Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Hey, Julie,
Speaker 1: have you ever renovated a house? I have. I have
Speaker 1: to tell you that wallpaper removal is the scourge of
Speaker 1: all renovators. It's awful, that's gross. I've never had to
Speaker 1: do that. I had to scrape piles off of hardwood floors,
Speaker 1: but that's about it. I don't know. I haven't done
Speaker 1: that actually, so I can't say if it's worse. But
Speaker 1: I can't say that my own experience, you know, being
Speaker 1: in a really small room, you know, filled with fumes
Speaker 1: like fel methyl kind of stuff and trying to just
Speaker 1: inch my inch and get you know, flowered wallpaper from
Speaker 1: the nine is a horrible thing. Yellow women running around
Speaker 1: in them and all that. Yeah, yes, because, uh, I
Speaker 1: mean it's rough with with renovating because you often you'll
Speaker 1: come in to a house or space that is in
Speaker 1: some cases unlivable, and you you have to put all
Speaker 1: this work into it just to get it up to
Speaker 1: the standard where you can be comfortable with the fact
Speaker 1: that you live in this space. Uh, and that's not
Speaker 1: even you know, discussing the process of getting it where
Speaker 1: you want it to eventually be exactly and if you will,
Speaker 1: which can take forever and never happen, that's right, has
Speaker 1: to become habitable at some point. You've got to get
Speaker 1: the the pp shot sent out of the floor. Yes,
Speaker 1: I sometimes there's a meth lab spas the same smell
Speaker 1: catp meth lab, that's what say. But I tell you
Speaker 1: a real fixer upper out there that that really it's
Speaker 1: far rougher than any wallpaper issues you've had, or or
Speaker 1: tiles on the hardwoods that I've had. And that is
Speaker 1: the prospect of moving to the planet March. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that is screaming for a redo. Yeah. That place is rough,
Speaker 1: garish red color. And uh, I mean it's just you
Speaker 1: couldn't live on March right now. That's kind of an
Speaker 1: overstatement of the obvious. But but but you could not
Speaker 1: live in it. You would have to ter a form it,
Speaker 1: which is the planetary version of renovating a space. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I at first I used to think about it
Speaker 1: as as like a terrarium for humans, although there would
Speaker 1: be no dome. But I like the idea of having
Speaker 1: this gigantic terrarium on Mars filled with humans. But that's
Speaker 1: really not what scientists are thinking. Yeah they're they're not
Speaker 1: thinking as much as of that, but just sort of.
Speaker 1: But but it does come down to we really wish
Speaker 1: this place is a little more like Earth, um because
Speaker 1: we want to be able to potentially live there. What
Speaker 1: can we do to make it happen? And I go ahead, No,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, so, well, why why do it?
Speaker 1: That's what I keep struggling with with this topic, like
Speaker 1: why would you tear for Mars? Yeah, that this is
Speaker 1: a big one because it's hard to make the argument
Speaker 1: that we need to be on March right now unless
Speaker 1: I mean some people, if you're Robert Superan, uh yesterday,
Speaker 1: and then we should have been yesterday years ago. I Mean,
Speaker 1: one of the big key arguments is that it has
Speaker 1: to do with the long term survival of the human race,
Speaker 1: that that eventually we're gonna have to become an interplanetary
Speaker 1: uh race, We're gonna have to become an interstellar race
Speaker 1: because we've got six billion of us right now and
Speaker 1: we're not stopping. We're We're yeah, we're growing. There's a
Speaker 1: the Earth isn't gonna last forever. And if we have
Speaker 1: this idea that we're gonna last forever, we're gonna need
Speaker 1: to expand out diversify our planetary portfolio. Okay, and sort
Speaker 1: of like the lorax, We've we've done a real number
Speaker 1: to our own environment, right, so we want to try
Speaker 1: to maybe escape our atmosphere and go to a new
Speaker 1: virgin atmosphere. That's all lussion. Pretty Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: you see less of that these days, but it seems
Speaker 1: like that was a real driving force for a while,
Speaker 1: Like all right, well, this one's about used up. What's next.
Speaker 1: But but at a very basic level, if we're gonna
Speaker 1: becoming an interplanetary interstellar race, you've got to take those
Speaker 1: baby steps. You So people talk about going to the
Speaker 1: going to Mars, and then it expands from there. The
Speaker 1: other side of it, and this is generally touted as
Speaker 1: more of a secondary argument, is that UM, in the
Speaker 1: same way that the Age of Discovery propelled scientific innovation,
Speaker 1: so too would the terraforming and eventual colonization of another
Speaker 1: world UM stir up a lot of technical innovation that
Speaker 1: would benefit life on Earth. Yeah. Actually, I even pulled
Speaker 1: a quote to that effect, because I thought, well, that
Speaker 1: is interesting, that that's the sort of view I can
Speaker 1: take on and say, Okay, it might be worth our
Speaker 1: time because indirectly we would get all this technology. UM.
Speaker 1: Dr Adrian Brown of SETI, with that Search for Extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: Life Institute. UM, he had actually said something very similar
Speaker 1: to that, saying that we wouldn't have invented such precise
Speaker 1: time keeping and navigational technology if we didn't need it
Speaker 1: in order to cross huge expanses of ocean to reach
Speaker 1: frontiers in Asia, Africa, in the New World. So he's
Speaker 1: using that same analogy for space, yeah, which I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting. Thy, Yeah, it is. And uh. And then
Speaker 1: there's the whole argument too that to really understand Mars,
Speaker 1: we would need to be there now. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how well that holds up with our continued advances in
Speaker 1: the robotic exploration techniques, but there's you definitely run across
Speaker 1: that argument. We're saying like, if we want to we
Speaker 1: want to get to the bottom of the possibility of
Speaker 1: life on Mars now or life in its distant path,
Speaker 1: and therefore understand the um evolution of life in the
Speaker 1: cosmos better than we're going to need to be there
Speaker 1: so well, and see I do understand the argument too,
Speaker 1: but then I also kind of think, well, if you
Speaker 1: if you have samples that are collected by robots and
Speaker 1: sent back, you know, you have the data that you
Speaker 1: need part of It's kind of like you have to
Speaker 1: admit it would be just really cool to be on Mars,
Speaker 1: and that's a reason to go. It's kind of like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're as of recording this, we're planning to
Speaker 1: go to south By Southwest to record something. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like if you know, if someone were to say, look,
Speaker 1: you really need to send us there, and we're we're
Speaker 1: making the argument because it would also be cool, you know,
Speaker 1: can be a little different if we just sent like
Speaker 1: a little hologram of ourselves. Yeah. Yeah, And that was
Speaker 1: on the table. We were saying, look, let's just been
Speaker 1: robot explorers to south By Southwest and then we're like, no,
Speaker 1: because we won't give the full effect and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and we'll also have more advanced technology for having to
Speaker 1: figure out how to send ourselves to it, right, So
Speaker 1: it's sort of a win win from Yeah, But so
Speaker 1: I'm also wondering why Mars, Why not Venus well, Mars
Speaker 1: is ultimately the better prospect. I mean, Venus is. I
Speaker 1: don't want to get up on Venus. The Venus is fascinating,
Speaker 1: but Venus is is pretty messed up. I mean it's
Speaker 1: a hot mess. Yeah, like it's it's a hot, highly pressurized,
Speaker 1: acid clouded world. And uh and and Mars it's just
Speaker 1: a little It's like if you're looking at two houses,
Speaker 1: Mars is the better fix it up property. I think
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning, like exactly what Venus is a teardown? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Venus is more of a teardown. I guess they're our
Speaker 1: terraforming schemes out there for Venus. But but we're gonna
Speaker 1: focus on Mars just because it's an easier prospect to understand, um,
Speaker 1: and to understand what what is what's exactly wrong with Mars? Right?
Speaker 1: We need to I feel like we need to, we
Speaker 1: need to look at that. So one of the big
Speaker 1: things terrible atmosphere, just really bad. Yeah. Then, um, you know,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that humans are involved to live in
Speaker 1: a very small atmospheric level of our own world and
Speaker 1: sort of a special sauce here that ye obviously isn't
Speaker 1: present on Mars. Yeah, and there are layers of this
Speaker 1: special sauce where we die. You know, if you got
Speaker 1: to go up to the top of Everest without any
Speaker 1: kind of transition, then you you wouldn't survive most people,
Speaker 1: most people the serpens would do, but they're used to it. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we wouldn't get enough oxygen we die. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's just just way too thin, it lacks efficient
Speaker 1: air pressure and contains way too much carbon dioxide. It's
Speaker 1: freezing to Yeah, it's also really cold. It's the to
Speaker 1: go back to the Goldilocks idea. Venus is too hot,
Speaker 1: Mars is too cold. Earth is just tract and if
Speaker 1: you had just even a speck of water at the
Speaker 1: moment that it hit the surface, it would just sizzle
Speaker 1: and evaporate. Yes. Um. There's also an important point to
Speaker 1: be made about there, the fact that there's no intact
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field um Earth as one. It's generated by hydrodynamic
Speaker 1: convection between the liquid outer core and the solid intercore.
Speaker 1: And without this shielding we to be exposed to a
Speaker 1: deadly stream of highly charged particles called the solar winds.
Speaker 1: So uh, for reasons we don't entirely understand yet, Mars
Speaker 1: lacks the protection of this electromagnetic field if they haven't,
Speaker 1: thank you lately. Yeah, they have. Mars has like only
Speaker 1: remnants of a magnetic field around its solar ice caps.
Speaker 1: So that's that's it's like not having a roof on
Speaker 1: the working roof and the mouse we'd have to figure
Speaker 1: out how to replace the roof. Um. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's that that's pretty rough. But there's some potential in
Speaker 1: Mars there. You know, there there is water on on
Speaker 1: the on the Martian surface, there's evidence that there used
Speaker 1: to be quite a bit right right, there's carbon and
Speaker 1: oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide, and there's nitrogen. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. The problem is that it's like the atmosphere
Speaker 1: there's like ninety point three percent carbon dioxide. It's just
Speaker 1: as a point as episode was it with like a
Speaker 1: point zero one or something point on Earth? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, and also on Mars it's like the oxygen
Speaker 1: there is point two percent, so really really low. So
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to supplement with oxygen nitrogen obviously, um,
Speaker 1: if you were to go in terraform. This in earnest
Speaker 1: also that the rotation rate is on par with the
Speaker 1: Earth's twenty four hour cycle. Yeah, and it's close enough
Speaker 1: to the sun to experience seasons, which is always lovely
Speaker 1: because you want seasons when you live in other worlds.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to have your winter home on
Speaker 1: one part in your summer home on the other, so
Speaker 1: Richard Branson. So, so then this comes to question, what
Speaker 1: would it take to fix it up, What would it
Speaker 1: take to get that new roof on it, to bump
Speaker 1: up the atmosphere, to scrape the horrible wallpaper off the
Speaker 1: walls of Mars and uh and make it look pretty again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there are actually some some very good ideas about this, right.
Speaker 1: It's good in the sense that they are solutions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're based in science. Um. I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of people like the idea of Like for me,
Speaker 1: the earliest experience I have with terraforming was seeing I
Speaker 1: think Aliens and they had the big terraforming stations and
Speaker 1: I only had a vague idea of what it was doing.
Speaker 1: That it was like, these giant buildings that are like
Speaker 1: spitting out smoke are going to somehow transform this world
Speaker 1: into a place that humans can live on. So the
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas effect, Yeah, well, a lot of It breaks
Speaker 1: down to that, like our experience and screwing up our
Speaker 1: own world crosses over to some of the ideas for
Speaker 1: making Mars a little more like what we want. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we want like big coal mining factories, which you're seeing,
Speaker 1: but basically the yeah, they're one of the ideas, the
Speaker 1: the Aliens model, if you will, is to create these
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas producing factories. Um you know, they would be uh,
Speaker 1: the same heating effect that we have here on Earth
Speaker 1: with greenhouse gases could be reproduced on Mars by setting
Speaker 1: up sending up hundreds of these factories across the Martians
Speaker 1: and releasing cfc CFCs methane, carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases,
Speaker 1: just pump it into the atmosphere, just basically pollution machines
Speaker 1: on on Mars to try and it's kind of like
Speaker 1: on Mars it's like the water is a little too hot,
Speaker 1: so we'll add some some some cold water to cool
Speaker 1: the bath down, and on Mars it is the reverse.
Speaker 1: So that's one scheme. Another involves large orbital mirrors to
Speaker 1: reflect the sunlight and heat the Martian surface. All right,
Speaker 1: This would giant mirrors kind of like the ones that
Speaker 1: the Soviets experimented with for the idea of of of
Speaker 1: of giving sunlight to dark regions during the winter uh,
Speaker 1: and these would would concentrate light onto the polar caps
Speaker 1: and melf the ice. This would release carbon oxide believed
Speaker 1: to be trapped inside the eyes, and the rise in
Speaker 1: temperatures would over the years would conceivably release greenhouse gases
Speaker 1: such as these CFCs and the same that you find
Speaker 1: in your air conditioner, so like melting polar caps, and
Speaker 1: then this would all lead to photosynthesis at some point,
Speaker 1: right for years and years and years, and again we're
Speaker 1: one of the things I think to think about is,
Speaker 1: you know, you've had some people say it could take centuries,
Speaker 1: and you have other people saying it could take thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of years. Yeah. One of the important things
Speaker 1: that when you're talking about changing an atmosphere, you're you
Speaker 1: get into this whole area of fluid dynamics, you get
Speaker 1: into the into into just the chaos theory itself. Just
Speaker 1: refreshure the idea that the chaos theory emerged from the
Speaker 1: attempt to create more reliable computer models of weather, of
Speaker 1: of how our atmosphere works, and the chaos theories is
Speaker 1: that you can only figure it out so far and
Speaker 1: then it just it just breaks down. So we're up
Speaker 1: against that and trying to figure out how to tinker
Speaker 1: with another world at fear we don't fully understand how
Speaker 1: our own works, or we at least the thing we
Speaker 1: understand the most about it is that it's incredibly complex.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of what ifs that end
Speaker 1: up falling into it in different people's figures. Will you
Speaker 1: know will say decades and another will say centuries. Well,
Speaker 1: and then there's the whole dark matter out in space,
Speaker 1: the fact that we don't really know what exactly it
Speaker 1: is and how it affects planets, right so, and then
Speaker 1: when we actually talked about this yesterday about the possibility
Speaker 1: of smashing ammonia heavy asteroids into the planet to sort
Speaker 1: of create the same greenhouse gas level effect. And this
Speaker 1: is another one that's UH that Robert Zubrin UH is
Speaker 1: really fond of and presented in his book A Case
Speaker 1: from Mars. And Zubrin is a really interesting guy. I
Speaker 1: get to interview him for a Discovery News article and
Speaker 1: I have I don't think I've ever interviewed somebody just
Speaker 1: so passionate about their thing, and I haven't plenty of
Speaker 1: people are really passionate about their their topics and their
Speaker 1: their their life's work. But Zubrin is in He's just
Speaker 1: like we should be on Mars yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: listened to the audiophile and at the risk of um,
Speaker 1: Robert Zubern like reaching out to me and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: you're the devil incarnate. That dude is a fanatic. But
Speaker 1: I kind of like that because you need those people,
Speaker 1: You need that passionate level in order to be like,
Speaker 1: we gotta do this, you know, yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: got it. You need extremist or and and and and
Speaker 1: extremely passionate people to push these ideas into the public mindset.
Speaker 1: Otherwise there's too many people would just not listen, right
Speaker 1: And and also you know, I know this is a
Speaker 1: little bit of an aside. I was thinking about him,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about his role and if even
Speaker 1: if this doesn't happen right now, I mean he he
Speaker 1: very well maybe like the da Vinci in the sense
Speaker 1: of his time and that you know, da Vinci had
Speaker 1: all these drawings for flight, but obviously the technology didn't
Speaker 1: exist until much much later. And you know, who knows
Speaker 1: people could go down in history be like that super
Speaker 1: and guy was righteous. He knew it I was talking
Speaker 1: about and he was he was ahead of his time.
Speaker 1: We should have in on Mars in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Right that being said, let's talk about the ammonia ridden
Speaker 1: aster which is a little bit creepy. Well, it's it's
Speaker 1: one of the another one of these ideas. This is
Speaker 1: very catastrophic sounding because you're talking messing with the planet's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It's it's very reminiscent of some of the the scenarios
Speaker 1: we look at with things like nuclear winter or or
Speaker 1: um or you know, asteroids impacting the Earth um And
Speaker 1: this basically boils down to the belief that if you
Speaker 1: hurled these large I see asteroids that were just full
Speaker 1: of ammonia at marks, they would produce tons of greenhouse
Speaker 1: gases and water. Okay, so you would need nuclear thermal
Speaker 1: rocket engines and you'd have to somehow attach these to
Speaker 1: an asteroid from the outer Solar System, and then the
Speaker 1: rockets would move the asteroids in about four kilometers per
Speaker 1: second for a period of about a decade before the
Speaker 1: rockets would shut off and allow the ten billion tons
Speaker 1: of asteroids to glide unpowered. Towards the Martian surface, and
Speaker 1: the energy released upon impact would be about a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty million mega wats of power. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: can you imagine the dust settling from that? I mean
Speaker 1: it would take centuries and centuries. And it's not that
Speaker 1: you mentioned dust. That's another scheme that's out there is
Speaker 1: to take material from a sea class asteroid or a
Speaker 1: Martian moon and spread it over Mars polar caps. So
Speaker 1: this would be um and another kind of drastic global
Speaker 1: warming type of scheme coated with dust. The poles would
Speaker 1: then absorb more solar radiation because remember you have you know,
Speaker 1: you wear a dark shirt on a sunny day, you're
Speaker 1: warmer than if you wear a white shirt. It's the
Speaker 1: same scenario. Yeah, They absorb more sunlight, causing them to
Speaker 1: heat up, release carbon dioxide, atmospheric atmospheric pressure increases, and
Speaker 1: you'd have the greenhouse effect, and eventually we get it
Speaker 1: up to the point where Arnold Schwartzenhager's eyeballs would explode
Speaker 1: if he took his filmet off. That's the ultimate goal
Speaker 1: in all things, but but also in terraform, all right,
Speaker 1: So I mean I guess that that is the point
Speaker 1: where then people could be supplemented with oxygen and nitrogen
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, but not like full on like
Speaker 1: they would need right now. Yeah, any of these schemes
Speaker 1: you're looking at, it's not you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: turn Mars into Idaho in a decade or center. You know,
Speaker 1: there would be this long, slow process of where it
Speaker 1: becomes more Idaho esque. Yeah, And I guess that that
Speaker 1: sort of plays into the outmoded idea that this would
Speaker 1: be a population outlet for for Earth. Right, Like, if
Speaker 1: we reached billion people by the time we actually by
Speaker 1: the time we reached twenty billion people, you'd have to
Speaker 1: assume that we would have had some sort of solution
Speaker 1: in place, because by the time that you can actually
Speaker 1: have Mars habitable, it would be thousands and thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of years from now. Yeah, So that's one of
Speaker 1: the arguments of like, hey, let's not try to this
Speaker 1: shouldn't probably be our backup plan for humanity. Right. Plus,
Speaker 1: I I like to or I don't like to think this,
Speaker 1: but it seems like if the more we were we
Speaker 1: moved towards potentially having more world peace, that's just going
Speaker 1: to get in the way of people needing to leave here,
Speaker 1: so we do. If we got to the point where
Speaker 1: we have the technology to go to other worlds and
Speaker 1: seed them with our people, you might want to make
Speaker 1: conditions on Earth particularly hellish, and then people would have
Speaker 1: a reason to flee right right right, same models the
Speaker 1: early or just a good reason to make tons and
Speaker 1: tons of money, which is another huge factor. Um you
Speaker 1: get into like mining on on Mars for healing them
Speaker 1: three and things like that, then you could conceivably see
Speaker 1: it being a possibility. Yeah. Yeah, Halliburton's all over this. Um.
Speaker 1: So this also kind of plays into the ethics, right,
Speaker 1: there's um and there are there's actually like kind of
Speaker 1: like a science gang war going on here, and it's
Speaker 1: like the reds and the Greens. I'm like ketting, like
Speaker 1: the reds are the are the folks are Like you
Speaker 1: know what, maybe we should look at Mars and try
Speaker 1: to keep it intact as much as possible and still
Speaker 1: study it, but keep the integrity of it because maybe
Speaker 1: there's something that it's ecosystem can tell us, and if
Speaker 1: we were to try to tear a format, we would
Speaker 1: sort of pollute that possibility of learning more out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that there might be some you know,
Speaker 1: little signs of what life may have been like on Mars,
Speaker 1: if there was life on Mars at some point in
Speaker 1: the past, that those those secrets are buried and those
Speaker 1: secrets are there to be found, provided that we don't
Speaker 1: completely contaminate the place. It seems like a controlled crime scene.
Speaker 1: You don't want the bumbling local detectives to go and
Speaker 1: local police have to come in and touch everything, because
Speaker 1: the big city detective he needs to get in there
Speaker 1: with all its high tech gear and figure out what's what. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't want to introduce an invasive microbial species that
Speaker 1: would just you know, lay waste to everything, because then
Speaker 1: we'd be like, oh, we didn't learn anything really about Mars. Now,
Speaker 1: we're just trying to fit our earthly paradigm, you know,
Speaker 1: into Mars this other thing which we don't really know
Speaker 1: about yet. So those are the reds, yes, and then
Speaker 1: the greens, of which Zubrin is definitely a member. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, his whole thing is like this is actually
Speaker 1: he put it really nicely in the interview I did
Speaker 1: with him, um and a phrase used to this exact
Speaker 1: example of many times. But he's like, if you were
Speaker 1: to make the argument, hey, let's take um, let's take
Speaker 1: Earth and let's turn it into a barren, lifeless world.
Speaker 1: Let's do that. Let's let's get started this project right away,
Speaker 1: you would say, dude, you're crazy. Don't turn don't turn
Speaker 1: the planet, this living, lush planet into a desert. And
Speaker 1: his thing is then the reverse is true too, that
Speaker 1: the argument like, look at Marks. It's dead, it's empty,
Speaker 1: there's nothing living there. It's a waste land. We have
Speaker 1: a responsibility to turn it into a green world. See.
Speaker 1: And that's the problem I have with it because it's
Speaker 1: like absolutism, right, It's like it's dead. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, because NASA actually has said, well we
Speaker 1: you know, there are these methane plumes that keep kind
Speaker 1: of unfurling in front of us, making us realize that
Speaker 1: there's methane being released, which kind of points us in
Speaker 1: the direction that there may be some sort of life form,
Speaker 1: you know, at least on a microbial level, and so
Speaker 1: we can't necessarily anounced it dead. Yeah. I guess it's
Speaker 1: kind of like if there was like a house in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood and it was like really crappy, and someone
Speaker 1: was maybe argument, hey, we need to fix this up.
Speaker 1: There's like there's it's doing nothing. It's just a complete ruin.
Speaker 1: It's you know, foreclosed on. Let's let's get somebody in there,
Speaker 1: let's get let's get this thing torn down and rebuild
Speaker 1: or something. And then you can make the argument, well,
Speaker 1: I fare all cats are living there those farall cats
Speaker 1: need to live somewhere, so why not this house or
Speaker 1: there's something making some argument that that that something natural
Speaker 1: may be going on that we shouldn't stamp on just yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or they might say there's a tiffany stained window in there.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't knock that exactly. Okay, that's an
Speaker 1: even better example. Yeah, yeah, So I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's I think it's a very fascinating uh topic. And
Speaker 1: I do really like the idea of technology coming out
Speaker 1: of the maybe the thought experiment. But obviously it's something
Speaker 1: that UM that we're at least in the United States,
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily have the economic power to put a
Speaker 1: lot of money into UM, particularly since some of these plans,
Speaker 1: like there's a four hundred fifty billion dollar plan rolled
Speaker 1: out in the Bush one era that was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we can build this orbital platform on Mars and launch
Speaker 1: this and do this, and Bush was like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. And there have been subsequent plans and facts
Speaker 1: you Ben came up with a couple of pretty good
Speaker 1: ones that are more in like the twenty fifty billion
Speaker 1: dollar range. Still that's yeah, that's still a lot of money.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's sad to think. I mean, at
Speaker 1: some point the past, the money made the the argument
Speaker 1: that that and I forget who was saying, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a friend of us talking to me. They were like,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna We're not going to see a personal
Speaker 1: land on Mars in our lifetime. Now, whether that's true
Speaker 1: or not remains to be seen, but just the prospects
Speaker 1: kind of sad because you grow up watching all the
Speaker 1: science fiction and and hearing all this science and you know,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about landing on Mars for well over
Speaker 1: half a century. I mean, we've been talking about it
Speaker 1: longer than that, but we've had more concrete plans in
Speaker 1: that time period, and to think it it's not going
Speaker 1: to happen is kind of depressing because you you kind
Speaker 1: of grow up thinking that this is where you're your
Speaker 1: life is going to go you know, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: hence zuber In in his his impatience and saying, look,
Speaker 1: we do have the technology, we could do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's possible. Yeah. And of course the more
Speaker 1: we learn, though, you know it, the more the situation
Speaker 1: comes complicated. Because there's a two thousand ten study from
Speaker 1: the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in the University of Leicester,
Speaker 1: and they found that double solar radiation waves periodically strip
Speaker 1: away thirty of the sparse Martian atmosphere, so that these
Speaker 1: waves occur when one solar wave overtakes another to produce
Speaker 1: a single like super wave. And uh, and so what
Speaker 1: little atmosphere remains on the planet is due to comics,
Speaker 1: comic strikes, and the occasional melting of polar ice. So
Speaker 1: even if we so, it kind of creates this this
Speaker 1: horrible situation. It's cut the money pit, like the more
Speaker 1: you're going to rebuild it and then stuff is just
Speaker 1: gonna bust it down. So I'm not saying we shouldn't try,
Speaker 1: but but it it's a little disheartening to have that
Speaker 1: added bit of information. Well, and I was thinking too
Speaker 1: that astrobiology, which we've talked about before. Is still such
Speaker 1: a young field in terms of the new technologies it
Speaker 1: has at its disposal. You know what, what might it
Speaker 1: be able to uncover in the next ten years to
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit more about Mars and how
Speaker 1: to look at that situation and look at terror forming
Speaker 1: and new So I don't think that we have all
Speaker 1: the data in what we're talking about. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should definitely not shut the case, shut the lid
Speaker 1: on the case just yet. I like to think it
Speaker 1: will happen someday. We'll see, we'll see. Let's bring on
Speaker 1: the mail. Yes, we do have a couple of bits
Speaker 1: of mail here from some people who have some experience
Speaker 1: with doppelgangers calling back to our Defeat Your Doppelgangers podcast. Uh,
Speaker 1: first we're gonna hear from Matt. Matt says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: love the podcast. Just listen to your show, Defeat Your Doppelgangers.
Speaker 1: This one really hit home with me because young kid,
Speaker 1: I always had the impression that there are were multiple
Speaker 1: copies of myself hanging around my hometown. I never felt
Speaker 1: there was any malicious intent or an evil clone. I
Speaker 1: always knew in the back of my mind that around
Speaker 1: any corner I might bump into a copy of myself.
Speaker 1: I never found one, but to this day I still
Speaker 1: have a feeling that they're out there somewhere. Also, as
Speaker 1: a kid, I always thought that the mirror in my
Speaker 1: bathroom or any mirror was actually a view into the
Speaker 1: closest relative neighborhood dimension, that is to say looking that
Speaker 1: is to say, a looking glass into the closest dimension
Speaker 1: to ours. The image staring back at me was not
Speaker 1: a reflection but the other meat from the next dimension
Speaker 1: looking in his mirror. Uh yeah, so um, Matt, thanks
Speaker 1: for sharing that. That's uh, that's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my mind is a little bit low there. Um. I
Speaker 1: also wanted to share it too. There's a comment by
Speaker 1: Jane on Facebook and she was talking about our Neandertals
Speaker 1: episode um, and she actually made a really good point
Speaker 1: that in that episode we kept ferring to Neanderthals is
Speaker 1: he There's like no mention of any female in Neandertals,
Speaker 1: which of course we know that existed. Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: that the mitochondrial DNA, and that tells us so much
Speaker 1: today about what went on with Neandertals. Um, they the
Speaker 1: possessors of it. But uh, and she also points out
Speaker 1: that when we were talking about them making glue and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, we kept talking about he
Speaker 1: knowing it. How about. You know what, that's a really
Speaker 1: good point to make. Thank you, Jane, thank you for
Speaker 1: keeping us sharp, because you know it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: sometimes you fall back on that that old um he
Speaker 1: pronoun is a catch all. So I just wanted to say, yes,
Speaker 1: the menatols the ladies, they were definitely a big part
Speaker 1: of that group. And it was interesting because a lot
Speaker 1: of the research that I came across, at least and
Speaker 1: especially the stuff that was produced online, shows this sort
Speaker 1: of patriarchal paradigm of the men making the glue, and
Speaker 1: like the women going through the men's hair and grooming them,
Speaker 1: and the men barked neandertal orders out of them. So anyway, again,
Speaker 1: thank you, Jane, and I love these comments that you
Speaker 1: guys give us, you know, the email on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: you guys really give us some good platforms like stuff
Speaker 1: for our minds to chew on as well. Indeed, one
Speaker 1: more quick Doubel ganger Eric writes, and he says, I've
Speaker 1: never met anyone who could be my twin, but I
Speaker 1: have had some problems with my name. UM my name
Speaker 1: doppelganger is in a doppelganger that shares one's name. I
Speaker 1: moved to Portland, Oregon, in two thousand five from the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Bay area. When I apply for a library
Speaker 1: card here, I was surprised to learn that there were
Speaker 1: unpaid overdue books under my name. Turns out someone with
Speaker 1: my name please don't read it on the air and
Speaker 1: gives it gives its full name. UM is also living
Speaker 1: in It's also living in the suburb of Portland's. The
Speaker 1: town has a population of a little less than twenty
Speaker 1: three people. So yeah, that happens probably more frequently we
Speaker 1: encounter with the individuals to share our exact name, and
Speaker 1: especially if you end up googling your own name like
Speaker 1: I do, way too much. You know. It's like when
Speaker 1: am I gonna overtake The Murder Robert Lamb? When am
Speaker 1: I going to overtake the The he Man the animated
Speaker 1: series animator? Yeah? Mine mine? Uh? I think kind of
Speaker 1: like Julie Douglas has made a triathlete somewhere in Austria
Speaker 1: or something. I can't remember having googled myself for a
Speaker 1: long time, but I was like, go Julie Douglas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the Julie douglas Is of the world need to
Speaker 1: stick together and make it work right. Yeah. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: still a little fist bump tea cans down there. Julie
Speaker 1: Douglass is well cool. If you have any little tidbits
Speaker 1: to add, or just want to interact with us, then
Speaker 1: head on over to Facebook or Twitter. You'll find us
Speaker 1: a Blow the Mind on both of those. We keep
Speaker 1: that updated with all sorts of good stuff, and you
Speaker 1: can always drop us a line at Blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
Speaker 1: icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works iPhone app has a RYE. Download it
Speaker 1: today on iTunes. Could you leave it's for me or