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 to go into the Old Vault for a classic
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one was
Speaker 1: originally published in May of It was called five Reasons
Speaker 1: to Never Take Your Space Helmet Off. And I remember
Speaker 1: why we did this episode is because we went to
Speaker 1: the theater to see Alien Covenant, Yeah, which I haven't
Speaker 1: watched again since the theater, but I am expecting actually,
Speaker 1: despite the bad reviews, it probably holds up pretty well
Speaker 1: as a new version of the nineteen fifties Mad Scientists
Speaker 1: B movie. Yeah, I haven't seen it since it since
Speaker 1: it originally came out, either, but I consider it better
Speaker 1: than most science fiction films. Uh at any right, it
Speaker 1: does involve a trope that frequently pops up in science
Speaker 1: fiction people taking their space helmets off on uh, you know,
Speaker 1: alien worlds, and then then they're surprised eyes when something
Speaker 1: terrible happens. Right, just get that biosphere right in you right?
Speaker 1: Or the other of course, example is where where characters
Speaker 1: take their helmets off on alien worlds and nothing bad happens,
Speaker 1: which is also, as you'll learn in this episode, equally
Speaker 1: preposterous like the old Star Trek episode. Yes, and actually
Speaker 1: that's what I'm comparing Alien Covenant more too. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like a beautiful if Ridley Scott photographed a version
Speaker 1: of Bride of the Monster by Edwood. Well, the great
Speaker 1: thing about Ridley Scott films is even even when they're bad,
Speaker 1: they're pretty good. So I mean, there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a certain degree of artistry that's going
Speaker 1: to be present, even even of other avident areas of
Speaker 1: the film, like Gunter Deliver. I think that was the
Speaker 1: case here. I remember some severe scripting and pacing issues,
Speaker 1: but I just kind of liked it anyway. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think they're about three movies slammed together into Alien Covenant,
Speaker 1: and two of them I really enjoyed. Uh So, without
Speaker 1: further ado, let's go ahead and pop the hatches on
Speaker 1: our helmets and breathe deep the Vault episode. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: you wasn't discussed to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick and Boyd we have
Speaker 1: a treat for you today because Robert and I saw
Speaker 1: Alien Covenant this past weekend, right, yeah, on a Saturday.
Speaker 1: Was Yeah, it was. So we're going to try to
Speaker 1: avoid major plot spoilers, but this episode today is going
Speaker 1: to uh spring off of an idea that came up
Speaker 1: when we were watching the movie. So we are going
Speaker 1: to talk about the movie a little in more general terms.
Speaker 1: But if you absolutely cannot bear to hear anything at
Speaker 1: all until you see it, you might want to pause
Speaker 1: here and come back once you've seen it. Like I said,
Speaker 1: no specific plot spoilers, but I mean, we've got to
Speaker 1: talk about the movie, right, yeah, I mean, and I
Speaker 1: don't agree with me talking about any more depth than
Speaker 1: you would get out of the trailers for it. And
Speaker 1: there were so many trailers for this film. I feel, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like this was the most part of it.
Speaker 1: May just be those sort of the algorithms of YouTube advertisements,
Speaker 1: but I felt like I was absolutely bombarded to the
Speaker 1: point where I just really wanted to respond and say like, look,
Speaker 1: I I'm on board, I'm gonna see it. Just stop
Speaker 1: making me watch trailers for it, because I'm gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna reach the point where I'm gonna start losing interest.
Speaker 1: So Ridley Scott did the same thing with Prometheus, where
Speaker 1: he didn't just do trailers, but he did scenes that
Speaker 1: take place before the movie starts. Sit with him and
Speaker 1: that thing. I don't know. I think maybe part of
Speaker 1: it just like shooting a lot of footage, and then
Speaker 1: with this film in particular, I felt like there was
Speaker 1: this is so one of the things with the film,
Speaker 1: like Alien Covenant, is that, by no means was just
Speaker 1: a small movie. This is a large studio production. And
Speaker 1: and over the years, Ridley Scott has has proven himself
Speaker 1: one of these actors who knows how he has the
Speaker 1: clout to work within that system, but he seems to
Speaker 1: know how to to cater to expectations like you don't
Speaker 1: not that I follow this kind of thing just religiously,
Speaker 1: but you know, I don't remember ever hearing stories about
Speaker 1: Ridley Scott's battle with the studio over something like he
Speaker 1: seems to Yeah, it may have happened. I don't recall
Speaker 1: hearing about that. It's not like hearing about David Fincher's
Speaker 1: struggles on Alien three with Fox. Yeah, and part of
Speaker 1: that is him having cloud you know, he's Ridley Scott
Speaker 1: he's essentially, you know, a living legend of of the cinema.
Speaker 1: But but I also get the sense that he is
Speaker 1: willing to He's willing to work. He's willing to adjust
Speaker 1: that or to um to to to adjust the settings,
Speaker 1: the trajectory on that, on that that vision he has
Speaker 1: in order to see it to the theater. What you're
Speaker 1: saying is he'll play ball. Yeah, I get the impression
Speaker 1: that he's a he's a guy who will play ball. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's so it is an alien movie. I will
Speaker 1: say it's an alien movie in the Alien franchise. That
Speaker 1: actually felt kind of like an alien movie. And here's
Speaker 1: my short review. Almost all the things I can think
Speaker 1: of to say about it are criticisms. I felt that
Speaker 1: it had really similar problems with Prometheus. With the script,
Speaker 1: the human characters are underdeveloped. Their personalities and motivations didn't
Speaker 1: seem to be consistent from one scene to another. Parts
Speaker 1: of the plot definitely went on. And this is a cliche.
Speaker 1: I hate to use it, but it is the best
Speaker 1: descriptive term for it. It was on autopilot in certain parts.
Speaker 1: But I just really liked it. I enjoyed it. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: despite all that it was beautiful to look at. Of course,
Speaker 1: Ridley Scott's always a great set designer, great at the
Speaker 1: visual aspect of his movies, creative and interesting things to explore.
Speaker 1: In the first half at least, I love the gleeful
Speaker 1: sense of body horror repaired with this classically ponderous mad
Speaker 1: scientist vibe, especially in the mid section of the movie.
Speaker 1: And Michael Fastbender is just heroically fun. So to the
Speaker 1: extent this makes any sense, I felt like the movie
Speaker 1: was somehow both stupid and an intensely pleasing work of art. Okay,
Speaker 1: well this actually this in ways lines up with some
Speaker 1: of my feelings about it. It was definitely from me
Speaker 1: a film that I saw it. I wasn't sure how
Speaker 1: I felt about it, but I keep thinking about it
Speaker 1: every day since I saw it, and and I feel
Speaker 1: like for me at this point in my life and
Speaker 1: only the way I interact with films, like that's how
Speaker 1: I tend to judge it. Is it something more than
Speaker 1: like the structural completeness of a film, or the or
Speaker 1: the character motivations and the character development, Like is there
Speaker 1: something in the movie that I came back to because
Speaker 1: there's for instance, there's so many just sort of paint
Speaker 1: by number superhero films, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: fun I enjoy seeing them, but it's just really into them. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm into them. I get excited about I'm
Speaker 1: I'm excited to say, see the next Guardians of the
Speaker 1: Galaxy film whenever it's you know, I can watch it
Speaker 1: on an airplane or however it comes together. But I
Speaker 1: enjoy seeing them, and then I don't. I don't chew
Speaker 1: on them afterwards. They kind of go in in in,
Speaker 1: one year out the other kind of right. So with
Speaker 1: Alien Covenant, I I kept thinking about in terms of
Speaker 1: of of Scott's vision for this film and the fact
Speaker 1: that he you know, like we said, well play ball
Speaker 1: um because it's uh. Because just as the the Malevolent
Speaker 1: Organism and the Alien series draws its form via the
Speaker 1: life forms that it annihilates, so too does Alien Cove.
Speaker 1: Its covenant Seema a chimerical beast. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a Prometheus sequel and body, but with appindages that call
Speaker 1: back to Aliens Alien three even a dash of a
Speaker 1: VP in there for good measure. And you know, the
Speaker 1: monster's form varies, enabling the creature to better consume it's
Speaker 1: a victims, but the genetic mission remains the same. This
Speaker 1: you know, unstoppable will of weaponized evolution, created and recreated
Speaker 1: by those who would take on the mantle of gods.
Speaker 1: And it's such really, Scott, I feel like he allowed
Speaker 1: Covenants form to encompass fan and studio demands for more,
Speaker 1: for more monsters, for dashes of past installments in the franchise,
Speaker 1: but still at its heart, it's a Prometheus sequel. It's
Speaker 1: the the second installment in a new film Mark that
Speaker 1: one commentator on called called quote a weirdly religious science
Speaker 1: fiction universe. And uh, you know, I'm me personally, I
Speaker 1: love both space horror and virtually anything that's weirdly religious,
Speaker 1: so you know I'm on this bull's eye for me too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love it though with I mean, the those aspects
Speaker 1: you mentioned, I love that they're all there, but they also,
Speaker 1: um would you say, so many of them are not
Speaker 1: followed through on. It's almost like they set something up
Speaker 1: to happen in the movie and then it just never happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would be interested to learn more about
Speaker 1: sort of behind the scenes and what was added, what
Speaker 1: was changed, because for instance, there's a there's a shower
Speaker 1: scene not to not just spoil anything later in the film,
Speaker 1: and it's very a VP and it feels feels a
Speaker 1: bit tacked on. It's like the moment it goes Multiple
Speaker 1: reviewers have commented on this that at some point the
Speaker 1: movie suddenly becomes a slasher movie. It's like a Friday
Speaker 1: movie for a few minutes, and that's sort of how
Speaker 1: it felt to me. Yeah, and uh and I also
Speaker 1: have to say that when it comes to the characters
Speaker 1: of this film, like, really, this is a film about
Speaker 1: two androids, and uh and and to A and to
Speaker 1: a lesser extent, a third character who is Um who
Speaker 1: is sort of like the associate captain who ends up
Speaker 1: taking over the Billy CREDITU character. Uh. Everyone else is
Speaker 1: is far less developed. But at the core, I mean,
Speaker 1: a film about to androids sort of struggling to figure
Speaker 1: out like where they stand in relationship to the to
Speaker 1: these these these lesser creators are they are they their
Speaker 1: their guardians or are they there destroyers? You know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm on board of that kind of thing. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we got to get into the meat of the episode.
Speaker 1: But one final comment about the movie, do you think
Speaker 1: they're ever going to stop with the the title format
Speaker 1: of franchise named colon, abstract noun. I'm so sick of it.
Speaker 1: Alien Resurrection, Alien Coming, and all the franchises do it now.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's like, uh, Terminator, Genesis, whatever. It
Speaker 1: makes me feel like the next one is going to
Speaker 1: be called like Alien Gamification. It just feels like such
Speaker 1: a product I hated. I wish they could give each
Speaker 1: movie its own title. Well, the last one was Prometheus,
Speaker 1: so thumbs up for that. I get the feeling that
Speaker 1: it is about tying everything into this overarching brand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's just to get people in the theaters.
Speaker 1: And I mean sometimes we use the noun noun colon
Speaker 1: additional keywords, uh template when say titling episodes of this podcast,
Speaker 1: because a part of it is like I've only got
Speaker 1: so much space, and I really need to convey what
Speaker 1: this is about, So aliens Colon Covenant. That lets you
Speaker 1: know that it's going to involve aliens, It's gonna involve
Speaker 1: Colon's involve something quasi religious, and that's all you need
Speaker 1: to know. But if we were to really follow this format,
Speaker 1: every episode of ours, somebody called something like stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind colon respiration, which is sort of what
Speaker 1: we're going to get into today. So, without spoiling anything
Speaker 1: significant about the plot, I wanted to point out something
Speaker 1: this movie movie has in common with Prometheus. So it's
Speaker 1: got space explorers, that's no surprise. Astronauts go into other
Speaker 1: planets and they just plunge their faces straight into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and biosphere of an alien planet without protection. And
Speaker 1: Prometheus they are these scenes where they take their helmets
Speaker 1: off for no reason I can really remember. I think
Speaker 1: they're just for the heck of it. In Covenant, they
Speaker 1: just walk out of their landing vehicle without suits of
Speaker 1: any kind. They're there's wear in some hats and some overcoats. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm fine with characters behaving irrationally or unrealistically, and horror
Speaker 1: and sci fi movies, I think that's a pretty common
Speaker 1: element and I'm okay with it. Yeah, I mean basically
Speaker 1: the whole movie Covenant, it begins with a hey, should
Speaker 1: we go check this out scenario like so many horror films,
Speaker 1: And if your characters were smart enough to stay on
Speaker 1: the path right, then they would never we would have
Speaker 1: no movie because what was that noise? In the bushes,
Speaker 1: and it's horror stories are about going off the path?
Speaker 1: Should we go off the path? Should we go explore that?
Speaker 1: And yeah, you don't do that, you never get out
Speaker 1: of the boat. But if you never got out of
Speaker 1: the boat, we would have no film, right, So I'm
Speaker 1: fine with that happening, providing I get provided that there's
Speaker 1: some consistent level of realism. Most modern sci fi movies,
Speaker 1: I would say, have a very healthy dose of fantasy
Speaker 1: in them, And that's just one expression of that here.
Speaker 1: But today we wanted to explore the topic of why,
Speaker 1: if you're an actual exo play, a colonist or explorer,
Speaker 1: you really shouldn't want to take your helmet off or
Speaker 1: otherwise open yourself up to the alien environment and and
Speaker 1: the sea of unknown possibilities that could come flooding in
Speaker 1: upon you. Right. One thing to keep in mind here
Speaker 1: is that that we're definitely looking at why you should
Speaker 1: keep that that helmet on and the dangers that are
Speaker 1: inherent to any any kind of alien environment we might experience. However,
Speaker 1: I feel like an important caveat to all this is
Speaker 1: that anytime we're looking at a fictional people landing on
Speaker 1: a fictional world, and taking their helmet off. I always
Speaker 1: have to wonder, Okay, would any sufficiently advanced civilization capable
Speaker 1: of not only interplanetary but interstellar travel, would they have
Speaker 1: all that worked out? Like, would they have sufficient scanning
Speaker 1: technology to know just like down to the finest detail
Speaker 1: that the air was breathable? Uh? Well, without spoiling too
Speaker 1: much about Alien Covenant, obviously they don't know that. But
Speaker 1: they're also religious fanatics. Not to have played David's advocate
Speaker 1: too much, but but they are. They are driven by
Speaker 1: by religious optimism in that film. So what you're saying,
Speaker 1: Robert is you're a little more gung ho. I think
Speaker 1: maybe you're saying, breathe in, breathe in, Brothers. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: that if the tap, if your technology is not picking
Speaker 1: it up, if there's a danger out there that you're
Speaker 1: interstellar technology is incapable of picking up on, let it
Speaker 1: act fast. Because movies movie movies like Alien Covenant show
Speaker 1: it's like there's no there's no real victory, And being
Speaker 1: a survivor, it's better to be that that individual that
Speaker 1: gets that has something jumped out of him rather quickly.
Speaker 1: Right at least you go out with a with a
Speaker 1: burst yeah, a big chesty burst. Okay, well, so maybe
Speaker 1: we should start by just acknowledging the concept of a
Speaker 1: space suit. Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of easy
Speaker 1: to forget why we have them because we end up
Speaker 1: just focusing on how cool they look most of the time. Right, So,
Speaker 1: a space suit is I think I remember reading a
Speaker 1: NASA resource at some point a long time ago that
Speaker 1: put it like this, and it was it's a spacecraft
Speaker 1: for one person. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the extra vehicular mobility units that are worn
Speaker 1: by astronauts. When you've got to go outside and perform
Speaker 1: external work on the International Space Station and do a spacewalk,
Speaker 1: you put this suit on and it cools your body
Speaker 1: it uh. It supplies you with oxygen and breathable atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It purges the CEO two that you exhale when you're
Speaker 1: out there. Uh. It shields you from radiation, It shields
Speaker 1: you from impacts from space debris. So, and these are
Speaker 1: all very important things. But another important aspect of any
Speaker 1: type of suit for extra vehicular activity when you're out
Speaker 1: exploring the cosmos is that it's a contained environment. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to create a sealed barrier between external conditions and
Speaker 1: internal conditions. So this sort of means making the inside
Speaker 1: of the suit as earth like as possible, no matter
Speaker 1: what the outside of the suit is. And of course
Speaker 1: this would also mean keeping out things that really just
Speaker 1: don't go well with your Earth adapted biology, for example,
Speaker 1: for and dust, gas, particles, radiation, and potentially life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes back to the idea of like the spacecraft itself,
Speaker 1: it's it's the idea that we as humans evolved not
Speaker 1: only to live on Earth, but to live within a
Speaker 1: very um thin portion of the atmosphere and under very
Speaker 1: specific environmental settings. And uh and and so there are
Speaker 1: places on our own Earth whereof we we go, we perish,
Speaker 1: and therefore we have to we have to bring part
Speaker 1: of our world with us, even if it's just a
Speaker 1: skin layer in a suit. Yeah. Now I can totally
Speaker 1: understand the impulse to want to take the space suit off.
Speaker 1: I can imagine if I was somebody colonizing an exoplanet
Speaker 1: that was, you know, that we thought would be habitable,
Speaker 1: that we could start living there. Obviously, protocols would be
Speaker 1: to maintain that seal, to to keep the quarantine as
Speaker 1: long as there was any doubt whatsoever that what was
Speaker 1: outside could hurt us. But you just can't live that way, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, anytime you go outside, you've got to wear
Speaker 1: the suit. You you can't touch the rocks in the trees,
Speaker 1: you can't interact by contact, by respiration, by anything except
Speaker 1: through this barrier with the planet you live on. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a horrible existence. Well, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: environmental standards are changing a little every day, Joe, So
Speaker 1: we'll check back in on this in a few years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I guess now we should get into the five
Speaker 1: reasons that we've come up with, at least why you
Speaker 1: should really not want to take your helmet off on
Speaker 1: an alien planet. Would be a good list to have,
Speaker 1: you know, in in in reduced form as a sticker
Speaker 1: on the inside of your helmet. And then if when
Speaker 1: you're tempted to, when you're overcome by the beauty of
Speaker 1: you know, exo planet. I love it when an exo
Speaker 1: planet has a nice diaby lollical name like uh in
Speaker 1: Furness b yeah or Mantibolga six, so you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it happens to be when you when you land there
Speaker 1: and you think, Ah, this place with this uh, this
Speaker 1: creepy name is actually rather beautiful. I'm gonna get a
Speaker 1: breath of fresh air. Look to the lower left hand
Speaker 1: portion of your visor and go through this list. Pope
Speaker 1: satan Alpi six e. Alright, so reason number one is
Speaker 1: going to be the obvious one, the one that you
Speaker 1: probably don't even need to think about. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: atmospheric gas. Right. Can I breathe this atmosphere that I
Speaker 1: am seemingly moving through? And we should be generous. This
Speaker 1: is one that sci fi almost always takes care of.
Speaker 1: There's a line in the script where somebody says, atmospheric
Speaker 1: conditions nominal the air, we can breathe it. But it's
Speaker 1: worth looking at what the atmospheres of other planets generally
Speaker 1: look like. Jean Paul Starchas said, you know, Hell is
Speaker 1: other people once you start looking beyond Earth. I propose
Speaker 1: an update, which is Hell is other people's planets because
Speaker 1: we are just so tightly adapted to the Earth biosphere
Speaker 1: and and uh, and it's very particular balance of gases,
Speaker 1: and to upset that balance significantly would be to change
Speaker 1: the properties of Earth, and thus to change the biosphere
Speaker 1: so we need our atmosphere to be the way it
Speaker 1: is seventy eight percent nitrogen, one percent oxygen, about point
Speaker 1: nine percent are gone, and point one percent trace gases,
Speaker 1: primarily carbon dioxide, plus a lot of variation in water
Speaker 1: vapor in the air. Now, we don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: the atmospheres of terrestrial exoplanets are going to be. We
Speaker 1: know we can see some gas giants orbiting other stars
Speaker 1: in the galaxy, and those of course are going to
Speaker 1: be composed generally like gas giants are like, they'll have
Speaker 1: hydrogen and helium atmospheres. But as far as the terrestrial
Speaker 1: exoplanets are go out there, we we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what their atmospheres are going to be. Like. If you
Speaker 1: look at other terrestrial planets in our Solar system, you
Speaker 1: do start to get a picture that might be local
Speaker 1: to us, but we don't know. Venus atmosphere is about
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. Yeah, not good, not so nice. Mars has
Speaker 1: an incredibly thin atmosphere. It's you know, a one percent
Speaker 1: or kind of atmosphere, and what's there is about carbon dioxide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course of Venus to the reality is that
Speaker 1: if you're breathing that on the surface. You're essentially standing
Speaker 1: in a pressure cooker too, yes, so so yeah, But
Speaker 1: you're just talking about just the breathe ability of the air, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And even if you arrived on Earth at a different
Speaker 1: point in Earth's history, you would have encountered a very
Speaker 1: different atmosphere on the primeval surface of Earth, say about
Speaker 1: four billion years ago, we also had an atmosphere of
Speaker 1: much higher CEO two concentration before the biogenic oxygenation of
Speaker 1: Earth about two billion years ago you had the original terraforming. Now,
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide is obviously not good to breathe. That is
Speaker 1: what you exhale. It's a waste product of of human respiration,
Speaker 1: and breathing it in can lead to bad effects at
Speaker 1: low concentrations and death or asphyxiation or poisoning high concentrations.
Speaker 1: I found an interesting chart put together based on research
Speaker 1: on carbon dioxide toxicity, and the chart was made by
Speaker 1: the International Volcanic Health Hazard Network, and it's got a
Speaker 1: sort of ascending scale of CEO two concentration in the
Speaker 1: air you're breathing and what the effects would be. So
Speaker 1: they say, you know, two to three percent of air,
Speaker 1: you're not really going to notice what's going on. But
Speaker 1: there will be a shortness of breath if you exert yourself.
Speaker 1: If at three percent exposure, you're breathing gets deeper, uh,
Speaker 1: three to five percent exposure, you're breathing rhythm speeds up
Speaker 1: and you might get headaches. At five percent exposure, your
Speaker 1: breathing gets really labored. You're gonna have headaches, sweating, heavy pulse.
Speaker 1: At seven point five percent exposure, you're gonna have really
Speaker 1: rapid breathing, increased heart rate, headaches, sweating, dizziness, shortness of breath,
Speaker 1: loss of strengthen the muscles, probably some mental fuzziness, like
Speaker 1: inability to work things out in your head. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get sleepy and hear ringing in your ears. At eight
Speaker 1: you get the really bad stuff vertigo, vomiting, loss of consciousness, uh,
Speaker 1: possibly death in this range, and then at you're gonna
Speaker 1: have convulsions, rapid loss of consciousness and death. And of
Speaker 1: course this is a situation too in control environments where
Speaker 1: the CEO two level can can creep up. If if
Speaker 1: things are are are out of wax, says in a
Speaker 1: submarine environment, yeah, or in the space shuttle or or
Speaker 1: like the Apollo spacecraft. If you don't have your CEO
Speaker 1: too scrubbers working, you are in for a world of pain.
Speaker 1: And so, as we said earlier, this is something the
Speaker 1: sci fi movies usually do address. They're not just gonna
Speaker 1: land on a plan it with the carbon dioxide atmosphere,
Speaker 1: opened the doors and say breathe in. Well, unless it's
Speaker 1: I feel like it. It It happened all the time and
Speaker 1: Trek though, right, what they just beamed down somewhere and
Speaker 1: they couldn't breathe. I don't know. I mean, it's been
Speaker 1: a long time since I've really mainlined some Trek, but
Speaker 1: it seems like they're always just breathing the heck out
Speaker 1: of any atmosphere they came across, like every world was breathable. Uh,
Speaker 1: And maybe there's maybe there was always an explanation or
Speaker 1: maybe there's you know, some sort of transhumanist read where
Speaker 1: they've all had like an operation that makes them able
Speaker 1: to breathe carbon dioxide. Yeah, Like if if this were
Speaker 1: Banks's Culture series, I'm sure that would be the explanation. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: they're members of the culture and their their body is
Speaker 1: automatically adjusting to some different atmospheric condition. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: wanna posit that you should still be careful here. So
Speaker 1: imagine you are in this sci fi spaceship and you've
Speaker 1: arrived at a planet and they analyzed the atmosphere. Hopefully
Speaker 1: they've analyzed it before you went to the planet, because
Speaker 1: they can do that via the spectral analysis of the
Speaker 1: colors of light they reflect off of it. But you
Speaker 1: should arrive there, and will you arrive there and they say, okay,
Speaker 1: oxygen atmosphere, you can breathe it, it still might not
Speaker 1: be safe to take that suit off, even just in
Speaker 1: terms of atmospheric gas, because even though ambient carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: levels might not be at a concentration to cause poisoning
Speaker 1: or asphyxiation, there could be other possibilities of localized events.
Speaker 1: So one thing I want to point out is on
Speaker 1: August one night, there was one of the weirdest and
Speaker 1: most tragic natural disasters in modern history. And this was
Speaker 1: near Lake Nyos in Cameroon. Robert, I think you've probably
Speaker 1: read about this before. I believe there's a House to
Speaker 1: Works article on this. There is, there is. This is
Speaker 1: one of the things I looked at. So Lake Nios
Speaker 1: is a crater lake. It's resulting from volcanic eruption several
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, and on this day in August ninety six,
Speaker 1: the lake suddenly exploded. The lake exploded, sending towers of
Speaker 1: water up into the air, and it produced this cloud
Speaker 1: of gas that rushed out of the lake into the
Speaker 1: surrounding countryside, and it ended up killing more than people
Speaker 1: in the nearby town of Nios. Nearly every person was killed.
Speaker 1: Only six people survived, and the killer was carbon dioxide. Now,
Speaker 1: lakes and volcanic craters often accumulate dissolved carbon dioxide in
Speaker 1: the water, but in most cases it gets absorbed into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere more gradually, right it rises up and gets released.
Speaker 1: In this case, it looks like what happened is that
Speaker 1: the water under high pressure at the bottom of this
Speaker 1: lake began to accumulate more and more dissolved CEO two
Speaker 1: it really high concentrations without ever releasing it. And then
Speaker 1: some unknown event could have been a small earthquake or
Speaker 1: in anything, it caused the lake to suddenly release all
Speaker 1: that carbon dioxide at once, and this massive cloud of
Speaker 1: poison gas that traveled at about sixty miles per hour
Speaker 1: across the surface of the land. So fortunately, now that
Speaker 1: lake has de gassing pipes, and it's got an alarm
Speaker 1: system that monitors the CEO two at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the lake water, meaning you can prevent something like this
Speaker 1: from happening in the future. But it goes to show
Speaker 1: that local atmospheric conditions can be altered in a very
Speaker 1: deadly way at a moment's notice. So if you're walking
Speaker 1: around on a rocky alien planet with breatheable oxygen atmosphere,
Speaker 1: should you also consider the frequency and location of geological
Speaker 1: outgassing of this type? Yeah? Yeah, this sounds very much
Speaker 1: like a planet that might be encountered in the chronicles
Speaker 1: of Riddick World, like a a a regular you know,
Speaker 1: occurrence that they can sort of plan the action scene around. Yeah, like, oh, everybody,
Speaker 1: since you start going off. It starts going off because
Speaker 1: a big CEO two surge is about to occur, and
Speaker 1: then they're having to stop in the fight sequence and
Speaker 1: get their masks on. Can I admit something you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna hate me for was that I've never seen a
Speaker 1: Riddick movie. Oh you've got a remedy to this joke,
Speaker 1: at least with the first two. Yeah, how many are there?
Speaker 1: So wait, it's it's pitch Black, Chronicles Narnia, ridic Chriticles
Speaker 1: of Narnia, Ridica, uh, and what else? There's more after
Speaker 1: I think that the third one is just Riddick, and
Speaker 1: then then it's just ridd It's gonna be ridd or Dick.
Speaker 1: And the next one, I guess, um, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the first one. The first one is a fun action
Speaker 1: film with some cool critters in it. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: many people hold it up just as an objectively, you know,
Speaker 1: good sci fi action flick. Yeah, the monsters are good
Speaker 1: in that one. The second one is a bit silly,
Speaker 1: a little flash gordiny. But but I actually probably enjoyed
Speaker 1: that one the most just because it plays it plays
Speaker 1: two things I like, and the kind of a goofy
Speaker 1: um a space opera scenario. Yeah, and the villain. And
Speaker 1: that one's really good too. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'll have
Speaker 1: to check it out. But they often encounter this scenario
Speaker 1: where like in the first one, the whole deal is
Speaker 1: that the planet has these uh, these these plot centric
Speaker 1: periods of light and darkness, and the monsters only come
Speaker 1: out of night. But when to make the next one,
Speaker 1: they should definitely consider a an explosive CEO two planet
Speaker 1: because I can I can picture it working beautifully. Well,
Speaker 1: that is one thing I guess we don't know. So
Speaker 1: in this episode we're going to be raising things that
Speaker 1: could be possibilities on unknown planets, but we don't really
Speaker 1: know if there are planets out there where there is
Speaker 1: very frequent c O two out gassing all over the planet.
Speaker 1: On Earth, this can happen, and we've just shown examples
Speaker 1: of how it can be deadly, but it doesn't happen
Speaker 1: all that often. It's not like if you're just generally
Speaker 1: landing on the surface, you'd expect to encounter that, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine a scenario in which this is this
Speaker 1: is every day. This is just a regular part of
Speaker 1: life on Chernobyl six or whatever the name of the
Speaker 1: planet is, and a human is just not going to
Speaker 1: be evolved to survive that, right uh. And and it
Speaker 1: is something that you might expect to happen on geologically
Speaker 1: active planets all over the place. So you've got an
Speaker 1: icy mantle, it's got materials in it, like a CEO
Speaker 1: two or sulfur dioxide that erupting clouds that disperse the surface.
Speaker 1: And it's true on Earth lots of the deaths that
Speaker 1: are due to volcanic eruptions and other geologic events like
Speaker 1: that are not always from the things you think of
Speaker 1: like lava flows, mud and pyroclastic flows and ash fall,
Speaker 1: but due to poison gas, inhalation and suffocation. And you
Speaker 1: can even see that there are other objects in our
Speaker 1: Solar system that have eruptions like this, like Jupiter's moon,
Speaker 1: Io is incredibly geologically active, is full of volcanoes on
Speaker 1: its surface that erupt with sulfurous glee. Yeah, and on
Speaker 1: this other world they just might be used to it.
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of the scene on The Simpsons where Marge
Speaker 1: just casually it's a Treehouse of Horror episode where March
Speaker 1: just casually says, Oh, it's the fog that turns people
Speaker 1: inside out, creeping in, you know, and and in this world, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just the fog that turns people inside out. It
Speaker 1: just happens every now and then. It's just how life goes.
Speaker 1: And uh, either you're you're evolved to to roll with
Speaker 1: the punches or you're not. That's they sing a song
Speaker 1: that they just one sniff of that fog and you're
Speaker 1: hide out. Yeah, it's a big dance number with a
Speaker 1: dog in it. Yeah, and come of going after Abe
Speaker 1: Simpson's exposed visra Yeah, good times anyway, Okay, well, there
Speaker 1: are some possibilities, but I think we should take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and when we come back we will look
Speaker 1: at probably the biggest thing to consider. All Right, we're back, So, Robert,
Speaker 1: we assume that the gases of the atmosphere on our
Speaker 1: exoplanet are safe. We we want to explore or colonize.
Speaker 1: We've thoroughly checked it out. It has a breathable atmosphere
Speaker 1: with oxygen. We've checked his geological activity. It's not going
Speaker 1: to be belching poison gas on us constantly wherever we land.
Speaker 1: We're we're pretty confident about the gas quality itself. Should
Speaker 1: we just take the helmet off now? Well, then we're
Speaker 1: getting into, yeah that the next big worry is going
Speaker 1: to be what if there's some something in the air,
Speaker 1: some sort of life form, be it alien spores, some
Speaker 1: sort of alien disease. I have no idea what I'm
Speaker 1: about to breathe in, right, right, So this is reason
Speaker 1: number two pathogens. Obviously, it's not going to be spoiling
Speaker 1: much about alien Covenant to say that this plays a
Speaker 1: role in there. It's there in the trailers. You know
Speaker 1: what aliens about. But in our so are we. We
Speaker 1: did a live episode from September last year which was
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind Live. Actually we put the
Speaker 1: franchise title before the colon in that one day did
Speaker 1: we did Stuff to Able Your Mind Live colon something
Speaker 1: about Star Trek I think was the title. I mean
Speaker 1: so many crows today, man. So yeah, it was Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blew Your Mind Live Prime directives and planetary contamination.
Speaker 1: And what we talked about in that episode was uh
Speaker 1: NASA protocols for preventing cross contamination of life forms between
Speaker 1: different planets, and that that follows up on Article nine
Speaker 1: of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which contains the
Speaker 1: following language. Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of
Speaker 1: outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, to
Speaker 1: conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful
Speaker 1: contempt a nation and also adverse changes in the environment
Speaker 1: of Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter, and
Speaker 1: where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this comes down to the idea that sure, if
Speaker 1: we went to the Klingon homeworld. Maybe we couldn't catch
Speaker 1: the Klingon flu or whatever kind of ailment it happens
Speaker 1: to be. Maybe, but could but maybe even if we couldn't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what could we do? Right? Yeah? But the idea too
Speaker 1: is that we only have this one model of life,
Speaker 1: and we have to sort of work forward with the
Speaker 1: assumption that any kind of life that evolves in another
Speaker 1: world is going to be Uh is the potential to
Speaker 1: be a comfortable system? Right? We even if we couldn't
Speaker 1: get germs from them, what if we could give germs
Speaker 1: to them? So? Yeah, those are the two primary concerns
Speaker 1: mentioned their forward contamination and bat contamination. Forward contamination is
Speaker 1: this ethical scientific concern against contaminating other planets with Earth life,
Speaker 1: which could potentially harm any microbes that already exists there
Speaker 1: or obviously large organisms. But if there is anything like
Speaker 1: that around us, we don't see it, or it could
Speaker 1: be damaging the integrity of future scientific research on that
Speaker 1: planet or moon, Like if you want to go there
Speaker 1: later and try to figure out if there's any indigenous life,
Speaker 1: you might have ruined your chances if you spread Earth
Speaker 1: life all over it. But the other concern is more
Speaker 1: akin to what we're looking at today, which is back contamination.
Speaker 1: And this is based more on self preservation. We don't
Speaker 1: want to endanger Earth life by accidentally returning alien pathogens
Speaker 1: or other dangerous life forms to our home planet. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the primary relevance of this in the Outer
Speaker 1: Space Treaty and in NASA protocols is the planets that
Speaker 1: are within reach of us, right which, as far as
Speaker 1: we can tell, look fairly devoid of life. We we
Speaker 1: might get a surprise, but we're not seeing anything running
Speaker 1: around on the surface. What would happen if we tried
Speaker 1: to apply the bio containment principles to a planet that's
Speaker 1: obviously teeming with life. If we go to an alien
Speaker 1: world and there's stuff all over the surface that's reproducing,
Speaker 1: should we feel safe to go down and walk around
Speaker 1: with the helmet off and take in some air. I
Speaker 1: would say maybe not. No. Okay, Well, there is an
Speaker 1: article that I wanted to talk about I found in
Speaker 1: Astrobiology magazine, and that's a magazine about the the hypothetical
Speaker 1: study of of astro you know, applying astronomy principles to
Speaker 1: other life forms around the around the galaxy. Obviously, we
Speaker 1: don't know whether they exist, So it's all a lot
Speaker 1: of hypothetical stuff, but it also deals with the origins
Speaker 1: of life on Earth and microbial environments and things like that.
Speaker 1: And the articles called alien Infection by Leslie Mullen from
Speaker 1: August two thousand three and uh it draws in some
Speaker 1: thoughts on the subject of whether we could be infected
Speaker 1: by alien pathogens on another planet. So it cites the
Speaker 1: American astrobiologist Christopher F. Chiba, and at the time he
Speaker 1: held the Carl Sagan Chair at Setting. He's a professor
Speaker 1: at Princeton. Chiba says, there are two potential types of
Speaker 1: alien pathogens we need to worry about. One would be
Speaker 1: toxic and the other would be infectious. Infectious are the
Speaker 1: types of germs we share between us here on Earth.
Speaker 1: They infect a host, they can be passed from host
Speaker 1: to host, and they they are parasitizing your body in
Speaker 1: a way. They're using your body to do something in
Speaker 1: the reproductive cycle. Toxic pathogens would be merely those that
Speaker 1: produce a poison or act as a poison that damages
Speaker 1: the body, even if you're not the intended host of
Speaker 1: this organism. So, first of all, there's some good news,
Speaker 1: because we should think about how viruses and bacteria infectious
Speaker 1: agents work here on Earth. The strain of a disease
Speaker 1: that affects maybe dogs and chickens or even chimpanzees might
Speaker 1: not infect humans. In fact, it often doesn't. Lots of
Speaker 1: our parasites are co evolved, meaning they're they're finally tuned
Speaker 1: to their preferred host organism. And in the same way,
Speaker 1: animals evolved traits to live in a certain ecosystem. You know,
Speaker 1: think away the hands and the feet and the tails
Speaker 1: of tree dwelling primate specialized in climbing trees and hanging
Speaker 1: from branches and swinging between branches that brackyation motion. Pathogens
Speaker 1: evolved to certain ecosystems as well, but those ecosystems tend
Speaker 1: to be the body of their primary host. Thus, if
Speaker 1: you've got alien pathogens that are not specifically evolved to
Speaker 1: colonize our bodies, they might not be able to. Then again,
Speaker 1: this goes both ways. It seems unlikely that we would
Speaker 1: encounter a space microbe finally tuned to infect our bodies,
Speaker 1: but if we did, our immune systems would probably not
Speaker 1: be finally tuned to defend against them. M that's true.
Speaker 1: So what would this look like. So, for example, you've
Speaker 1: got a microorganism that lives in the icy soil of Mars.
Speaker 1: It might be able to get inside our bodies, but
Speaker 1: the internal environments of our bodies that there are several options.
Speaker 1: The our bodies might kill it, it might be too hot,
Speaker 1: too wet, and it's just not how it's adapted. Alternately,
Speaker 1: it could maybe occupy our bodies without really doing anything.
Speaker 1: And you know, it could infect us, but it wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily cause disease or illness, or rapidly reproduce, take over
Speaker 1: our cells, or make toxic byproducts, or cause any other
Speaker 1: kind of damage. But every now and then on Earth
Speaker 1: there is one of these scary situations where a pathogen
Speaker 1: that previously could only infect another type of animal crosses
Speaker 1: the species barrier and becomes able to infect humans. And
Speaker 1: so we wonder if the same thing could happen with
Speaker 1: the microbes of another planet. So, like, if we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how we could be attacked by microbes
Speaker 1: that did not evolve to infect us, and that our
Speaker 1: immune systems did not evolve to fight off, are there
Speaker 1: any Earth parallels we could look to that would give
Speaker 1: us an idea of what that war between us and
Speaker 1: the microbes would look like, the author of this piece
Speaker 1: does come up with an answer. So she talks to
Speaker 1: John Rummel, NASA's former Planetary Action officer, and Rummel points out,
Speaker 1: you know, there's one way to guess how our bodies
Speaker 1: might be affected by microbes of other planets, and that's
Speaker 1: to look at the effect of quote non specific microbes
Speaker 1: on Earth, which is, are those that didn't co evolve
Speaker 1: with the specific host. Now, one example would I think
Speaker 1: fall more into the category I mentioned earlier of toxic bacteria,
Speaker 1: and this would be the example of cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria is
Speaker 1: all over the place on Earth. It's also known as
Speaker 1: blue green algae, even though it's not really algae, and
Speaker 1: you find it everywhere you go. So if you're out
Speaker 1: walking on a dock and you see blooms of this
Speaker 1: kind of turquoise scums sloshing around against the dock, you
Speaker 1: might be looking at blue green algae or cyanobacteria. So,
Speaker 1: cyanobacteria are capable of producing biological poisons known as cyanotoxins,
Speaker 1: for example, neurotoxins that attack the nervous system and hepatotoxins
Speaker 1: that attack the liver and blooms of cyanobacteria in alpine lakes,
Speaker 1: the article points out, have been linked to the deaths
Speaker 1: of cattle in the area around the lakes, even though
Speaker 1: it's not that the cyanobacteria evolved to infect the cattle,
Speaker 1: and it's not that they're specifically trying to protect themselves
Speaker 1: from being eaten by cattle. It's just that the cyanobacteria
Speaker 1: is poisons are very general and they work across a
Speaker 1: broad range of organisms. So in the same way that
Speaker 1: you might have if you can imagine a large alien
Speaker 1: creature with a spiked tail, Yes, spike is very very
Speaker 1: broad in its application. It can cut into and decapitate
Speaker 1: and disembowe varying types of life forms. Right, this is
Speaker 1: a brilliant analogy. And uh and and the same for
Speaker 1: just a a a sufficiently deadly um strain of sano bacteria. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's not like if an alien had I don't know,
Speaker 1: a human shaped iron maiden design specifically to pierce human bodies.
Speaker 1: That might not work on some cosmic jellyfish or gas
Speaker 1: planet somewhere. But if you just got a big spike
Speaker 1: on your tail. Yeah, he can use it on pretty
Speaker 1: much anything. Uh So, Yeah, that's a good comparison. But
Speaker 1: another example would be going away from the toxicity example
Speaker 1: and more towards the infectious example would be, uh, the
Speaker 1: bacteria Seratia marcisns. And this is a rod shaped gram
Speaker 1: negative bacterium that can be found infecting an extremely diverse
Speaker 1: range of hosts. The article cites this is as one
Speaker 1: example of something that sort of works from one end
Speaker 1: of the evolutionary bush to another. It can infect humans,
Speaker 1: of course, and sometimes it's responsible for infections that are
Speaker 1: acquired in what's supposed to be a sterile environment, like
Speaker 1: hospital acquired infections, but it can also infect everything from
Speaker 1: fruit flies to coral Yeah. Crazy. So if there are
Speaker 1: organisms on Earth that can be that generalized in in
Speaker 1: the types of hosts they infect, you can imagine the
Speaker 1: same thing being true of some guidance of alien microbes.
Speaker 1: Now the different there might be even bigger because they
Speaker 1: are not even part of our evolutionary tree. But if
Speaker 1: we're similar enough as organisms, it's it's possible they could
Speaker 1: infect us. Yeah, similar enough. I think that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of the danger lies. And in this I want
Speaker 1: to I want to touch on parasites for just a
Speaker 1: little bit. Nice. So, so here's the thing. Taking into account, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all the variables of conversion evolution on a foreign world. Um,
Speaker 1: that's one thing, but I'm not sure the greatest worry
Speaker 1: is that you would have a fine tune parasite taking
Speaker 1: to it to our body the way that it has,
Speaker 1: you know, evolved to take advantage of a host. Because
Speaker 1: even on our own planet, in the midst of our
Speaker 1: own ecosystem, we see the harmful and even fatal consequences
Speaker 1: of the parasite just getting lost and perishing inside of
Speaker 1: the wrong host or even you know, the right host.
Speaker 1: It just gets turned around. Parasitic death by misadventure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a misadventure you've gotta be a war weary of.
Speaker 1: For instance, the pork tape worm is a prime example
Speaker 1: of this. Tell me more so it needs to hold on. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Is this what you'd get from eating undercooked pork burgers? Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the name the pork tape worm. So this is
Speaker 1: a This is a parasite that needs to venture inside
Speaker 1: a pig to complete its life cycle, but the eggs
Speaker 1: often wind up inside of a human instead. The eggs
Speaker 1: hatch the confused larva uh, don't make it to the
Speaker 1: human intestines. Instead, they burrow into the bloodstream. They're swept
Speaker 1: through the body, often winding up in the brain forming cysts.
Speaker 1: And this can destruct brain functions, damage the brain. It
Speaker 1: can cod's hydrocephalus and the result and it can also
Speaker 1: result in brain hernia. Is the cause coma or death?
Speaker 1: Whoa this is? This is like some alien stuff? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean really really, if you want to, if you
Speaker 1: want to explore some just complex you know, not only
Speaker 1: xenomorpho esque, but like even beyond that level of complexity.
Speaker 1: In terms of life cycles, the parasitic world is phenomenal,
Speaker 1: especially when you have these crazy easy branching um life
Speaker 1: cycles that involve multiple organisms. It's it's delightfully grotesque stuff. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you these parasites you encounter in another world, They or
Speaker 1: the parasites cana encounter you and even enter you. And
Speaker 1: maybe they don't have the they have not evolved to
Speaker 1: fully take advantage of you and serve as a proper parasite.
Speaker 1: But what if they could still get inside you and
Speaker 1: they get they get lost, They don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: This is actually something I thought of quite a bit
Speaker 1: in viewing Alien Covenant, because we see a few different
Speaker 1: horrific scenes where these neomorphs, these uh, these these white
Speaker 1: sort of proto xenomorphic creatures, they burst out of the
Speaker 1: infected person, like through the spine or through the mouth.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it really gave me the idea of all
Speaker 1: these poor things. They don't know where they are, these
Speaker 1: poor creatures, they're just lost inside this human host, and
Speaker 1: they're just trying to get out wherever they can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny if you go back to the old alien movies.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not funny. I don't know. If you go
Speaker 1: back to the older alien movies, the aliens we see
Speaker 1: in those movies have a much more highly specified life cycle.
Speaker 1: They infect a person the same way every time, and
Speaker 1: they emerge from a person the same way every time.
Speaker 1: And these newer movies seem to be developing more more
Speaker 1: general diversity in the way the alien organisms parasitize their hosts.
Speaker 1: So again that's something to keep in mind. Uh My,
Speaker 1: My basic point is the parasite need only gain access
Speaker 1: to any of your major body systems or the body
Speaker 1: cavity itself to really mess things up, So it's life
Speaker 1: cycle might be might be doomed, But what about yours? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think we should admit that we just don't
Speaker 1: know what kind of dangers exists on real planets out there,
Speaker 1: and to what extent we would be vulnerable to them
Speaker 1: if they did. But the possibility space of fatal outcomes,
Speaker 1: I would say, is vast, and we just don't know
Speaker 1: what the probability of of real encounters is. Within that ace,
Speaker 1: you could possibly have your body wrecked by an alien
Speaker 1: parasite that doesn't know what to do with you, allow
Speaker 1: the pork tape worm. You could effectively be infected by
Speaker 1: a path of the pathogen that deems you close enough
Speaker 1: to its ideal environment or host organism. Or you might
Speaker 1: be poisoned by the toxic byproducts of defensive poisons in
Speaker 1: a microbial life form that wants nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: But the story actually gets a little bit worse for
Speaker 1: our intrepid colonists on this exo planet, because I want
Speaker 1: to mention a couple things here that specifically have to
Speaker 1: do with space travel. First of all, I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: read about this Robert. Space travel jams up your immune system,
Speaker 1: So for several years now, NASA has been studying the
Speaker 1: effects of space flight on immune system responsive crew members
Speaker 1: aboard the I S S. I've got a NASA news
Speaker 1: piece here from August reporting the findings of the NASA
Speaker 1: Integrated Immune Study and Clinical Nutrition Assessment, and so far
Speaker 1: results have shown that astronauts have a problem one with
Speaker 1: diminished immune capacity during their time on the I S S. Specifically,
Speaker 1: NASA's Integrated Immune Studies showed that immune cells remained present
Speaker 1: in the blood, but their activity was confused. Some cells
Speaker 1: are overactive, other cells are underactive, and this leads to
Speaker 1: a condition they refer to as asymptomatic viral shedding, which
Speaker 1: means you've got dormant viruses inside your body that wake
Speaker 1: up and become active once again without the host showing
Speaker 1: normal symptoms of infection. And then in turn, this viral
Speaker 1: reactivation triggers immune overreaction, leading to symptoms like allergies and rashes.
Speaker 1: And so this is often times why you see you
Speaker 1: might see people in the I S S like filming
Speaker 1: videos and they look like they're having bad allergies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that this is a This touches on just
Speaker 1: sort of the the general risk of course, interplanetary travel,
Speaker 1: certainly interstellar travel is that it's not just you. You're
Speaker 1: you're traveling from a hospitable world Earth to some inhospitable
Speaker 1: world like diablow three. Uh you were you were trying
Speaker 1: to get there. You have to travel a thoroughly inhospitable environment,
Speaker 1: that of of of space, deep space without the protection
Speaker 1: from well, this gets into you know, what kind of
Speaker 1: technology would you have worked out to enable your trip,
Speaker 1: but you know, not having a proper protection from radiation,
Speaker 1: perhaps not having h you get into the mental realm
Speaker 1: as well, like being isolated for extended periods of time,
Speaker 1: like you get you're l able to show up at
Speaker 1: that other world a little bit crazy sick without properly
Speaker 1: functioning immune system, and then you still have to deal
Speaker 1: with the rigors of a foreign biosphere. The idea is
Speaker 1: that the day you meet a space microbe could be
Speaker 1: the day your immune system is just about at its worst.
Speaker 1: And so the article cites NASA immunologist Brian Crucian, who says, quote,
Speaker 1: if the situation assisted for longer deep space missions, he's
Speaker 1: talking about the the immune condition of people in the
Speaker 1: I s s, it could possibly increased risk of infection,
Speaker 1: hypersensitivity or autoimmune issues for exploration astronauts. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: what causes this we don't fully know yet, but there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of hypotheses. They focus on microgravity, stress,
Speaker 1: lack of sleep uh, microbial environment or microbial exposure, isolation,
Speaker 1: and exposure to radiation. On the plus side, I would
Speaker 1: say all of these are things that we would hope,
Speaker 1: as you just alluded to, Robert, you would be able
Speaker 1: to address by the time we're an exoplanet colonizing species.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to travel to exoplanets in a space
Speaker 1: ship that doesn't have artificial gravity, that hasn't come up
Speaker 1: with ways of dealing with radiation, exposure or stress, you've
Speaker 1: got bigger problems. You know, you're you're probably not gonna
Speaker 1: make it there. Yeah, I mean unless you're go in
Speaker 1: with a sci fi scenario where basically everyone just needs
Speaker 1: to get out of the pool. You know, everyone has
Speaker 1: to get off of Earth and start on in these
Speaker 1: colonies and it that's the motivation for getting there, is
Speaker 1: that it's either go or perish totally. So that is
Speaker 1: something we should keep in mind. The other thing I
Speaker 1: had to mention so is space travel appears to make
Speaker 1: us immuno compromised. Also, multiple studies have shown that space
Speaker 1: flight conditions can increase the virulence of known pathogens. One
Speaker 1: example would be Salmonella Tiffi mariam. So in some experiments,
Speaker 1: when you took the strain of salmonella into space, once
Speaker 1: it came back, it was more deadly to mice than
Speaker 1: earth grown strains of the same bacterium. So if you
Speaker 1: can imagine picking up a germ on an alien planet
Speaker 1: and then ash overrides re Repley's quarantine procedure and you
Speaker 1: get in the ship and take it back to space
Speaker 1: with you, you could be making things even worse for yourself.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, on that note, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back we will discuss killer allergens.
Speaker 1: Thank all, we're back, and I have to say, this
Speaker 1: is an area that I had not really given much
Speaker 1: thought off. When I think of risks on an alien world, um,
Speaker 1: I tend to think of Yeah, I think of the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: I think of diseases and foreign organisms. I think of
Speaker 1: some of the things we're going to discuss in a bit,
Speaker 1: like radiation. But the idea of just all my allergies
Speaker 1: are acting up because um, because side is six. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just really affecting my sinuses. Well again, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to explore possibility space. So this is not
Speaker 1: something that I think has been um widely explored. I
Speaker 1: just want to think about it as a possibility. So
Speaker 1: small bits of organic matter in the air, for example,
Speaker 1: of the pollen of plants or other airborne life forms.
Speaker 1: These are the kinds of allergens we encounter here on Earth,
Speaker 1: and I wondered what people with allergic susceptibility might might
Speaker 1: encounter on an alien planet. They might not be active pathogens,
Speaker 1: they might not be germs trying to invade your body,
Speaker 1: but that could make your body go haywire. That could
Speaker 1: trigger this critical immune system response and and death by
Speaker 1: asthma or anaphylaxis. So this process might not be as
Speaker 1: speedy as some other dangers, but could represent a threat
Speaker 1: to colonists who burned their helmets or otherwise open them
Speaker 1: up and breathe deep of the alien biosphere. So to
Speaker 1: look at whether this is a possibility, I think we
Speaker 1: should take a quick look at how allergic responses work.
Speaker 1: An allergic reaction is basically just a malfunction of the
Speaker 1: immune system. It happens when a foreign substance called an allergen,
Speaker 1: comes into contact with the body and the immune system
Speaker 1: mistakes the substance for a hostile pathogen, right. It thinks
Speaker 1: that you are being infected by a germ that needs attacking,
Speaker 1: when in fact it's just some harmless stuff. It's a
Speaker 1: piece of protein, pollen, something like that, you know, shrimp,
Speaker 1: and this triggers an immune system response that is unnecessary
Speaker 1: and self destructive. It's kind of like if you've got
Speaker 1: an army base and the wind flows a tumble weed
Speaker 1: up against the exterior fence of the base, and a
Speaker 1: malfunction in the base is automated defense network responds by
Speaker 1: shelling the area with heavy artillery, destroying part of the
Speaker 1: base in the process. So we don't fully understand all
Speaker 1: of the deep underlying causes of allergic reactions, like why
Speaker 1: some people have specific allergies and other people don't. Twin
Speaker 1: studies do seem to show that there's a strong genetic
Speaker 1: component to allergies, but environmental influences are a factor as well.
Speaker 1: According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology,
Speaker 1: a little less than about eight percent of adults in
Speaker 1: the US have respiratory allergies, also known as hay fever. Worldwide,
Speaker 1: it's more it's like ten percent to thirty percent of
Speaker 1: people as far as we know. And so it's generally
Speaker 1: true that allergic reactions to new substances don't occur immediately
Speaker 1: the first time you get exposed to those substances. The
Speaker 1: body has to encounter the allergen, produce allergy and specific
Speaker 1: antibodies known i g e. Anti bodies, and then allow
Speaker 1: those antibodies to bind two receptors on immune cells called
Speaker 1: mast cells and basa fills. And the delay between this
Speaker 1: first exposure, the sensitizing exposure, and then the potential for
Speaker 1: the first dangerous reaction I think is usually considered to
Speaker 1: be about a week or ten days. So this could
Speaker 1: be something that sneaks up on you. You've been on
Speaker 1: the surface of this planet for a while, you think
Speaker 1: everything's okay, nobody's gotten sick in the first day or two,
Speaker 1: but suddenly you might get really bad asthma. And so
Speaker 1: this is more of a danger of prolonged exposure to
Speaker 1: an alien biosphere. The first encounter probably wouldn't harm you,
Speaker 1: but once this sensitization has happened, if the body encounters
Speaker 1: that same allergy and again the cells trigger what's known
Speaker 1: as an allergic cascade, and this means the body floods
Speaker 1: with allergy mediators like histamine, which causes dilation of the
Speaker 1: blood vessels, low blood pressure, itching, sneezing, digestive problems, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And if this gets bad enough, it leads to, of course,
Speaker 1: what we know as anaphylaxis. You know, this is the
Speaker 1: really severe reaction that can be fatal if not treated quickly.
Speaker 1: So I was wondering how how dangerous is anaphylaxis, How
Speaker 1: fatal is it can? Can it cause death? Yes, but
Speaker 1: the odds aren't as bad as you think. So aten
Speaker 1: study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found
Speaker 1: that anaphylactic shock resulted in between sixty three and nine
Speaker 1: deaths in the United States every year. However, that's only
Speaker 1: about point three percent of cases where people presented in
Speaker 1: hospitals with anaphylaxis. So if you can get to a hospital,
Speaker 1: it looks like your odds are pretty good. Treatment usually
Speaker 1: tends to be a big shot of epin efron, also
Speaker 1: known as adrenaline, so you get the rush. Uh, and
Speaker 1: exactly the EpiPen. It's a it's an epine an auto injector.
Speaker 1: One hopes that by the time we get to these
Speaker 1: foreign planets the prices have come down a little bit
Speaker 1: and they can stock up the ships with them. Um,
Speaker 1: it's less clear to me the survival rate without medical
Speaker 1: attention or epinefron would be due to anaphylaxis. But of course,
Speaker 1: on the surface of an alien planet, can you get
Speaker 1: to a hospital or can you get your repine and
Speaker 1: shot in time? I guess we would just hope that
Speaker 1: your med droid is working well. It has It has
Speaker 1: EpiPens for fingers to drive them in. That's right. Every
Speaker 1: time it tries to hug you, you get the adrenaline injection. Uh. So.
Speaker 1: The other the other thing to think about would be
Speaker 1: asthma attacks, which can also be triggered by allergic reactions
Speaker 1: to inhaled irritants, and they're often more deadly in the
Speaker 1: modern day. So an asthma attack causes constriction of the airways,
Speaker 1: and according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America,
Speaker 1: about ten Americans die from asthma every day and inteen
Speaker 1: asthma killed three thousand, six hundred and fifty one people.
Speaker 1: So it's usually treated with inhaled broncho dilators like the
Speaker 1: the emergency and haler that you have the rescue in
Speaker 1: haler um. But it can be treated with other stuff
Speaker 1: in the case of a real bad asthma attack. So
Speaker 1: if you're on the surface of an alien planet, can
Speaker 1: you imagine what types of things that go into your
Speaker 1: body might cause a severe allergic reaction? Of course, it
Speaker 1: could be pollen or spores from an alien plant or
Speaker 1: some other kind of germinating life form. Could be alien
Speaker 1: foods if you find yourself eating them, though, I guess
Speaker 1: have we factored in Robert, do you consider if you
Speaker 1: take your helmet off, do you also just eat the
Speaker 1: stuff around you? I don't know. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this the other night because I watched um uh, the
Speaker 1: new MST three K episode that deals with the Lost World.
Speaker 1: You know, m Edgar Rice Burrows German submarine winds up
Speaker 1: in this place where evolutions all walking, and you still
Speaker 1: have all these dinosaurs and they immediately, like right after
Speaker 1: they kill the first dinosaur, they cook it up and
Speaker 1: they eat it, just no concerns whatsoever. Um it would
Speaker 1: be it would be funny to see that utilize in
Speaker 1: some of these sci fi scenarios where they kill a
Speaker 1: neo morph in. They're like, out where we gotta eat?
Speaker 1: So right, let's fire up the girl sick of this
Speaker 1: freeze dried ice cream. But hey, how about another thing
Speaker 1: for anaphylactic shock. What about the venom of an alien organism?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean you look at the terrestrial example,
Speaker 1: and you have plenty of of of small organisms that
Speaker 1: pack a substantial punch thanks to their their neurotoxins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't even have to be that the or
Speaker 1: the organism's natural venom is strong enough to kill you.
Speaker 1: I mean, that could have been a reason we cited
Speaker 1: all on its own actually would be the venom of
Speaker 1: alien arthropods. But imagine that the venom is not enough
Speaker 1: to kill you on its own, you still could have
Speaker 1: one of these immune system malfunctions. Uh that you know it. Basically,
Speaker 1: you get stung by the alien equivalent of a wasp
Speaker 1: what would we call it, the infurnace seven hymen opteroid,
Speaker 1: and it stings you and gives you a dose of
Speaker 1: something that really just just meant to hurt, but instead
Speaker 1: you have an allergic reaction to the insect, and according
Speaker 1: to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma Immunology, up to
Speaker 1: fifty percent of people who die from allergic reactions to
Speaker 1: insects had no previously documented allergy, like they didn't know
Speaker 1: they were allergic. So it sounds like it could be
Speaker 1: a scary scenario on an alien world. Yeah, fear of
Speaker 1: alien bees. Alien bees, by the way, also a brand
Speaker 1: of professional lighting equipment for photographers. No way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a lovely, lovely logo. Dude, I just looked
Speaker 1: it up. Yes, they give it. So they give him
Speaker 1: the alien face with the large eyes. It's like a
Speaker 1: gray except he's not gray's yellow because he's a bee.
Speaker 1: And they make his wings yellow too. I'm not saying.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why I'm saying. He I guess it
Speaker 1: looks kind of masculine in the logo here. But but
Speaker 1: the bees we know and love are women, right. I
Speaker 1: know about this because my wife is a photographer, and uh,
Speaker 1: and there have been times in the past which she's like,
Speaker 1: can you help me get the the alien bees? Make
Speaker 1: sure you can? You can you get the alien bees
Speaker 1: out of the car for me? So that the alien
Speaker 1: bees have become a normal part of my life. But
Speaker 1: then also on top of talking about potential alien allergens
Speaker 1: that that could get you. I I don't know to
Speaker 1: what extent that's a real thing to worry about, but
Speaker 1: I thought that was worth considering. There's also this other
Speaker 1: class where you know, we've looked at infectious agents and microorganisms,
Speaker 1: and we've looked at allergens, which is like bits of
Speaker 1: matter that upset your body. I wonder if there's also
Speaker 1: categories of things in between that we haven't even reckoned with,
Speaker 1: that we we don't even fully understand because there's just
Speaker 1: not a strong analogy on Earth. It makes me think
Speaker 1: about one of the picks from the My My Fiction
Speaker 1: pick from the summer reading episode we did last year,
Speaker 1: which was a sci fi book that I really loved
Speaker 1: called Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. And a lot of
Speaker 1: reviewers seemed to hate this book, I think because they
Speaker 1: found it depressing and pessimistic, conjuring up this universe where
Speaker 1: space colonist characters come to the conclusion that Earth might
Speaker 1: be the only viable home for us in the galaxy.
Speaker 1: And the reason is that based on a very small
Speaker 1: sampling of planets. Planets seemed be either uninhabitable, unable to
Speaker 1: sustain life, or already home to hostile micro organisms. And uh,
Speaker 1: and so there's this organism. I don't want to spoil
Speaker 1: too much about the book, but they go to a
Speaker 1: planet whether where there is this organism that they just
Speaker 1: don't really understand. It does seem to infect and kill people,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really work like micro organisms that were
Speaker 1: familiar with. At some point, a character tries to compare
Speaker 1: it to a fast acting preon, like the you know,
Speaker 1: these misfolded proteins that make copies of themselves and damage
Speaker 1: our tissues that way. But then they rule out, They
Speaker 1: say it, actually, it doesn't really work that way. It's
Speaker 1: just a sci fi scenario. But it does make me
Speaker 1: think about the possibility that there could be tiny, chemically
Speaker 1: active molecules and objects that act upon our bodies in
Speaker 1: ways that are not even familiar to us. Uh, in
Speaker 1: the ways we're familiar with from micro organisms or from allergens. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I'm not that familiar with the with Kim Stanley Robinson.
Speaker 1: Is there another work by this author that I should recognize?
Speaker 1: This is the only book of his that i've read,
Speaker 1: but I know he's well known for his He did
Speaker 1: a trilogy of books about Mars, about terraforming Mars. Yes,
Speaker 1: that that must be where I recognize his name from.
Speaker 1: They're like different colors. I think it's called Mars. Yes, yes, yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've not read those, but I have friends who speak. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I haven't read them either, but I so. Despite the
Speaker 1: fact that a lot of people didn't like Aurora, I
Speaker 1: really loved it. I thought it was a fascinating counterpoint
Speaker 1: to a lot of the space exploration fiction we usually see.
Speaker 1: Are you ready to look at the next threat to
Speaker 1: the unhelmeted space explorer? Bring it on? Helmet still on?
Speaker 1: Ready to look at reason number four? Okay, how about
Speaker 1: killer particles? So we discussed this in our episode Your
Speaker 1: Health is a Mars colonist. Many alien worlds are likely
Speaker 1: to contain extremely fine particles of dust and soil that
Speaker 1: could cause health problems or even kill you. One thing
Speaker 1: that we mentioned in that previous episode that I just
Speaker 1: wanted to mention again. In December nineteen seventy two, you
Speaker 1: have the crew of the Apollo seventeen walking on the Moon.
Speaker 1: They're out there doing their extra vehicular activity did they
Speaker 1: play golf? I can't remember who played golf. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't remember off hand either, and some people play golf.
Speaker 1: Maybe they did. Maybe that was somebody else. But astronauts
Speaker 1: Harrison Schmidt and Eugene Cernan, and they were operating in
Speaker 1: the location near the Sea of Serenity, and when they
Speaker 1: got back inside the lunar module after the e v A,
Speaker 1: Harrison Schmidt experienced what has been called quote lunar dust
Speaker 1: hay fever, which was this respiratory reaction to inhaling fine
Speaker 1: particles of lunar regulars. So the dust on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Moon has these weird qualities. It's abrasive, it's
Speaker 1: almost kind of been described like tiny fine shards of glass.
Speaker 1: It sticks to everything, It smells like gunpowder. Apparently, it's
Speaker 1: hard not to inhale it when you're messing around on
Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon, and when you do, it's
Speaker 1: not for your respiratory system, it it it messes you up.
Speaker 1: Other planets also have other types of surface soil that
Speaker 1: are going to be very different than what we're used
Speaker 1: to on Earth, and we need to consider the possibility
Speaker 1: that all of these surface soils could have chemicals in
Speaker 1: them fine particles that could really be a threat to
Speaker 1: our health and and could even kill us. Even on Earth,
Speaker 1: there are situations where inhalation of fine particles can lead
Speaker 1: to respiratory diseases. Like you can if you inhale a
Speaker 1: lot of extremely fine silica, Like if you're a miner
Speaker 1: or sand blaster or something, you can inhale this stuff,
Speaker 1: this fine silica that it leads to something called silicosis,
Speaker 1: and that's just not good for your lungs. It depends
Speaker 1: on exactly what kind of exposure you get, but eventually
Speaker 1: it can lead to progressive massive fibrosis, which is just
Speaker 1: destroys your lungs. It's almost like your lungs filling up
Speaker 1: with concrete. Uh. You do not want things like this
Speaker 1: going into your lungs. And things like in these fine
Speaker 1: grains could be present on many other worlds also. Mars
Speaker 1: is a good example of places where the soil is
Speaker 1: believed to contain chemicals that are not just dangerous in
Speaker 1: terms of them being fine and uh and respirable, but
Speaker 1: the Martian soil is known to contain perclorates, which have
Speaker 1: detrimental effects on the thyroid and hormone production in the
Speaker 1: human body, and we don't know what kinds of toxic
Speaker 1: chemicals could be in the soil of alien planets. But
Speaker 1: if you break the seal between the inside and outside,
Speaker 1: it's difficult to keep fine grain particles separate. And of
Speaker 1: course that's just assuming these are just straight up particles
Speaker 1: and they're not radioactive particles, right, because even Earth has
Speaker 1: naturally occurring radioactive particles radionuclides, which can be hazardous to
Speaker 1: your health if you inhale them. And so we don't
Speaker 1: also know the extent to which the surface of another
Speaker 1: planet might be peppered with fine radioactive articles that you
Speaker 1: can suck right in with a deep breath. Alright, so
Speaker 1: we're down to the last item on our checklist before
Speaker 1: opening the helmet. And again this is not just the
Speaker 1: opening of the helmet, but the breaching of the mini
Speaker 1: space suit and the presume protective layers that encompasses. Right,
Speaker 1: So this one might be a little bit less helmet
Speaker 1: focused and more just focused on the general barrier between
Speaker 1: you and the outside. That's right. So radiation. We we've
Speaker 1: done a few different episodes now where we've we've we've
Speaker 1: discussed radiation, most most recently the episode dealing with like
Speaker 1: the demon core idea and like what happens with what
Speaker 1: happened with Chernobyl and the risks probe posed by radiation
Speaker 1: to human health. Yeah, I haven't even thought about this
Speaker 1: before before we did this episode, but walking around with
Speaker 1: exposed skin on these planets, I mean, can you get
Speaker 1: an infurnace six sunburn? Yeah? I would guess so, depending
Speaker 1: on what the the the star or stars at the
Speaker 1: center of the infurnace system or like yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: both cosmic and solar radiation immediately become a problem once
Speaker 1: you leave the neighborhood of Earth, and to your point,
Speaker 1: even on Earth, solar radiation can be an issue depending
Speaker 1: on what your skin situation is like and where you are.
Speaker 1: Even on Earth's surface, we're exposed to a steady ambient
Speaker 1: level of radiation from the Sun solar radiation UH and
Speaker 1: the larger universe cosmic radiation. But Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere
Speaker 1: work together to protect us from most of the danger.
Speaker 1: So even astronauts on the International Space Station two miles
Speaker 1: above Earth, UH, they're exposed to much more radiation than
Speaker 1: we get on the surface. They're still shielded by Earth's magnetosphere.
Speaker 1: Which extends thousands of miles into space around the planet.
Speaker 1: That's right, So even though they're outside the atmosphere, there's
Speaker 1: still within this thing that repels a lot of this
Speaker 1: cosmic radiation. Yeah. This so this sort of magic field.
Speaker 1: It's not magic, but you know, it's this wonderful protective
Speaker 1: shield shielding around the Earth. So you'll in on an
Speaker 1: alien world, you're just thinking about breaching your suit taking
Speaker 1: that helmet off. Does the planet have an atmosphere? Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and assume it does, Otherwise you really don't
Speaker 1: have a good excuse. So if there's so, there's some
Speaker 1: level of radiation shielding just by virtue of there being
Speaker 1: an atmosphere. But is there a magnetosphere? So I'm going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and guess there is, because one of
Speaker 1: the things that happens when there's no magnetosphere is that
Speaker 1: the solar wind strips most of the atmosphere off of
Speaker 1: your world. Yeah, this is we talked about the thin
Speaker 1: atmosphere of Mars. Mars does not have a strong magnetosphere.
Speaker 1: I think doesn't have one at all. Yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: massive atmosphere loss in these scenarios. So yet to to
Speaker 1: break down who has magnetosphere. There's Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, Ganymede, Saturn,
Speaker 1: urin this neptune. Mars definitely does not have one. But
Speaker 1: in the case of you know, an absence of a
Speaker 1: magnetosphere massive atmosphere lost, there are there are many astrobiologies
Speaker 1: that predict that that potential life on an exoplanet might
Speaker 1: well be oombed without a magneto magnetosphere in place. At
Speaker 1: the very least, it would mean that life would have
Speaker 1: to flourish there, perhaps underground behind you know, beneath protective
Speaker 1: ice caps or or artificial structures and systems. You get
Speaker 1: into the same scenario when we start thinking about the
Speaker 1: potential Mars colonists, like, how how would you effectively shield uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a colony on that world? You want to
Speaker 1: like dig underground or something. Yeah, Still, you've got this
Speaker 1: protective space suit presumably provides some sort of protection against radiation.
Speaker 1: And even a world protected by a magnetosphere and an
Speaker 1: atmosphere can be a radioactive mess for creatures such as ourselves.
Speaker 1: I mean it could be naturally occurring radioactive environments which
Speaker 1: we we certainly encounter, or something compromised by an intelligent
Speaker 1: species radioactive dumping. So to come back to the the
Speaker 1: alien universe, we don't know what the what other crimes
Speaker 1: the the engineers got up to. Toby decided to just
Speaker 1: dump a whole bunch of radioactive waste done any particular planet.
Speaker 1: It seems like the kind of thing we would do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So that's the thing that I guess is
Speaker 1: worth considering. What is the range of possibilities for the
Speaker 1: natural ground based radioactivity of a foreign planet? I mean,
Speaker 1: on Earth, there are natural sources of radiation apart from
Speaker 1: just what's coming from the sky. We've got uranium in
Speaker 1: the Earth. Uranium decays produces radon gas. If you inhale that,
Speaker 1: you can have radiation exposure. Uh So yeah, I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess we just don't know what's possible on other planets. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: to put everything in sort of a uh in context
Speaker 1: of what we have here, which is our again, our
Speaker 1: best model for what we might find elsewhere. Uh. In
Speaker 1: terms of natural radiation, again, everybody has to do with
Speaker 1: some degree of terrestrial radiation thanks to naturally occurring radioactive
Speaker 1: materials such as uranium, thorium, radium, etcetera. In the Earth
Speaker 1: and the inhabited area on the planet with the highest
Speaker 1: levels of terrestrial radiation is Ramsar, Iran, and this is
Speaker 1: due to a nearby radioactive hot spring and building materials
Speaker 1: that have been harvested from there. But I think I
Speaker 1: recall reading because we did a now piece on this,
Speaker 1: didn't read that that actually in rams Are like people
Speaker 1: are not don't really have much worse health outcomes despite
Speaker 1: the fact that they're exposed to elevated levels of radiation.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's my understanding. But but just in terms
Speaker 1: of like the levels here and these are gonna be
Speaker 1: this is what we're looking at, and this is gonna
Speaker 1: be in ing wise or nano gray units and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be per hour, I believe, so absorbed
Speaker 1: rates of radiation in the air and Ramsar are going
Speaker 1: to be between seventy and seventeen thousand, and again that's
Speaker 1: the highest you're going to find for an inhabited area
Speaker 1: on Earth. But if you're going to uninhabited, uh, then
Speaker 1: this is the place that takes takes the cake. The
Speaker 1: Black Beaches of guardapare Brazil, and they contain monosite, which
Speaker 1: is a phosphate of rare earth metals containing uranium and thorium.
Speaker 1: Uh so it's in the sand here, and it produces
Speaker 1: absorbed dose rates of of ninety to ninety thousand en
Speaker 1: gy wise um per hour. And now that's just natural radiation.
Speaker 1: If you go ahead and you a factor in radioactive
Speaker 1: pollution in our case by humans, but in another case
Speaker 1: by some you know, it doesn't even have to be
Speaker 1: an existing extraterrestrial species. You know, presumably you could have
Speaker 1: the radioactive waste of a of a of an inner
Speaker 1: planetary or simply planetary society that then later got onto
Speaker 1: destroying itself. Like what if we arrived on an exoplanet
Speaker 1: we realized, oh, the previous inhabitants annihilated themselves with an
Speaker 1: atomic war. Uh, surely that's been explored. That sounds like
Speaker 1: classic trek right there. But if we factor that in,
Speaker 1: then the most polluted example we have on Earth is
Speaker 1: a lake Karace in Russia. This is a long time
Speaker 1: dumping site for radioactive waste, and by most estimates, the
Speaker 1: most radioactive place on the planet now is that including
Speaker 1: next to the elephant's foot in in chernobyl Um. I
Speaker 1: believe so, yeah. I mean the idea here is that
Speaker 1: we're talking like long standing you know, radiation. So this
Speaker 1: was just a place where just a small ural mountain
Speaker 1: lake where they would just dump stuff. They would they
Speaker 1: would just dump radioactive waste continually and uh it they
Speaker 1: let to researchers in in the nineties to analyze it
Speaker 1: based on I think current satellite data. It's completely covered
Speaker 1: and cement. Now there have been attempts to to manage it.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen nine, uh, it's said if you were
Speaker 1: standing on the shore of the lake, you more than
Speaker 1: an hour of exposure would have been fatal. Wow, so
Speaker 1: I think you know, you can you can imagine a
Speaker 1: scenario where you you land on a world, maybe you
Speaker 1: have of a preliminary radiation reading for just sort of
Speaker 1: the world itself. You wander onto a black sand beach.
Speaker 1: Yeah you want, you want onto the beach, and you know,
Speaker 1: the next thing, you know, you're absorbing increasing levels of radiation,
Speaker 1: which might not be an immediate problem, but it might
Speaker 1: be um, you know a problem of prolonged exposure. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: when we think about radiation again, there are there are
Speaker 1: two main ways that you would want to keep yourself
Speaker 1: sealed from your environment. It works in multiple ways. So
Speaker 1: one is that you would have a suit. Hopefully they
Speaker 1: would have some kind of shielding that proprides a barrier
Speaker 1: against the ray radiation, you know, the bombardment of your
Speaker 1: body with with direct rays like gamma rays or neutron radiation.
Speaker 1: But then you would also want to keep your environment
Speaker 1: sealed so that you don't have the interaction with radioactive particles.
Speaker 1: And I think that could be one of the biggest dangers,
Speaker 1: is the inhalation of these radio newclides. The more I
Speaker 1: think about it just might be better to leave the
Speaker 1: suit on, definitely, no matter how delicious the neomorphs same,
Speaker 1: no matter how delightful that beach may seem, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just better just to stay in the suit. It's I'm
Speaker 1: sure it has a bathroom function. Okay, here's a question.
Speaker 1: You're totally out of freeze, dried ice cream, no earth
Speaker 1: food left. You're on the alien planet. You've killed a neomorph.
Speaker 1: Do you starve to death or do you try to
Speaker 1: eat it? Well, I guess you try and eat it.
Speaker 1: I mean, geez, I don't know, of course, not knowing
Speaker 1: what I know about the neomorph's now, I mean, actually
Speaker 1: that maybe in a sense that's a survival method because
Speaker 1: you know that you might live on in some sorts,
Speaker 1: some form or another, right, right, at least you're parasitic progeny. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that the neomorphs sandwich kind of becomes you and then
Speaker 1: then you're good to go. Now you're completely acclimatized to
Speaker 1: the environment. You're no longer remotely human, but you're thriving. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you have enjoyed this weird exoplanet speculation with us.
Speaker 1: But but if we haven't convinced you knit by now
Speaker 1: to keep your helmet on, we're probably not gonna right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably off by now, I'm guessing you know. But
Speaker 1: but hopefully we give you some good ideas here. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: that's not to say that I want you to go
Speaker 1: in and just kneel de grass Tyson the heck out
Speaker 1: of every science fiction film you see, because I think
Speaker 1: there's there's ultimately little joy in that. But but it
Speaker 1: it does. I do think it's always important to to
Speaker 1: have the scientific reality and at least in the background.
Speaker 1: You know, it's an act of disengaging from what you
Speaker 1: know about the real threats of space exploration, as opposed
Speaker 1: to just not knowing about it to begin with and
Speaker 1: and and basing everything on the sci fi fantasy world
Speaker 1: you're observing. Well, I think earlier I mentioned something about
Speaker 1: how for me it has to its consistency. Really like,
Speaker 1: if if a movie seems to have an ethic of
Speaker 1: realism and hard science, I will be troubled by things
Speaker 1: that are unrealistic. But if it doesn't, across the board
Speaker 1: have an ethic of realism and hard science, then who cares? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you know it comes. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you were to encounter a scene where the helmet
Speaker 1: comes off in two thousand and one, right, Like that
Speaker 1: would be a case where like, whoa, come on, Stanley.
Speaker 1: Up until now, like we didn't even have sound in space.
Speaker 1: We're being just really hard with our science, and now
Speaker 1: you're just kind of thrown into the wind. But yeah,
Speaker 1: does in the wind singing dust in the world. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry for singing twice. Y'all? All right, everybody, Well, if
Speaker 1: you like this discussion here today, head on over the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we
Speaker 1: have all the podcast episodes, and we also have things
Speaker 1: like videos and blog posts, um, including my expanded review
Speaker 1: of Alien Covenant that is on the website and that
Speaker 1: will be on the landing page for this episode as well.
Speaker 1: Also include links to other alien related and sci fi
Speaker 1: related content that we've covered over the years, and if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us directly. As always,
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
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