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Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, I have an unusual aliens question for you.

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Speaker 2: It is never good for me when a question starts

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Speaker 2: like that. It's I have an unusual aliens question for you?

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Speaker 2: Or what is in my poop? As a parasitologist, I

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Speaker 2: get a lot of that, So go on, I can't wait.

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Speaker 2: Where are you going with this?

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Speaker 1: All right? So, as a parasitologist, do you ever see

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Speaker 1: a critter infected with something new? And wonder?

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Speaker 2: Hmm?

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Speaker 1: Is this an alien parasite?

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Speaker 3: No?

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Speaker 2: Never, There's so many weird things on Earth. I don't

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Speaker 2: feel like we need to go to space to explain them.

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Speaker 2: And the other day I saw someone trying to make

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Speaker 2: the argument, like in an actual like sciencey pop magazine,

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Speaker 2: that octopus like octopodes, Oh gosh, let's not get into

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Speaker 2: how you pluralize that might be aliens. And I'm like,

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Speaker 2: oh my gosh, dude, their genome fits nicely in the

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Speaker 2: tree of life. This isn't complicated. So the answer is no.

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Speaker 1: All right, But then my question is how exactly can

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Speaker 1: you tell? I mean, do you think like if alien

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Speaker 1: parasites did come to Earth, could they do their parasiting

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Speaker 1: on us? Would they find us tasty or be like

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Speaker 1: incompatible with us.

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Speaker 2: So that's an interesting question. You know, it might be

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Speaker 2: that they wouldn't be able to eat us, or that

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Speaker 2: they wouldn't be able to like, you know, bind to

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Speaker 2: whatever receptors inside of us they needed to. But you know,

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Speaker 2: for as far as how far or what do you

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Speaker 2: need to do to tell? You know, you could like

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Speaker 2: take a DNA sample and you know, see if they

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Speaker 2: fit on the tree of life or not. But yeah,

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Speaker 2: I don't know hard to know, so I guess I'd

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Speaker 2: say it's impossible to know. But I'm guessing that we

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Speaker 2: do look different from the kind of things that aliens

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Speaker 2: are used to sucking on out in space.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to take it as a compliment that aliens

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Speaker 1: don't want to suck on any parts of me.

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Speaker 2: You know, That's exactly how I meant it.

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Speaker 1: Did Hi, I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and I'm

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Speaker 1: doing my best to be not attractive to alien parasites.

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Speaker 2: I'm Kelly Widersmith, and you probably don't have any alien parasites.

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Speaker 2: But if you do, send them to me, because I'd

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Speaker 2: love to see them.

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Speaker 1: How are we going to find out? Kelly? Are you

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Speaker 1: planning to chop me up to see.

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Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, better you than my kids.

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Speaker 1: You didn't take very long to think about that. You

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Speaker 1: went right into Yes, I'm gonna chop up my co host.

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Speaker 2: Some questions are easy to answer.

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Speaker 1: And welcome to the podcast Daniel and or He Explain

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Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of iHeartMedia where we tackle all questions,

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Speaker 1: those that are easy to answer and those that are

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Speaker 1: harder to answer. Questions about the deep nature of the universe,

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Speaker 1: questions about what's out there, questions about how it all works,

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Speaker 1: and questions about who else might be out there in

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Speaker 1: the universe. Orge can't be with us today, but I'm

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Speaker 1: very please to have Kelly here to talk to us

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Speaker 1: about aliens landing on Earth and potentially sending our parasites

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Speaker 1: out to alien planets.

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Speaker 2: Oh is this the world needs more parasites. I'm so excited.

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Speaker 2: The universe needs more parasites, not just the world share them?

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Speaker 2: No know, is that a weird take? I don't.

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Speaker 1: I'll admit I have a hard time getting warm and

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Speaker 1: fuzzies for parasites. I always think of those wasps that

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Speaker 1: like lay their eggs inside spiders and then control them

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Speaker 1: until they die, driving them around like some horrific bumper car. Like,

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Speaker 1: oh man, that is just not a warm and fuzzy

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Speaker 1: oh I.

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Speaker 2: Love watching videos of that. It's it's so creepy and

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Speaker 2: like usually, so I have to admit, even though I'm

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Speaker 2: a biologist, and I might take my biologist card away

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Speaker 2: for saying this, I find spiders a little creepy. I

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Speaker 2: said it, but I almost feel bad for them when

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Speaker 2: I see them getting parasitized and like manipulating their web

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Speaker 2: building behavior and then the babies like stick a straw

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Speaker 2: in the back of the spiders and and it's it's

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Speaker 2: kind of creepy. I feel bad for spiders sometimes they

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Speaker 2: have my sympathy.

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Speaker 1: And you know, if we could have those wasps on

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Speaker 1: the podcast and we would ask them, like, how do

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Speaker 1: you feel about zombifying those spiders, they would answer with

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Speaker 1: the same cold, calculating quickness that you answered when you

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Speaker 1: said you would chop me up on the podcast. There

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Speaker 1: would be like, no problem, let's do it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, so, fortunately for me, I am a low

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Speaker 2: on introspection ability, so I'm not going to think too

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Speaker 2: hard about what that says about me. But I am

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Speaker 2: super glad that I am not the kind of organism

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Speaker 2: that wasps can manipulate life. Is good being a human,

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Speaker 2: or at least being a human in North America.

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Speaker 1: Until those alien wasps land here on Earth. And it's

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Speaker 1: a regular trope in science fiction that if you go

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Speaker 1: out into space you might catch some sort of weird

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Speaker 1: alien virus which takes over and infects the entire biome,

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Speaker 1: polluting the Earth and demolishing life on Earth. Or if

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Speaker 1: we land on Mars, we could accidentally pollute Mars with

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Speaker 1: some sort of Earth based microbe. This question of keeping

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Speaker 1: things sterile, of keeping things separate is a standard issue

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Speaker 1: in science fic and also in real life space missions.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we go to great lengths to try to make

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Speaker 2: sure we don't do what's called forward contamination getting Earth

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Speaker 2: microbes out on Mars. And then we were very careful

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Speaker 2: to make sure that, you know, when the astronauts came

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Speaker 2: back from the Moon, there was no backwards contamination. They

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Speaker 2: didn't bring any microbes back from the Moon. And so

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Speaker 2: far I think we've had pretty good success. But if

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Speaker 2: I had to bet, I would bet some of our

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Speaker 2: extremophiles have made it to Mars. Do you know Daniel

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Speaker 2: has anybody? Uh, surely someone's looked.

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Speaker 1: At that I know that there are Tarte grades that

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Speaker 1: crash landed on the Moon in that Israeli experiment gone bad,

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Speaker 1: and they're probably busy building a colony up there and

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Speaker 1: planning to return with weapons. Yeah, that's pure speculation, of course. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I feel like I have to say that, since this

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Speaker 1: is supposed to be a heavy science podcast, anytime we

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Speaker 1: say something silly, I want to make sure people know

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Speaker 1: when we're joking. But in terms of sending things to Mars,

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Speaker 1: you know, we have sent stuff from here to Mars,

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Speaker 1: and we have done our best to cleanse it of microbe.

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Speaker 1: But my wife is a microbiologist, and she always tells

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Speaker 1: me it's essentially impossible to remove microbes. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: will find microbes in every environment on Earth because there's

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Speaker 1: always some little critter capable of eating whatever poison you're

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Speaker 1: using to cleanse it of microbes. So I'd be very

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Speaker 1: skeptical that our landers have no microbes on them. So,

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Speaker 1: since I happen to be married to a microbiologist, I

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Speaker 1: thought it'd be fun to ask Katrina about it directly,

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Speaker 1: and so I did. So. Welcome to the podcast, Katrina,

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Speaker 1: Thanks very much for joining us.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for having me and thanks.

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Speaker 1: For contributing your biochemical expertise. Oh boy, So my first

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Speaker 1: question is what are the chances that we have already

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Speaker 1: polluted Mars and the Moon with microbes from Earth?

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Speaker 4: What a great question, and you know there are teams

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Speaker 4: of people who are devoting their life work to figuring

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Speaker 4: this out.

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Speaker 3: So you know you're asking me as a bystander to

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Speaker 3: answer that question.

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Speaker 4: But there have been some fascinating experiments where people, for example,

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Speaker 4: have found that up at JPL in Pasadena, California, they

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Speaker 4: use these really stringent cleaning reagents to try to remove

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Speaker 4: all the microbes from the surface of the spacecraft, and

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Speaker 4: they find that there are microbes that can actually eat

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Speaker 4: the most difficult cleaning reagent. You can imagine, it's like

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Speaker 4: bleach yum carbon source. They'll eat that. So what are

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Speaker 4: the chances that one of those microbes that survived JPL's

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Speaker 4: most atrocious molecules they could think of to kill all

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Speaker 4: the microbes and then also survived getting out of the

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Speaker 4: atmosphere of Earth and the transport to Mars. What do

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Speaker 4: I think the chances are? I think it's possible. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: I'm not saying these are like happy dividing cells.

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Speaker 3: Of microbes.

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Speaker 4: It's just that microbes have first of all, the most

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Speaker 4: diverse strategies you could imagine, so there's every time you

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Speaker 4: got an idea, they've got a million more. And then

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Speaker 4: they can form these very dormant sporelike or spore particles

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Speaker 4: that basically you know, squirrel away and hide their DNA inside.

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Speaker 3: Of like many, many many layers of protection.

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Speaker 4: So I think it's very possible that something in that

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Speaker 4: type of form. Ironically, the attempts to clean the spacecraft

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Speaker 4: could actually select for microbes that are really extra tough,

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Speaker 4: and therefore they would have a better chance of having

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Speaker 4: made it to Mars. Now, I'm not saying that when

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Speaker 4: they get to Mars then they're going to be like

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Speaker 4: stretching out, jumping in the pool, having a great life.

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Speaker 4: I mean, they're still going to be stuck in their

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Speaker 4: dormant state. But is it possible that if you like

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Speaker 4: brought some water to Mars and then it could like

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Speaker 4: wake those bugs up, you know, that kind of thing

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Speaker 4: could happen.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, But so I guess the second question is if

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Speaker 2: it can, so, it would need to survive the chemicals

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Speaker 2: the vacuum of space, and then find something to eat.

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Speaker 2: On Mars, and that's a lot of hoops to jump through.

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Speaker 2: You'd need a lot of variability in the microbes that

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Speaker 2: make it to Mars. But you know, if Jurassic Park

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Speaker 2: taught me anything it's that life finds a way.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. Katrina is always telling me. Like you pick up

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Speaker 1: a scoop of like boiling acidic water near some vent,

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Speaker 1: you'll find like ten to the nine bacteria in every

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Speaker 1: cubic centimeter. Or if you look at some satellite we're

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Speaker 1: sending up into space, you'll find microbes on the outside

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Speaker 1: that eat the bleach they were using to kill the microbes.

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Speaker 1: But you're right, those microbes have survived that environment. That

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Speaker 1: doesn't guarantee that they're going to be able to survive

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Speaker 1: any arbitrary environment. These extremo files are evolved to live

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Speaker 1: in their particular niches.

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Speaker 2: So should we stop trying?

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Speaker 1: I think we should just give up on the whole

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Speaker 1: field of biochemistry. I mean, that's what that's what I think.

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Speaker 2: That's how I felt when I was in college.

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Speaker 1: No, I think it is important that we try to

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Speaker 1: separate these things. I mean, imagine we land on Mars

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Speaker 1: and we discover microbes there. We want to know, are

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Speaker 1: these Earth microbes or not? And even if they have

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Speaker 1: Earth like DNA, we want to know did these come

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Speaker 1: from Earth or maybe all of life on Earth came

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Speaker 1: from microbes on Mars that were blasted off the surface.

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Speaker 1: That's an actually legitimate, non joking scientific theory about the

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Speaker 1: potential origin of life on Earth. So we want to

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Speaker 1: know if we've infected life on Mars.

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Speaker 2: So I know that we have bits of like Mars

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Speaker 2: that have been blown out into space and I think

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Speaker 2: they've landed, and like being able to find them in Antarctica.

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Speaker 2: Have we looked for alien microbes in those and found

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Speaker 2: anything yet?

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Speaker 1: Oh, we definitely have looked for alien microbes, And a

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Speaker 1: few decades ago there were scientists who were confident they

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Speaker 1: had found them. They saw these little microtubules, and even

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Speaker 1: President Clinton made this huge announcement, like on the lawn

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Speaker 1: of the White House, that we thought we had found

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Speaker 1: life on Mars. These days, though, we have other non

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Speaker 1: life based explanations for those formations, so people are pretty

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Speaker 1: convinced that's not evidence for life on Mars. But you know,

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Speaker 1: we've gotten like a few rocks from Mars that we

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Speaker 1: could study here on Earth, And so it's a pretty

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Speaker 1: small sample. We're hoping in the next decade or so

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Speaker 1: to do Mars sample return. Would they pick up rocks

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Speaker 1: from the surface of Mars and send them back here

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Speaker 1: to Earth via some ridiculously complicated Rube Goldberg set of devices.

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Speaker 1: But we're all excited to study those and maybe define

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Speaker 1: microbes there that would be exciting.

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Speaker 2: I hope we can contain them and they don't take

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Speaker 2: over our minds.

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Speaker 1: But we can also think beyond our Solar system and

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Speaker 1: wonder what about microbes on planets around other stars? Do

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Speaker 1: we need to take the same sort of considerations about

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Speaker 1: avoiding polluting exoplanets or maybe we should turn the question

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Speaker 1: on its head and on purpose pollute those exoplanets with

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Speaker 1: our kind of life.

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Speaker 2: You know. I feel like maybe we shouldn't have two

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Speaker 2: scientists talking about this, we should have like a philosopher

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Speaker 2: slash ethicist. But we've got what we've got, So what's up.

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Speaker 2: We don't have anybody with an ethical compass here, so

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Speaker 2: let's plow forward with this question.

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Speaker 1: But fortunately we do. We got a question from a listener, Haley,

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Speaker 1: who is nine years old, and she's young enough to

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Speaker 1: have sort of like an intuitive philosopher's heart and sense

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Speaker 1: of ethics at least, And so she wrote in with

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Speaker 1: this question him.

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Speaker 5: My name is Haley, I'm nine years old and today's

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Speaker 5: my birthday. I was actually wondering, if human wanted to

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Speaker 5: live after ours was gone, can't you put like micros

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Speaker 5: and back to on a different planet and let them

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Speaker 5: evolve there? And I was wondering, do you think astronauts

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Speaker 5: accidentally bring little small form like life forms to out

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Speaker 5: of Earth and put them somewhere else, like on their

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Speaker 5: clothes or the rockets by accident?

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Speaker 2: Thanks Hailey, those questions are so great and happy belated birthday, And.

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Speaker 1: How sad is it that we have to rely on

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Speaker 1: nine year olds to be our ethical compass.

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Speaker 2: Yeah? No, I think when my kids grow up, it's

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Speaker 2: gonna be uh, it's gonna be everyone for themselves here.

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Speaker 1: So I thought this was a really fun question, and

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Speaker 1: I started looking into it, and I discovered that there's

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Speaker 1: a whole project, a whole group of people with specific

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Speaker 1: plans and ideas to do just this, to send our microups,

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Speaker 1: our bacteria two different planets around other stars and to

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Speaker 1: see them with life, And is.

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Speaker 2: The goal so that you can make those habitats more

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Speaker 2: hospitable if humans ever decide they want to move there

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Speaker 2: or are they just doing it like as a fun

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Speaker 2: you know, and end equals too for like the possible

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Speaker 2: pass evolution could take.

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Speaker 1: You're asking me if they're being responsible or if they're

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Speaker 1: just like mucking around out of curiosity.

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Speaker 2: No, they're pretty clearly mucking around. But I want to

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Speaker 2: know how they justify the exercise.

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Speaker 1: Well, that's exactly what we're gonna be talking about today

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Speaker 1: as we answer the question could we seed exoplanets with

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Speaker 1: basic life?

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Speaker 2: Well, we should see what the listeners have to say.

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Speaker 1: Thank you very much to our group of listeners who

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Speaker 1: answer these random and sometimes weird questions. We love hearing

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Speaker 1: what you have to say and hearing your voice on

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Speaker 1: the podcast. If you'd like to be part of this

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Speaker 1: not very select group of lead volunteers, please write to

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Speaker 1: me to Questions at Danielandjorge dot com. Everybody is welcome.

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Speaker 1: Think about it for a minute. Do you think we

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Speaker 1: could seed exoplanets with basic life? Here's what people had

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Speaker 1: to say.

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Speaker 6: I reckon we could seed life on an exoplanet if

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Speaker 6: if the environment was suitably similar to Earth and there

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Speaker 6: was some kind of energy source for the life to

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Speaker 6: capitalize on. I imagine it would require a little bit

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Speaker 6: of engineering of the life unless we got very, very

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Speaker 6: lucky with the environment.

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Speaker 1: I believe it may be possible to see exoplanets with life. However,

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Speaker 1: I don't think we're anywhere near that capability. Were probably

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Speaker 1: many centuries of that millennia away from that.

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Speaker 7: I think that if an exoplanet has no existing life,

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Speaker 7: then seeding life should be possible. But if there's anything

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Speaker 7: there already, then the differences in proteins and whatever else

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Speaker 7: it may have developed there would mean that it would

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Speaker 7: be pretty unlikely without wiping out whatever was.

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Speaker 8: Their first I think we could, although precisely sending a

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Speaker 8: rocket to an exoplanet would be really tricky. But should

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Speaker 8: we Maybe while trying to seed life, we may end

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Speaker 8: up disrupting already existing ecosystems.

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Speaker 9: Yes, I think we can if the exoplanet has the

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Speaker 9: right habital conditions, and you could maybe put the organism

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Speaker 9: of the life on the planet. So I think yes.

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Speaker 2: I was impressed by all the different angles the listeners

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Speaker 2: came up with to address this question, like, well, it's

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Speaker 2: really far away, is that going to be a problem?

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Speaker 2: You know what would the environment need to be like

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Speaker 2: for them to survive? Lots of cool ideas from the

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Speaker 2: listeners on this one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, lots of different scenarios. Can we get it there?

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Speaker 1: Would it survive? Why should we even do it? And

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Speaker 1: so I think we should start with your question there, Kelly,

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Speaker 1: But like, what is the motivation here exactly? Like why

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Speaker 1: would you build a little rocket, put a bunch of

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Speaker 1: bactery in it and send it to an exoplanet? What

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Speaker 1: exactly is the goal you're trying to achieve?

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Speaker 2: I mean, so, I personally am a big fan of life,

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Speaker 2: and I'd like there to be lots of life and

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Speaker 2: lots of biology everywhere. But I feel like it's complicated

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Speaker 2: when you get to adding biology to places that it

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Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily belong. I don't like invasive species very much

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Speaker 2: here on Earth and like less of that. So are

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Speaker 2: we like doing the ultimate experiment in invasive species?

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Speaker 1: I think there are lots of possible angles here. I

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Speaker 1: think maybe the most generous motivations are just the ones

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Speaker 1: you expressed, Like life is awesome, Let's have more of

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Speaker 1: it in the universe. So imagine you could find some

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Speaker 1: currently sterile planet where there is no life, and your

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Speaker 1: confident life would not arise naturally, why not see it

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Speaker 1: with life, turn it into a petri dish, see what

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Speaker 1: would happen, and potentially creating biomes that might be habitable

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Speaker 1: for humans in a deep, deep future. Now, way, you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be displacing any current life, so you don't have

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Speaker 1: to worry about the ethics of like invasive species and colonialism.

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Speaker 2: But so that assumption is a really hard one for

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Speaker 2: me to accept though. So, like, you know, we are

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Speaker 2: not even one hundred percent sure that there's no life

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Speaker 2: on Mars. You know, it might still be in like

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Speaker 2: the lava tubes or something sort of like hiding out.

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Speaker 2: So it's even harder for us to study far out exoplanets.

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Speaker 2: How could we ever convince ourselves that a planet is

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Speaker 2: sterile and definitely doesn't have life when we only know

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Speaker 2: what life looks like on our planet and we can't

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Speaker 2: even tell you if there's life on the planets in

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Speaker 2: our Solar System. So I would have trouble believing we

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Speaker 2: could ever get certainty about that assumption. But what do

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Speaker 2: you think?

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Speaker 1: No, I agree with you, And it sounds like the

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Speaker 1: set of for a science fiction novel where scientists get

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Speaker 1: humbled because they didn't understand what life could be. Then

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Speaker 1: they marched forward with their hubrisk too quickly. I agree,

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Speaker 1: we don't know what life could be like in the universe,

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Speaker 1: so it's hard to be certain that any planet really

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Speaker 1: is sterile. It's also basically impossible to be certain that

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Speaker 1: if planet will always be sterile. What if life was

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Speaker 1: going to evolve next week and then you showed up

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Speaker 1: with your zillions of microbes and you now made it impossible.

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Speaker 1: That's not something you can ever probe, right, especially because

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Speaker 1: we don't know how common life is and how likely

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Speaker 1: it is to be created from non living environments. So

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Speaker 1: it definitely would be taking a gamble. But I think

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Speaker 1: the motivations are the ones we expressed earlier. It's just like,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't it be nice to have more life? Imagine if

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Speaker 1: we are the only life in the galaxy and there

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Speaker 1: are all these habitable worlds out there with nothing on them,

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Speaker 1: that does feel like kind of a waste.

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Speaker 2: It does, And you know, some of my favorite life

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Speaker 2: is life that I can eat. And so after the break,

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Speaker 2: let's talk about whether or not we can create essentially

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Speaker 2: grocery stores on other exoplanets. In case we ever decide

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Speaker 2: to go shopping there. Okay, so we all agree life

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Speaker 2: is awesome, and as long as we're not wiping out

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Speaker 2: other life, it might be cool if there were more

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Speaker 2: life in other places and we could sort of see

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Speaker 2: what kind of amazing biodiversity ends up being created in

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Speaker 2: new environments. But let's talk about being able to eat

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Speaker 2: that biodiversity. So, say we were seeding other planets in

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Speaker 2: case humans ever come along, what do you think I

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Speaker 2: think the chances are that you see to planet, Like,

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Speaker 2: how long do you need to wait before you can

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Speaker 2: harvest it?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question because I think you've pointed

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Speaker 1: out to me many times and it's described in your

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Speaker 1: upcoming book. If we do land on another planet, we

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Speaker 1: need to find some way to be self sufficient. You

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Speaker 1: can't rely on like shipments from Earth forever, which means

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Speaker 1: you need to be able to create your food locally,

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Speaker 1: which means you need like a whole biome. You need

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Speaker 1: like plants, and you need microbes. You need all this

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Speaker 1: stuff to create your life, and that's difficult to arrive with.

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Speaker 1: So it'd be wonderful if you showed up and there's

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Speaker 1: like plants or at least microbes or you know, the

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Speaker 1: basic foundation of your ecosystem that you could build your

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Speaker 1: grocery stores on top of. And so in a few

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Speaker 1: minutes you'll hear an interview I did with a microbiologist

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Speaker 1: where asked them essentially that question, like how long would

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Speaker 1: it take to go from injecting bacteria into an ocean

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Speaker 1: to showing up and finding redwoods and dinosaurs, you know,

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Speaker 1: things that you could hunt and climb around on and eat.

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Speaker 1: And so you'll hear him say it's a very, very

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Speaker 1: long time. It's not something you could expect to do

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Speaker 1: in a million years, or maybe even in a billion years.

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Speaker 1: But you know, on this podcast, we are very forward thinking.

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Speaker 1: We are not just planning for our children and our

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Speaker 1: children's children. We're planning for the deep future of humanity, right.

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Speaker 2: Infinite time horizons. Nothing here limits us.

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Speaker 1: Which means we can ask for infinite budgets, right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: because like a dollar today is worth so much more

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Speaker 1: in the future. But I think the picture you should

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Speaker 1: have in your mind is the Earth is the only

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Speaker 1: place in the galaxy with life, or one a few places.

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Speaker 1: If life in the galaxy is rare and it takes

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Speaker 1: a long time to develop. Then it seems like an

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Speaker 1: attractive idea to take a little bundle of our microbes,

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Speaker 1: send it to another planet, have it developed life there,

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Speaker 1: because then it would be more life in the galaxy.

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Speaker 1: And also, as you say, it would be the kind

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Speaker 1: of life that we can eat, which is our favorite

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Speaker 1: kind of life, because you know, even if you show

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Speaker 1: up on an alien planet and it has some kind

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Speaker 1: of life, it's not guaranteed that you could eat it.

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Speaker 2: What I don't necessarily even though it's guaranteed if you

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Speaker 2: could eat it, if it was growing somewhere else. You know,

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Speaker 2: it's not safe for us to eat all the life

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Speaker 2: on Earth. There are definitely mushrooms that you ought not

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Speaker 2: to eat. For example. You know, I guess the question

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Speaker 2: would be like how often do you see the planet

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Speaker 2: and it doesn't take how often do you see the

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Speaker 2: planet but you come back and it's filled with toxic

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Speaker 2: mushrooms or something like that, And so, you know, I

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Speaker 2: think there's lots of ways this could go that might

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Speaker 2: not be exactly what you want, but I think all

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Speaker 2: of those ways would be interesting, would teach us something

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Speaker 2: cool if I can ethically, you know, jump the hurdle

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Speaker 2: of feeling comfortable with this experiment.

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Speaker 1: And you raise an important point earlier, which is like,

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Speaker 1: how do you know which planet is a good candidate

438
00:21:36,320 --> 00:21:39,760
Speaker 1: for sending your microbes? Which planets might have the right conditions,

439
00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:42,639
Speaker 1: or which planets might be sterile. And so there's a

440
00:21:42,640 --> 00:21:45,320
Speaker 1: group of folks it's called Project Genesis that have actually

441
00:21:45,359 --> 00:21:48,040
Speaker 1: thought this through and worked on a little bit of

442
00:21:48,040 --> 00:21:49,840
Speaker 1: the engineering to make this possible.

443
00:21:50,080 --> 00:21:51,160
Speaker 2: Oh, tell me more about that.

444
00:21:51,280 --> 00:21:53,280
Speaker 1: The idea is to do it in two stages. The

445
00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:55,040
Speaker 1: first is to send out a bunch of probes to

446
00:21:55,080 --> 00:21:58,440
Speaker 1: find good candidates, to gather data and beam it back.

447
00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:01,680
Speaker 1: So the first wave is like, go out there and

448
00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:04,879
Speaker 1: find planets in the galaxy which might be good candidates.

449
00:22:04,920 --> 00:22:08,160
Speaker 1: And then a second wave is to actually send the microbes.

450
00:22:08,680 --> 00:22:10,680
Speaker 1: And this is important because the first wave can be

451
00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:12,880
Speaker 1: a lot faster than the second wave because the first

452
00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:15,800
Speaker 1: wave doesn't have to stop at the planet. You can

453
00:22:15,880 --> 00:22:18,800
Speaker 1: just do like a quick fly by and see these.

454
00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:20,880
Speaker 2: Planets and then shoot the data back.

455
00:22:20,720 --> 00:22:23,000
Speaker 1: To us and shoot the data back. And this has

456
00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:26,239
Speaker 1: to do with the physics of interstellar travel. Right. All

457
00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:28,480
Speaker 1: of these stars, even the ones close to us in

458
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:31,720
Speaker 1: the galaxy, are pretty far away, like the nearest star

459
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:34,480
Speaker 1: is like four light years away, and the whole galaxy

460
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:37,720
Speaker 1: is one hundred thousand light years across. So getting from

461
00:22:37,760 --> 00:22:40,360
Speaker 1: star to star takes a long time because it takes

462
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:42,880
Speaker 1: you a long time to accelerate anywhere near the speed

463
00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:45,880
Speaker 1: of light. So even getting to the nearest star could

464
00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:48,919
Speaker 1: take you thousands of years, especially if you have to

465
00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:52,320
Speaker 1: bring with you all the fuel that it takes to accelerate,

466
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:54,120
Speaker 1: and the more fuel you bring with you, the more

467
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:56,880
Speaker 1: fuel you need because you have to accelerate all that fuel.

468
00:22:57,119 --> 00:23:00,240
Speaker 1: See very quickly, have extraordinarily expensive.

469
00:22:59,800 --> 00:23:02,840
Speaker 2: Rock, So even that first pass is not going to

470
00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:05,520
Speaker 2: get done in our lifetime. And I can imagine it

471
00:23:05,560 --> 00:23:08,800
Speaker 2: being super frustrating to like put a bunch of equipment

472
00:23:08,840 --> 00:23:11,360
Speaker 2: on there, and then five hundred years later you're like, oh,

473
00:23:11,520 --> 00:23:14,040
Speaker 2: we wish we had put this other piece of equipment

474
00:23:14,080 --> 00:23:15,879
Speaker 2: on there, but I guess you'd make do with what

475
00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:18,960
Speaker 2: you had. Are there options that don't require just like

476
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:21,040
Speaker 2: ridiculous amounts of fuel.

477
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:23,720
Speaker 1: There are some really clever options, and we've talked about

478
00:23:23,760 --> 00:23:26,520
Speaker 1: in the podcast once before. There's this plan for something

479
00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:30,080
Speaker 1: called a solar sale. The idea is, don't bring the

480
00:23:30,119 --> 00:23:32,679
Speaker 1: fuel with you, don't load up a rocket with fuel

481
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:34,760
Speaker 1: and then need fuel to push that fuel and fuel

482
00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:37,040
Speaker 1: to push that fuel. Don't bring any fuel at all,

483
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:39,879
Speaker 1: have all the power come from the sun and just

484
00:23:39,960 --> 00:23:42,119
Speaker 1: have a sale. The solar sale is just a huge

485
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:45,160
Speaker 1: mirror and all the photons from the sun bounce off

486
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:47,919
Speaker 1: of it and give it a little push. Photons are

487
00:23:47,920 --> 00:23:51,160
Speaker 1: these tiny little particles the quanta of light, and they

488
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 1: have no math to them, but they do have momentum,

489
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:56,959
Speaker 1: which means when they bounce off of something and go

490
00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:00,280
Speaker 1: the other direction, they give that something a kick. Like

491
00:24:00,320 --> 00:24:03,280
Speaker 1: when you're standing in the sun, the sun is literally

492
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:06,120
Speaker 1: pushing on you with all those photons. It's a very

493
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:08,359
Speaker 1: gentle push, which is why the sun doesn't usually knock

494
00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:11,879
Speaker 1: you down except in southern California in July, but it

495
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:14,680
Speaker 1: is there. And if you had a very lightweight spacecraft

496
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:17,800
Speaker 1: and a very large sale, you could accelerate up to

497
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:19,480
Speaker 1: near the speed of light pretty quickly.

498
00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:22,480
Speaker 2: That sounds like it's even faster than the method that

499
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:23,240
Speaker 2: uses fuel.

500
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:25,800
Speaker 1: Is that right, Yeah, exactly, it's much faster than the

501
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:29,280
Speaker 1: method that uses fuel. The disadvantage is that there's no

502
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:32,359
Speaker 1: way to slow down, like this thing can accelerate up

503
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,360
Speaker 1: to near the speed of light and then it can

504
00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:38,200
Speaker 1: whiz by your planet very very quickly, but it could

505
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:40,639
Speaker 1: take some pictures and it could send you some information.

506
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: That's why this first phase is just information gathering and

507
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: then beam you back the data of course at the

508
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 1: speed of light. So this first phase where you like

509
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 1: go out and look at planets, you say, like is

510
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:52,919
Speaker 1: there oxygen on them? Is there water on them? What

511
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:55,400
Speaker 1: is the basic environment? Like this could be a very

512
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:56,160
Speaker 1: quick survey.

513
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 2: Okay, So if you're doing these surveys, what kind of

514
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 2: things are you looking for? I assume oxygen. Well, I

515
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,640
Speaker 2: mean there's bacteria that don't require oxygen, but I guess

516
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:08,640
Speaker 2: if the plant is you're seating it for food, you're

517
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,120
Speaker 2: gonna want there to be oxygen for us. So probably

518
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:13,800
Speaker 2: you want a planet with oxygen.

519
00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:15,959
Speaker 1: That is the first and the hardest question, like do

520
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:19,360
Speaker 1: you want planets with oxygen or without oxygen? And it's

521
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:22,680
Speaker 1: interesting to think about, like where planets do get their oxygen.

522
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:24,840
Speaker 1: Are their planets out there that are sterile but have

523
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: oxygen or is oxygen purely just a product of life?

524
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because actually most planets do have oxygen

525
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 1: on them very very early in their life cycle. Most

526
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 1: planets are made with water because water is everywhere in

527
00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:40,200
Speaker 1: the universe, and in the early phase of the life

528
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 1: cycle of a star, they tend to emit a lot

529
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:45,520
Speaker 1: of ultraviolet radiation. This is part of their life cycle

530
00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: called pre main sequence, like before they settle down and

531
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:51,880
Speaker 1: really just doing all their steady burning effusion, they emit

532
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:55,119
Speaker 1: a huge amount of ultraviolet radiation which can break up

533
00:25:55,160 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: that water and produce oxygen. So very early in the

534
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 1: life of a planet do get some natural oxygen without

535
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:05,200
Speaker 1: any life right, so you can get planets with oxygen

536
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 1: on them. The problem is that for a lot of stars,

537
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 1: this early phase is not very long. It's just a

538
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 1: few tens of millions of years, so it doesn't make

539
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 1: very much oxygen. And because you're blowing off so much

540
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 1: solar radiation, a lot of the atmosphere of a planet

541
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:21,040
Speaker 1: can just get blown off. And this is what happened

542
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:23,320
Speaker 1: to Earth. We had a little bit of oxygen made

543
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:25,960
Speaker 1: early on through this UV light from the Sun, but

544
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:28,879
Speaker 1: then the Sun basically blew away our entire atmosphere that

545
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: was the one that was formed with the original planet.

546
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:35,679
Speaker 2: Whoops. So then do we want to send do we

547
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:39,040
Speaker 2: want to send photosynthesizing organisms.

548
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:41,840
Speaker 1: Then well, it's an interesting question, right, Like on Earth,

549
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:46,040
Speaker 1: life started without any oxygen because the atmosphere was replaced

550
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 1: by volcanic outgassing which got nygen and CO two, and

551
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: then photosynthesizing organisms did create oxygen. But it's interesting because

552
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:57,240
Speaker 1: a lot of biochemists tell you that having oxygen makes

553
00:26:57,280 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 1: it harder to form life, Like a lot of the

554
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: chemical building blocks of life couldn't have formed if you

555
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 1: had a lot of oxygen in your atmosphere. That the

556
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:09,679
Speaker 1: anaerobic procedures are actually more important and they're inhibited by

557
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: the presence of oxygen. So if what you want is

558
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 1: to start life on a sterile planet, you probably don't

559
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:18,359
Speaker 1: want oxygen. But if you want to seed it with

560
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:22,359
Speaker 1: life like hours, then probably you do want to find

561
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:26,000
Speaker 1: oxygen rich planets because they're more conducive to our kind

562
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:29,680
Speaker 1: of life, and they're probably sterile because the oxygen is

563
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:32,200
Speaker 1: like poisoned to those early forms of life.

564
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 2: So how do you know that the planet you're seating

565
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 2: hasn't like progressed as far as Earth and that's why

566
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 2: it's got oxygen? I guess because your flyby was that accurate.

567
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:44,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, on the flyby, you're going to do more than

568
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 1: just test for water and test for oxygen. You can

569
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: also look for methane, for example. Methane and oxygen together

570
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:53,199
Speaker 1: are a pretty good signature of life. You know, you

571
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:56,480
Speaker 1: can look for phosphine. It's a whole really difficult question

572
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: of like how do you know if there's life on

573
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:01,760
Speaker 1: that planet? But I think in general, looking for oxygen

574
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:04,600
Speaker 1: rich planets that don't have obvious signs of life is

575
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 1: a good target because oxygen tends to prohibit the formation

576
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 1: of early life. And it turns out it actually is

577
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,920
Speaker 1: possible to have planets with lots of oxygen that isn't

578
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: produced by photosynthesis.

579
00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 2: And where do we get it from?

580
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 1: So there are a few different ways that planetary scientists

581
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:22,640
Speaker 1: think that it's possible to have a bunch of oxygen

582
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 1: on your planet and not have it be blown away

583
00:28:24,840 --> 00:28:26,639
Speaker 1: in the early life cycle of the star and not

584
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: have it come from photosynthesizing life. There's a few different

585
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:33,440
Speaker 1: configurations that at least their models tell them this can happen.

586
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 1: In like, if you have a planet that has a

587
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 1: huge amount of water, like a water world, then all

588
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: that water will put pressure on the crust of that planet,

589
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 1: which basically shuts down the geologic activity like all the

590
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 1: plate tectonics and the volcanism that we have, and it

591
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:50,680
Speaker 1: slows down the weathering and the melting of the rock.

592
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: Both of these things absorb oxygen from the atmosphere, and

593
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: so if you have a huge amount of water, you

594
00:28:56,840 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 1: can shut down these sort of like oxygen slurping mechanism.

595
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:02,680
Speaker 1: Like you know, rocks out there on our planet have

596
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: rusted because they have oxygenated. All the weathering of rocks

597
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: on the surface of the Earth has slurped a huge

598
00:29:08,560 --> 00:29:11,480
Speaker 1: amount of oxygen out of our atmosphere. So if you

599
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:15,320
Speaker 1: have a planet where you basically suppress the oxygen slurping mechanisms,

600
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 1: then you can maintain some of the oxygen in the atmosphere.

601
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 1: That's sort of like one mechanism to make an oxygen

602
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: rich exoplanet without life on it.

603
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 2: So to get an oxygen rich exoplanet without life, you

604
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 2: can do it by having tons and tons and tons

605
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:31,400
Speaker 2: and tons and tons of water. Can you get more

606
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:33,840
Speaker 2: dry versions or does it always have to have loads

607
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:34,240
Speaker 2: of water?

608
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, you can. The sort of desert planet can

609
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: also do that. If you have a little water, but

610
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 1: not in zero. Then you end it with like a

611
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 1: solid surface and a lot of steam in the atmosphere.

612
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,400
Speaker 1: It gets very very hot, and all the water becomes vapor.

613
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: It provides this like big reservoir of oxygen in the atmosphere,

614
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:53,920
Speaker 1: and then the sunlight breaks if the water molecules, the

615
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,920
Speaker 1: hydrogen floats off to space because it's very light, and

616
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 1: the oxygen sticks around. And if the planet has like

617
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,240
Speaker 1: a solid desert surface, it can't weather, it can't absorb

618
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 1: that oxygen, so then the oxygen stays in the atmosphere.

619
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: So you have either like water World or a desert

620
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 1: planet with like a steamy atmosphere.

621
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 2: All right, is there anything in between? Or those are

622
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 2: the two ways you get high oxygen environments.

623
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: There is one other speculation. If you have a planet

624
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 1: that has like a very high initial ratio of carbon

625
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 1: dioxide to water, then you end up with a runaway

626
00:30:24,800 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: greenhouse effect, sort of like Venus. It gets super duper hot,

627
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: and you have no oceans because all the water is

628
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: turned into steam, and you have no volatiles in the

629
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 1: planet's mental because it's too hot. These voltules would do

630
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 1: the same thing of like sequestering all the planetary oxygen

631
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 1: through chemical reactions. Instead, the voltules are now in the

632
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: atmosphere where they're unable to remove the oxygen. They're having

633
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:48,800
Speaker 1: a really significant runaway greenhouse effect. Is another way to

634
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 1: suppress some of the oxygen slurping mechanisms that would normally

635
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 1: remove oxygen from an atmosphere. So either you have a

636
00:30:56,320 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 1: water world or a desert planet, or you have like

637
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: a crazy venous green house effect.

638
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 2: Well, frankly, I don't want to live in any of

639
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 2: those environments, so I'm hoping whatever microbes we dump makes

640
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 2: everything a lot nicer, much longer. After let's take a

641
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 2: break and then we'll talk about one other nice option

642
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:28,280
Speaker 2: for where we could be seeding our microbes. Okay, so

643
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:31,880
Speaker 2: there's one other nice option for places we could see.

644
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe there's more than one, but one that we're

645
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 2: going to talk about today, And those are planets that

646
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 2: have these short windows of time as they're sort of

647
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 2: developing and going along where they might be a nice

648
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 2: place to seed with earthy microbes. Could you tell us

649
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 2: about that?

650
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember. The big idea is to look for

651
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:52,200
Speaker 1: places where our life might survive, but life wouldn't grow

652
00:31:52,240 --> 00:31:54,920
Speaker 1: on its own. Where we're not displacing native life like

653
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:59,800
Speaker 1: original species. So one idea is oxygen rich steroplanets because

654
00:31:59,840 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 1: the can prevents life from arising. The other is to

655
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: look for places where life doesn't have time to arise,

656
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 1: like it might be that there's enough time for us

657
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 1: to seed it with life, which could then take off,

658
00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 1: but there aren't like the billions of years it would

659
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:16,440
Speaker 1: take for life to start on its own. An example

660
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 1: of that are brown dwarf systems. Brown dwarf is a

661
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: star that's not hot enough to fuse the way that

662
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 1: our star does. It doesn't have enough mass, so there's

663
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: not enough internal temperature for fusing to kick off. So

664
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 1: they call these sometimes a failed star. They're just big

665
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: blobs of hot gas and they're hot, but they're not

666
00:32:33,440 --> 00:32:36,040
Speaker 1: fused and they're not glowing right. This does provide some

667
00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:39,280
Speaker 1: temperature to create a habitable region for your planet, and

668
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: it could remain habitable for like a few hundred million

669
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: years or a billion years, but not like a long

670
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: time the way that our Sun and our Earth has

671
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:50,160
Speaker 1: many many billions of years as a window. So the

672
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: idea is to look for brown dwarf systems where life

673
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: could survive but maybe it doesn't have enough time to

674
00:32:56,880 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 1: develop on its own and seed planets in those systems.

675
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 1: It's a place where, like our life could again survive,

676
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: but we wouldn't be displacing any native species.

677
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:08,880
Speaker 2: But so then we would need to move our life

678
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 2: somewhere else. I mean, I guess it would have millions

679
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 2: or billions of years, and so it would have some,

680
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 2: you know, time to run its course. But I mean,

681
00:33:15,720 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 2: is that enough time where we could imagine that something

682
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:20,440
Speaker 2: we could eat could have developed, and that that would

683
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 2: be a useful run for the experiment.

684
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:26,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So you send our life there and it

685
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: has enough time to flourish and develop and do something

686
00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 1: before we arrive and set up our grocery stores.

687
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:34,200
Speaker 2: Okay, I know, I feel like there's still a part

688
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 2: of me that feels like it's enough time for our

689
00:33:36,080 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 2: seated microbes to do their thing. That should be enough

690
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 2: time for life to potentially arise on its own there.

691
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 2: So I'm not one hundred percent convinced that we wouldn't

692
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 2: be snuffing out some other possibility for the start of

693
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:51,840
Speaker 2: life on another planet. But am I missing the point?

694
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:54,720
Speaker 1: No, you're not at all. And I totally agree all

695
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:58,280
Speaker 1: these calculations. Assume that life takes a long time to start,

696
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, if pretty quickly when there are

697
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: good conditions, then all these places potentially could have life

698
00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:07,880
Speaker 1: already or could start life any moment, right, And if

699
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:10,000
Speaker 1: you see them on a Tuesday, you could be displacing

700
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 1: life which would have started on a Friday. And so

701
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: before we do this, we definitely need to understand that

702
00:34:14,680 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: a lot better before we're confident in saying like, oh,

703
00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 1: this is a steril place and it's unlikely for life

704
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:21,240
Speaker 1: to arise anyway.

705
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:24,800
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's assume that we've convinced ourselves we found

706
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:29,439
Speaker 2: a sterile place that we feel comfortable seating microbes. How

707
00:34:29,480 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 2: do we get the microbes there? I assume some of

708
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:34,520
Speaker 2: the methods that we used to survey could also be

709
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:35,920
Speaker 2: used to deliver microbes.

710
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 1: So it's a great question how do we deliver the microbes? Right?

711
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: Say you actually have this little blob of stuff and

712
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:43,279
Speaker 1: you want to send it to a planet around Alpha

713
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,320
Speaker 1: Centauri or something where we talked about earlier. The solar

714
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: sale is great for getting up to high speeds, but

715
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 1: it's not so great for breaking. You don't want your

716
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:53,680
Speaker 1: microbes to hit the planet at like ninety five percent

717
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 1: of the speed of light, because then they'll just like

718
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: core sample the planet. Right. They need a gentle landing

719
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:01,719
Speaker 1: if you're going to spurse them, sprinkle them on top

720
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,439
Speaker 1: of the ocean. Right. So somehow you have to figure

721
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: out how to slow down. You don't just want to

722
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: accelerate and zoom through the system. You want to arrive

723
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:11,280
Speaker 1: at a gentle speed.

724
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 2: How do you do that?

725
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's tricky, But there's a really cool technology called

726
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:19,400
Speaker 1: magnetic brakes, which are very similar to a technology that

727
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: you and I talked about in that science fiction novel

728
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:24,680
Speaker 1: Orbital Cloud. Remember that they had this technology in that

729
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: book to maneuver satellites by using the Lorentz force. They

730
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 1: had these long space tethers, these long wires. If you

731
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:33,920
Speaker 1: put a current on the wire, it would interact with

732
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: the magnetic field of the planet and put a force

733
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:39,160
Speaker 1: on the object. It's a very similar idea here. The

734
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:41,960
Speaker 1: physics is fundamentally the same, though the mechanism is a

735
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 1: little bit different. What you do is you bring a

736
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: loop of wire and you make a current. That current

737
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:50,040
Speaker 1: makes a magnetic field, and you can use that magnetic

738
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: field as a break because space is actually filled with

739
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 1: stuff that you can push against. Because the Sun is

740
00:35:56,520 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: not just putting out photons, it's putting out protons. Part

741
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 1: of the solar wind are these charged particles, these protons

742
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:06,240
Speaker 1: flying through space, And as you approach this distant system,

743
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:09,680
Speaker 1: you can turn on this magnetic field which will push

744
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: back against all of these protons in a way to

745
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:12,879
Speaker 1: slow you down.

746
00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:16,360
Speaker 2: Could you turn on the magnetic breaks from Earth? Like,

747
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 2: how do you make sure the breaks don't turn on

748
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:18,479
Speaker 2: too soon?

749
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:24,920
Speaker 1: I got no breaks, No breaks exactly. No, it's important

750
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:26,440
Speaker 1: that you time this right. And yeah, you could turn

751
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:28,880
Speaker 1: this on from Earth, or you could preprogram it to

752
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:31,520
Speaker 1: know where it is, or you could detect a certain

753
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:34,480
Speaker 1: level of protons. There's lots of various ways to turn

754
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:36,800
Speaker 1: it on. But yeah, you could send this thing messages

755
00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: which would catch up with it because it's not flying

756
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 1: at the speed of light, and so your photonic messages

757
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:44,919
Speaker 1: from Earth could always catch it. Now, unlike a solar sale,

758
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:48,360
Speaker 1: which people have built and tested, magnetic breaking is a

759
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:50,879
Speaker 1: little bit more theoretical. Nobody's ever built one of these

760
00:36:50,920 --> 00:36:53,520
Speaker 1: things as far as I could tell, and demonstrated that

761
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,240
Speaker 1: it could actually work out there in the environment of space.

762
00:36:56,600 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: But in principle, we have some ideas about how to

763
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 1: do this. How to send something they are really really

764
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: fast and slow it down in time to enter the system.

765
00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:08,000
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's assume that we can send something out

766
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:11,400
Speaker 2: to our chosen exoplanet and we can stop it so

767
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:14,160
Speaker 2: that we don't accidentally core the planet. Like, how do

768
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 2: you pick which microbes you send?

769
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:19,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a great question. What do you send?

770
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,399
Speaker 1: How likely it is to survive? You send one thing?

771
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,000
Speaker 1: Do you send ten thousand different things? You send more

772
00:37:24,040 --> 00:37:26,480
Speaker 1: of one than the other? How does this all work?

773
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: What do microbes need? Anyway? So I didn't know the

774
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 1: answers to these questions, so I called up a friend,

775
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 1: Will Ratcliffe. He's an evolutionary microbial biologist at Georgia Tech,

776
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: and he studies the evolution of multicellularity. Like how did

777
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 1: creators go from individual cells to working together as single organisms?

778
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 2: You have such interesting friends. Let's hear the interview.

779
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 1: So here's my chat with Will Ratcliffe. All right, so

780
00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 1: then it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast Professor

781
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: William Ratcliffe. Well, welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much

782
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:04,359
Speaker 1: for joining us, Ah, thanks for having me. So will

783
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:08,719
Speaker 1: we are talking about dropping a load of life on

784
00:38:08,840 --> 00:38:13,239
Speaker 1: some alien planet, some exoplanet, and I'm just wondering, like,

785
00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 1: first of all, what are the chances of microbes surviving

786
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:20,080
Speaker 1: If I take a bunch of stuff I've scraped out

787
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:23,400
Speaker 1: of sewage here on Earth or you know, from underneath

788
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:26,080
Speaker 1: some trees or something in a forest, and I launch

789
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 1: them to an alien planet. Are they just going to

790
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: dry up and die? What are the chances that they

791
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:31,240
Speaker 1: can survive?

792
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 10: So the answer to this, I think really depends on

793
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:37,480
Speaker 10: the existence of a few things. You need liquid water.

794
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:39,759
Speaker 10: There's really kind of no getting around that. If you

795
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:43,279
Speaker 10: have an exoplanet that doesn't have liquid water, ideally on

796
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:46,560
Speaker 10: the surface, then it's going to be an uphill battle

797
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:49,880
Speaker 10: for life. You might have things which persist but don't flourish,

798
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 10: but if you have liquid water, then it becomes a

799
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 10: question of what kind of energy sources and what kind

800
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:58,960
Speaker 10: of carbon sources are available that for that life. We're

801
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:01,520
Speaker 10: used to life that's sort of makes a living largely

802
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 10: either eating other things, which we do right. We take

803
00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 10: large chains of carbon and break them down and get

804
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 10: both of our carbon, which is what we used to

805
00:39:09,200 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 10: build bodies and our energy, which is what we used

806
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:14,840
Speaker 10: to power those bodies from those big chains of carbon.

807
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 1: But there's actually a lot of different niches.

808
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 10: That life has sort of evolved to take advantage of

809
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 10: and dissipate energetic equilibria and build bodies with carbon in

810
00:39:22,239 --> 00:39:25,880
Speaker 10: different ways. One that's really common and I think common

811
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 10: in the universe and really impactful is light, So you know, photosynthesis.

812
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:32,880
Speaker 10: So being able to use light for energy is a

813
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 10: really common way of making a living because there's a

814
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 10: ton of energy in light and it's relatively straightforward for

815
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 10: organisms that have evolved the ability to use it to

816
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:43,480
Speaker 10: just put it to work powering cells.

817
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:45,880
Speaker 1: But didn't we have life on Earth for millions of

818
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,400
Speaker 1: years before we had anybody taking energy from photons?

819
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:51,719
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a good question. It's actually it gets really

820
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:56,279
Speaker 10: difficult to infer back that far. So we likely had

821
00:39:57,239 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 10: photosynthetic behavior pretty soon after the origin of life, although

822
00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:04,919
Speaker 10: again it's difficult to really see back beyond a couple

823
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:08,840
Speaker 10: billion years. By two point one billion years ago, we

824
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:11,799
Speaker 10: had had so much oxygen pumped into the atmosphere on

825
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 10: Earth that we oxidize our atmosphere and we have you know,

826
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:17,759
Speaker 10: we basically couldn't absorb and react away any more of it.

827
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 10: But life arose around three and a half billion years ago.

828
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:22,799
Speaker 10: But you're right, there's other ways to make a living

829
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,160
Speaker 10: that don't depend on light. And in fact, if we

830
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 10: if we look at those, those are things which are

831
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:30,279
Speaker 10: probably pretty common in the universe as well. So you know,

832
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 10: the main way that metabolism works is by taking something

833
00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 10: which is at a high energy state and reacting it

834
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:38,239
Speaker 10: into a lower energy state and using the energy that's

835
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 10: released to power metabolism. These redox reactions are common. There's

836
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 10: many different ways to do it. A simple way is

837
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:46,919
Speaker 10: to take hydrogen, right and sort of burn it into

838
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:49,320
Speaker 10: with oxygen and burn it into water. That releases a

839
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:51,879
Speaker 10: ton of energy and that can be used to power metabolism.

840
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 10: You may not have oxygen, I mean hydrogen that's really

841
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:57,440
Speaker 10: common in the universe, so I think we can assume

842
00:40:57,440 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 10: that there may be some hydrogen around, right. You may

843
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 10: not have oxygen, however, I'm one of these planets. Although

844
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 10: I will say on a planet that has a surface water,

845
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 10: it's not that unlikely to think that there will be

846
00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 10: some oxygen every now and then. And that's because if

847
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:12,680
Speaker 10: there's light, light will take water it'll break it apart,

848
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:14,800
Speaker 10: you know, ulti volt light will break it apart. The

849
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 10: hydrogen will escape into space, and you'll be left with oxygen,

850
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:20,759
Speaker 10: which is persistence time depends on whether it reacts with things,

851
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 10: but you can have oxygen around.

852
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:24,879
Speaker 1: So you're saying, we basically need liquid water, we need

853
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:28,080
Speaker 1: some light, and we need some carbon and some hydrogen,

854
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: and then probably the microbes will be happy munching away

855
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:32,359
Speaker 1: pretty much.

856
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:33,840
Speaker 10: And it turns out that we can even make it

857
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 10: less restrictive than that. You can take light off the table,

858
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 10: although I think you know, since planet's usually around stars,

859
00:41:38,719 --> 00:41:40,839
Speaker 10: light's usually not off the table, but you could take

860
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 10: it off the table. And if you have hydrogen or

861
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:47,439
Speaker 10: if you have iron, those are also very common, very

862
00:41:47,520 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 10: effective sources of generating the electron flow during a redox

863
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:54,160
Speaker 10: reaction that can power life. So there's life on Earth

864
00:41:54,320 --> 00:41:57,800
Speaker 10: that can literally rust iron and grow using the energy

865
00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 10: that comes from that. That same life can take carbon

866
00:42:01,080 --> 00:42:04,840
Speaker 10: dioxide and fix it, meaning turn it into longer chains

867
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 10: of carbon, and so you can basically if you have

868
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:09,919
Speaker 10: carbon dioxide and you have iron, or if you have

869
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,719
Speaker 10: hydrogen and carbon dioxide, you are good. If you have light,

870
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:17,800
Speaker 10: you are really really good. And if you have oxygen, light, iron,

871
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 10: and carbon dioxide, it's chill. You can easily have lighted well.

872
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:24,280
Speaker 1: As a physicist, I worry about other things, like levels

873
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:26,960
Speaker 1: of radiation. You know, if this thing is getting like

874
00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:30,239
Speaker 1: impacted by huge numbers of cosmic rays, I worry about

875
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: them getting shredded. On the other hand, I have in

876
00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 1: my head my wife's voice, and she's always telling me

877
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: that life survives everywhere. You know, they find it on

878
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 1: the outside of the Space shuttle and they find it.

879
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:45,279
Speaker 1: You know, it's basically impossible to fully sterilize anything inside chernobyl.

880
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: You know, you find things that are rad hard. So

881
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:50,360
Speaker 1: do we have to worry about these craters being fragile

882
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:52,239
Speaker 1: or we're pretty sure if we have a big enough

883
00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 1: sample that some of them are going to survive.

884
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 10: I think it's not a big worry. If you have

885
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 10: a large sample, you'll have things that survive. Plus you

886
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 10: could have them in habit environments that are protected. You know,

887
00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:04,080
Speaker 10: Hydrothermal events on the bottom of the ocean, for example,

888
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 10: will buffer you from a lot of stuff, and then

889
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:09,280
Speaker 10: organisms can evolve mechanisms that make them much more robust

890
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:12,360
Speaker 10: to the damage to DNA that's caused by high intensity

891
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:15,120
Speaker 10: waves and particles. So you know, a lot of organisms

892
00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 10: like tartar grades are often touted as a cool example

893
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:20,880
Speaker 10: of something which is robust to DNA fragmentation.

894
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:22,879
Speaker 1: They've evolved a lot of.

895
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 10: Cool mechanisms that can take DNA that's been busted into

896
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 10: a bunch of small pieces and reassembled in a pretty

897
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:29,720
Speaker 10: accurate manner.

898
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:32,800
Speaker 1: All right, So say you're tasked with developing this payload.

899
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:35,080
Speaker 1: We're going to drop it on some random alien planet

900
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 1: you know very little about, just because you've seen maybe

901
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: some spectroscopy from its atmosphere. What cocktail do you recommend sending?

902
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 1: I mean, should we just scoop up a sample from

903
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 1: a local forest? But does it really matter if they're

904
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:47,320
Speaker 1: all so hardy.

905
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 10: I think it does matter in that you know, a

906
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 10: local forest, the surface of a local forest is probably

907
00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 10: a very different environment than what you're going to find there,

908
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 10: and it's an environment that is not wet.

909
00:43:59,440 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 2: Right.

910
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 10: I think we're going to have our best bet with

911
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:04,480
Speaker 10: something which targets oceans, because oceans are large, oceans are

912
00:44:04,480 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 10: relatively stable, and if let's hope that this planet has

913
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:10,799
Speaker 10: surface water that's liquid and within those oceans. I think

914
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:12,919
Speaker 10: I would have a mixture of things which inhabit both

915
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 10: the surface and our phototrophic so things which can photosynthesize

916
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:20,960
Speaker 10: using light, and things which inhabit like seafloor niches where

917
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:23,520
Speaker 10: they can do chemical chemical autotrophy, where they would be

918
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 10: basically breaking down hydrogen using hydrogen sulfide as an electronic

919
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:30,760
Speaker 10: acceptor doing things which allow them to make a living

920
00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:34,279
Speaker 10: that is completely independent from a light based ecosystem.

921
00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: So then what do you expect we might get, Say

922
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:38,880
Speaker 1: we drop this thing on an alien planet and we

923
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 1: come back in fifty million years, or our descendants eventually

924
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:45,239
Speaker 1: make it out there on slow colony ships. Are we

925
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:47,360
Speaker 1: going to end up with just like a frothing ocean

926
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 1: filled with microbes, or are we going to show up

927
00:44:49,200 --> 00:44:51,359
Speaker 1: and there's gonna be dinosaurs in redwoods, or you know,

928
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:53,080
Speaker 1: some alien version of these things.

929
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:56,880
Speaker 10: Fifty million years is pretty short in the scheme of things,

930
00:44:57,200 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 10: so I think you're looking more at a frothing ocean

931
00:44:59,440 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 10: filled with mic growth, although they may terraform the planet

932
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 10: in the sense of creating eno foxygen. You know, the

933
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,359
Speaker 10: amount of oxygen that we have in our atmosphere twenty

934
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,040
Speaker 10: percent of our atmosphere that's all coming from life, right,

935
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:14,279
Speaker 10: that's all coming from photosynthetic organisms. And so if this

936
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:17,719
Speaker 10: planet doesn't have life already, if it's a steroplanet, there

937
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:20,160
Speaker 10: won't be much, if any, oxygen available, Like the amount

938
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 10: of oxygen that we have is because of life. And

939
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 10: so I think if we could get you know, very

940
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 10: photosynthetically active ocean microbes. It might take a little longer

941
00:45:29,080 --> 00:45:31,720
Speaker 10: than fifty million years, but you could terraform the planet

942
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:33,600
Speaker 10: in a way that would probably result in more of

943
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:36,239
Speaker 10: an aerobic atmosphere, something which we're more happy with. But

944
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 10: to get something like dinosaurs and redwood trees and stuff,

945
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:41,680
Speaker 10: I would probably actually jump the gun a little bit

946
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 10: here and see the world with more highly, more derived

947
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 10: organisms than just these bacteria which are hardy, which can live.

948
00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:53,239
Speaker 10: You know, bacteria are like the ultimate metabolic you know,

949
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:55,960
Speaker 10: tool kit masters. If there is an energy source to

950
00:45:55,960 --> 00:45:58,760
Speaker 10: be dissipated, there's a bacteria or an archea, a single

951
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:01,640
Speaker 10: cell organism that that has evolved to dissipate that. You know,

952
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 10: there's bacteria living miles deep in rocks eating only hydrogen. Amazing,

953
00:46:08,200 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 10: it's outstand You know, they might divide once every thousand years.

954
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:14,640
Speaker 10: It's it's really cool. But these types of more complex organisms,

955
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 10: generally speaking, these multicellular organisms that we can see that

956
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:21,840
Speaker 10: have you know, complex morphological features, they evolve from eukaryotes,

957
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 10: which are a different kind of organism that's actually the

958
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 10: result of a symbiosis between a bacterial cell and an

959
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:32,319
Speaker 10: archel cell, and that symbiosis started on the order of

960
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 10: two billion years ago. And these organisms have compared to bacteria,

961
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:39,759
Speaker 10: they have a lot more complicated subcellular features. They have

962
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:43,480
Speaker 10: their DNA incased within a nucleus, they have more complicated

963
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 10: mechanisms for generating and moving proteins, and they have many

964
00:46:47,520 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 10: more opportunities for within cell gene regulation. And it's within

965
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:55,840
Speaker 10: this more complicated kind of cell that you've gotten the

966
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 10: types of multicecular organisms that we know and love. Plants,

967
00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 10: animal fungi, dinosaurs, redwood trees, and in fact, even those

968
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 10: lineages which have evolved pretty sophisticated forms of multicellularity, it

969
00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:10,640
Speaker 10: took them quite a while to do that. So animals

970
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:12,360
Speaker 10: have been around for you know, on the order of

971
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 10: at least six hundred million years. Plants cropped up around

972
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:18,840
Speaker 10: four hundred and twenty million years ago is kind of

973
00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:20,799
Speaker 10: when they got their start. Fungi have probably been around

974
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:23,439
Speaker 10: for about a billion years, although it's hard to tell

975
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 10: when they became multicecular, but it often actually took quite

976
00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:27,840
Speaker 10: a while for this origin of.

977
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 1: Multicecularity play out.

978
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:31,799
Speaker 10: But I will say, once you give them a toolkit

979
00:47:32,480 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 10: where they have the ability to have cells that remain

980
00:47:35,200 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 10: attached to one another and to specialize in different behaviors,

981
00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 10: and you know, regulate that specialization through communication or other

982
00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 10: bioelectric sensing in response mechanisms. Once they have those toolkits

983
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:51,840
Speaker 10: for how cells grow into bodies and specialize and undergo

984
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:56,719
Speaker 10: morphological novel morphological function, they can diversify very quickly from

985
00:47:56,760 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 10: that starting point. So I think what you'd want to

986
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 10: do is like see that world with maybe relatively hardy,

987
00:48:02,640 --> 00:48:06,319
Speaker 10: relatively simple plants, animals, and fungi, and then let those

988
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:09,320
Speaker 10: things diversify into the various psychological niches that they find,

989
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:11,640
Speaker 10: although you might actually have to do a sequential now

990
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 10: that I think about this sequential seating, hit them with

991
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:16,520
Speaker 10: the basic stuff to get you know, a carbon rich

992
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 10: ecosystem going, and then toss in the more complicated stuff.

993
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,000
Speaker 10: You know, a couple thousand years later.

994
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:25,839
Speaker 1: So what do you think is the most complex form

995
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:27,880
Speaker 1: of life that might survive this kind of trip. I'm

996
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:30,480
Speaker 1: imagining this thing is like frozen or desiccated and then

997
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 1: dropped in the ocean with basically nothing, and we hope

998
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:35,960
Speaker 1: it just sort of reconstitutes itself. You can't do that

999
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 1: with like a dog, right or a tree. So are

1000
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:41,080
Speaker 1: we seeding this planet with tartar grades to come back

1001
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:44,440
Speaker 1: fifty million years later to find human size intelligent tartar grades?

1002
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 10: Oh, that's a fantastic question. So freezing things for interstellar travel,

1003
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:51,759
Speaker 10: like a lot of smaller organisms, there's probably a way

1004
00:48:51,760 --> 00:48:53,600
Speaker 10: to work that part out of that too much difficulty.

1005
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:55,839
Speaker 10: You can freeze, you know, you can't freeze a fly,

1006
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 10: but you can freeze you know, a number of smaller animals.

1007
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,279
Speaker 10: Certainly tartar grades would have no problem being desiccated and

1008
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:04,719
Speaker 10: shipped around the around the universe. But I don't think

1009
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:06,880
Speaker 10: that they're going to become you know, large and complicated.

1010
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 10: They make their living basically sucking up bacteria plants. I

1011
00:49:10,200 --> 00:49:14,960
Speaker 10: think I would take advantage of resting stages explores, inferns

1012
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:19,160
Speaker 10: or or you know, heart very very durable seeds of angiosperms.

1013
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:22,239
Speaker 10: That being said, I don't know what, if anything, could

1014
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:25,800
Speaker 10: survive these extremely sterile conditions that we would find ourselves

1015
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 10: with on a new planet. I mean, I think I

1016
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:31,440
Speaker 10: think bacteria are really like they should do fine. You know,

1017
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:34,360
Speaker 10: if you throw enough stuff, enough different types of bacteria,

1018
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 10: with enough different forms of metabolism at a blank slate

1019
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:42,279
Speaker 10: environment where there are energetic you know, conditions, energetic equilibria

1020
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 10: to be dis equilibria to sort of be taken advantage

1021
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 10: of and be used for energy, you're going to get

1022
00:49:46,480 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 10: something which grows on that. But plants, animals, fungi, those

1023
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:52,320
Speaker 10: are all things which largely have evolved in the context

1024
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:55,880
Speaker 10: of an already pretty rich ecosystem of other organisms, and

1025
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:58,439
Speaker 10: they're highly dependent on those other organisms to make their living.

1026
00:49:58,520 --> 00:50:00,319
Speaker 10: I mean, plants you might be able to get away

1027
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,040
Speaker 10: with in the sense that they are mostly self sustaining

1028
00:50:03,120 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 10: photo autotrophic organisms that are growing on light, water and minerals.

1029
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:12,440
Speaker 10: But even plants are really specialized on growing on land

1030
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:14,759
Speaker 10: like plants are basically you know, we talked about, oh,

1031
00:50:14,800 --> 00:50:17,239
Speaker 10: the invasion of land. Really it's the invasion of air

1032
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:20,040
Speaker 10: from a marine algae that was the difficult part for plants.

1033
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:22,080
Speaker 10: So I think you could probably if I was gonna

1034
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:24,160
Speaker 10: throw anything in there that was that was larger and

1035
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:27,359
Speaker 10: more complicated, it would be something like a seaweed, right,

1036
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:30,759
Speaker 10: because they're they're phototrophic, They're they're getting their energy from

1037
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:35,120
Speaker 10: the from the sun and minerals. There are many mutualistic

1038
00:50:35,120 --> 00:50:37,120
Speaker 10: interactions that they have with other organisms. But I'm sure

1039
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 10: you could find something which doesn't depend on those and

1040
00:50:39,080 --> 00:50:43,960
Speaker 10: can grow azenically. And then once you have macro algae growing,

1041
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 10: they create a habitat for many different organisms, lots of animals,

1042
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:50,959
Speaker 10: for example. So if I thought about this more, maybe

1043
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:52,560
Speaker 10: what you know, what I would do. I'm not sure

1044
00:50:52,560 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 10: how you would ship this around the universe, But have

1045
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:58,040
Speaker 10: you ever seen those fully enclosed little ecosystems that have

1046
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 10: some algae and some shrimp. I think they're Hawaiian and

1047
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:04,320
Speaker 10: they can live like in a completely enclosed, sealed glass

1048
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:06,840
Speaker 10: sphere for decades where that you know, basically you have

1049
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:09,960
Speaker 10: this nice balance between the oxygen that's produced by the

1050
00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 10: algae and the food that's created and the shrimp which

1051
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:15,600
Speaker 10: consume it and create carbon dioxide which the algae use.

1052
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,920
Speaker 10: It's pretty cool. So something like that maybe some small

1053
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:23,920
Speaker 10: invertebrate which is mostly grazier on algae or even eatings.

1054
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 10: Think that might the single sid alogae which grow on

1055
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:29,080
Speaker 10: the surface of macrology and macrology and maybe try to

1056
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:31,759
Speaker 10: get that established. I don't know about just throwing it

1057
00:51:31,800 --> 00:51:34,120
Speaker 10: into a sterilotionan, but if there was a way to

1058
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:37,400
Speaker 10: sort of, you know, have an incubator where you have

1059
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:40,600
Speaker 10: a near shore environment or a pond something a little

1060
00:51:40,640 --> 00:51:46,560
Speaker 10: bit less big then subject to planetary scale weather.

1061
00:51:48,160 --> 00:51:51,439
Speaker 1: So is this an idea which excites you? You're like, ooh,

1062
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:53,480
Speaker 1: this would be really fun to see what happens. Or

1063
00:51:53,520 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 1: is something that terrifies you the idea of you know,

1064
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:58,400
Speaker 1: polluting the galaxy with our kind of life. You know,

1065
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 1: is it wonderful to imagine show up on this planet

1066
00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: and having like intelligent shrimp swimming in kelp forests that

1067
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: we seeded, you know, long times ago.

1068
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:11,520
Speaker 10: It's more exciting than terrifying for the simple reason that,

1069
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:14,879
Speaker 10: while we don't really know what the extent of independently

1070
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 10: evolved the life on other planets is, it seems like

1071
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 10: the amount of planets that exist vastly as strips the

1072
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 10: amount of independent origins of life certainly complex life, and

1073
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:30,040
Speaker 10: so it doesn't seem to me that planets with liquid

1074
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:33,800
Speaker 10: water are necessarily a super limiting resource in our universe.

1075
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:37,000
Speaker 10: And so the opportunity to see how life would evolve

1076
00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:40,360
Speaker 10: given replays of the tape, right to see how it

1077
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:43,680
Speaker 10: would independently go about colonizing a planet diversifying, I mean

1078
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:46,719
Speaker 10: you could. It would be It's a once in a

1079
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 10: lifetime opportunity to see how something which starts over reconstitutes itself,

1080
00:52:51,160 --> 00:52:52,800
Speaker 10: how a bioswear reconstitutes itself.

1081
00:52:52,880 --> 00:52:54,839
Speaker 1: So you want to turn the entire galaxy into your

1082
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:55,440
Speaker 1: own lab.

1083
00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:58,920
Speaker 11: Basically, I mean, you know, I wouldn't say no, that's

1084
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:01,640
Speaker 11: the exciting part, but I would say you'd have to

1085
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 11: be very, very confident that there wasn't already existing life

1086
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:06,560
Speaker 11: on that planet before you went about doing this.

1087
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:08,799
Speaker 10: I mean, if it truly was sterile, then I don't

1088
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:11,040
Speaker 10: think that there's a huge amount of downside, But a

1089
00:53:11,040 --> 00:53:12,840
Speaker 10: lot of that depends on how confident you are that

1090
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:14,719
Speaker 10: it really is a sterile planet. And you know that

1091
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,760
Speaker 10: being said, if this planet's sterile, and it's been sterile

1092
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 10: presumably for quite a long time, despite being habitable billions

1093
00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 10: of years, it seems unlikely that it would all of

1094
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 10: a sudden not become sterile in the near future anyway,

1095
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 10: So I don't know what you're giving up.

1096
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks very much for sharing your excitement

1097
00:53:31,200 --> 00:53:34,120
Speaker 1: and your insights with us. Really appreciate your time. It's

1098
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 1: a pleasure. And of course I checked in with Katrina

1099
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:40,000
Speaker 1: and to see how much she agreed with Will. So then,

1100
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:42,799
Speaker 1: if microbes are so hardy, if we wanted to seed

1101
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:45,800
Speaker 1: an exo planet with life, could we just send anything

1102
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:48,600
Speaker 1: we want or do they need to be carefully chosen?

1103
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:52,040
Speaker 4: I think diversity would be a better strategy than like

1104
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 4: carefully choosing just one strategy, So I think you would

1105
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 4: be better off. You'd be more likely to succeed by

1106
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 4: gathering up microbes from a lot of different environments and

1107
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:05,480
Speaker 4: then sending as many different strategies out there, so you'd

1108
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 4: get to roll the.

1109
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:07,160
Speaker 3: Dice a lot more times.

1110
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:09,759
Speaker 4: But I think you would want to pick from environments

1111
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:12,719
Speaker 4: that are already harsh and potentially similar to the place

1112
00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:15,120
Speaker 4: that you're trying to bring the microbes to, so that

1113
00:54:15,160 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 4: they would already be adapted.

1114
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:18,280
Speaker 3: But yeah, if I had to pick.

1115
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:22,600
Speaker 4: Between, like, you know, one lab evolving a perfect bug

1116
00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:25,440
Speaker 4: versus just like sampling all of Earth's environments.

1117
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:27,000
Speaker 3: I would vote Earth's environments.

1118
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:30,000
Speaker 1: So I think Will's answer your question is that would

1119
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:32,839
Speaker 1: take a lot longer than fifty million years to get

1120
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 1: from microbes to redwoods and dinosaurs and grocery stores.

1121
00:54:37,239 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 2: So I am not going to be shopping at the

1122
00:54:38,920 --> 00:54:40,440
Speaker 2: brown dwarf grocery store.

1123
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:46,399
Speaker 1: That's a bum no. But you are great gree kirkirk kirkkrekerk.

1124
00:54:46,440 --> 00:54:49,760
Speaker 1: Great grandkids might be able to have dinosaur steaks for dinner.

1125
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 2: Thank goodness, the future is good. Okay, So, as you

1126
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:57,200
Speaker 2: may have been able to pick up throughout the course

1127
00:54:57,239 --> 00:55:01,280
Speaker 2: of the conversation, I have some concern about this idea,

1128
00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 2: though I do find it interesting. So should we do it?

1129
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:08,080
Speaker 2: Let's end on that. So how about in our solar system?

1130
00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:09,719
Speaker 2: What do you think should we ever do this?

1131
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:12,440
Speaker 1: I think it's a hard question in general, but I

1132
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:15,799
Speaker 1: think that in our solar system it's pretty clear, Like, yes,

1133
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 1: it'd be nice to be able to live on Gainy

1134
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:21,080
Speaker 1: Meede or on Io. But if we just send our

1135
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:23,440
Speaker 1: microbes and spray them all over the solar system in

1136
00:55:23,480 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 1: the hopes of eventually having a biome that could support us,

1137
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:29,239
Speaker 1: we're ruining our chance to answer a much deeper, more

1138
00:55:29,239 --> 00:55:32,640
Speaker 1: important question, right, like how hard is it for life

1139
00:55:32,640 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: to start? Could life have started in other places in

1140
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 1: the Solar system independently, or maybe life in the Solar

1141
00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:42,320
Speaker 1: system actually did start only one place, but not on Earth,

1142
00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:46,400
Speaker 1: and then came to Earth. If we sprayed bacteria microbes

1143
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:49,160
Speaker 1: all over our Solar system, we couldn't answer these questions.

1144
00:55:49,200 --> 00:55:52,680
Speaker 1: We'll have polluted our backyard. And I think those questions

1145
00:55:52,760 --> 00:55:56,439
Speaker 1: are more important than grocery stores on io.

1146
00:55:56,520 --> 00:55:59,239
Speaker 2: I think many people would disagree with you, especially when

1147
00:55:59,239 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 2: it comes to Mars, because, of course, if we're going

1148
00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:03,920
Speaker 2: to settle Mars, we are going to be seeding Mars

1149
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 2: with all kinds of stuff, and depending on how soon

1150
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,440
Speaker 2: we do that, that might be before we even know

1151
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:11,719
Speaker 2: for sure if Mars has life on it or not.

1152
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,920
Speaker 2: So this is, you know, something that could possibly happen

1153
00:56:15,960 --> 00:56:18,840
Speaker 2: in our lifetime. But do you think that the ethical

1154
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 2: questions become or have a little clearer answers if we're

1155
00:56:22,560 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 2: talking about other solar systems.

1156
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:26,360
Speaker 1: Well, I want to get back to Mars actually, because

1157
00:56:26,440 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 1: as a world famed skeptic on the possibility of settling Mars,

1158
00:56:30,640 --> 00:56:33,360
Speaker 1: I have to ask you do you think it's possible

1159
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:36,440
Speaker 1: to settle Mars and not pollute it, Like, could we

1160
00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:38,480
Speaker 1: set up some sort of barrier where we have like

1161
00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:43,640
Speaker 1: an Earth region on Mars and somehow avoid contaminating the

1162
00:56:43,680 --> 00:56:45,799
Speaker 1: rest of the planet or is that impossible.

1163
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:48,319
Speaker 2: I'm not very optimistic that we could do that. So

1164
00:56:48,360 --> 00:56:51,520
Speaker 2: you know, Mars has dust worms that blow dust all

1165
00:56:51,560 --> 00:56:53,279
Speaker 2: over the planet, and you know, I think there are

1166
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:55,880
Speaker 2: microbes that you know, even if you said like okay,

1167
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:58,200
Speaker 2: no humans are allowed to, you know, cross this line

1168
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 2: and half the planet is going to be pristine, I

1169
00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:02,880
Speaker 2: think our microbes over time would sort of blow around

1170
00:57:02,920 --> 00:57:06,160
Speaker 2: the planet. And you know, if there's no microbes there

1171
00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:10,760
Speaker 2: then they're already then maybe that's not so bad, although

1172
00:57:10,760 --> 00:57:13,200
Speaker 2: the microbes will start changing, you know, like the chemistry

1173
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:15,560
Speaker 2: of the environment, and that might make some scientists sad

1174
00:57:15,600 --> 00:57:18,680
Speaker 2: who wanted to study Mars and it's like preserved states.

1175
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:21,080
Speaker 2: So you know, there's a lot of trade offs you

1176
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:22,840
Speaker 2: need to make when you're thinking about what to do

1177
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:23,800
Speaker 2: with another planet.

1178
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:26,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does seem like we have to decide

1179
00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 1: is Mars a scientific preserve or is it a resource

1180
00:57:30,880 --> 00:57:31,760
Speaker 1: to be exploited.

1181
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:33,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the difficult thing is, you know, if

1182
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 2: the US decides one thing, or in China decides another,

1183
00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 2: or Russia decides another, Like, can you get the whole

1184
00:57:40,160 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 2: global community to agree on what we're going to use

1185
00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:45,560
Speaker 2: Mars for? And I guess we'll see.

1186
00:57:45,720 --> 00:57:48,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, And not just governments, right, eccentric zillionaires can start

1187
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:52,600
Speaker 1: their own Mars colony outside of any jurisdiction. Right, there

1188
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 1: are no laws on Mars as far as I'm aware.

1189
00:57:54,720 --> 00:57:57,680
Speaker 2: No, no, nope, nop nope. So if Musk wanted to

1190
00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:00,160
Speaker 2: go to Mars, he would still have to like at

1191
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:03,160
Speaker 2: a permit through the FAA, and he would have to

1192
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:07,040
Speaker 2: like essentially get approval from the US government. And when

1193
00:58:07,080 --> 00:58:09,920
Speaker 2: you're out in space, you are still the responsibility of

1194
00:58:09,960 --> 00:58:14,200
Speaker 2: some government. So Musk would still be the United States' responsibility.

1195
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:16,320
Speaker 2: They should be telling him what he can or cannot

1196
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:19,680
Speaker 2: do out there. So you know, the Outer Space Treaty

1197
00:58:20,480 --> 00:58:23,440
Speaker 2: is international law that is supposed to apply to when

1198
00:58:23,520 --> 00:58:26,760
Speaker 2: humans go out into space as well. But you know,

1199
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 2: is Musk gonna listen? That's a different question entirely. And

1200
00:58:30,120 --> 00:58:33,080
Speaker 2: what would be the implications if he doesn't listen? Who knows?

1201
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:34,960
Speaker 2: Because the US could say no more.

1202
00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 1: You're gonna throw him in Mars jail.

1203
00:58:36,800 --> 00:58:39,600
Speaker 2: That's right. I mean, so the US does have some leverage.

1204
00:58:39,600 --> 00:58:42,040
Speaker 2: They could say we're not sending any more resupply ships

1205
00:58:42,080 --> 00:58:44,360
Speaker 2: until you guys, you know, get your axe cleaned up.

1206
00:58:44,880 --> 00:58:47,000
Speaker 2: But yeah, who knows what muscle will do when he

1207
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:47,439
Speaker 2: gets there.

1208
00:58:47,560 --> 00:58:50,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a tricky question here in our solar system.

1209
00:58:50,320 --> 00:58:52,480
Speaker 1: In terms of other solar systems, I think it's related,

1210
00:58:52,480 --> 00:58:54,280
Speaker 1: But for me, the balance tips a little bit in

1211
00:58:54,320 --> 00:58:57,480
Speaker 1: the other direction. Like, there are so many planets out there,

1212
00:58:57,560 --> 00:59:00,400
Speaker 1: I'm fairly confident we could find some that have no

1213
00:59:00,640 --> 00:59:03,840
Speaker 1: life on them that we could use as experiments or

1214
00:59:03,880 --> 00:59:06,920
Speaker 1: we could use to seed edible biomes for the very

1215
00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:09,960
Speaker 1: future of humanity. Seems to me to be too restrictive

1216
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:13,840
Speaker 1: to say we can't explore or we can't experiment anywhere

1217
00:59:13,840 --> 00:59:14,640
Speaker 1: in the galaxy.

1218
00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:14,960
Speaker 8: Yeah.

1219
00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:18,600
Speaker 2: I think if you could absolutely convince me that we

1220
00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:22,840
Speaker 2: definitely knew what to look for and could absolutely determine

1221
00:59:22,880 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 2: that a planet was sterile, you know, the evolutionary biologist

1222
00:59:26,120 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 2: and me would love to see what happens if you,

1223
00:59:28,280 --> 00:59:30,640
Speaker 2: you know, drop microbes and then come back, you know,

1224
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:33,320
Speaker 2: six billion years later, what do you have there that

1225
00:59:33,400 --> 00:59:35,960
Speaker 2: sounds fascinating. It would be difficult for you to convince

1226
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:38,080
Speaker 2: me that it was definitely a sterile planet and we

1227
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:40,000
Speaker 2: weren't going to be, especially when it's you know, in

1228
00:59:40,040 --> 00:59:42,120
Speaker 2: a different solar system. But if you could convince me

1229
00:59:42,160 --> 00:59:44,240
Speaker 2: of that, then I would certainly be interested in seeing

1230
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:47,320
Speaker 2: this experiment run, not just because I love food so much,

1231
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:49,360
Speaker 2: but because I think there'd be interesting science.

1232
00:59:49,800 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it would be a huge tragedy if there

1233
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:54,640
Speaker 1: really was like alien life on that planet and then

1234
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:56,880
Speaker 1: we sent our microbes and it like wiped them out.

1235
00:59:57,000 --> 00:59:59,240
Speaker 1: What if we showed up and there were like fossils

1236
00:59:59,240 --> 01:00:02,240
Speaker 1: of a dead civilation that we had killed with our

1237
01:00:02,280 --> 01:00:03,640
Speaker 1: equivalent of smallpox.

1238
01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:06,160
Speaker 2: Oh, that would be awful. And also from like a

1239
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:09,560
Speaker 2: science perspective, like losing all of the data on like

1240
01:00:09,640 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 2: when life actually pops up independently and the direction that

1241
01:00:13,480 --> 01:00:15,600
Speaker 2: that took, as opposed to you know, what does our

1242
01:00:15,680 --> 01:00:17,520
Speaker 2: life when you put it somewhere else. I think it's

1243
01:00:17,600 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 2: much more interesting to see what happens when life pops

1244
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:22,000
Speaker 2: up somewhere else on its own, and then what happens

1245
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:24,439
Speaker 2: to it. But yeah, so many levels of it being

1246
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:27,479
Speaker 2: super sad if it turns out we're messing up what's

1247
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:28,680
Speaker 2: happening on some other planet.

1248
01:00:28,800 --> 01:00:29,000
Speaker 9: Yeah.

1249
01:00:29,080 --> 01:00:31,120
Speaker 1: If that happens, we should get thrown in space jail.

1250
01:00:31,320 --> 01:00:35,520
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, except you know we will have long since

1251
01:00:35,560 --> 01:00:37,640
Speaker 2: been dead because it will take so long to get

1252
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:40,720
Speaker 2: the microbes there. So I guess our whole species would

1253
01:00:40,720 --> 01:00:42,200
Speaker 2: have to get thrown into space jail.

1254
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:45,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I think it's an interesting question even if

1255
01:00:45,440 --> 01:00:47,680
Speaker 1: we never do it, right, even if we don't actually

1256
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:50,920
Speaker 1: do this, it's fun to imagine, like, how would it work?

1257
01:00:51,200 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 1: What technology would you need? Is it even possible? To me,

1258
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:57,160
Speaker 1: it's fascinating that we're not actually that far from this

1259
01:00:57,240 --> 01:00:59,680
Speaker 1: kind of technology, like solar sales. We could build that

1260
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:02,880
Speaker 1: and that it breaks. Probably that would work. Capsules of

1261
01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:06,000
Speaker 1: ocean water which might survive the transit from here to there.

1262
01:01:06,120 --> 01:01:09,880
Speaker 1: That's not implausible, Like this sort of science fictiony scenario

1263
01:01:10,160 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 1: could be reality in the not far future.

1264
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:15,880
Speaker 2: Yeah. We live in exciting times with exciting possibilities. I

1265
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:17,040
Speaker 2: hope we make the right choices.

1266
01:01:17,280 --> 01:01:20,880
Speaker 1: Since we're talking about some big moral choices. I asked

1267
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:24,520
Speaker 1: Katrina about the should we side of this question, and

1268
01:01:24,640 --> 01:01:27,720
Speaker 1: how would you feel if an alien payload arrived with

1269
01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:31,320
Speaker 1: their microbes hoping to seed our world with their bugs.

1270
01:01:31,320 --> 01:01:33,560
Speaker 1: Would you feel invaded or intrigued?

1271
01:01:35,480 --> 01:01:39,720
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously intrigued, but how would I handle.

1272
01:01:39,520 --> 01:01:42,040
Speaker 1: I hope you're listening to that aliens.

1273
01:01:42,400 --> 01:01:46,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, and CDC. I hope the CDC is not listening

1274
01:01:46,720 --> 01:01:48,080
Speaker 3: to that one too much. Actually.

1275
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:50,920
Speaker 4: I mean, you would definitely want to do that kind

1276
01:01:50,960 --> 01:01:53,280
Speaker 4: of work in a very careful environment, and we do

1277
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:56,160
Speaker 4: know how to work with pathogens. It's never perfect, though,

1278
01:01:56,200 --> 01:01:58,360
Speaker 4: I mean, that's a whole other conversation. But you know,

1279
01:01:58,880 --> 01:02:02,160
Speaker 4: I don't love hearing them there's small pox in a

1280
01:02:02,160 --> 01:02:06,760
Speaker 4: freezer somewhere, and it's just one mistake away from getting

1281
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:09,320
Speaker 4: into contact with humanity again. And so not knowing what

1282
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:13,080
Speaker 4: the health impact or the environmental climate impact of a

1283
01:02:13,240 --> 01:02:16,600
Speaker 4: new set of microbes would be, I would definitely want

1284
01:02:16,600 --> 01:02:19,760
Speaker 4: to tread lightly, but I'd be super intrigued. Oh my gosh,

1285
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:22,640
Speaker 4: that's a dream to get to figure out how on Earth,

1286
01:02:23,720 --> 01:02:27,440
Speaker 4: how on wherever they came from they do their metabolisms

1287
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:30,840
Speaker 4: and copy themselves, and I mean that would be fascinating.

1288
01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:33,800
Speaker 1: I hope you feel like you've made the right choice

1289
01:02:33,840 --> 01:02:36,040
Speaker 1: in listening to me and Kelly talk about this question

1290
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:38,960
Speaker 1: for the last hour, and I hope that you learned something,

1291
01:02:39,400 --> 01:02:41,480
Speaker 1: not just about whether or not Kelly is likely to

1292
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:45,400
Speaker 1: chop you up, but whether future humanity could and should

1293
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:47,880
Speaker 1: send microbes to other planets.

1294
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:50,920
Speaker 2: I was the scary co host this time. Usually that's your.

1295
01:02:50,800 --> 01:02:55,680
Speaker 1: Job exactly now. I know what it feels like. Oh

1296
01:02:55,720 --> 01:02:57,800
Speaker 1: my gosh, I'm quivering my boots, and I'm glad we're

1297
01:02:57,840 --> 01:03:00,960
Speaker 1: across the country from each Others very much for joining us,

1298
01:03:00,960 --> 01:03:03,960
Speaker 1: even though you threatened to slice me into pieces.

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Speaker 2: Thanks very much for having me, for being a good

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Speaker 2: sport when the tables returned.

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Speaker 1: All right, Thanks for listening. Everyone, tune in next time.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain

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Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts

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Speaker 1: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.