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Speaker 1: The Thread is a new hit podcast from Ozzy Media

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Speaker 1: that explores history surprising connections in order to discover how

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Speaker 1: one thing leads to another, like how movie moguls in

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Speaker 1: early Hollywood helps spark the me Too movement today. Get

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Speaker 1: it on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen. Now

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Speaker 1: here's a highlight from coast to coast. Am on I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio, David. I'm hearing dates of of trying to

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Speaker 1: colonize Mars. What's going on here? The corporation space X

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Speaker 1: that Elon Musk started in two thousand and two is

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Speaker 1: the closest to sending astronauts to Mars. Elon Musk has

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Speaker 1: talked about sending astronauts as soon as the organization called

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Speaker 1: Mars One, which is a Dutch corporation, talks about establishing

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Speaker 1: a colony on Mars with astronauts. By those dates are

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Speaker 1: very very soon. I think Elon Musk and SpaceX probably

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Speaker 1: could succeed, if not in four then probably soon thereafter.

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Speaker 1: That assumes their next rocket called the BFR for the

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Speaker 1: Big Falcon Rocket. The BFR, if it works, will be

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Speaker 1: big enough and powerful enough to get humans to Mars.

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Speaker 1: It will be a bit more powerful than the Saturn

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Speaker 1: five rockets that took astronauts to the Moon a generation ago,

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Speaker 1: but that rocket doesn't exist yet. They're supposed to have

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Speaker 1: the first launches of the BFR and if they meet

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Speaker 1: their schedule, then they will have a rocket that can

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Speaker 1: get to Mars. They then plan to start using it

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Speaker 1: in to start sending unmanned payloads to Mars, dropping packages

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Speaker 1: of habitats and food and other supplies on Mars, and

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Speaker 1: follow it up two years later with astronauts Mars one.

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Speaker 1: The Dutch group, they have astronauts and they have investors,

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Speaker 1: but they don't actually have rockets or how they're planning

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Speaker 1: to get to Mars, but they talk about getting there.

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Speaker 1: NASA is also in this competition. NASA talks about sending

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Speaker 1: astronauts to the Mars system in the they are not

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Speaker 1: talking about putting astronauts on the actual surface of Mars,

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Speaker 1: and there are reasons for that. The main reason is

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Speaker 1: it's very, very costly in terms of energy to get

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Speaker 1: down to the surface of Mars safely and then to

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Speaker 1: launch back off the surface to come home. At the moment,

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Speaker 1: we don't have rockets that are strong enough, powerful enough

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Speaker 1: to take us too Mars onto the surface of Mars

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Speaker 1: back up and to bring astronauts home. And even if

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Speaker 1: we had the rockets, once you're on the surface of Mars,

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Speaker 1: you actually need fuel for those rockets to launch off

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Speaker 1: the surface. If your listeners have remember watching rocket launches

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Speaker 1: from Florida, most of what we see in those rockets

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Speaker 1: are giant fuel tanks a mendo some ount of energy,

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Speaker 1: tremendous amount of fuel to get off the surface of

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Speaker 1: the Earth, and the same is true on Mars. And

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Speaker 1: if you want to get back off the surface of Mars,

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Speaker 1: you'd either have to take the fuel with you, which

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Speaker 1: we don't know how to do, or you'd have to

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Speaker 1: manufacture the fuel on Mars, which we don't know how

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Speaker 1: to do. So NASA is not yet talking about landing

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Speaker 1: on Mars because NASA couldn't get those astronauts home again.

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Speaker 1: And NASA can't do that because they're using your tax

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Speaker 1: dollars to do that. Elon Musk is talking about sending

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Speaker 1: colonists to the surface of Mars who he believes will

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Speaker 1: be able to survive on the surface of Mars, and

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Speaker 1: if he can get them there, they'd better be able

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Speaker 1: to survive on the surface of Mars because he can't

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Speaker 1: bring him home. Now, are we also talking about the

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Speaker 1: possibility of a one way trip for an astronaut? At

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Speaker 1: the moment, the only trip to Mars, to the surface

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Speaker 1: of Mars that is possible is a one way trip,

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Speaker 1: a NASA trip in which we send astronauts into orbit

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Speaker 1: around Mars but not down to the urface. We could

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Speaker 1: probably bring them home again. But at the moment, nobody,

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Speaker 1: not SpaceX, not Mars One, not NASA, nobody can send

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Speaker 1: someone to the surface of Mars and get them back

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Speaker 1: off the surface and bring them home. So yes, at

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Speaker 1: the moment, anybody who goes to Mars is contemplating a

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Speaker 1: one way mission. There are some people who actually would

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Speaker 1: do that, David, and in Gosh, I don't know how

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Speaker 1: they can. Mentally, I think there are lots and lots

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Speaker 1: of people who would do it for lots of reasons.

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Speaker 1: I'm not one of them. I would want to be

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Speaker 1: able to come home again. Yeah, I want to see

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Speaker 1: my kids and my grandkids. But you have kids and grandkids.

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Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who are not that

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Speaker 1: tied to Earth. Maybe they don't have much or any family,

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Speaker 1: they don't have the deep connections to society that some

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Speaker 1: of us have, and maybe they just want to be famous.

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Speaker 1: They want to be the next Neil Armstrong. They want

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Speaker 1: their names to be in the history books, so that

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Speaker 1: they're willing to go and take the risk of going

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Speaker 1: on a one way journey with their fingers crossed a

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Speaker 1: maybe by the time they get there, or maybe after

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Speaker 1: they've lived there for forty years, we will have developed

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Speaker 1: the technology to bring them back home. Let's when we

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Speaker 1: take calls next hour. Let's see if anybody would take

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Speaker 1: that one way trip. I think if they are willing to,

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Speaker 1: they also have to understand that the risk isn't just

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Speaker 1: that it's a one way trip. The risk is that

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Speaker 1: it might be a suicide mission because at the moment,

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Speaker 1: we can't keep them alive on the surface of Mars.

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Speaker 1: We don't have the food, we don't have the water,

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Speaker 1: we don't have the ability to manufacture the food. Despite

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Speaker 1: what Matt Damon was able to do in The Martian,

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Speaker 1: which was the movie, we don't have the ability to

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Speaker 1: grow potatoes or anything else on Mars right now. Can

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Speaker 1: we even create a habitat like he was living in

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Speaker 1: at the moment. No, There are a lot of people

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Speaker 1: working on developing habitats that might work. But this we

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Speaker 1: talked earlier about ultra violet light getting to the surface

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Speaker 1: of Mars. That ultra violet light makes the surface of

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Speaker 1: Mars an incredibly dangerous place for living beings like ourselves.

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Speaker 1: X rays get to the surface of Mars. The amount

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Speaker 1: of radiation that penetrates to the surface of Mars means

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Speaker 1: that at the moment, we would die fairly quickly from

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Speaker 1: radiation poisoning on the surface of Mars. So we need

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Speaker 1: to invent habitats that can protect us from that radiation,

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Speaker 1: and we haven't successfully done that yet. Well, what David Weintroump,

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Speaker 1: His latest book is called Life on Mars. David, you

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Speaker 1: wrote a book called Religions and Extraterrestrial Life. How will

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Speaker 1: we deal with it? Let's talk a little bit about

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Speaker 1: that too. What are your thoughts on et life? I

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Speaker 1: think the bottom line is we have no idea what

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Speaker 1: is or isn't out there. All the ingredients for life

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Speaker 1: as we know it, water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, all

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Speaker 1: the building blocks of life exists pretty much everywhere in

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Speaker 1: the universe. The same stuff exists on any other planet

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Speaker 1: in the verse as exists on the Earth. So life

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Speaker 1: could come into existence somewhere else, but we don't have

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Speaker 1: any answers. One of the things that got me interested

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Speaker 1: in the question and in writing that book was that

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Speaker 1: over the last twenty years, astronomers have become very good

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Speaker 1: at discovering planets around other stars, what we call exoplanets,

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Speaker 1: and we now know are thousands of these planets around

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Speaker 1: other stars. The next step for astronomers now that we've

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Speaker 1: found these planets is to study the light coming from

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Speaker 1: those planets. And if you imagine for a moment that

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Speaker 1: you could take a telescope from the other side of

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Speaker 1: the Milky Way galaxy. You live on a planet one

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand light years from the Earth, And if you

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Speaker 1: could discover that the Sun has a planet, the Earth,

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Speaker 1: orbiting it, and you could use your telescope to study

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Speaker 1: the light from the Earth, you would know that life

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Speaker 1: exists on the Earth because you would see in the

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Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere the signa cheers of oxygen and ozone and methane,

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Speaker 1: and all of those things come from biology. So you

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Speaker 1: would not have to journey across the galaxy. You would

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Speaker 1: have to not have to get into a spaceship and

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Speaker 1: travel to the Earth. You could simply use your telescope

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Speaker 1: and look across hundreds of thousands of light years and

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Speaker 1: be absolutely certain that life exists on the Earth. So

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Speaker 1: having discovered these other planets, the next step for astronomers

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Speaker 1: is to do exactly that, to train our telescopes on

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Speaker 1: those exo planets, study the light from those exoplanets and

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Speaker 1: see if any of them show signs of biology. What

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Speaker 1: we are doing right now is we are changing the

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Speaker 1: question is their life in the universe, from one of

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Speaker 1: pure speculation into a scientific question which in the next

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Speaker 1: century we might actually answer. That's incredible. How far, David,

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Speaker 1: could you be out with a telescope, a huge one

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Speaker 1: to see the city lights, let's say, from New York,

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Speaker 1: off a planet Earth. That's a great question. I don't

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Speaker 1: have an answer to that question. I think you could

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Speaker 1: see that the lights from the Earth, the unnatural lights

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Speaker 1: from the Earth, with a telescope, probably anywhere in the

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Speaker 1: Milky Way galaxy. But quite honestly, I'm just guessing at

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Speaker 1: that you would know that the side of the Earth

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Speaker 1: that faces away from the Sun, the night time side

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Speaker 1: of the Earth, should be dark. The only light emitted

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Speaker 1: from that side of the Earth should be heat that

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere and the rocks have absorbed from the Sun

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Speaker 1: and then are radiating back into space infrared light. And

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Speaker 1: you would see from the Earth a tremendous amount of

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Speaker 1: visible light that could not be the result of the

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Speaker 1: natural heat from the Earth. And I think you'd be

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Speaker 1: able to detect that from fairly great distances, almost certainly

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Speaker 1: from anywhere in the Milky Way galaxy, with the current

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Speaker 1: large telescopes that we own. Well, then you'd have to

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Speaker 1: conclude that there's some artificial light on that planet there,

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Speaker 1: that third planet from the Sun, and somebody built it. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: you would almost certainly draw out conclusion that's exciting, and

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Speaker 1: maybe one day we'll find that on other planets here.

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Speaker 1: I think in the lifetimes of your children and grandchildren,

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Speaker 1: astronomers will have studied the light from hundreds of thousands,

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Speaker 1: possibly even millions, of other planets around other stars. And

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Speaker 1: if from all those other planets we don't see signs

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Speaker 1: of light that is unnatural, we don't see signs of

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Speaker 1: gases in the atmosphere that could only come from biology,

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Speaker 1: then we will draw the conclusion that our galaxy is

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Speaker 1: a fairly lonely place at least for intelligent life, but

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Speaker 1: we also may discover on one or more than one

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Speaker 1: of those other planets some of these signatures that tell

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Speaker 1: life is out there. Again, we have no idea right now,

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Speaker 1: but we are on the cusp of making the measurements

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Speaker 1: that will give us some of these answers. We've had

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Speaker 1: a lot of guests on the program David over the years, who,

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Speaker 1: of course believe that we've been life here has been

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Speaker 1: seated by extraterrestrial life that they visited us. Be regardless

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Speaker 1: of where people stand on that, I think to to

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Speaker 1: to think that this universe is not teeming with some

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Speaker 1: kind of intelligent life, uh, is a mistake. There's probably

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Speaker 1: billions of planets that support intelligent life out there. There

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Speaker 1: are certainly billions of planets that could support intelligent life.

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Speaker 1: As a scientist, I take the approach of knowing that

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Speaker 1: we don't know the answer that yes, almost certainly there

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Speaker 1: are plenty of places where if you took life as

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Speaker 1: we know it and put it there, it could survive.

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Speaker 1: But at the moment we simply don't have any evidence

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Speaker 1: one way the other that it's out there. But certainly

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Speaker 1: there are plenty of places where it could exist, and

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Speaker 1: if life naturally develops simply when you have the right environment,

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Speaker 1: when you have liquid water, when you have a heat source,

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Speaker 1: when you have the right chemical components, then life is

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Speaker 1: probably abundant in the universe, of course, and with the

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Speaker 1: Frank Drake equation, where you know, he theorizes that the

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Speaker 1: probability of life out there is astronomical. I think it's there.

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Speaker 1: I think it's there, and I look forward to learning

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Speaker 1: whether you're right or not. And I can't challenge you

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Speaker 1: and say you're wrong because I simply have no idea.

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Speaker 1: But I agree with you completely that the potential for

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Speaker 1: life is huge beyond Earth. Listen to more Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast a m every weeknight at one a m. Eastern,

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Speaker 1: and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for

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Speaker 1: more