WEBVTT - Are we all Martians? 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.840 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:07.480 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:16.279 from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.479 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and I'm with Charles Bryant 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:23.960 and what we're doing Stuff you should know today? Oh yeah, 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:28.520 not the other one. Stuff you should not know. Nothing 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:33.040 you should know now we're out there inspiring podcasts. Yeah. 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:36.159 Who we heard about that today? Right, someone started podcast 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:39.360 in the Illinois Valley. I don't know where that is. 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:41.280 I don't think it's Illinois though, but they wrote about 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:42.960 it in the paper, right, Yeah, they got to write 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:45.360 up in the paper. Pretty cool. Yeah. Okay, before we 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:48.760 get started, buddy, we need to announce our upcoming New 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:53.360 York trip in Trivia night. Yeah. We talked to Mayor 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:58.320 Bloomberg and he, uh, he said that Friday, October twelve, 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.520 two thousand twelve is Stuff you Should Know day in 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:04.000 the five boroughs of New York City. That's right, and 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.319 we will be presented a not a key to the city, 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:10.479 but a key card to our hotel. At least it's 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:12.360 a set of lock picks to the city. That's right. 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:15.400 And uh, So we're coming for Comic Con. If you 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:17.240 have a Comic Con pass, you can come see this 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:20.560 podcast live and we're gonna have details on like what 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:23.080 room and what time and everything. Yeah. Plus it's cheap 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:25.080 even if you don't have a past, like like day 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:29.160 passes are not expensive. Yeah, even in this economy. It's 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.679 it's it's good. So we're gonna be podcasting live during 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:35.360 the day on Friday, and um you can check out 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:38.119 Facebook and Twitter for info on exactly where and when. 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:42.119 And then that night another stuff you should know Trivia Night, 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:45.920 which was a huge success, huge success in New York 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:48.280 last year. So it's just two years ago, right, yeah, 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:52.280 two years ago. Yeah. Uh about this time too. I 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:55.440 think it was October, wasn't it. Yeah. Um, So that's 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.240 a whole day, the whole day of your life in 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:01.840 New York City, packed with stuff you should know, featuring 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.840 Chuck and myself. So this is gonna be great. Uh 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:09.000 and I know it's just me, but I like saying myself. Um, 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.480 and we're gonna have details for sure on that. We're 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:15.400 locking down the menu hopefully as we speak, and um 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.680 locking down our all star celebrity trivia team as we speak. 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:21.800 If you're out there and you're an all star celebrity, 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:23.120 you want to play with us. I think that's a 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:26.399 great call out up. We're still assembling our team. Yeah, 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.200 a couple of the stalwarts are going to be out 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:30.919 of town, which is disappointing. So we're looking for for 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:34.600 comers as it were, Yes, as it were, And we're 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:38.360 also looking for commers to challenge us and uh and 0:02:38.360 --> 0:02:40.239 and Duke get out on the trivia floor. It's gonna 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:42.360 be fun for free, that's right. And there will be 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:47.160 adult libations involved if you're into that. Probably if you're 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.680 into that, and Uh, that's about it. Anything else. I 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:54.000 think it's high time we started the episode. Thank you 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.639 for bearing with us. I guess everyone, Uh, let's see, Chuck. 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:01.239 I'm a little under the weather today. I know I'm fighting. 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.000 I I'm not I'm not gonna get sick. I'm just 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:06.640 it's like, man, that that one day where it's like 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:10.440 you're right before you're about to get better the worst day, 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:12.519 but you're just not going to get sick, you know 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:14.200 what I'm saying. So I don't have like five days 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.120 of sickness ahead of me. I've got bagel days of 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.320 sickness ahead of me. You're saying this like positive thoughts. 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:23.120 Is that the deal? Okay? Yeah? I found that my 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:27.040 mind body connection is really really strong, especially in the 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.400 horrible way where I'm like, I'm not gonna get sick. 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:32.320 I wonder if I'm getting sick though, Am I getting sick? 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:34.240 And then all of a sudden, I'm sick. It's like 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:36.720 I just talked myself into getting sick. But that sounds 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:38.840 like you just talk to yourself into getting well. So 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:45.160 I'm trying it out. It's mental gymnastics. Uh, sometimes it works. Yeah, um, 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:48.080 but I guess let me just go ahead and start 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.120 and get this one over with. Okay. I like this one. Yeah, 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:53.440 not bad. You realize that's half of an article I 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:55.920 sent you before that. You you're like, now, let's not 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:58.920 do this one. Yeah, the origin of life on Earth. 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.720 But didn't we do that? We never did that? Well 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:06.720 there was a reason. Wow, I believe it now. But 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:08.440 maybe we can do the other half. We'll do. This 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:10.800 is like part of a two part suite about where 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:15.640 life on Earth came from Mars. Maybe there's another way, 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:17.840 and this is my intro. There's another possible way, and 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:22.479 it's something called a biogenesis, and a biogenesis basically says 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:28.360 that all the proteins needed to form RNA. Somehow we're 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:32.400 present in the early Earth and the primordial soup, and 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:36.279 somehow they came together in a structure that was RNA. 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:40.920 And RNA is a pretty specific, weird little thing, and 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:45.200 that it can not only replicate itself, it can make 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:48.400 new stuff too, so it can build d N A, 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.240 but it can also replicate itself. It sounds like something 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:55.280 Ridley Scott movie, very much so. And they think that 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.640 RNA somehow came together and over the course of millions 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.680 of years, in all these different trials and errors, finally 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:05.479 started to form DNA, which kick started life. The origin 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:08.520 of life was just a bunch of proteins that came together. 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:11.520 There are a lot of reasons people pooh pooh this. 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:14.920 A lot of people a lot of creationists say, hey, 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:17.440 you know Occam's razor, which you scientists love so much, 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.080 do you think that's it? Or that somebody created us? 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:27.640 So the abiogenesis hypothesis, maybe theory by now has kind 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.400 of has some holes in it, but it's really interesting 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:32.360 and we'll talk in depth about that in another one. 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:37.720 This one is about the big rival to a biogenesis. 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:41.880 And it's called panspermia, which is a pretty pretty neat name. 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:47.520 What does that mean? Seeds everywhere? Yeah, seeds everywhere over 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.520 the place, panspermia. And it's from a guy in the 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:55.920 nineteen o six Swede whose name is pretty awesome, uh, 0:05:55.960 --> 0:06:00.800 Savante Argennis, who wrote a book called Worlds in the Making, 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.120 and he coined the term pants fermia. But it was 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.640 um about fifty or so years maybe thirty or so 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:10.920 years before him, um that the idea of pants fermia 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:15.040 was first put forth by Lord Kelvin. Yeah, the famous 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:20.880 Lord Kelvin, British physicist, mega famous. I mean not many 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.400 people get a temperature scale named after him. No, there's not, 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:30.240 just the Tommy Celsius and Billy Fahrenheit man and Lord 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:36.120 Kelvin trimember that is. Uh. So his idea was that 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:39.400 seed bearing meteorites, which is kind of where we are 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.839 here with this, did we come from Mars? Potentially that 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:49.960 these meteorites that had uh life buried within them, or 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:52.600 at the very least you know, sitting on the surface, 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.599 had life there found its way to Earth and that's 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:57.680 where it all started, right, And it's pretty cool to 0:06:57.720 --> 0:06:59.360 think that way back then. They were thinking of this 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:03.560 stuff back in the seventies. Yeah, man, you know, well, 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:06.320 I mean the super far off the space elevator came 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.800 from a Russian guy in eighteen. People were thinking back then. 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:15.080 They had a lot of time to um subjugate. The 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:17.400 other cultures may have been thinking even more, you know, 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:19.800 because they didn't know as much. All they did was 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:22.560 sit around and think. Well, if the Olympics taught me 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.920 anything the opening ceremonies, it's that they had a lot 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:29.880 more time to toil and think, and everything just got 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:33.840 better after the sod was removed when the Industrial Revolution 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:36.080 came about. You think that got better. I think it 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:39.880 got worse. Oh I see. It seemed to me that 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:44.640 it was the saving grace of um of civilization was 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:47.480 when the Industrial Revolution hit. Oh okay, I thought you 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.800 meant the opening ceremonies because they got much worse after 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.840 the Industrial Revolution. All of a sudden, people were texting 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:56.120 each other on screen, and it was it was like 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:59.160 these little romance stories playing out on the field. They 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:04.040 got so yeah, it did. Yeah uh. But fortunately the 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:06.960 Olympics had John Hodgman to defend it. He was the 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:11.040 sole person to defend it on Twitter. Boy could think 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.120 Twitter went around in the Atlanta Olympics. Yeah, I don't 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.200 remember that one, but you he was like, you remember 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:18.960 the Atlanta embarrassing He was like, it was like little 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:21.080 Richard driving around in a truck or something that we 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.760 had stainless steel pickup trucks driving around. We had like 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:29.600 line dancing and like Georgia peaches. It was just like, 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:33.200 oh man. But the point was it was big. It 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:35.520 may have been gaudy, but it was big. Right, No 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.120 one could out do Beijing. But they were saying they 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:40.840 weren't even trying to do outdo Beijing. They were trying 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:44.319 to do something different. But it's still it missed. Yeah, 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:49.319 it comes down. Yeah, Okay, So anyway back to it, 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:54.319 back to the Victorian era, um, and there their science thought, 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:59.719 uh the wow, we got so far off, it's ridiculous. Um. 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:02.640 But the point was the concept of pants permia is 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.840 that the Earth, prior to the arrival of life was 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:10.480 like a virgin Petrie dish, and then there was some 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.040 cosmic cough and like a little bit of cosmic spittle 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.079 infected this peatree dish, and all of a sudden, life 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:22.000 took off, that's gross pants. Bermia used to have a 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:25.079 more narrow definition back then, but now it's been broadened 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.400 out to the point where pretty much most scientists believe 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:33.360 that you can exchange life among bodies in our Solar system, 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.200 like it can happen. Yeah, well it's had proven to happen. 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:38.720 It was broader right back in the day, it was broader, 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.400 and then they now it's broader. Back then it was 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:43.760 more specific, it was broad narrow, and then when and 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.559 then it went back to the original broad version. Now 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.199 sciences started to kind of back up the what was 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.000 originally considered a flight of fancy. So what Lord Kelvin 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:58.080 thought was that asteroids brought life to Earth um and 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.319 and probably from Mars, maybe elsewhere in the galaxy, here 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.680 elsewhere in the universe, but the point was they arrived 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:09.800 via rock. Well, after a few years of consideration, most 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.320 people were like, that's not possible, Like an asteroid would 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:17.640 basically pulverize everything on it, there's heat involved, there's no way. 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:22.280 And so the Swede comes along sipante are hineous and 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:24.920 he says, no, these are just basically like little little 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:28.160 microbes traveling between the planets, right, Yeah, It's like you 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.480 don't even need the meteorite as the vessel. This stuff 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:37.040 is just going by what starlight? Uh yeah, that's kind 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:40.079 of a simple way to put it. In electromagnetic energy 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:42.640 in the other articles at starlight, which sounds a little 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:44.920 more fanciful or ether I think they used to call 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:48.720 it to that. Really. Yeah, so this is all great, 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.440 And then we find out in n when we launched 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:54.599 the Viking probes which to Mars, which I think we 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.360 goofed on this before, right, the Viking name or something. Yeah, 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:04.160 it seems like Viking one touchdown at uh Chrysa plinysa 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:10.840 Viking too on Utopia Plinysia. And interestingly, they took some 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.079 some atmospheric readings and they found that the same stuff 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.439 in the atmosphere of Mars was also contained inside these 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:21.640 meteorites from the nineteen eighties. Pretty cool, right, Well, they 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:26.240 figured out the signature of the atmosphere of Mars and 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:28.480 then they compared it and it was the same. Right, 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:30.400 And then they went back and said, well, wait a minute, 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.240 let's find out what other rocks have this specific unique 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:38.280 signature that we can locate on Mars and say these 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.680 are Mars meteorites. And they I think they had like 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:45.640 fifty thoud of them. Uh yeah, the ones they already had, 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.439 they like looked back into them and a hundred and 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:50.800 four of them came from Mars. That was kind of low, 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:53.840 I thought, Yeah, I was a little disappointed. But the 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:58.360 point is is these things show that rocks can travel 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:02.760 from Mars to Earth and survive intact. That was the 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.079 big part of it. So you have a little bit 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:10.560 of Lord Kelvin's original idea starting to come back into reality. 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.600 You know, just good for him. Yes, a scale and everything, 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:16.480 but they dug him up and shook his hand and 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:20.680 put him back. Uh. Shall we move on to um 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:23.360 A l H eight four zero one. This is one 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:26.160 of my favorite metior rites. This one. You remember this 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.520 one like caused a huge stir, Like Clinton came out 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:31.679 and I was like, there's life on Mars. Like we 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.400 found evidence. They found three different traces of what they 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:41.480 considered UM I guess microbial fossils from Mars, and two 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:43.960 of them were discounted, but another one was like a 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:47.240 chain of magnetite that was arranged in such a way 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.040 that it couldn't possibly have been created by anything but 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:55.839 an organism UM That I think the results are still 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:58.600 out on that one. I don't. The other two are like, no, no, 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:02.680 it's definitely in organic, Nick, But this one, the jury 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:05.400 is still out on whether it's possible it was created 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:11.800 by some sort of organic life that basically excreted magnetite chains. Uh. 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:14.240 So the cool thing about this is they studied, you know, 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.320 years later, they they've come up with all these different 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:19.520 issues of why this might not be able to happen. 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:22.439 One of them is the intense heat that would be generated. 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.360 Could the meteorite survive it? Could my life on the 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:30.400 meteorite or buried within it survive it? And they studied 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:34.679 at cal Tech, Yes, cal Tech, they studied a l 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:38.480 H eight four zero zero one. I wonder what they 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:43.200 call it. Probably the Allan Hails, the Alan Hills meteorite. Yeah, 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:45.360 probably so, because that's where it was found. So they 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:48.360 and that's what the l H stands were. Um. So 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:51.600 they studied this and they they figured out that inside 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.400 this thing, it actually never got hotter than a hundred 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:58.000 and four degrees And they did this through magic called 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:01.679 magnetic signature. They cut off a slice of it and 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:06.200 found its magnetic signature. Uh, couldn't heat beyond that, So 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:08.800 that means it never disappears. Yeah, it never got hotter 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:11.719 than a hundred and four. So that kind of put 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:15.520 that one into bed. Ye. So there's plenty of microbes 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:18.880 that can survive temperatures of a hundred and three or 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.160 a hundred degrees in fact a better. A lot of 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:23.520 them love that kind of temperature, love it. Yeah, they're 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:28.920 called um retirees, right. Uh. And then so so that 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:30.920 backs up Calvin a little bit. The fact that there's 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:34.880 rocks that we can say definitely came from Mars back 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.160 him up. Um. And then also getting back to the 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:43.280 rocks coming from Mars, the possibility, the probability of one 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.360 infecting the planet, I guess you could say the early 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:52.040 planet also came to be supported through further research. Um, 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:57.840 some guys from NASA was it NASA. They calculated that 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:03.360 as many as fifty bill in Martian rocks pummeled Earth 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:06.760 in the first five hundred years of the Earth's life 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:17.160 at Earth a decade, No within a decade, but over 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:19.840 the first five hundred million years while the Earth is 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.880 cooling and the prior just prior to the existence of 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:28.560 life on Earth, Mars rocks hit Earth Okay, so they're 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:33.080 saying the rocks can survive. There were plenty of them, 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:37.560 and we know that at least one traveled and did 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:40.320 not heat up over a hundred and for degrees. And 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:44.680 the NaSTA dudes also said that basically our inner solar 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:49.600 system all has sort of a similar suitable environment. So 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:53.960 exchange of life and the inner Solar system only is 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.600 you know, very much likely. Yeah, yeah, if you, if you, 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.120 if they care, If you look at Mars, the chance 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.880 that Mars um can send a rock to Earth is 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:10.600 way higher than it's It's pretty high, right, but if 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.400 you if you go outside of our solar system, the 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:18.440 chances start to plummet exponentially downward um to where if 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:22.360 you go outside of our Solar system elsewhere in our 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:27.360 galaxy um, even in the Milky Way, the odds are 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.560 like one in a billion that even a single rock 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:33.840 could have hit Earth in its first five million years. 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:38.720 It just doesn't happen. But apparently the interplanetary exchange between 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:41.600 Mars and Earth is a lot more frequent than you'd think. 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:45.480 We're also talking about how that hundred and four degree 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:50.840 internal temperature bacteria can survive that maybe even thrive Um 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.760 there are some bacteria too that have been studied that 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:58.239 have been able to survive UM basically trips on satellites 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.280 exposed to solarate viation much as they would be like 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:04.520 on a meteorite, and they've been found to survive pretty 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:09.080 pretty well as well. A lady name no, I'm sorry 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:13.280 a UM well, yeah, a microbiologist named Lynn roth Child 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:19.119 and her partner Rocco Mensinelli. I believe that's how you 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:24.960 pronounce that. Uh. They put some halophiles, which are salt loving, 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.080 which you'd find in UM the dead sea. Yeah, and 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:31.280 they can like these these buggers or survivors. Yeah, they 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:36.760 basically just scab over their cells and um survive like that. 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:41.040 And they found that after two weeks on a satellite UM, 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:46.359 ten of these bacteria had survived. Not bad. That's not bad. 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:49.439 So we know that bacteria kind surviving space. We know 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.280 that it could possibly hit your right on a rock, 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:56.000 and we know that plenty of rocks come from ours. Uh. 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:58.560 Jumping back a little. One of the initial things they 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:02.280 thought would be that, you know, if these asteroids or 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:04.520 if these things are colliding in space, it would just 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:08.679 disintegrate into dust. Basically, they found out that not that 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:14.119 is not necessarily true either. Um. They found traced trace 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:18.119 gases within meteorites that originated on Mars in the nineteen 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:21.840 eighties and basically figured out that if one of these 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:26.040 impacts happens, maybe the it's disintegrated in the middle, but 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.679 on the outer edges there could be like larger chunks. 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:32.120 They just get shot away. Right, So that's that's basically 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.640 where these things are coming from. Ok But some other 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:37.200 people said, all right, well, those ones that get shot away, 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:41.320 they get to escape Earth's gravity or mars Is gravity, 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:45.240 they would have to suddenly, in a less than a second, 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:50.680 be accelerated from zero to eleven thousand, five hundred miles 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:54.280 per hour thousand if you did that in a thousandth 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:56.880 of if you did that to human, the human would 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:01.480 become liquefied, of course. Okay, but the that's that doesn't 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:05.040 necessarily hold truth with bacteria. And we know this because 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:10.640 certain microbiologists have packed bacteria into bullets and fired them 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:13.120 and then studied the bacteria and found that they were 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:18.159 alive still they survived that UM trajectory, yeah, which wouldn't 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.360 be that fast though, it wouldn't be eleven thousand, five 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:23.679 hundred miles an. I guess as the fast as they 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:26.280 could get it there, right, I guess? Okay, well, at 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:31.600 least it was a good effort. Um. Oh the Gerda 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:37.119 Hornick microbiologist in Germany. She also sent organisms into orbit 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:40.560 for six years, not too bad in the nineteen eighties. 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:46.520 Basilli's uh subtillists. And this is pretty wacky because not 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:49.439 only did it survive, but when this thing started like 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:52.919 depriving itself or getting deprived of nutrients, it formed like 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.560 a shell, like a spore or shell on top to 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.000 basically protect everything underneath it. That's the one I thought 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:03.240 with nothing, That's the one I thought was scabbing over. Correct, 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:05.719 that was that one. Yeah, so you know, in the 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:09.400 cold dark, no water, no nothing, about thirty of these 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.440 things survived. That's survival. Okay, So then we have one 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:18.240 last factor, chuck time. Yes, so it's not like this 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:22.080 is a ten hour, two week trip like this can 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.600 take a really long time for a rock to escape 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:27.800 mars Is gravity and then basically make its way to 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.960 Earth millions of years that kind of time. Cane bacteria 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:37.040 survive that length of time? Sure, why not? Well, in 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.840 some really smart people at cal Poly isolated a living 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.479 spore from the gut of a bee preserved in amber, 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:47.920 kind of right out of Jurassic Park. How long ago 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.000 would that be? Been? Preserved in Nember to forty million 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:54.199 years and the bacteria is still alive. Yes, And that 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.439 is not even the most amazing one, the most amazing. No. No, 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:03.360 Russell uh re Land of west Chester University in Pennsylvania 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:08.760 extracted bacteria from a two hundred and fifty million year 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:13.119 old salt crystal. Living bacteria, Yeah, chapped inside liquid in 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:15.480 that salt crystal. So I think all the questions have 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.760 been answered, is like, it's not probable, but it's feasible 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:22.760 at least that these things could have taken place. So 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:26.720 it is possible that we are in our origin Martians. 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:32.159 That's right. It's still raises a question, Chuck, what's that? 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:39.320 Where did that life begin? Yeah? Jeez, that's it. Dial 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:41.879 it back even further. That's all I got. You got 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:45.719 anything else right now? That's all I got. So I 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:50.000 would recommend going to how stuff works dot com and 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:52.439 typing in are we all Martians? And will bring up 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:57.520 this article UM. On the site, you can also type 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:00.399 in origin life Earth in the search barineal up my 0:22:00.560 --> 0:22:05.000 article on panspermia and a biogenesis. Actually, there was one 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.080 more thing we should have pointed out. What we said 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:13.200 that it can take fifteen million years for these meteorites 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:15.959 to to reach Earth, but we didn't point out that 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:18.600 that's not always the case. Sometimes these things find their 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:21.119 way to Earth in just a few years or day. 0:22:21.240 --> 0:22:26.320 It doesn't always take fifty million years. Okay, Chuck Josh. 0:22:26.400 --> 0:22:29.680 Before we go any further, we need to tell everybody 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:34.719 to go do some reading, too, sweet agreed o horror 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:38.000 fiction contest. That's right, as everyone knows, every Halloween for 0:22:38.040 --> 0:22:41.800 the past couple of years, we read a horror story 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:44.800 and Jerry Jazz is it all up with sound design. 0:22:44.880 --> 0:22:47.280 She does good work. And this year Josh had a 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:49.639 pretty awesome idea that sort of bad us on the 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:53.280 behind by calling for fans submissions, and we got a 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:55.720 lot of them. We got a hundred and four of them, uh, 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:57.680 and they had to be between three thousand and four 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:00.840 thousand words. So we read between three h four hundred 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:03.919 thousand words of these submissions, and we went through and 0:23:03.920 --> 0:23:06.080 we picked out our favorite sixteen and it was tough. 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:08.639 There's some really good stuff in there. Um, but we 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:10.560 came up with the Sweet sixteen, and now it's up 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:12.879 to you guys out there to pick which one we 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:17.440 read for the Halloween episode. Um, we've entered the sixteen 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:21.000 into this fancy little bracket UM game. A widget on 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:25.560 the house Stuff Works website has this grossly inappropriate country 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:30.520 music that we can't disable. There's there were extensive emails 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:32.200 about whether or not we can just say what we can't. 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:34.560 We couldn't like put horror sounds or anything. No. I 0:23:34.600 --> 0:23:37.160 wanted to so bad. So it's like this really scary 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:43.400 bracket game with like the it's crazy anyway, Um, there's 0:23:43.400 --> 0:23:46.240 bracket's brackets up there. First you need to go to 0:23:46.680 --> 0:23:50.320 UM type this into your favorite search engine blogs how 0:23:50.440 --> 0:23:56.040 stuff works, uh Sweet sixteen here, and it'll bring up 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:59.040 this blog post that has a link to all sixteen 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:02.199 articles or um entries. Yeah. We're also linking to this 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:05.080 on our Facebook and Twitter, so you can do that too. Yeah. Uh. 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:07.240