Mars is smaller, so everything there would be closer.
Speaker 1: You technically be half as old if you count your
Speaker 1: age in Mars ears. You can duncate basketball more easily
Speaker 1: there because the gravity is lower. Its amazing sights to see,
Speaker 1: and at least for now, there are no crowds. Sounds
Speaker 1: like a pretty nice place to move to, right And
Speaker 1: in fact, people have been talking a lot about moving
Speaker 1: to Mars recently, and it's not just because a crazy
Speaker 1: billionaire is investing in it. Some people say it's clear
Speaker 1: we might run out of space here on Earth someday,
Speaker 1: or we might ruin it with nuclear war or environmental disaster,
Speaker 1: in which case it would be nice to have a
Speaker 1: backup place to move to. And others say it's human
Speaker 1: destiny to move beyond Earth and conquer the stars, starting
Speaker 1: with the closest planet to us. But as we'll learn today,
Speaker 1: Mars is not quite the ideal relocation destination to explore this.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is split into two parts. First, we'll ask
Speaker 1: could we move there right now? What's it like there
Speaker 1: on Mars? And could we survive living there? Second, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the idea of terraforming Mars, which is the
Speaker 1: idea that we can change Mars to make it more
Speaker 1: like Earth. What would it take and is it even possible?
Speaker 1: All Right, the first person I talked to was doctor
Speaker 1: Sandra Sillystrom, scientist at NASSE. Well, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Actor Silistrom for joining.
Speaker 2: Us, Thank you for letting me come here.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2: So I am an astrobiologist looking for life in the universe,
Speaker 2: and particularly looking for life on Mars. So I'm currently
Speaker 2: part of the science team from the NASA Perseverance Rover
Speaker 2: that's currently roving Mars and collecting sample for Mars Super turns.
Speaker 2: So bringing rocks back from Mars.
Speaker 1: Well, that's amazing and so cool. To start us off,
Speaker 1: can you describe for us what it's like on Mars, Like,
Speaker 1: what is the atmosphere, like, what is the terrain there?
Speaker 2: Well, so, it's not a very nice place to be
Speaker 2: for living things and humans. It's a very hostile place.
Speaker 2: It's cold and very dry, so there's no lands or animals.
Speaker 2: It's just rocks, loose sand lying in dunes, and the
Speaker 2: atmosphere is very thin. The pressure on The surface of
Speaker 2: Mars is on a one percent what we have on
Speaker 2: the surface of Earth.
Speaker 1: What does that mean one percent?
Speaker 2: It means there's no oxygen or anything for us to breathe,
Speaker 2: but it also means there's no protection against radiation coming
Speaker 2: in frown space. So it's not a very nice place
Speaker 2: to visit.
Speaker 1: And how cold is it there?
Speaker 2: It's typically below freezing. It can go down to less
Speaker 2: than one hundred degrees celsius and it rarely goes above
Speaker 2: freezing or zero degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: For those of you that prefer fahrenheit. Mars has an
Speaker 1: average temperature of about minus eighty degrees fahrenheit, and in
Speaker 1: the North and South Poles it can get as cold
Speaker 1: as minus two hundred and twenty five degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 2: And it's very dry because there's no running water on
Speaker 2: the surface and almost no humidity, so it's a very
Speaker 2: dry place, basically a dry desert, cold dessert.
Speaker 1: Is the whole planet like that or only parts of it?
Speaker 1: Is there any variation?
Speaker 2: Well, in terms of climate, it's pretty similar. I mean
Speaker 2: yet equator. You can have sometimes actually above freezing a
Speaker 2: couple of days, and it's colder of course at the poles,
Speaker 2: but in general it's below freezing all over the planet,
Speaker 2: plus very dry.
Speaker 1: So what would happen if I just teleport it to
Speaker 1: Mars right now without any protection? What would happen to me?
Speaker 2: I think you would die pretty fast. I mean, first
Speaker 2: of all, because there's no oxygen right, so you couldn't
Speaker 2: breed anything. So I think that would kill you before
Speaker 2: you froze to death. You will definitely not survive very long.
Speaker 1: I see now is the problem that there's no air
Speaker 1: for that, the air that is there doesn't have oxygen or.
Speaker 2: Both both, so it's a low pressure environment. You would
Speaker 2: need some kind of pressure suit, but you also would
Speaker 2: need oxygen to bring with you to breed. Right the
Speaker 2: atmosphere it's ninety five percent CO two and there's basically
Speaker 2: no oxygen, so I don't remember the exact number, but
Speaker 2: it's below one percent.
Speaker 1: What's Mars always like it is right now? Or did
Speaker 1: it have a different history?
Speaker 2: So actually, if you go there and just take picture
Speaker 2: of the surface, you actually see there's a lot of
Speaker 2: feature indicating that we're flowing water at some point. So
Speaker 2: there are water on Mars, but most of it is
Speaker 2: either frozen at the poles, or just beneath the surface.
Speaker 2: But at some point some of that water actually flowed
Speaker 2: and it carved out like meandering river structures. You can
Speaker 2: see deltas at the end of rivers into the lake.
Speaker 1: Wow, how long ago was that?
Speaker 2: This was a long time ago, so maybe aund four
Speaker 2: billion years ago, so very early in the story of Mars.
Speaker 1: So four billion years ago, if you went to Mars,
Speaker 1: you would see lakes.
Speaker 2: And rivers, yeah, presumably.
Speaker 1: And clouds and brain yeah. Oh what about the atmosphere?
Speaker 1: Was it always one percent or was it different?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: So it's believed that the atmosphere were thicker, and this
Speaker 2: is one of the reasons people think there's no water now,
Speaker 2: is because the atmosphere creates pressure, right, and the pressure
Speaker 2: makes the water be able to be liquid and not frozen.
Speaker 2: So what people think is that there was a thicker atmosphere,
Speaker 2: but that disappeared quite early in the history of Mars.
Speaker 2: And when the atmosphere disappeared, the liquid water also froze.
Speaker 1: Oh, so it's due to the lack of atmosphere that disappeared.
Speaker 1: Do we know what happened to the atmosphere? Why did
Speaker 1: it go away?
Speaker 2: So this is also one big research topic about Mars,
Speaker 2: and one of the reasons is there's no magnetic field,
Speaker 2: and also Mars has less gravity they hold atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it sounds like Earth and Mars were sort
Speaker 1: of like twins at the beginning. I mean they were
Speaker 1: very similar, rocky, there were lakes, there was water, there's
Speaker 1: a thick atmosphere. But now Earth it's super different than Mars.
Speaker 2: Yes, so that makes it also very interesting. One is
Speaker 2: teeming with life and you have the oceans a lot
Speaker 2: of life, but the other one is like a dry desert.
Speaker 2: Do you also have venos Actually, oh right, Venus, which
Speaker 2: is almost the opposite because they have too much atmosphere
Speaker 2: and it's very warm. Instead, it's covered by that thick case,
Speaker 2: so it's hard to serve the surface and if you
Speaker 2: try to land something, it kind of dies within a
Speaker 2: couple of minutes because it's the heat is so high. Wow.
Speaker 1: So it's like there were triplets. They're all like the
Speaker 1: same and they all took different paths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's a lot of talk now about going
Speaker 1: to Mars, maybe establishing a colony there, exploring it. Is
Speaker 1: it a place where humans could live? Are there resources there?
Speaker 1: For us to live out the land or do we
Speaker 1: have to bring everything with us like a camping trip.
Speaker 2: So there is a lot of research going into city
Speaker 2: to resource utilizations. This is like using stuff on ground.
Speaker 2: There are some resources. For example, you could take the
Speaker 2: CEO two and then split that and make O.
Speaker 1: Two and so we have that technology to turn COE
Speaker 1: two back into oxygen.
Speaker 2: Yes, hopefully we'll make some way to make oxygen so
Speaker 2: you can breathe, and then we would have to make
Speaker 2: food and also shelter. So one of the big problems
Speaker 2: because we don't have that atmosphere is radiation. So the
Speaker 2: radiation level on Mars is much higher than on Earth.
Speaker 2: So one thing if we go there is to build
Speaker 2: a shelter that you would maybe be able to manufactures,
Speaker 2: although there's rock materi lying on the surface like a
Speaker 2: dome to protect from radiation.
Speaker 1: Like, you couldn't just rely on your suit or a
Speaker 1: camping tent. You need a thick wall to protect you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe you could go there and stay for a
Speaker 2: shorter time in some like inflatable type of habitat, but
Speaker 2: then if you want to stay longer, you would probably
Speaker 2: need to build some type of thicker like a dome.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: Another thing people are thinking about. So there seems to
Speaker 2: be caves, so you would be able to, you know,
Speaker 2: live in a cave or something, because then you would
Speaker 2: have automatically that prediction.
Speaker 1: I see, But then you might run into Martian bears.
Speaker 2: Well I don't think.
Speaker 1: So, okay. The last thing I talked to you, doctor
Speaker 1: Sillystorm about was whether we could grow food on Mars
Speaker 1: right now? Okay, so maybe we have energy shelter oxygen there.
Speaker 1: What about food? Is there is there a possibility to
Speaker 1: grow food there?
Speaker 2: There've been some scientific tests where they kind of grow
Speaker 2: things and Martian analog soils, and it seems possible. One
Speaker 2: problem is that there's toxic things in the Martian soil
Speaker 2: that's not very good. There's type of salt called percurates,
Speaker 2: which is quite common on Mars, that is not very
Speaker 2: beneficial for the growth. You need to add like nitigen phosphorus,
Speaker 2: which may not be abundant and not I mean, the
Speaker 2: sun is also less strong on Mars because we're further away,
Speaker 2: so you need to have netlives or something to get
Speaker 2: the photosynthesis. You have plenty of seal too, so that's
Speaker 2: not a problem.
Speaker 1: Okay, to recap. Mars is not the dream destination some
Speaker 1: movies make it out to be. In fact, it seems
Speaker 1: pretty dangerous to live there. It's freezing cold. There's very
Speaker 1: little air or oxygen while the water is frozen at
Speaker 1: the poles. You can't really grow food there. You need
Speaker 1: to wear a pressurized suit the whole time, and most
Speaker 1: likely you have to live in a cave that's not
Speaker 1: peaceful or relaxing at all. Now, there is something that
Speaker 1: serious scientists think we can do to make Mars a
Speaker 1: nicer place to live, and that is terraforming. So when
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll talk to an expert about what
Speaker 1: that is and whether it could ever work. Don't go anywhere,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back and we're back. Okay, we learned
Speaker 1: that Mars is not a cozy place. It's not nearly
Speaker 1: as bad as the other planets in our Solar System,
Speaker 1: but still living there would be like living in Antarctica,
Speaker 1: except there's almost no air to breathe. There's a ton
Speaker 1: of radiation, and if you took off your spacesuit you'd die.
Speaker 1: This is why people have talked about terraforming Mars, which
Speaker 1: is to change at mosphere. Now to fill us in
Speaker 1: on how that works and whether it's possible reached out
Speaker 1: to a Mars terrorforming expert. Doctor Francois Forge is an
Speaker 1: astrophysicist who has worked on many space missions for NASA
Speaker 1: and the European Space Agency. Here's how he describes what
Speaker 1: he does.
Speaker 3: So, I'm a planetary scientist. I study mostly the atmosphere
Speaker 3: on other planets and in particular Mars. I've been working
Speaker 3: on many a space mission on the ground and in orbit.
Speaker 3: I'm among the person who does climate modeling, the same
Speaker 3: thing you do on the Ears to do climate prediction,
Speaker 3: but we apply these models to other planet, in particular
Speaker 3: planet Mars.
Speaker 1: The start off, what is it like in Mars if
Speaker 1: we were together there?
Speaker 3: And mass today has many similarities with the Ears because
Speaker 3: the length of the day is twenty four hours and
Speaker 3: forty minutes. You have seasons just like on the Earth.
Speaker 3: Because the tilts of the axis of rotation is about
Speaker 3: the same that on Earths. As the consequence, you have
Speaker 3: a low pressure system jet. When you have moonsunjets, you
Speaker 3: have many similities. Of course, it's different because it's much drier,
Speaker 3: the pressure is very low. You have on average six
Speaker 3: hundred and ten million bars, but that's one hundred time
Speaker 3: less than on the Earth, so it can be very
Speaker 3: cold that it deserts like planet.
Speaker 1: Next, I ask him to describe what terraforming is. Now,
Speaker 1: you wrote a paper about this idea of terraforming bars,
Speaker 1: can you explain to us what terraforming is.
Speaker 3: Okay? Terraforming is to modify your environment at the planetary
Speaker 3: scale so that you can either make life easier for humans,
Speaker 3: or you can also a low life, typically terrestrial life,
Speaker 3: to grow and develop there, and ultimately you can even
Speaker 3: imagine completely adapting it to a human life.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Farge, there are three levels of terraforming.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like when you go to the spa
Speaker 1: and you get a choice of three levels of treatment.
Speaker 1: You can get just a bag massage, or you can
Speaker 1: get the full body massage, or you can get the
Speaker 1: full body massage plus the modbath, the hot stones and
Speaker 1: those little cucumbers that cover your eyes, or you can
Speaker 1: think of it like levels in a video game. They're
Speaker 1: all terraforming, but each level gets harder and trickier. Here's
Speaker 1: how doctor Farge describes each level.
Speaker 3: One is to directly raise the pressure so that you
Speaker 3: can walk around without a spacesuit, a seconetist who adapts
Speaker 3: mass to some form of terroristial life, and finally to
Speaker 3: adapt mass for humans to be just like the Earth.
Speaker 1: Interesting. There's three levels of terraforming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there are side options.
Speaker 1: Now we'll get into each of these levels, but first
Speaker 1: I was curious about where the side came from.
Speaker 3: This is not a new idea. It's something you can
Speaker 3: find in many science fiction books, movies, even games. It's
Speaker 3: quite a popular concept. Ellen Musk has been popularizing it
Speaker 3: because he wants to do that. But in reality, if
Speaker 3: you look at the technical and scientific literature, there are
Speaker 3: very very little studies, not many studies about that, so
Speaker 3: you can become a specialist quite quickly. So the point
Speaker 3: is to say that there have been some speculations, some
Speaker 3: scientific studies in the seventies and the eighties. A key
Speaker 3: scientific studies was published in nineteen ninety one by Chris McKay,
Speaker 3: Riot Tune, and Jim Casting. They were all together at
Speaker 3: the Nazaims Research Center. I was there just after this,
Speaker 3: so I know them well. And this is really something
Speaker 3: that is at the basis of many of the speculation
Speaker 3: that you can read today in the pular literature and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, and lots of the concept that I
Speaker 3: will describe today are in fact described very well in
Speaker 3: this interesting paper.
Speaker 1: Okay, to start, here's level one of terraforming Mars, and
Speaker 1: that is to simply raise the atmospheric pressure.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: As mentioned before, the air on Mars is one hundred
Speaker 1: times thinner than it is on Earth, so all you
Speaker 1: have to do is make more air.
Speaker 3: So now let me go to the first step, that
Speaker 3: is to raise the atmospheric pressure so that you can
Speaker 3: live without a spacesuit. And the side effect of this
Speaker 3: will be too allow to have liqid water on the
Speaker 3: surface more easily.
Speaker 1: Can I just ask why does the low pressure require
Speaker 1: you to use a space suit?
Speaker 3: Well, there are two reasons. The first one is the
Speaker 3: fact that if you go to Mars right now, you
Speaker 3: can't have liquid water at all because water will boil
Speaker 3: at two three degrees celsius. That means that, for instance,
Speaker 3: if you walk around you're a saliva will boil and
Speaker 3: your blood will want to boil as well. At thirty
Speaker 3: seven degrees you're well above the boiling point, so you're
Speaker 3: like a pressure cooker. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not having your blood boil would be nice. The
Speaker 1: second reason you need a pressure ized suit is that
Speaker 1: at those low pressures there wouldn't be enough oxygen atoms
Speaker 1: for your lungs to breathe, even if you wore a
Speaker 1: pure oxygen mask. So clearly it would be nice to
Speaker 1: raise the air pressure on Mars, But how would you
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 3: So the conclusion you need a space suit today, and
Speaker 3: if you don't want a space suit, you need to
Speaker 3: find a way to raise the pressure of the atmosphere
Speaker 3: on Mars up to at least one hundred twenty millibars
Speaker 3: typically okay, and that's a lot because right now on
Speaker 3: Mars you have six midi bars of mostly CO two.
Speaker 3: So the question is how can you raise the pressure
Speaker 3: up to one hundred and twenty million mars or even higher?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: So you need some gas. And they had this idea
Speaker 3: that especially in the polar regions, there should be frozen
Speaker 3: COEO two ready to be released. So they say that, mmm,
Speaker 3: we think that if we can heat the pole, we
Speaker 3: can sublime in other world, transform the seal to ice
Speaker 3: into seal to gas sufficiently so that you increase the
Speaker 3: amount of seal to gas.
Speaker 1: Okay. So one idea to raise the pressure on Mars
Speaker 1: is to take all the CO two ice we see
Speaker 1: in Mars' north and south poles, melt it so it
Speaker 1: turns to gas, and fill up the atmosphere with it.
Speaker 1: Now scientists think that you wouldn't have to melt all
Speaker 1: that coeo to ice. That'd be like melting all the
Speaker 1: ice in our north and south poles. You could do
Speaker 1: it by triggering global warming.
Speaker 3: Seal two, by the way, is a greenhouse gas, so
Speaker 3: if you increase the amount of gas, there could be
Speaker 3: a runaway greenhouse effect in other worlds. You heat a
Speaker 3: little bit the polese, it really is a little bit
Speaker 3: of seal two s to hat the planets, and then
Speaker 3: you have a runaway process that sublimes all the CO
Speaker 3: two around and suddenly you have a very nice thick
Speaker 3: atmosphere made of seal two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what could go wrong? All right? So then how
Speaker 1: do you get this global warming started? And this is
Speaker 1: where things start to get a little science fictioning.
Speaker 3: On this basis you may have heard. All we have
Speaker 3: to do is to initialize this, for instance, by using
Speaker 3: mirrors to hit the poles of mass, and that could
Speaker 3: trigger this runaway climate change that will suddenly transform mass.
Speaker 1: So one idea is to float mirrors in space around
Speaker 1: Mars and point them so that they focus the light
Speaker 1: from the Sun to the North or South poles, sort
Speaker 1: of like a giant space magnifying glass. And from there
Speaker 1: the ideas get even crazier.
Speaker 3: Some people have suggested that you could spread the I
Speaker 3: don't know, very dark material on the cap and sudden
Speaker 3: need will absorb the sola heat and go into this process.
Speaker 3: If you know Ellen Musks, it goes around with a
Speaker 3: T shirt where it's threetened nuke mass. And this idea
Speaker 3: is that, okay, let's release the coal two frozen at
Speaker 3: the poles by putting nuclear bombs and it will sudden
Speaker 3: nut ones from MASSO.
Speaker 1: That's right. One idea is to paint the North and
Speaker 1: South poles black so they absorb more heat, and the
Speaker 1: other idea is to explode nuclear bombs to vaporize the
Speaker 1: North and Sells poles. Like I said, what could go wrong?
Speaker 1: But not all ideas are it this destructive. Another way
Speaker 1: to cause global warming is to simply pollute the Martian atmosphere.
Speaker 3: A very popular weight that has been studied was to
Speaker 3: make factories and create super efficient greenhouse gas. With the
Speaker 3: fluoro carbon. For instance, you can make artificial greenhouse gas
Speaker 3: that will really create a strong greenhouse effect with only
Speaker 3: a few part per millions. So factories will be enough
Speaker 3: to create that if you find the material to make them.
Speaker 3: We could invent aerial salts metallic carrosalts with the form
Speaker 3: of a needle that will be especially optimized to also
Speaker 3: create a very efficient greenhouse effect.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's terraforming. Level one increasing the pressure so we
Speaker 1: don't need spacesuits to walk around. Level two is having
Speaker 1: life grow on Mars.
Speaker 3: Step two will be to have plants than life that
Speaker 3: could survive on Mars, to adapt mass in a way
Speaker 3: that you could imagine, have plants, algae, something living that
Speaker 3: could survive and thrive on the surface. So some people
Speaker 3: will find that exciting because you bring life to somewhere
Speaker 3: else down on the Earth. Some people will be motivated
Speaker 3: by the fact that plants will be a way to
Speaker 3: modify an atmosphere. For instance, photosynthesis could transform CO two
Speaker 3: into oxygen, and this is a way to transform Mars
Speaker 3: in something more suitable for humans.
Speaker 1: That sounds great. Why doesn't that work?
Speaker 3: The reason is that life is very good as growing everywhere,
Speaker 3: even if it's called one acidic whatever. But life requires
Speaker 3: liquid water on the Earth is very simple. If there
Speaker 3: is liquid water, you have life. Even if it's salty water,
Speaker 3: if it's at minute ten degrees, if it's very hot
Speaker 3: water at the bottom of the ocean at one hundreds. See,
Speaker 3: it's okay. Life is happy. But you need liquid water.
Speaker 3: If you are only ice, live stops. If you have
Speaker 3: only water vapor, life stops. So the question is how
Speaker 3: to get liquid water on Mars.
Speaker 1: Okay, this gets a little bit technical, but basically, because
Speaker 1: Mars has low pressure and low temperature, water only really
Speaker 1: exists as solid ice or vapor, which is a problem because,
Speaker 1: as doctor for j said, life needs liquid water. So
Speaker 1: you don't only have to raise the pressure in the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: you also have to raise the temperature. There is good news, though.
Speaker 3: There have been studies that show that life simple. Life
Speaker 3: like ALGs and even some plants can be happy with
Speaker 3: the low pressure atmosphere. They don't need as high as
Speaker 3: an atmospheric pressure than what I describe for human but
Speaker 3: you need liquid water. And to have liquid water, the
Speaker 3: absolute pressure must be about six point one meter bars.
Speaker 1: Okay for level two You don't need to raise the
Speaker 1: pressure as much as in level one, but you do
Speaker 1: need to raise the temperature, which you might have already
Speaker 1: done if you trigger global warming to melt the CO
Speaker 1: two in the North and South Poles. All right, when
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll tackle the last level of terraforming Mars,
Speaker 1: the boss level, which is making Mars just like Earth.
Speaker 1: Don't go to another planet just yet. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Okay, come to the boss level of terraforming Mars,
Speaker 1: the ultimate treatment in our planetary spa many making Mars
Speaker 1: just like Earth. And here the idea is not just
Speaker 1: to make the pressure on Mars the same as on
Speaker 1: Earth so you can walk around without a pressureized spacesuit,
Speaker 1: or to make the temperature high enough to have liquid water.
Speaker 1: This is going all the way.
Speaker 3: Step NUMBA three is really science fiction, but we've been
Speaker 3: there since the beginning. So it's to give mass a
Speaker 3: breathable atmosphere for humans. That will be the real terrorformation
Speaker 3: that you can dream of in science fiction movies. You
Speaker 3: go around, you walk around, just like in Star Wars,
Speaker 3: all these planets.
Speaker 1: Imagine stepping out the door of your house on Mars.
Speaker 1: You're not wearing a spacesuit. The temperature is a little nippy,
Speaker 1: but not freezing. Above you, there are clouds blocking out
Speaker 1: some of the harmful radiation coming from the sun, and
Speaker 1: you take a deep breath. The air is a little dry,
Speaker 1: but it's not boiling your saliva. And best of all,
Speaker 1: it has oxygen, sweet, refreshing ly sustaining oxygen. And you
Speaker 1: go for a nice run among the plants that are
Speaker 1: growing on Mars, which is super fun because, as I said,
Speaker 1: the gravity in Mars is forty percent what it is
Speaker 1: on Earth, so it's like jumping around a bouncy castle.
Speaker 2: Whoo.
Speaker 1: That is the final level of transforming Mars. So what
Speaker 1: would it take to get us there?
Speaker 3: So of course this means a lot of thing. First,
Speaker 3: you need, as we discussed before, enough oxygen.
Speaker 1: Are there any ideas of where we would get all
Speaker 1: this oxygen?
Speaker 3: No oxygen? No, No oxygen is easy because oxygen you
Speaker 3: can get it from water. You can process water. You
Speaker 3: have lots of water on Mars, have to admit so
Speaker 3: water will be busy. You take water, you can electrolyize water,
Speaker 3: so you can create oxygen. But you cannot be pure
Speaker 3: oxygen because pure oxygen is dangerous. Everything tends to catch fire,
Speaker 3: and it's very, very dangerous. It's a little toxic in
Speaker 3: some way. If you breathe pure oxygen for some time,
Speaker 3: you can have some disease, the Row and Smith effects
Speaker 3: like that. It's inflammatory. In any case, you need to
Speaker 3: dilute oxygen with another gas. Some on the Earth you
Speaker 3: have nitrogen, but we don't have nitrogen on Mass.
Speaker 1: So the main problem in making Mars air breathable is
Speaker 1: not oxygen. You could make it on Mars from water.
Speaker 1: The problem is everything else that air needs to be breathable.
Speaker 1: The air we breathe on Earth is twenty one percent oxygen.
Speaker 1: The rest has to be something else, but it can't
Speaker 1: be CO two, which is most of what's there on
Speaker 1: Mars right now.
Speaker 3: You need to decrease the amount of many gases that
Speaker 3: are toxic, like carbon monoxide carbon dioxide below a certain
Speaker 3: level otherwise you have problems. You need to have less
Speaker 3: than ten million bars of CO two typical clear and
Speaker 3: less than point one million bars of carbon monoxide otherwise
Speaker 3: you have big problems.
Speaker 1: When you are a human, okay, then you might think, well,
Speaker 1: when you made oxygen from water, you also made H
Speaker 1: two or hydrogen gas, right, could you use that to
Speaker 1: dilute the oxygen?
Speaker 3: Well, no, because hydrogen and oxygen tends to react and
Speaker 3: if you have sparkles, you explode, so you don't want
Speaker 3: that either.
Speaker 1: All right, This brings us to what seems to be
Speaker 1: the main problem with any of these terraforming plants, which
Speaker 1: is that Mars doesn't have all the things we need.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to pressurize the atmosphere or cause global
Speaker 1: warming with CO two, there isn't enough of it on
Speaker 1: Mars right now. All the missions we've sent there, like
Speaker 1: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Global Surveyor or Mars
Speaker 1: Odyssey have all found that there's not enough CO two,
Speaker 1: either frozen in the North and South poles or absorbed
Speaker 1: on the ground. And if you're trying to fill the
Speaker 1: atmosphere with breathable air, you need a lot of nitrogen
Speaker 1: or our gun, which Mars doesn't really have. And this
Speaker 1: is where we run into the definition of what it
Speaker 1: means for something to be possible. Some people say at
Speaker 1: this point, well, you could bring the CO two from
Speaker 1: Venus or Earth like ship it using rockets, or you
Speaker 1: could go out to the asteroid belt, round up about
Speaker 1: ten million comets and somehow get them to crash land
Speaker 1: on Mars because comments have water and carbon monoxide. But
Speaker 1: the sheer scale of these solutions start to get a
Speaker 1: little ridiculous, or at least really really expensive, or expensive
Speaker 1: is beyond the problem.
Speaker 3: In other words, you cannot do it with a technology
Speaker 3: that we can imagine.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: You may be able to do it if you use
Speaker 3: one ten million commets that you move and bring to Mars,
Speaker 3: but that's beyond our technology, completely beyond. We have no
Speaker 3: energy to do that. Maybe in five hundred years we've
Speaker 3: discover an infinite source of energies, but right now it's impossible.
Speaker 3: That's my opinion. But it's a debate. If my colleague
Speaker 3: Edwin Kite was here, it will scream and say, oh, Francois,
Speaker 3: you're dead wrong. I will show you that you can
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of where we're at. It's a debate.
Speaker 1: Some people say it is technic possible to change Mars,
Speaker 1: even if it takes an almost infinite amount of energy,
Speaker 1: and we didn't even get to the ethical questions about
Speaker 1: terraforming Mars. Some people argue that we shouldn't change Mars
Speaker 1: that we should leave at pristine kind of like a
Speaker 1: national park. And some say there could still be Martian
Speaker 1: life there, maybe hidden under the surface, and that changing
Speaker 1: Mars would be a huge act of genocide. So whether
Speaker 1: we could or should terraform Mars, the answer seems to be,
Speaker 1: maybe we should clean up our own planet first, all right.
Speaker 1: To end this episode, I asked both our experts if
Speaker 1: they would go to Mars.
Speaker 2: I tend to say no because if you go to Mars,
Speaker 2: you have to commit two years at least to go there,
Speaker 2: and I have a family and I don't want to
Speaker 2: be away for like two years. I mean, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be cool to go to Mars. If you could go
Speaker 2: there for a month, would be cool just to go
Speaker 2: and go to a clear different environments.
Speaker 3: Me. I'm still a dreamer. I like astronauts, so I
Speaker 3: will dream of going to Mass as an astronaut, but
Speaker 3: to do expedition to Mars to explore and study Mass
Speaker 3: and come back and leave Mass as clean as possible.
Speaker 3: So I don't want to colonize Mars, and I don't
Speaker 3: want to terraform Mars.
Speaker 1: Sef nasa Issa said doctor Frage. We needed to get
Speaker 1: on this rocket tomorrow and go to Mars. You would go, Yes,
Speaker 1: I will.
Speaker 3: I'm fond of such adventures.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for joining us, See you next time
Speaker 1: you've been listening to Science Stuff. Production of iHeartRadio written
Speaker 1: and produced by me or Hm, edited by Rose Seguda,
Speaker 1: executive producer Jerry Rowland, an audio engineer and mixer Kasey
Speaker 1: peprom The same recording of Mars is credited to NASA
Speaker 1: jeep Yale call Tech l A N L C N
Speaker 1: E S C N R S and is E A supero.
Speaker 1: Available on the NASA website at Science dot nasa dot gov,
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