Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the Vault. This one originally
Speaker 1: aired on May four, and uh oh, this was the
Speaker 1: Star Wars Alien Necropsy Part one that we I think
Speaker 1: we ended up dissecting several alien species. Do we do
Speaker 1: the minox? I'm having trouble remembering this one. I think
Speaker 1: we did. Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm it's been It seems
Speaker 1: like a lot has happened since we did these episodes,
Speaker 1: but I remember them being a lot of fun, and
Speaker 1: this is gonna be the perfect time to to re
Speaker 1: explore them. There's a lot going on in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars uh universe out there, and we have another episode
Speaker 1: of Weird How Cinema coming up where we're gonna look
Speaker 1: at a Star Wars knockoff film, so that's always exciting.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Lord Veda requires all of these necropsy is
Speaker 1: to be completed by the end of the day. The
Speaker 1: surgical Droids says these are substantial specimens. We might require
Speaker 1: more time two episodes. Even Lord Vader is not a
Speaker 1: fan of two parts. He says the anatomy of the
Speaker 1: alien specimens are quite involved, and if we're to perform
Speaker 1: a complete analysis, will need more time. Okay, fine, but
Speaker 1: the results better be extremely infotaining. Welcome to st Have
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And you know, the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, Rob, you really leaned into the holidays.
Speaker 1: But most of those holidays were towards the end of
Speaker 1: the year, the wintertime holidays, the hibernation holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas,
Speaker 1: of course Halloween. But we do that all the time.
Speaker 1: And I think I get the sense that you are
Speaker 1: so strongly leaning into the holidays that it has continued
Speaker 1: into the month of May. Yeah, I guess, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: bringing that spirit uh into May, especially for today's holiday,
Speaker 1: uh May the Fourth, as in May the Fourth be
Speaker 1: with you, which is of course the one day each
Speaker 1: year that everyone gets to go crazy for Star Wars
Speaker 1: in addition to plan, addition to all the other days.
Speaker 1: I guess. But um, but yeah, I I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know that even though I think my son
Speaker 1: and I had gotten super into Star Wars this at
Speaker 1: this point. Last year, I think we kind of forgot
Speaker 1: about May the four being a thing. Like May the
Speaker 1: fourth was never a thing when I was a Star
Speaker 1: Wars fan as a kid that I know of, so
Speaker 1: it kind of blew right past me. Um. But but
Speaker 1: this time I I kind of realized that the last minute,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, May fourth is next week. It's it's
Speaker 1: Star Wars Day. It's just uh, just open season. We
Speaker 1: should do some Star Wars content. You know. I would
Speaker 1: have guessed, even as obsessed with Star Wars as you
Speaker 1: were last year, and I guess continuing into this year, uh,
Speaker 1: that that May the fourth wouldn't be your bag. I
Speaker 1: would I would expect that May the fourth would kind
Speaker 1: of irritate you, would be one of those cute little
Speaker 1: things that gets under your skin. Am I wrong? Um? No? No,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I don't have any problem with it.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially since there's like new stuff coming out.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, if that's if this sets the deadline
Speaker 1: for for the bad Batch animated series to come out
Speaker 1: and makes them you know, put it out, then I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we have it. Otherwise stuff would just keep
Speaker 1: getting delayed right right, Okay, yes, just wedge on into
Speaker 1: our calendars. Yeah, maybe they'll come up with another Star
Speaker 1: Wars holiday this year. Well, some say that there's we
Speaker 1: have May the fourth and it Made the Fourth be
Speaker 1: with you and then write. Some say there's Revenge of
Speaker 1: the Fifth, which is tomorrow. But I don't know, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know how how crazy they Maybe there's something
Speaker 1: for the sixth as well, but I think I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be appropriate that it will continue after today,
Speaker 1: because we originally planned for this to be one episode,
Speaker 1: but then as we were working on the notes, we
Speaker 1: were like, oh, wait a minute, We've got like, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty thou pages of content or whatever it is we've
Speaker 1: got now, So so this will definitely be at least
Speaker 1: Tuesday and Thursday of this week. It is a it
Speaker 1: is a week long Made the Fourth, Yes, yes, as well,
Speaker 1: it should be. So. Obviously we've talked about Star Wars
Speaker 1: a bit here on the show in the past, whether
Speaker 1: it be a discussion of you know, the question, could
Speaker 1: Jupiter be blown up by the Death Star? Uh, and
Speaker 1: I think the answer was probably not. We've also talked
Speaker 1: about the Mighty Sarlac, and we also did a Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema episode on e Walks the Battle for Indoor.
Speaker 1: But in this episode we're gonna take the old my
Speaker 1: monster science approach to the some of the the aliens
Speaker 1: from the Star Wars universe, you know, using some sort
Speaker 1: of some bit of fantastic biology and then using that
Speaker 1: as a way to discuss real world terrestrial biology and
Speaker 1: finding where things line up where they don't, etcetera. Now
Speaker 1: standard disclaimer here we are Star Wars fans, but we
Speaker 1: are not Star Wars experts. We're probably not going to
Speaker 1: perfectly reflect cannon or legend uh with regards to the
Speaker 1: Star Wars universe with accuracy. Here. We haven't read every
Speaker 1: scientific meditation on Star Wars, and we don't know the
Speaker 1: extended universe perfectly. But we'll do the best we can here,
Speaker 1: and we'll have some fun with the topic. But we
Speaker 1: fully invite you to get mad about it. Well, there's
Speaker 1: no reason to get mad about it. This is all
Speaker 1: too too fun. But yes, certainly, um, feel free to
Speaker 1: write in if if you have any actually he's uh
Speaker 1: to share with us regarding the creatures we're talking about
Speaker 1: here today. Well, put, all right, Well, let's start with
Speaker 1: your first selection Joe, what did you choose from the
Speaker 1: the vast and exotic Star Wars universe? Okay, Well, to
Speaker 1: set the stage the film is The Empire Strikes Back.
Speaker 1: It's that mid movie section, the chase where han Leia,
Speaker 1: Chewy and C three p O are on the run
Speaker 1: from the Imperial fleet in the Millennium Falcon. This is
Speaker 1: after they have evacuated the hath base and there are
Speaker 1: a group of star destroyers that are chasing the Millennium
Speaker 1: Falcon and they chase it into an asteroid field. This
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite parts when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I still love it today. There's a kind of it
Speaker 1: almost becomes like a James Bond car chase or like
Speaker 1: Smokey and the Bandit where you know, they're like the
Speaker 1: scene where the cars are zipping around, you know, through
Speaker 1: obstacles and around traffic, but it's in space and instead
Speaker 1: of other cars and a bunch of barrels and just
Speaker 1: street you know, uh, tomato carts in the way and stuff,
Speaker 1: it is asteroids and of course this is extremely dangerous
Speaker 1: there space rocks crashing all around and uh. The Falcon
Speaker 1: eventually manages to evade its Imperial pursuers and it hides
Speaker 1: in a cave on a large asteroid. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is a great sequence in a just a great
Speaker 1: Star Wars film. It's one of those like out of
Speaker 1: the frying pan into the fire moments where actually it's
Speaker 1: like into a third frying pan or front five because
Speaker 1: everyone's gotten out of hot. You've had that tremendous battle
Speaker 1: seat once with all of its ins and outs. Then
Speaker 1: you have the asteroid field, and then what happens next
Speaker 1: is uh, it comes from an entirely different direction. Well,
Speaker 1: that's one of the great things about the story structure
Speaker 1: of the Empire Strikes Back is that you know you're
Speaker 1: cutting between the different characters and the things they're doing.
Speaker 1: But when you're with han Leia, Chewy and c three
Speaker 1: p Oh, it's just one frying pan to another. Every
Speaker 1: time they get to a new place, they think that
Speaker 1: they're finally safe now, but then they realize that the
Speaker 1: floor is teflon and things start heating up, and it's
Speaker 1: just on to the next crisis. But in this cave
Speaker 1: we get some creature encounters. So first the Millennium falcon
Speaker 1: is swarmed by a flock of nasty winged creatures with
Speaker 1: ring shaped sucker mouths and there they look sort of
Speaker 1: like sulfurous leech bats. These are called minox Han, and
Speaker 1: Chewy seem to be familiar with them like that they
Speaker 1: once they see them, Hans says, uh my Knox, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like he talks about them like they're very common nuisance
Speaker 1: animals for space travelers. He says that they're chewing on
Speaker 1: the power cables, like, yeah, that's what they always do.
Speaker 1: And so our heroes they leave the ship, they go outside,
Speaker 1: go down the ramp and start walking around outside with
Speaker 1: these little oxygen masks on while they're trying to blast
Speaker 1: the mineox off. But then they encounter and it's another
Speaker 1: realizing you're actually in another frying pan moment when it
Speaker 1: is revealed that the cave that they're hiding in is
Speaker 1: no cave at all. It is a giant carnivorous worm
Speaker 1: of some kind and they have essentially parked down its gullet,
Speaker 1: And of course there's a great escape sequence where they
Speaker 1: have to rock it out between its closing jaws just
Speaker 1: in time. Is the teeth are coming together. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's a fabulous looking creature to this big alien whalish
Speaker 1: worm monster. Yeah. One of the best. This giant worm
Speaker 1: creature on the asteroid is not named in the movie.
Speaker 1: I mean they say what the minox are. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's like, it's almost as if in Star Wars it's
Speaker 1: like saying, oh, rats, we've got rats here, We've got
Speaker 1: my knox, but they never say what this thing is.
Speaker 1: I looked it up and some plenty of the Elder
Speaker 1: of the Galaxy has given its species of designation. It
Speaker 1: is called an exo gorth or alternately a space slug.
Speaker 1: And Rob, I've got some pictures attached here for you
Speaker 1: to look at. Of course, we've seen the movie, so
Speaker 1: we know what it looks like. It's is this giant Uh?
Speaker 1: Have have to be honest and say, somewhat phallic looking
Speaker 1: worm comes up out of the hole. It's got the
Speaker 1: big jaws clamping after the ship, so it seems to
Speaker 1: be actively wanting to eat the space ship. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I found another image that I think is from
Speaker 1: one of the Marvel Star Wars comics, and it's a panel.
Speaker 1: I really don't know the context of how this happens,
Speaker 1: but there's a panel in a comic somewhere where a
Speaker 1: star destroyer flies into a giant Exo Gorth's mouth. That
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it's going to end well for for
Speaker 1: anybody involved there. That's something that the extra it looks
Speaker 1: like that's that's too big of a mouthful. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: there's something very interesting about both of these alien species,
Speaker 1: the min Ox and the Exo gorths uh. And it's
Speaker 1: something that I've actually thought about for a long time.
Speaker 1: I remember having this thought, maybe not when I very
Speaker 1: first saw Star Wars when I was a kid, but
Speaker 1: at some point it occurred to me that these are
Speaker 1: the only aliens I can think of in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars movies that are not found on a planet, but
Speaker 1: in outer space itself, on the barren terrain of an
Speaker 1: asteroid with no atmosphere, living in the vacuum. These are
Speaker 1: vacuum dwellers. Yeah, and I think it was that way
Speaker 1: for a long time. Eventually, they also introduced a creature
Speaker 1: called a Purgle that came around. I think it was
Speaker 1: introduced in Star Wars Rebels, one of the animated series,
Speaker 1: and I have a feeling it's going to show up
Speaker 1: in some live action stuff in the near future. But
Speaker 1: they're like a deep space whale like organism with its
Speaker 1: kind of a squid, like a combination betwe in, a
Speaker 1: space squid and a space whale. And they're capable of
Speaker 1: entering hyperspace even but they're kind of they have a
Speaker 1: lot in common with the design of the Exo Go.
Speaker 1: They're kind of like the Noble Exo Gorth. The picture
Speaker 1: you attached looks mad. He's got like the downturned eyebrow.
Speaker 1: He looks like he's he's looking for a fight. Well,
Speaker 1: they they explore this kind of like whale like nature
Speaker 1: where if you're if you're not treating them right, if
Speaker 1: you're abusing them, then yeah, they can be quite dangerous,
Speaker 1: but if you try to understand them, then you realize
Speaker 1: that they have this very passive and beautiful nature. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can see that. So it's like the you know,
Speaker 1: somebody says about the dog, like, oh, he doesn't like strangers,
Speaker 1: but when you warm up to him, you know, he's
Speaker 1: a he's a real cuttlebug. Yeah. So, anyway, for this
Speaker 1: entry of our Aliens Star Wars Alien Neck Cropsy, I
Speaker 1: wanted to to think about the idea of vacuum dwellers
Speaker 1: as a as a proposal as a concept. Now Star
Speaker 1: Wars obviously it is not hard science fiction. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not trying to create a scientifically grounded experience. It's
Speaker 1: a fantasy. And that's fine. I mean, you've got no
Speaker 1: problem at all with with soft science fiction and space fantasy.
Speaker 1: I love that stuff. Uh, And there are plenty of
Speaker 1: elements in this sequence that are really nothing like what
Speaker 1: we'd expect to find in reality. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention a couple of other examples of that before we
Speaker 1: get back to the idea of a vacuum dwelling organism
Speaker 1: and consider the plausibility of that. One example of how
Speaker 1: this doesn't really resemble reality in any recognizable way is
Speaker 1: the idea of how dense the asteroid belt in the
Speaker 1: Empire Strikes Back is how it's just crammed with rocks
Speaker 1: that are moving really close to each other and slamming
Speaker 1: together all the time, And how this compares to the
Speaker 1: one example of a real asteroid belt that we know about.
Speaker 1: And this is a standard feature of sci fi movies.
Speaker 1: It's not just Empire Strikes Back. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times there are space battles in an
Speaker 1: asteroid belt that is just a mind field. This densely
Speaker 1: packed obstacle course of of giant boulders that are going
Speaker 1: to smash into your ship and kill you, and the
Speaker 1: ships have to frantically dodge around through the slamming rocks
Speaker 1: while they dog fight. Yeah, it's a great sequence, but
Speaker 1: it is just um maddening, just how how tired everything is,
Speaker 1: and and it just seems like a complete nightmare that
Speaker 1: anyone would I mean, it seems like it should be
Speaker 1: a Butcher Cassidy and the Sundance Kid kind of moment, right,
Speaker 1: Like why would the Thai fighters even chase them in there?
Speaker 1: Like how because how could you expect to survive unless
Speaker 1: you were like a fourth sensitive pilot of some sort,
Speaker 1: you know, or like the greatest pilot of all time,
Speaker 1: like like a Han Solo. Yeah, they'd be crazy to
Speaker 1: follow us, wouldn't they. And I know when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I pictured the asteroid belt of our solar
Speaker 1: system being like this, probably because of especially Empire, but
Speaker 1: more generally movies like this that it's just you know,
Speaker 1: it's just tight with rocks. But now we know that
Speaker 1: is not the case. I was trying to find what
Speaker 1: is the actual density of the asteroid belting terms of
Speaker 1: asteroids of an appreciable size. I found an explainer about
Speaker 1: this from Scientific American that's older. It's from nine so
Speaker 1: our our our knowledge might be a little bit updated
Speaker 1: since then. But this, I feel it gives you a
Speaker 1: good idea to asks several experts about this, this question
Speaker 1: of the density of the asteroid belt. First of all,
Speaker 1: there was an interesting story in it that's relayed by
Speaker 1: Tom Garrels of the University of Arizona, who said that quote.
Speaker 1: Some scientists were seriously concerned about the possible high density
Speaker 1: of objects in the asteroid belt, which lies between the
Speaker 1: orbits of Mars and Jupiter, when the first robotic spacecraft
Speaker 1: were scheduled to be sent through it. The first crossing
Speaker 1: of the asteroid belt took place in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies when the Pioneer ten and Pioneer eleven spacecraft journey
Speaker 1: to Jupiter and beyond. The danger lies not in the
Speaker 1: risk of hitting a large object. In fact, such a
Speaker 1: risk is minuscule because there is a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: space between Mars and Jupiter, and because the objects there
Speaker 1: are very small in relation. Even though there are perhaps
Speaker 1: a million asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter, the
Speaker 1: chance of a spacecraft and not getting through the asteroid
Speaker 1: belt is nearly negligible. And then there was an updated
Speaker 1: thought that came in after that from David Morrison of
Speaker 1: NASA AMES who said, quote, there were more than a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter, but
Speaker 1: these objects are distributed within the huge volume of the
Speaker 1: asteroid belt. Their average spacing is several million kilometers. Collisions
Speaker 1: are thus extremely rare. An average one kilometer asteroid suffers
Speaker 1: one collision every few billion years, or maybe one or
Speaker 1: two collisions over the lifetime of the Solar System. The
Speaker 1: spacing is also so large that seen from one asteroid,
Speaker 1: even the nearest one kilometer asteroid would likely be too
Speaker 1: faint to be visible without a telescope. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: extreme distances between these objects now because there aren't a
Speaker 1: lot of objects. There are, but the you know, space
Speaker 1: is gigantic, so the space between them is also gigantic.
Speaker 1: If you were to fly into an asteroid belt, it's
Speaker 1: actually unlikely you would even notice it. You probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: see any asteroids while you were flying through it. Though,
Speaker 1: I did think about something that could make another interesting
Speaker 1: I'm sure some movie has done this but it could
Speaker 1: make a different kind of threat of traveling through an
Speaker 1: asteroid belt interesting. I think the more likely risk while
Speaker 1: flying through an asteroid belt is not that you would
Speaker 1: be smashed between giant space rocks while you're trying to
Speaker 1: dodge through them, but the chance that you would hit
Speaker 1: an invisibly tiny micro asteroid at high speed, and it
Speaker 1: would be like a bomb because of the kinetic energy
Speaker 1: of the impact because it's going so fast and you're
Speaker 1: going so fast. Though I guess, of course, it would
Speaker 1: depend on how fast you were going and what angle
Speaker 1: you hit it at relative to its own trajectory. I mean,
Speaker 1: a head on collision with a with a tiny asteroid
Speaker 1: could be catastrophic. But there's another thing in the sequence
Speaker 1: that doesn't make sense if you try to bring hard
Speaker 1: sci fi rules to it, which is the part where
Speaker 1: they're in the cave and the minox show up in
Speaker 1: that great moment where I think Leiah is looking out
Speaker 1: the window and then suddenly the big sucker comes down
Speaker 1: and he got which I was talking to Rachel about
Speaker 1: this earlier this morning, and she says, when she saw
Speaker 1: that part in the theater, when the Star Wars remasters
Speaker 1: or remake not remakes, the whatever you call him. The
Speaker 1: remasters came out in the nineties or the earlier. I
Speaker 1: guess it was the nineties. Yeah, that she just like
Speaker 1: screamed in the theater, just like Bloody Murder screamed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's startling and gross totally. It's like, it still gets
Speaker 1: me when I watched the movie. It's very suddenly that
Speaker 1: noise it makes. It's like when the head pops out
Speaker 1: of the boat and Jaws, you know, and when Richard
Speaker 1: Dreyfuss is like down in the water looking at it.
Speaker 1: It gets you every time. But anyway, so there's yeah,
Speaker 1: the minox come out, and so Han and Chewy and
Speaker 1: Leah walk outside of the Millennium Falcon in their regular
Speaker 1: oaths wearing little oxygen masks. So this is another one
Speaker 1: of those space fantasy things, because this would not work
Speaker 1: on a real asteroid. The vacuum would kill you pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: even if you had a little oxygen mask. So I
Speaker 1: found a good explainer on this. This was also a
Speaker 1: Scientific American article. This was written by Anna Goslin in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, and and of course one thing we
Speaker 1: should be clear about is that a vacuum in as
Speaker 1: the term is generally used is defined as a region
Speaker 1: of space with extremely low gas pressure. Uh. It's sort
Speaker 1: of a conventional definition because even in outer space, there's
Speaker 1: not nothing in space. You're still going to have a
Speaker 1: few random hydrogen atoms floating around and stuff, but it's
Speaker 1: pressure so low that it's negligible. So once you walk
Speaker 1: out of the Millennium falcon, once you are exposed to
Speaker 1: the low pressure environment of a vacuum of space, several
Speaker 1: things are going to happen pretty quickly. One is that
Speaker 1: because of the lower pressure, gas is tend to expand,
Speaker 1: and this includes the gases that are trapped in your body,
Speaker 1: trapped in your lungs. So if you're holding your breath
Speaker 1: or inhaling, this expanding gas is going to cause trauma
Speaker 1: in the lungs, tearing up gas exchange tissues. Also, the
Speaker 1: low pressure will cause water to boil at a lower temperature,
Speaker 1: and in the case of a vacuum, this means water
Speaker 1: boils at a temperature lower than your body temperature, which
Speaker 1: translates to swelling in the body, rapid evaporation of water
Speaker 1: vapor from the easiest escape roots in your body, and
Speaker 1: primarily this will be things like the holes in your face,
Speaker 1: like your mouth, nose, and eyes, and this rapid boiling
Speaker 1: off of water will of course cause very low temperatures
Speaker 1: around these holes in your face. I think about the
Speaker 1: way that you know, the rapid evaporation of water cools
Speaker 1: your body through sweat, except take that to the extreme,
Speaker 1: like literally your tongue might freeze. And if records of
Speaker 1: what has happened to animals that are opposed to a
Speaker 1: vacuum or any indication, you also might simultaneously defecate, urinate,
Speaker 1: and projectile vomit. Wow, So even event horizon scaled back
Speaker 1: a little bit on what this would be like. Yes. Now,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, sometimes movies make it look like
Speaker 1: if you were exposed to a vacuum, you would explode,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't seem to be true. It actually does
Speaker 1: seem like you could survive being in a vacuum for
Speaker 1: maybe a few minutes. I mean, it would depend on
Speaker 1: a number of factors, but you could. Most people could
Speaker 1: probably survive being exposed to a vacuum for some amount
Speaker 1: of times, like a few minutes, less than five minutes maybe,
Speaker 1: but it would require somebody else who is not exposed
Speaker 1: to a vacuum helping you because we have seen this
Speaker 1: in in sci fi. I think that's basically what happens
Speaker 1: an event horizon. And I think the and yeah, the
Speaker 1: expanse has has has explored this as well. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: like one of the reasons you would need somebody to
Speaker 1: help you is that you would you would very rapidly
Speaker 1: lose anciousness. The low pressure would also cause bubbles to
Speaker 1: form in your blood vessels, which would interfere with oxygen circulation.
Speaker 1: And I think the estimate is that this leads to
Speaker 1: rapid unconsciousness, probably in something like ten to fifteen seconds
Speaker 1: after you're exposed to the vacuum, and then so you
Speaker 1: lose consciousness, you probably collapse and it would go on
Speaker 1: to kill you within a few minutes if you're not repressurized.
Speaker 1: This article by Anna Goslin shares a story of a
Speaker 1: human who actually survived vacuum exposure. Uh So, I just
Speaker 1: want to read this part quote. In nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: a technician inside a vacuum chamber at Johnson Space Center
Speaker 1: in Houston accidentally depressurized his space suit by disrupting a hose.
Speaker 1: After twelve to fifteen seconds, he lost consciousness. He regained
Speaker 1: it at twenty seven seconds after his suit was repressurized
Speaker 1: to about half that of sea level. The man reported
Speaker 1: that his last memory before blacking out was of the
Speaker 1: moisture on his tongue beginning to boil, as well as
Speaker 1: a loss of taste sensation that lingered for four days
Speaker 1: following the incident. So all that to say, Han Chewy
Speaker 1: and Leiah, these are experienced space travelers. They would know
Speaker 1: better than to try to walk out into the vacuum
Speaker 1: of space without a pressure suit. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: be fair. I have seen some righteous nerds on the
Speaker 1: Internet arguing that, well, maybe because we we now we
Speaker 1: know from what happens later in the movie that actually
Speaker 1: they were not in a cave on an asteroid, they
Speaker 1: were in the exo Gorth's gullet, and maybe the exo
Speaker 1: Gorth's gullet creates its own pressurized atmosphere. And okay, let's
Speaker 1: say I grant that, Uh maybe, But I thought the
Speaker 1: whole point was that they thought they were in a
Speaker 1: cave on an asteroid, not in the belly of a
Speaker 1: giant worm. So it doesn't seem like they would go
Speaker 1: outside without a pressure suit. Yeah, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: if maybe They're like the ship's readings were like, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't actually need a suit to go outside in
Speaker 1: this this weird cave, and they're like, Okay, that's fine. Cool.
Speaker 1: It really wasn't thinking about it that hard, Like they
Speaker 1: weren't asking, well, why would that be? Why would a
Speaker 1: cave that it's supposedly open to the to the void
Speaker 1: have these unique conditions? Um? But I guess if I
Speaker 1: was gonna play Devil's advocate and try and like sort
Speaker 1: of stitch everything together, I could and then maybe, yes,
Speaker 1: maybe this giant space slug. Uh. It's it's gastric environment
Speaker 1: closely mimics a terrestrial world and just you know, the
Speaker 1: atmosphere is a little off. Um, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: or maybe that's maybe that's so one of the ways
Speaker 1: that it gets its its food, right, it just waits
Speaker 1: for spaceships to land inside its belly and uh. And
Speaker 1: since spaceships are hard to digest, it needs to have
Speaker 1: an inviting environment that lures the precious meat beings out
Speaker 1: of the spaceship. Right. Yeah, it gets gets gets them
Speaker 1: out there. I mean, it does have fog rolling around,
Speaker 1: so it almost looks like you're out on the moor
Speaker 1: once you leave the spaceship. I wonder also how fog
Speaker 1: rolling around would work in a vacuum. It doesn't seem
Speaker 1: very vacuum like. It's almost as if they weren't really
Speaker 1: thinking of it and in pure physical terms as a vacuum,
Speaker 1: which would make a lot of sense. Again, because this
Speaker 1: is space fantasy. I just wanted to say also, I
Speaker 1: I found a picture on the Internet of the model
Speaker 1: of the the Giant Exit Worths teeth while it was
Speaker 1: being created, along with the I l M model maker
Speaker 1: Lauren Peterson inside the mouth looking at it, and he
Speaker 1: just looks just exploding with joy while gazing at the
Speaker 1: teeth he has created. He kind of he also in
Speaker 1: this picture he's got long hair and a big beard.
Speaker 1: He almost looks like a human e walk. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love looking at these old photos of these like these
Speaker 1: these seventies guys working on these models for this, uh,
Speaker 1: for for these films. It's pretty great. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pure joy on this NaN's face. Than I wanted to
Speaker 1: come back to the question that I brought up earlier
Speaker 1: about the vac hume dwellers. When we imagine finding alien
Speaker 1: life forms not in space fantasy, but in reality, of course,
Speaker 1: we always imagine finding them on a planet, a planet
Speaker 1: with an atmosphere. But I was wondering, is it biochemically
Speaker 1: and evolutionarily conceivable that there could be such thing as
Speaker 1: an alien dwelling directly within the void, within the you know,
Speaker 1: the howling emptiness of space. Could there be creatures of
Speaker 1: the vacuum? And so I was looking around trying to
Speaker 1: find some good sources on this. I didn't come across
Speaker 1: any like direct scientific papers, though, if any listeners know
Speaker 1: of any that I couldn't find and want to send
Speaker 1: in my way, please do. The best thing I came
Speaker 1: across was actually an interesting BBC article from sixteen by
Speaker 1: the science writer Philip Ball, one of my my favorite
Speaker 1: science writers who wrote probably the best book I've ever
Speaker 1: read on quantum physics, which is called Beyond Weird. I
Speaker 1: recommended it, uh really, I think a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago during a summer reading episode. But in this article,
Speaker 1: Ball starts off by pointing to a study published in
Speaker 1: the journal Science by Cornelia Minair at all. Mine Air
Speaker 1: is a professor at the University of Nice in France,
Speaker 1: and it's a study called ribos and Related Sugars from
Speaker 1: ultra violet irradiation of interstellar ice analogs and so to
Speaker 1: read from the summary from from the journal Science on
Speaker 1: this quote, astrobiologists have long speculated on the origin of
Speaker 1: prebiotic molecules such as amino acids and sugars. Mine art
Speaker 1: at All demonstrated that numerous prebiotic molecules can be formed
Speaker 1: in an interstellar analog sample containing a mixture of simple
Speaker 1: ices of water, methanol, and ammonia. They irradiated the sample
Speaker 1: with ultra violet light under conditions similar to those expected
Speaker 1: during the formation of the Solar system. This yielded a
Speaker 1: wide variety of sugars, including ribos, a major constituent of
Speaker 1: ribo nucleic acid or RNA. And of course, as we've
Speaker 1: discussed on the show before, RNA is one of the important,
Speaker 1: uh you know, long organic molecules that is considered a
Speaker 1: possible precursor of the original formation of life on Earth,
Speaker 1: the first cell, and of course RNA is used is
Speaker 1: used in life forms today, it's in the cells in
Speaker 1: your body. And this is not the only study of
Speaker 1: this kind showing that some molecules important to the formation
Speaker 1: of a biological sphere, such as sugars and amino acids
Speaker 1: can be formed in space, maybe even just on little
Speaker 1: tiny grains of ice floating around in space by themselves,
Speaker 1: not on a planet at all. They can be formed
Speaker 1: in these types of scenarios by radiation acting on precursor compounds.
Speaker 1: So another example would be that UM researchers for decades
Speaker 1: have have found evidence of amino acids in meteorites that
Speaker 1: apparently these amino acids were formed in deep space, and
Speaker 1: the Rosetta mission, which intercepted a comet was a common
Speaker 1: six seven p in space. In the Rosetta orbiter detected
Speaker 1: the presence of the amino acid glycine, along with methylamine
Speaker 1: and ethylamine from a spectrometry reading of the of the comet.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that important molecules and molecules that are
Speaker 1: necessary for the early stages of chemical evolution before the
Speaker 1: formation of the first cell we're not formed on Earth
Speaker 1: but in space and then somehow delivered to Earth, maybe
Speaker 1: on the backs of icy comets that smashed into the
Speaker 1: Earth's surface when the planet was young. And of course
Speaker 1: this is all hypothetical. We still don't know for sure
Speaker 1: how the first life on Earth came to be. We
Speaker 1: actually talked about one very interesting model of this on
Speaker 1: a recent episode, the one we did about the Nile Inundation,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the idea that the first cells might
Speaker 1: have been created by the presence of prebiotic molecules like
Speaker 1: lipids and nucleic acids in areas on the surface of
Speaker 1: the Earth that are repeated least subjected to wet dry cycles.
Speaker 1: And if you want the details on on the reasoning
Speaker 1: behind that, you can go back and listen to that episode.
Speaker 1: What was it called, I believe the title we went
Speaker 1: with was the Nile Inundation God's Water in Life, because
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of mythology in there, but also
Speaker 1: just a lot about the the the annuals flooding of
Speaker 1: the Nile and how it factors into the environment and
Speaker 1: the history of the region. Right, so we don't know
Speaker 1: how for sure how it happened, but the process of
Speaker 1: chemical evolution leading from those organic molecules to the formation
Speaker 1: of the first cell, meaning a cell capable of replication
Speaker 1: and metabolism, that's generally assumed to have happened somewhere on
Speaker 1: Earth or in a or on another planet like Mars
Speaker 1: maybe and then seated to Earth through some kind of
Speaker 1: collision and travel of rocks through space, and that could
Speaker 1: be in hydrothermal vents or in puddles or what have you.
Speaker 1: But it's usually assumed to have happened on Earth. But
Speaker 1: Philip Ball rights quote, there is a more intriguing possibility
Speaker 1: life itself might not have kne did a warm and
Speaker 1: comfortable planet bathed in sunlight to get going. If the
Speaker 1: raw ingredients were already out there in interplanetary limbo, might
Speaker 1: life have started there too? Interesting question? And of course
Speaker 1: there's another question, which is a follow up. If it
Speaker 1: were possible for life to form in space rather than
Speaker 1: on a planet, would it also be possible to for
Speaker 1: that life to evolve into complex forms out there in space? Um? Now,
Speaker 1: there are some reasons that this does seem unlikely on
Speaker 1: its face. So a bunch of Philip Ball's article ends
Speaker 1: up focusing on ways that alien life forms could have
Speaker 1: the benefits of a home planet while existing in interstellar space,
Speaker 1: and the primary idea he explores here is life on
Speaker 1: rogue planets, meaning planets that are ejected from their solar
Speaker 1: systems and float through the interstellar void alone or maybe
Speaker 1: with some moons into and you. You might think that
Speaker 1: without a home star, these worlds would be guaranteed to
Speaker 1: be barren. But internal heating from residual formation heat and
Speaker 1: radioactive elements in the core, and possible title interactions with
Speaker 1: the moons that are along for the ride, this could
Speaker 1: possibly be enough to sustain a biosphere, perhaps in an
Speaker 1: iced over ocean. But this isn't really what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: right We're we're we're looking for something that could live
Speaker 1: in space itself or on the surface of an asteroid
Speaker 1: exposed to the vacuum, where there's no atmosphere, no ocean,
Speaker 1: just the raw hell of the infinite. Now and exploring
Speaker 1: this part of the article, Ball notes something that I
Speaker 1: had read about before, but I had forgotten about until
Speaker 1: I was reading this, which is that um the astronomer
Speaker 1: Fred Hoyle, who did a lot of important work in
Speaker 1: in twentieth century astronomy, but now is probably best remembered
Speaker 1: in the popular consciousness for coining the term Big Bang,
Speaker 1: which he meant as an insult, like a ridicule of
Speaker 1: the theory, because he was a supporter of the steady
Speaker 1: state theory of the universe, which is now known to
Speaker 1: be wrong, like the the we know that the universe
Speaker 1: is thirteen point eight billion years old, and and we
Speaker 1: called the process of expansion leading to the universe we
Speaker 1: know today the Big Bang. After this, after this negative
Speaker 1: appellation from Hoyle. But anyway, Hoyle actually wrote a science
Speaker 1: fiction novel that was published in nineteen fifty nine called
Speaker 1: The Black Cloud, and supposedly it's quite good, though I've
Speaker 1: never read it. But the premise is that there is
Speaker 1: a giant cloud of intelligent gas that floats around through
Speaker 1: outer space, and when it encounters Earth, it sort of
Speaker 1: doesn't know what to make of life that inhabits a planet,
Speaker 1: and it becomes a threat to us. But Hoyle did
Speaker 1: not have a plausible theory for how a such a
Speaker 1: sentient space gas would would come to evolved. I think
Speaker 1: it's just a mystery in the book. But Ball looks
Speaker 1: at this question of what the chemical basis of space
Speaker 1: based life could be and concludes that despite the difficulties
Speaker 1: of the environment, it seems like urban molecules are still
Speaker 1: probably the best bet for creating biology. The most common
Speaker 1: alternative put forward to carbon based biology is silicon and
Speaker 1: I will know that when I looked up the the
Speaker 1: exo gorth on Wikipedia. Wikipedia tells me that the exo
Speaker 1: go is a silicon based life form. And also I
Speaker 1: think that in addition to eating humans and spaceships and stuff,
Speaker 1: it eats rocks, you know, eats the minerals of asteroids.
Speaker 1: So I think it's the case it's supposed to have
Speaker 1: like a mineral and energy diet that perhaps occasionally supplements.
Speaker 1: But you know, another thing I was thinking about is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: two things. I guess on one level, it could be
Speaker 1: eat biting at a spaceship just because it's there, or
Speaker 1: out of defense, it doesn't really want to eat it,
Speaker 1: you know, in the same way that you'll have animals
Speaker 1: in the wild that will attempt to take a bite
Speaker 1: out of something, you know, defensively even if it's not
Speaker 1: part of their diet. But also the curious mouth. Yeah so.
Speaker 1: But but here's another thing. If the inside of the
Speaker 1: the of the creature here is essentially an ecosystem, um,
Speaker 1: is it possible that it it is like grabbing things
Speaker 1: in order to sort of not feed itself, but to
Speaker 1: supply and feed the ecosystem within it, and then it
Speaker 1: somehow gets so much sort of residual nutrition from that
Speaker 1: ecosystem like it kind of has. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: hive maintaining a um like like a domestic crop within itself,
Speaker 1: except its domestic crop is just like this swampy world.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. So when it eats a millennium falcon,
Speaker 1: that's like it's poop yogurt, like the probiotics stuff. It's
Speaker 1: trying to supply its interior minox and like the mossy
Speaker 1: organisms that line its gullet and produce all that fog
Speaker 1: we see with some nice power cables to chew on
Speaker 1: and and I guess presumably humans to feast on whenever
Speaker 1: they die. Yeah, maybe it feeds on swamp fog. And
Speaker 1: but it needs a you know, a ripe swamp environment there,
Speaker 1: and occasionally, yeah, needs some needs some new stuff to
Speaker 1: add to the to the genetic pool. You're so good
Speaker 1: at world building. This is this is great a future
Speaker 1: Star Wars. I hope you're taking notes. But anyway, So
Speaker 1: back to Philip Ball's article. So he he echoes the
Speaker 1: sentiments of many experts I've read who have deep familiarity
Speaker 1: with chemistry, who generally say that carbon is just so
Speaker 1: much better at building complex molecules than silicon Uh, silicon
Speaker 1: really does not seem like a very good candidate for
Speaker 1: creating life. Again, maybe our imagination is being limited in
Speaker 1: some way, but but it really looks like carbon is
Speaker 1: the good stuff. If if we're fine, if we're gonna
Speaker 1: find life elsewhere in the universe. A lot of astrobiologists
Speaker 1: seem to think that carbon is just the way it's
Speaker 1: going to be. For example, Ball quotes an astrobiologist named
Speaker 1: Charles Cockle of the University of Edinburgh who thinks that, yeah,
Speaker 1: alien life could be very different. Maybe there's a lot
Speaker 1: that is hard for us to imagine, but that whatever
Speaker 1: it is, it's going to be carbon based, and it's
Speaker 1: going to require water, and that this will be a
Speaker 1: universal norm no matter what planet or part of space
Speaker 1: you're on. Uh. And he does he does admit quote
Speaker 1: I have a quite conservative view, which science generally proves
Speaker 1: is misguided. But he he holds the view nonetheless. So
Speaker 1: when looking for carbon molecules to form the precursors to life,
Speaker 1: we already know that a substantial number of them can
Speaker 1: be and are readily formed in the vacuum and in
Speaker 1: deep space. As we mentioned already, both sugars and amino acids.
Speaker 1: We have evidence that both of these things can be
Speaker 1: formed outside the environment of a planet, maybe on the
Speaker 1: surface of a comet or just an ice grain floating
Speaker 1: around in a dust cloud in space. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, amino acids are the building blocks of proteins,
Speaker 1: these sugars like ribos or important ingredients in forming nucleic acids.
Speaker 1: So uh so, like this is the stuff you would need.
Speaker 1: And typically these things are formed through simple chemical and
Speaker 1: photochemical processes. So Ball mentions a typical chemical reaction called
Speaker 1: Strekker synthesis that could be responsible for the formation of
Speaker 1: amino acids in space, but also that these things can
Speaker 1: be formed by exposure of precursor chemicals to radiation, typically
Speaker 1: ultra violet light. Now this part I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: Ball rights quote. It looks at first as though these
Speaker 1: reactions should not take place in deepest space without a
Speaker 1: source of heat or light to drive them. Molecules encountering
Speaker 1: one another in frigid, dark conditions do not have enough
Speaker 1: energy to get a chemical reaction started. It's as if
Speaker 1: they run into a barrier that is too high for
Speaker 1: them to jump over. However, in the nineteen seventies, the
Speaker 1: Soviet chemist vitality. Golden Sky showed otherwise, some chemicals could
Speaker 1: react even when chilled to just four degrees above absolute zero,
Speaker 1: which is about as cold as space gets. They just
Speaker 1: needed a bit of help from high energy radiation such
Speaker 1: as gamma rays or electron beams like the cosmic rays
Speaker 1: that whizz through all of space. And so maybe there
Speaker 1: is some hope for for deep space stimulation of the
Speaker 1: chemical reactions that lead to life given these types of
Speaker 1: inputs like like gamma rays or cosmic rays. Given these
Speaker 1: inputs which are possible in outer space, Goldanski found evidence
Speaker 1: that some long chain molecules could form, such as formaldehyde
Speaker 1: chains that are several hundred molecules long. But there's a
Speaker 1: there's a catch. There's the downside. While space can form
Speaker 1: these precursor molecules, the molecules encounter another problem, which is
Speaker 1: continued exposure to the same radiation sources that formed them
Speaker 1: in the first place. Ball sides this this guy Charles
Speaker 1: Cockle again saying that they are just as likely to
Speaker 1: smash molecules as they are to form them. Potential biomolecules,
Speaker 1: progenitors of proteins and RNA say, would be broken apart
Speaker 1: faster than they were being produced. And to come back
Speaker 1: to the Nile episode, this reminds me of what we
Speaker 1: talked about in that episode with theories about the formation
Speaker 1: of life on Earth and the role of water, because again,
Speaker 1: water would play this stimulating and destruct deive role in
Speaker 1: the in the early chemical evolution of life. Water is
Speaker 1: a key ingredient in Earth based models of chemical evolution,
Speaker 1: but it also easily destroys the delicate organic molecules it creates,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons that it's been hypothesized
Speaker 1: that there are these wet dry cycles that uh that
Speaker 1: would have allowed the first cells to come together. So
Speaker 1: ultimately that the experts that Ball consults here seem to
Speaker 1: think it's pretty unlikely that we would see in these
Speaker 1: really cold environments in deep space, like on the surfaces
Speaker 1: of ice creams. Even though these precursor molecules to life
Speaker 1: can be formed, it seems unlikely that these environments would
Speaker 1: form enough complex molecules and have them survive long enough
Speaker 1: to kick off chemical evolution and really really bring together
Speaker 1: space based life. But I want to get into another
Speaker 1: option in just a second here that could explain where
Speaker 1: something like this organism comes from. But before that, I
Speaker 1: was just wondering also, like, Okay, why the complex morphology
Speaker 1: of the exo goth Uh? You know? Complex? More so,
Speaker 1: it's got like a body with different parts like the
Speaker 1: animals we see on Earth. It's got a mouth with teeth,
Speaker 1: and it's got something that looked like little eyes talks,
Speaker 1: and it's got a head and a tail, and it's
Speaker 1: it's very differentiated. Uh. Complex morphology arises on Earth, I
Speaker 1: think as a reaction to complex environments. Right, Like if
Speaker 1: you look at all the body parts on an animal,
Speaker 1: these are parts that have arisen in response to different
Speaker 1: qualities and challenges of the environment in which the animal evolved.
Speaker 1: Animals need to I mean not all animals, I guess
Speaker 1: there are sessile animals, but most animals that move they've
Speaker 1: had these different parts because they need to move around
Speaker 1: and do different types of things. They have different types
Speaker 1: of predators and prey, etcetera. The asteroid in the Empire
Speaker 1: Strikes Back does not seem to me to be a
Speaker 1: complex environment, Like so if anything was living there in reality,
Speaker 1: I feel like I could more easily imagine a sort
Speaker 1: of map of bacteria just harvesting radiation and on the
Speaker 1: surface of the asteroid rather than rather than like a complex,
Speaker 1: differentiated large animal. But that that makes me think, well,
Speaker 1: what if these organisms didn't first evolve in space, but
Speaker 1: this is this is sort of a transplant operation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this would seem to make more sense, right, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea that it's it's worm shaped because this worm shape
Speaker 1: that it has once served it well in a non
Speaker 1: asteroid environment exactly. So. I think all of our listeners
Speaker 1: now probably know about the animal I'm about to bring up,
Speaker 1: but but it's worth revisiting the details. The mighty tarte grade,
Speaker 1: also known as the water bear, a truly all inspiring organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're absolutely incredible. Tartar grades are animals. They're not
Speaker 1: bacteria or fungus. They are animals like us. They're even
Speaker 1: bilateral animals. They have bilateral symmetry like we do. So
Speaker 1: they're not like sponges, but they are extremely tiny. Tartar
Speaker 1: grades are ubiquitous within Earth's byo sphere. You'll find them
Speaker 1: on the highest mountain peaks, in marine caves, in moss
Speaker 1: in Antarctica. They're basically everywhere, and as far as I
Speaker 1: can find evidence of they are the only known animal
Speaker 1: that has been documented to survive prolonged exposure to the
Speaker 1: raw vacuum of space, and they do it apparently by
Speaker 1: taking specific steps to avoid some of the nastiness that
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier when we were talking about humans
Speaker 1: being exposed to a vacuum. Now, of course, one of
Speaker 1: their main defense mechanisms has got to be just that
Speaker 1: they're they're so cute, Like they imagined that one day
Speaker 1: they would be discovered by humans, and if they were
Speaker 1: not so cute, we would not take so kindly to
Speaker 1: to uh, to finding out that this is really their
Speaker 1: planet and we're just on it um. But they're they're
Speaker 1: so adorable, you you you kind of don't get earth jealous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the what was the German description that the declina vassa
Speaker 1: baron the the tiny water bears, yeah, or the little
Speaker 1: moss piglets some people, Uh yeah, they look like across.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen somewhere described as a cross between
Speaker 1: a caterpillar and a teddy bear. That's pretty accurate. I
Speaker 1: keep seeing them pop up in animated shows recently. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just was watching a show with the fam and
Speaker 1: there was a race of creatures in another world that
Speaker 1: were clearly based on water bears, And then there was
Speaker 1: another cartoon we were watching where they were like futuristic
Speaker 1: mutated water bears that live in the water, and if
Speaker 1: they get in the water, you drink the water, then
Speaker 1: they get in your brain and start controlling you stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Clearly they strike a chord. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's something about the way they look and the way
Speaker 1: that we've already started describing them that, um it lends
Speaker 1: itself well to further imagination. Yeah. So about their hardiness
Speaker 1: and ability to survive, to survive a vacuum. I was
Speaker 1: reading a New York Times article about water bears by
Speaker 1: Cornelia Dean, and this article discusses the targe grades ability
Speaker 1: to survive unbelievably harsh environmental conditions. So, if a tartar
Speaker 1: grade encounters extreme drought or sudden changes in temperature or
Speaker 1: water salinity, or other types of environmental threats, the tartar
Speaker 1: grade can enter a kind of hibernation state where it's
Speaker 1: metabolism throttles down to zero point zero one percent of
Speaker 1: its standard rate, so that's one ten thousand of its
Speaker 1: regular metabolism. During this process, almost all of the water
Speaker 1: content is avoided out of the tartar grade's body, and
Speaker 1: the tartar grade curls up into this dehydrated shell state
Speaker 1: called a ton spelled t u n so. Cornelia Dean writes,
Speaker 1: quote tons can be subjected to atmospheric pressure six hundred
Speaker 1: times the surface of Earth and they will bounce right back.
Speaker 1: They can be chilled to more than three hundred degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit below zero for more than a year, no problem.
Speaker 1: The European Space Agency once sent tons into space two
Speaker 1: third it's survived simultaneous exposure to solar radiation and the
Speaker 1: vacuum of space. This is not something that can be
Speaker 1: said of any other animal that I know about. I
Speaker 1: think this is the only one we're aware of. And
Speaker 1: it really seems like this dehydration is one of the
Speaker 1: main keys to survival in the state because with all
Speaker 1: the water evacuated, you won't get these rapid boiling and
Speaker 1: freezing effects of water content that can occur in space
Speaker 1: that led to some of the really gross outcomes we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. In fact, the evacuation of the
Speaker 1: water content, counterintuitively apparently even affects the Tarte grades ability
Speaker 1: to survive exposure to extreme radiation. You wouldn't think those
Speaker 1: things were correlated. But Dean writes, quote, when cosmic radiation
Speaker 1: hits water in a cell, it produces a highly reactive
Speaker 1: form of oxygen that damages cell d n A. The
Speaker 1: ton doesn't have this problem. Tons have been reconstituted after
Speaker 1: more than a century and brought back to life as
Speaker 1: tarte grades looking not a day older. So no frozen
Speaker 1: tongue for the tartar grade and no radiation damage either.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're looking for a candidate for
Speaker 1: something that could possibly take hold of life in the void,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying a tart grade could like take up
Speaker 1: life on an asteroid. It seems like eventually it would
Speaker 1: just like its window for life would close. But using
Speaker 1: our imaginations here, this might be trending in the right direction.
Speaker 1: And I want to take it a step further because
Speaker 1: did you know that there are probably tartar grades on
Speaker 1: the Moon, not native to the Moon. I want to
Speaker 1: be very clear they're from Earth, but they're on the
Speaker 1: Moon now, possibly still alive, and in this this ton state,
Speaker 1: just awaiting the possibility to get splashed with water again. Right.
Speaker 1: So I was reading about this in an article on
Speaker 1: vox by Brian Resnick called Tartar Grades. The toughest animals
Speaker 1: on Earth have crash landed on the Moon. Uh. This
Speaker 1: was from twenty nineteen, and it covers the fact that
Speaker 1: I think this is actually drawing from an article that
Speaker 1: was originally in Wired in twenty nineteen that had some
Speaker 1: interviews with the people involved. But the short version is
Speaker 1: that in April twenty nineteen, there was a lunar lander
Speaker 1: called a Baracheet, which was scheduled to become the first
Speaker 1: privately funded spacecraft ever to land on the Moon. It
Speaker 1: was originally a competitor for the Google Lunar Xprize, but
Speaker 1: that window had passed, but the mission was still scheduled
Speaker 1: and it was controlled by a group called Israel Aerospace
Speaker 1: Industries that was based out of Yahoo Did, Israel. And
Speaker 1: after landing on the surface, it was planned to take
Speaker 1: some readings of the Moon's magnetism. But unfortunately, there was
Speaker 1: a mission failure. There was a critical computer error I
Speaker 1: think during its descent or before, and the probe ended
Speaker 1: up crash landing on the Moon. And so you would think, okay,
Speaker 1: well the craft was destroyed, end of story. But there
Speaker 1: was something on the craft. There was something much of interest.
Speaker 1: Aboard there was a small installation created by a group
Speaker 1: called the arch Mission Foundation, and speaking to Daniel Oberhouse
Speaker 1: of Wired, the group claims that they believed their cargo
Speaker 1: may have survived the crash, and their cargo it included
Speaker 1: several things. I mean, the idea was they were trying
Speaker 1: to send up to the Moon a record of Earth
Speaker 1: civilization that could last for billions of years. So maybe
Speaker 1: like if humanity goes extinct and aliens ever get to
Speaker 1: the Moon, they could find some records of Earth from
Speaker 1: this little from this little installation on this lunar lander.
Speaker 1: And so part of it was a library of information
Speaker 1: that was etched onto a nickel metal disc that had
Speaker 1: like a bunch of English Wikipedia pages and some some
Speaker 1: classic books. But it also had samples of human tissue
Speaker 1: like human blood, and it had Tarte grades. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I hope they screenshotted essentially screenshot at Wikipedia at a
Speaker 1: time when there were no like trolley entries at a
Speaker 1: incorrect information because there's a cut off period there and
Speaker 1: now it's it's up there on the moon, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wonder how many uh citation needed tags the aliens
Speaker 1: are going to run into. But to read from Resinus
Speaker 1: article here quote, many of those Tarte grades are coded
Speaker 1: in a protective resin, much like how Amber preserves long
Speaker 1: dead mosquitoes that were once trapped in tree sap. According
Speaker 1: to Wired, a co creator of the library believes the
Speaker 1: disc survived the crash. In the best case scenario, Barascheet
Speaker 1: ejected the Archmission Foundation's Lunar Library during impact and it
Speaker 1: lies in one piece somewhere near the crash site. Wired reports,
Speaker 1: so water bears on the Moon at least potentially may
Speaker 1: maybe still viable. So I would say this is still
Speaker 1: not super plausible if you're if you're gonna be really
Speaker 1: strict about it, But to play our hand as far
Speaker 1: as we can, I'm going to say that I think
Speaker 1: the Exo Gorth was originally some type of extremely hardy
Speaker 1: water bear type creature that crash landed via spaceship on
Speaker 1: an asteroid and a heavily populated stretch of space and
Speaker 1: somehow adapted to the new environment over millions of years
Speaker 1: of evil lution. I'm still not quite sure how it
Speaker 1: survives without an atmosphere. That doesn't seem very possible, because
Speaker 1: while the Tarte grade can for a while. It's only
Speaker 1: able to survive that through entering this cryptobiotic state the
Speaker 1: ton uh. So it's it's harder to imagine an organism
Speaker 1: do in its life and doing full metabolism while simultaneously
Speaker 1: being exposed to the vacuum um. Maybe if the exo
Speaker 1: gorth and the mynock have some kind of biology that
Speaker 1: allows them to live without water content, because it seems
Speaker 1: like one of the main problems with being exposed to
Speaker 1: the vacuum and trying to live is that the organisms
Speaker 1: we're thinking of are sort of heterogeneous mixtures of different
Speaker 1: states of matter. They've got some gas contents, some liquid content,
Speaker 1: and some solid content, and that that just doesn't all
Speaker 1: hold together super well when exposed to a vacuum. The
Speaker 1: low pressure messes with your liquid and your gas contents. Plus,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't honestly say that it seems like
Speaker 1: the exo Gorth in the movie is all is purged
Speaker 1: water because I think, as we mentioned, it's got fog
Speaker 1: and it's in its belly, so yeah, it's very swampy
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, it's not a dry heat um, you know,
Speaker 1: and it almost as a saunotype environment. It would be
Speaker 1: interesting to see if there was like a treatment of
Speaker 1: this where where one of these Exo gorths is actually
Speaker 1: like a vacation destination where you you know, you go
Speaker 1: to just sweat it out. But as far as I
Speaker 1: know that that does not currently exist. Another awesome idea
Speaker 1: that man, they should hire you to write one of
Speaker 1: these upcoming movies. I wouldn't go that far um at
Speaker 1: any rate. The exo go certainly one of the cooler
Speaker 1: alien monster type species that that we discover in the
Speaker 1: Star Wars movies. And a great reveal as well. I
Speaker 1: always love that scene where you finally see the whole thing,
Speaker 1: like just you know, leaping out of that hole in
Speaker 1: the asteroid trying to grab the millennium falcon. I love
Speaker 1: how it bends over as it bites. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: guess another thing that's wonderful about it is that it's
Speaker 1: not certainly not a cheap creation like it has. They
Speaker 1: put a lot of skill and a lot of love
Speaker 1: into creating it. But it also kind of looks like
Speaker 1: an oven mit, you know, So it it has this
Speaker 1: it's it's basic um body shape is uh is a
Speaker 1: big hand puppet, you know, But but they make it
Speaker 1: into something that is. Uh you know that it goes
Speaker 1: beyond hand puppets, So I don't know, but it's still
Speaker 1: kind of simultaneously hits both those uh uh those frequencies
Speaker 1: For me, I love it. Give me more monsters like
Speaker 1: that puppets models, uh, instead of the computer animation please.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I think we have time for at
Speaker 1: least one more uh consideration here in the episode. So
Speaker 1: for my selection for today, basically I went to my
Speaker 1: son and I said, hey, Joe and I are doing
Speaker 1: these episodes on features from the Star Wars world. What
Speaker 1: should we cover? And without any deliberation, he said toe grouts.
Speaker 1: He's been obsessed with toe groot is over the past year,
Speaker 1: often discussing their key anatomical features, their leak wu and
Speaker 1: their mon trails. Uh, just wondering aloud, what do they
Speaker 1: feel like? What do you know? What is there? How
Speaker 1: flexible are they? What? Um? How do they move as
Speaker 1: the as individual toe groutes get older and so forth?
Speaker 1: And so very popular discussion area. So I owe it
Speaker 1: to him to consider them here. Now are these the creatures?
Speaker 1: These are humanoid creatures right, so they're they're like sentient humanoid,
Speaker 1: not like some space monster and they have a kind
Speaker 1: of they have a biological feature that kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a long hat or head dress. Yea, they have Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have these uh, these appendages on their head that
Speaker 1: do look like a head dress and certainly strike that
Speaker 1: that chord when you're looking at them and they are um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So basically, yeah, that you have two different sets. So
Speaker 1: you have the mon trails and these are two large
Speaker 1: cone like horns on the top of their head, sometimes
Speaker 1: said to be hollow. And then you have the leaku.
Speaker 1: These are three fleshy appendages also called head tails that
Speaker 1: protrude downward, two on either side beneath the montrels and
Speaker 1: one behind the head. Uh. These are sometimes compared to
Speaker 1: the head appendages of the Twilights, which I believe you're
Speaker 1: familiar with these from Return of the Jedi, Yes, from
Speaker 1: Jab of the Huts, little lackey guy. Yeah. But while
Speaker 1: the leaku of the Twilights, uh, you know, are are
Speaker 1: supposed to contribute to communication, like they have like subtle
Speaker 1: movements that they make with them, the leaku of the
Speaker 1: toe Gruta seem mostly motionless, though with varying degrees of rigidity.
Speaker 1: They might have to do with age or environmental conditions
Speaker 1: or in many cases like what you know, what what
Speaker 1: degree flexibility is inherent in the makeup, special effects or
Speaker 1: in the computer animations being used. You know, this is
Speaker 1: funny because I was sort of considering picking The Twilight
Speaker 1: actually because I was thinking about, oh, the weird like
Speaker 1: head tails, those things, until I saw you had picked this.
Speaker 1: So I feel like we got our head tail basis covered.
Speaker 1: You're going to be the Liku and Montrale's expert here.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a little more to talk about
Speaker 1: with with the Tgrudas because you have you have these
Speaker 1: two different features going on. Yeah, so, um, in case
Speaker 1: you don't know, you're not you don't know offhand who
Speaker 1: I'm talking about with the Dogrutas, I should point out
Speaker 1: the two most notable to Grutas in the Star Wars galaxy,
Speaker 1: both of whom were Jedi. So there's Jedi masters Shocked
Speaker 1: Ti Uh, hero general of the Clone Wars, and Uh.
Speaker 1: She fought in pivotal battles on Genosis, Camino, and Corrassant
Speaker 1: and served as the Jedi representative on the world of Camino.
Speaker 1: And she was killed at the close of the Clone
Speaker 1: Wars by Darth Vader. But the even more famous uh
Speaker 1: to grout of character is Jedi Commander as Katano, hero
Speaker 1: of the Clone Wars, later a Rebel operative. Uh. She
Speaker 1: was the padawan of Anakin Skywalker and she was voiced
Speaker 1: by Ashley Exstein on the Clone Wars and later played
Speaker 1: in live action by Rossario Dawson. I would say she's
Speaker 1: not only the most beloved Star Wars character of the
Speaker 1: modern era, but probably at this point one of the
Speaker 1: most beloved Star Wars characters of all time. Like, she's
Speaker 1: she's up there? Wait, why do I not know this character?
Speaker 1: What does she? What does she? What properties is she from?
Speaker 1: So she pops up in the Clone Wars animated series. Um,
Speaker 1: the long the long run, not the initial one. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that that was very short form. This is
Speaker 1: the uh, the later one. Uh the computer animated version. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean I like, I like all the the Clone
Speaker 1: Wars animated but but yeah, this one was was particularly good. Uh.
Speaker 1: Enjoyed going through all that with my son over the
Speaker 1: past years. But yeah, she's an introduced in a series
Speaker 1: early on as as Anakin's padawan, and you follow her
Speaker 1: throughout this whole series. She kind of grows up and
Speaker 1: then as you know, as a as an adult, she's
Speaker 1: a character in the Rebels series, and she finally popped
Speaker 1: up as a live action character in the second season
Speaker 1: of The Mandalorian, and she's gonna have her own spin
Speaker 1: off series, etcetera. She's in all the stuff I haven't seen, right, right,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's just a really well fleshed out character. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, just a strong female character, and uh in
Speaker 1: an alien character with a lot of depth to them.
Speaker 1: You know, so often in the Star Wars universe where
Speaker 1: we're just focusing on the human characters amid the aliens,
Speaker 1: and here we have one of the aliens. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you gotta love Han Solo, Princess Lea and all them,
Speaker 1: but we've got enough humans. I'm gonna have some real
Speaker 1: creatures as heroes. Yeah. So coming back to their biology, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the most part, they're they're very very human though,
Speaker 1: but they do have these mon trials and the Leekup.
Speaker 1: So what are they doing? What what are they for? Well,
Speaker 1: as far as the Leeku go, again, they seem to
Speaker 1: play a role in communication, uh in other species, but
Speaker 1: not so in the toegrew or they don't seem to
Speaker 1: to move around or anything. Now, they do seem to
Speaker 1: grow throughout their life, and there does seem to be
Speaker 1: some degree of sexual dimorphism in that they're longer in
Speaker 1: females than in males. Um. So obviously they could have
Speaker 1: evolved to aid in mate selection to communicate fitness to
Speaker 1: potential mates. Uh. They are quite colorful and I cut
Speaker 1: catching after all. Uh. And you know, we see this
Speaker 1: in the wattles of various bird species, for instance, and
Speaker 1: I think I think leeku are quite comparable to wattles
Speaker 1: in other species like goats. However, wattles or castles as
Speaker 1: there sometimes known, are generally thought to have no purpose.
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in a book book by
Speaker 1: Sue Weaver titled The Goat is Just All about goats
Speaker 1: and how they work. Chapter about the parts that have
Speaker 1: no purpose. Yeah, pretty much. It seems it seems as
Speaker 1: if or tassels have no purpose. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: you have this feature in this alien humanoid species that
Speaker 1: ultimately has no purpose. But maybe, but you know, is
Speaker 1: a part of of of their anatomy and is you know,
Speaker 1: factored into their own ideas of beauty and representation. Now,
Speaker 1: as for the montrals, we have a far more specific
Speaker 1: purpose in the star Wars lore. Uh. They allow an
Speaker 1: individual to sense the movement of objects around them through
Speaker 1: echolocation and um in consens up to eighty two feet
Speaker 1: or roughly twenty five ms. Now. Echolocation is of course
Speaker 1: the location of objects by reflected sound, used in a
Speaker 1: number of terrestrial birds and mammals, either used in the
Speaker 1: hunting of prey or in the navigation of their environments
Speaker 1: such as trees and caves. Um Now, I was looking
Speaker 1: around at some possible parallels, and I think a good
Speaker 1: comparison for the to gruta might actually be the shrew,
Speaker 1: which uses echolocation quote for habitat assessment at close range
Speaker 1: a in too, why do shrew's twitter communication or simple
Speaker 1: echo based orientation by siemens at all published in the
Speaker 1: Royal Society Biology Letters from two thousand and nine. So again,
Speaker 1: this would be a situation where the shrew or perhaps
Speaker 1: that took gruta, is not using its echolocation like say
Speaker 1: like a bat, you know, to hunt in a you know,
Speaker 1: a nighttime environment. They would be using it more as
Speaker 1: a way to assist in their understanding of their immediate environment. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: so we were with these possible echolocation horns. Again we're
Speaker 1: talking about the montrels on the took rudas, but this
Speaker 1: actually come brings us back to the leak of those
Speaker 1: uh those those tales that are hanging down um, because
Speaker 1: sometimes waddles are used by organisms such as the umbrella
Speaker 1: bird to aid in the production of sounds. So perhaps
Speaker 1: that's what's going on with the took root as well.
Speaker 1: I don't think we ever see or hear at the
Speaker 1: grouta doing this, but I was wondering if possibly, like
Speaker 1: that's the reason for this combination of headgear, like the
Speaker 1: leakup would have been used at least originally to create
Speaker 1: sounds that would aid in echolocation that was then picked
Speaker 1: up by the montrels. Oh like you also see I
Speaker 1: think in some marine mammals, like some of the equipment
Speaker 1: on the front of their head is not just used
Speaker 1: for receiving the sounds, but for producing the sounds. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so again there's nothing. I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: in the shows too to support this idea. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: somebody's written about it, uh and gone to this this area.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but I was thinking, well, okay, on
Speaker 1: one hand, maybe it's simply out of our range of
Speaker 1: hearing as a supposedly you know, human viewer of this
Speaker 1: space drama. Um Or it could have to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that the two to grooted that we spend
Speaker 1: the most time with our our our fourth sensitive and
Speaker 1: their Jedi trained uh so perhaps most of the time
Speaker 1: they have little use for these um more archaic sense features.
Speaker 1: But then again, for sensitivity, would you know it would
Speaker 1: open up a new sense realm for an individual, But
Speaker 1: I don't mean, I don't know if that would mean
Speaker 1: you would just completely abandon another sense realm, you know,
Speaker 1: even if it was decreased or or partially um you know, atrophied, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, due to evolution. Well, you know, I think
Speaker 1: about in the very first Star Wars movie, how a
Speaker 1: large part of what the forces shown to do is
Speaker 1: to aid in the guidance of actions without the use
Speaker 1: of senses. So when when Luke is training with Obi
Speaker 1: Wan Kenobi while they're on the way to the Death Star,
Speaker 1: they put the blast shield down on the helmet so
Speaker 1: that he can't see the remote while he's training with it.
Speaker 1: He's supposed to be able to tell what's there without
Speaker 1: using his primary sense of his eyes the same way. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he turns off his targeting computer when he's
Speaker 1: aiming the proton torpedoes into the death Star. He somehow
Speaker 1: is is abandoning or surrendering is either natural or technologically
Speaker 1: aided senses in in almost as a kind of supplication
Speaker 1: to the power of the force. Right, It's like the
Speaker 1: you put the blast shield down or you turn off
Speaker 1: the targeting you to as a sign of faith, is
Speaker 1: showing that you you truly forsake these senses and you
Speaker 1: trust the force totally. Well, there you go, there's there's
Speaker 1: precedent for it after all. So anyway, it's a fun
Speaker 1: exercise I think too, you know, to look at something
Speaker 1: like that on a on a fictional alien species that
Speaker 1: you know it's clearly there, mostly because it looks cool,
Speaker 1: but try to imagine what what could it have done?
Speaker 1: What what could its purpose actually be? And again, some
Speaker 1: of it is baked into the cannon already, the idea
Speaker 1: that there is some of these worst sense features of
Speaker 1: some sort. But yeah, it's it's fun to than try
Speaker 1: and break it down further and imagine exactly what they
Speaker 1: were doing and what it would be like, uh, to
Speaker 1: have uh, those those montreles and leku um, you know,
Speaker 1: without getting into my my son's additional concerns over what
Speaker 1: do they feel like? How flexible? I'm sorry, this is unacceptable.
Speaker 1: We need an answer, Rob, What do they feel like? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess you could say, what does the
Speaker 1: wattle of a bird or or the tassels of a goat?
Speaker 1: What do they feel like? I guess they would be
Speaker 1: kind of flashy and awesome. Um. Yeah, the horns would
Speaker 1: be kind of rigid. Uh yeah, And I guess it
Speaker 1: would depend on, you know, how how old they are
Speaker 1: and how you know, if they do they lotion? Do
Speaker 1: they lotion their their their leku enough to keep them
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know from getting too dried out.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like the self care manuals for
Speaker 1: the Tokruta. It's like, hey, you know, remember to oil
Speaker 1: your oil your leaku do well? The Jedi tended. They
Speaker 1: seem to take pretty good care of themselves. How often
Speaker 1: you see like a truly scruffy Jedi, That's true. One
Speaker 1: thing I always noticed, Obi Wan Kenobi's beard is so
Speaker 1: well trimmed and sculpted. Yeah, I think you just have
Speaker 1: that extra you have that extra time on your hands,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, you know, even as even as an
Speaker 1: old Jedi, he took the time. Yoda was pretty scruffy, um,
Speaker 1: especially towards the end, but he was ancient, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he's earned it. Okay, should we call part one there?
Speaker 1: Because we've got plenty more alien necropsies from the Star
Speaker 1: Wars universe to to come back and explore next time.
Speaker 1: That's right, we have. There's a more fun specimens to
Speaker 1: discuss and to die sect. Uh So in the meantime,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone or what are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on on giant Star Wars space worms and fleshy
Speaker 1: appendages to alien species? Uh, you know, let us know
Speaker 1: of anything we missed, any details, uh that we're not
Speaker 1: aware of from from Cannon or extended universe that might
Speaker 1: uh you know, further fill in some of the holes here.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, in the meantime, if you want to
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: such as the past episodes where we talked about the
Speaker 1: Death Star blowing things up or or or certainly the
Speaker 1: Mighty Star Lack, you can find them in the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed, which you can find
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: We just asked the rate review and subscribe huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this step, SOOD or any other, to
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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