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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast Mitchio Cocco,

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Speaker 1: of course, Professor or theoretical Physics at the City University

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Speaker 1: of New York. He's the co founder of the string

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Speaker 1: field theory. He is a best selling author a couple

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Speaker 1: of his books, The Future of Humanity, The Future of Mind,

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Speaker 1: and has written several books on physics and related topics.

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Speaker 1: He's been a frequent guest on radio and television programs

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Speaker 1: and film, and here he is back on Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast Doctor Mitchio, how are you, sir? Very good, very good.

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Speaker 1: It's been a long time. We did not have a

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Speaker 1: chance to talk to you. You were on a few

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Speaker 1: weeks before Art Bell died, and I wanted to give

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Speaker 1: you a few seconds to Mitchio before we get going

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Speaker 1: with this incredible program with you tonight, to chat a

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Speaker 1: little bit about Art. You were on with him many

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Speaker 1: many times, weren't you. Yes, that's right. I was one

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Speaker 1: of his favorite guests. I think you sure? Were you sure?

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Speaker 1: We're used to tell us about you all the time,

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Speaker 1: and you were so generous to stay with us after

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Speaker 1: artt hired and what a loss though, My gosh, and

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Speaker 1: it's hard to believe it's a little over a year

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Speaker 1: that he's been gone. Yeah, you know, I think we

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Speaker 1: really miss him. He was really a very very strong, clear,

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Speaker 1: clearian voice out there. He was one of a kind. Well,

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Speaker 1: thank you for everything you've done for us, for the show,

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Speaker 1: for him. We really appreciate it. And you're doing a

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Speaker 1: lot of things these days, aren't you. Yeah. I just

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Speaker 1: got off a book tour. My latest book, you know,

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Speaker 1: The Future of Humanity, about the space program, hit the

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Speaker 1: paperback best seller list as well as the hardcover best

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Speaker 1: seller list. So I've been on the road. You sure are,

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Speaker 1: and you're just still doing personal appearances as well. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I was just on Facebook Live this morning. We had

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Speaker 1: forty seven thousand people tune in to that live interview

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Speaker 1: on Facebook just this morning. Oh that's fantastic. You think

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Speaker 1: that we may have to leave planet Earth one time?

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Speaker 1: Tell us about that. Yeah, you know, the dinosaurs did

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Speaker 1: not have a space program, and that's why they're not

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Speaker 1: here today to talk about it. We do have a

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Speaker 1: space program, and costs are dropping like a rock. You know,

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Speaker 1: the movie The Martian with Matt Damon. Yes, one hundred

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Speaker 1: million dollars to make, but the Indian government sent a

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Speaker 1: probe to Mars for seventy million dollars. So the Hollywood

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Speaker 1: movie about going to Mars costs more than actually going

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Speaker 1: to Mars. That's how much costs have dropped over the decades.

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Speaker 1: And you know, it's been fifty years since we went

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Speaker 1: to the moon, but now we have not one, not two,

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Speaker 1: but three potential moon rockets capable of going to the Moon.

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Speaker 1: There could be a traffic jam around the Moon in

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Speaker 1: the coming years. Well, you know, right before you came on,

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Speaker 1: I was talking with doctor Stephen Kates about what NASA

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Speaker 1: is working on, and they're starting to really push plans

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Speaker 1: in the events an asteroid has headed our way. What

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Speaker 1: they're going to do about it, if they can do

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Speaker 1: anything about it. Do you think, doctor Kuckold, that they

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Speaker 1: know there's something going on and they're just not telling

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Speaker 1: us because we'd be panicking like crazy. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: they track these things. However, they track these things that

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Speaker 1: are bigger than to say, a football field. Things smaller

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Speaker 1: than a football field, we don't really track at all.

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Speaker 1: We don't have the funds for it, we don't have

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Speaker 1: the interest for it. And yet things smaller than a

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Speaker 1: football field, you know, the size of an apartment building,

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Speaker 1: they're potential citybusters, capable of knocking out an entire city.

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Speaker 1: And so they should level with us and tell us

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Speaker 1: that they simply don't have enough funds to start the track.

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Speaker 1: Objects smaller than a football field. If we were to

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Speaker 1: leave the planet, would it be in mass? I mean,

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Speaker 1: how many people could we at the time we decide

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Speaker 1: to leave, How many people could we send out into space?

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Speaker 1: And where would we send them? Well, right now the

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Speaker 1: answer is zero. We are sitting ducks, Sitting ducks to

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Speaker 1: a potential strike from out of space. Because you know,

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Speaker 1: everyone thinks we have Bruce Willis and the Space Shuttle

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Speaker 1: to blow up an asteroid or a comet, right but

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Speaker 1: you see, the Space Shuttle has been canceled, and the

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Speaker 1: Space Shuttle, even when it was in operation, could not

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Speaker 1: reach deep space. We are clueless as to how to

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Speaker 1: stop one of these things. Let's say NAID attacks an

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Speaker 1: objects smaller than a football field headed our way. What

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Speaker 1: can we do? Basically pray, that's about it. If we

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Speaker 1: try to blow it up with a nuke, all these

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Speaker 1: other fragments could cause bigger problems, right, that's right, we

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Speaker 1: don't know the consistency of an asteroid. The asteroid could

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Speaker 1: be basically loose rock held together by gravity, and by

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Speaker 1: blowing it up, you just have a whole bunch of

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Speaker 1: these smaller asteroids which can ca is a lot more

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Speaker 1: danger than one big asteroid. And so that's another reason

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Speaker 1: why we should seriously think about beating up our space program.

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Speaker 1: And like I said, costs are dropping to the point

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Speaker 1: where I think space tourism will eventually take us to

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Speaker 1: the Moon. You know that Elon Musk is SpaceX is

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Speaker 1: actually selling tickets, tickets for going through the Moon on

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Speaker 1: his Moon rocket. This is serious business now and people

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Speaker 1: are buying those tickets. Yeah, I think our grandkids may

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Speaker 1: have the option of honeymooning on the Moon. And Japanese

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Speaker 1: billionaires have already already bought out the Moon rocket that

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk is fielding, and so he already has they

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Speaker 1: completely sold out the Moon rocket ready to go. It's amazing.

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Speaker 1: And your new book, of course, as you mentioned, the

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Speaker 1: Future of Humanity, talks about terraforming Mars, creating an atmosphere

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Speaker 1: that would be livable for humans. Is that a hundred

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Speaker 1: years away. Well, if it would be a distant future,

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Speaker 1: of course. However, if we can raise the temperature of

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Speaker 1: Mars by six degrees, just by six degrees, then you

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Speaker 1: get a runaway greenhouse effect. The warm of the planet

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Speaker 1: is the more water vapor is released from the polar

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Speaker 1: ice caps, which creates more global warming. And so the

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Speaker 1: greenhouse effect is actually a good thing when it comes

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Speaker 1: to Mars, because you just raise the temperature gets by

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Speaker 1: a few degrees and it takes off all by itself.

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Speaker 1: And the way to do it well, Elon must says,

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Speaker 1: maybe we should drop hydrogen bombs on the polar ice

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Speaker 1: caps and melt the polar ice caps. A less dangerous

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Speaker 1: way to terraform Mars is to have solar satellites. Solar

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Speaker 1: satell beamed sunlight down to the polar ice caps. There's

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Speaker 1: plenty of water. Mars has plenty of water. Mars has

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Speaker 1: had water for river is in even an ocean, an

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Speaker 1: ocean about the signs of the United States. That's how

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Speaker 1: much water Mars has in the polar ice caps. It

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Speaker 1: would be almost like holding a big magnifying glass over

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Speaker 1: the planet, wouldn't it. That's right. Some people have thought

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Speaker 1: about putting these solar satellites around the Earth beaming microwaves

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Speaker 1: down to Earth. However, Mars would even be easier just

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Speaker 1: to be microwareradiation down to the polar icecaps and to

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Speaker 1: begin the process because Mars already. Mars already has plenty

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Speaker 1: of water, it's that's frozen. That's the problem. Without an

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Speaker 1: atmosphere where we could breathe, without air machines and things

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Speaker 1: like that, what kind of a life would it be

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Speaker 1: for an astronaut to have to be confined, let's say,

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Speaker 1: to some kind of bubble terrain. Well, initially it is

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Speaker 1: going to be rather confining because you know, you can't

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Speaker 1: live off the land. Our early pioneers in the United

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Speaker 1: States they could live off the land because there was

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Speaker 1: vegetables they could grow, there were animals they could kill,

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Speaker 1: there was air to breathe. Mars has none of them.

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Speaker 1: So it will be difficult the initial settlement on Mars.

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Speaker 1: We'll have to brave the fact that there's no food

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Speaker 1: on Mars. However, we can now genetically modify algae and

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Speaker 1: seaweed and plants to thrive in a carbon dioxide atmosphere

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Speaker 1: of Mars. So using genetic engineering, it may be possible

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Speaker 1: to create agriculture. Agriculture on Mars for the first time,

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Speaker 1: and price of course love carbon dioxide, and they give

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Speaker 1: up oxygen that we can breathe. Plus the ice. There's

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Speaker 1: plenty of ice on Mars. We can melt the ice

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Speaker 1: and use it for drinking water. After we terify it

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Speaker 1: and separate out the oxygen and hydrogen, we can breathe

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Speaker 1: the oxygen and the hydrogen we can use for rocket fuel.

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Speaker 1: And so there's plenty of things that NASA has worked

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Speaker 1: out as to what to do once we get our

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Speaker 1: astronauts on the Moon and Mars, what would we have

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Speaker 1: to do to train them in terms of their psyche

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Speaker 1: because being on Mars in a terrain like that, in

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Speaker 1: a bubble would be awfully boring. I mean, what would happen. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: at first you're going to have to get used to

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Speaker 1: the fact that you are a pioneer. But eventually I

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Speaker 1: think we're going to have you Martian sports and Martian entertainment.

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Speaker 1: You know, Mars has plenty of sights that would be

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Speaker 1: tourist attractions on the planet Earth. The biggest volcano on

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Speaker 1: four planets, Mount Olympus, not to mention a grand canyon

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Speaker 1: the size of the United States of America three thousand

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Speaker 1: helves long. That's how big the Grand Canyon of Mars is.

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Speaker 1: So there's plenty of tourist attractions on Mars once we

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Speaker 1: get a settlement on Mars. Is there any sizeable amount

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Speaker 1: of oxygen on the planet right now that would allow

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Speaker 1: a human to without an apparatus? Nothing. The atmosphere is

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Speaker 1: one percent the atmospheric pressure on the planet Earth, and

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Speaker 1: most of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, which of course

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Speaker 1: plants love, right, plants could convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen.

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Speaker 1: Sure would I hate to be the first one to

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Speaker 1: have to take that helmet off and take a gasp,

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Speaker 1: but just to see what it's like. Well, we saw

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Speaker 1: that scene in the movie Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger

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Speaker 1: is thrown on the Martian desert without a spacesuit, and

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Speaker 1: it's not a very pleasant scene in that movie. Great movie,

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Speaker 1: by the way, it was a great movie. You're late colleague,

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Speaker 1: doctor Stephen Hawking, proposed that we leave the planet as well.

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Speaker 1: So what is it about you incredible scientists that see

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Speaker 1: something that we folks just don't see right now? Well,

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Speaker 1: we think it's inevitable. So a lot of physics. Physics

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Speaker 1: has a death warrant for life on the planet Earth.

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Speaker 1: In five billion years, the Sun is going to expand

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Speaker 1: and eat up the Earth. Poets asked the question, will

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Speaker 1: the Earth end in fire or ice? We know the answer.

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Speaker 1: The answer is fire. The Sun will eat up the

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Speaker 1: Earth and the sky will be on fire. The mountains

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Speaker 1: will melt, the oceans will boil, and we will have

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Speaker 1: the last nice day on the planet Earth. So that's

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Speaker 1: on a scale of five billion years. On a scale

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Speaker 1: of millions of years, we have asteroid impacts that could

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Speaker 1: take us out. Every fifty million years or so, a

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Speaker 1: planet buster could conceivably hit the planet Earth to wipe

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Speaker 1: out the dinosaurs and wipe us out as well. And

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Speaker 1: then we have supervolcanoes like a Yellowstone These Yellowstone National

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Speaker 1: Park is a gigantic supervolcano that will eventually rip the

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Speaker 1: guts out of the United States of America. It will

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Speaker 1: go again. It goes every six hundred thousand years, and

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Speaker 1: it's overdue, overdue, and it's inevitable. I mean, it's a

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Speaker 1: law of physics that that supervolcano will will erupt. And then,

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Speaker 1: of course, on a scale of decades. We have the

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Speaker 1: possibility of nuclear perspiration, the greenhouse effect, weaponized designer journs,

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Speaker 1: you name it. That we've got problems to face. And

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Speaker 1: that's why we physicists say we meet an insurance policy,

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Speaker 1: an insurance policy just in case something bad happens naturally

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Speaker 1: or artificially. And just remember that ninety nine point nine

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Speaker 1: percent of all life forms on the Earth eventually go extinct.

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Speaker 1: Extinction is the norm. Extinction is the norm. If you

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Speaker 1: don't believe me, just dig right under your feet. Right

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Speaker 1: under your feet are the bones of the ninety nine

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Speaker 1: point nine percent life forms that never made it. So

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Speaker 1: we don't want to go the way of ninety nine

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Speaker 1: point nine percent of all species on the planet Earth.

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Speaker 1: By the nature he gets tired of organisms and boom,

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Speaker 1: they're extinct. We don't want to go that way, and

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Speaker 1: that's why we need an insurance policy so that we

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Speaker 1: have a settlement, a self sufficient settlement on Mars and beyond.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com for more