Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: so we recorded a special live edition of the podcast
Speaker 1: last week at Star Trek Mission, New York, and all
Speaker 1: three of us, Robert, Christian and I up in a
Speaker 1: conference room full of Star Trek Conference attendees. Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It was really great. Hopefully some of the folks who
Speaker 1: were there in person are listening now, and if so,
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you once more for being
Speaker 1: a fabulous audience. Everyone seemed to really get into the topical.
Speaker 1: We had some fun chatting with folks after the show. Absolutely, So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, here is our live episode of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. Robert, you've got to start us
Speaker 1: Star Trek history. Okay, So um, when we're not going
Speaker 1: to pretend to be like the the the perfect Star
Speaker 1: Trek fans. Our knowledge is not perfect. But I certainly
Speaker 1: have a very warm place in my heart for Star
Speaker 1: Trek the Next Generation, especially because I grew up watching
Speaker 1: it every evening in syndication at nine pm. It was
Speaker 1: my my go to I would escape from the horrors
Speaker 1: of Junior High and just just pour myself into the
Speaker 1: hollow deck of Star Trek. Yeah, for me, I think
Speaker 1: deep Space and nine was when I really dove in
Speaker 1: deep But I was talking to these guys the other day.
Speaker 1: Does anybody remember the Cheerios commercial right before The Next
Speaker 1: Generation came out where you they offered like if you
Speaker 1: cut out on the back of the box, you could
Speaker 1: be like an extra in the Next Generation. That was like,
Speaker 1: I was like five, maybe six years old, and that's
Speaker 1: how we got Wesley Crusher. That glued right in my kid.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I didn't. I guess I didn't make it.
Speaker 1: I didn't make the cut. I am far less trek
Speaker 1: ucated than these two, even I have to admit to
Speaker 1: the room. I I love like the even numbered movies,
Speaker 1: as they say. And I've watched some highlight episodes from
Speaker 1: the original series, like a Balance of Terror and what's
Speaker 1: the one where they Kirk and Spocko back in time
Speaker 1: and they wear these like cool nineteen thirties suits and
Speaker 1: some lady gets hit by a car. It Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a good one. Uh. Then, Also, I watched the
Speaker 1: first season of Next Generation, and I really loved the
Speaker 1: planets that looked like a nineteen nineties like family portrait
Speaker 1: photo studio filled with potted trees. It was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about the Prime directive
Speaker 1: because it while we are by no means experts on
Speaker 1: the Prime Directive, it does relate quite a bit to
Speaker 1: the real world science that we're gonna be talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and uh, I mentioned we don't we don't have
Speaker 1: to tell you guys what the Prime directive is. You know,
Speaker 1: it is, um, it's the philosophy of the federation. Right,
Speaker 1: it is that it's an anti colonialist for that matter
Speaker 1: of anti Vietnam War ethos the policy of of non interference.
Speaker 1: Don't mess around with the natural progression or demise of
Speaker 1: of life on a given world. Right is it, don't
Speaker 1: get involved in it's it's cultural ascension. Let it, let
Speaker 1: it happen. Yeah. And one of the major questions that's
Speaker 1: going to be important to talking about planetary contamination later
Speaker 1: that we had was is observing mere mere early observing
Speaker 1: a violation of the Prime Directive? And from what I
Speaker 1: could tell, it seems like no, Although it seems like, uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's quite a bit of instances the one that
Speaker 1: I remember the most is in Star Trek Insurrection with
Speaker 1: you know, when Data is running around in the invisible
Speaker 1: suit and goes crazy and rips his mask off and
Speaker 1: everybody just sees a floating Brent Spiner head. This is
Speaker 1: the one where f Murray Abraham played Allain. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so that clearly violated the observing thing. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then apparently I haven't seen this one, but there's a
Speaker 1: next generation episode called Who Watches the Watchers where Ryker
Speaker 1: and Troy put on makeup so they look like they're
Speaker 1: members of this indigenous race so they can observe what's
Speaker 1: going on there. Uh, we're not quite there yet. Uh,
Speaker 1: but but it seems like observing is okay, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean as long as, of course you're not seen observing.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the primatologist's view on it, right. You
Speaker 1: you want to be able to observe, uh, these creatures
Speaker 1: in their natural habitat. But if they see you, then
Speaker 1: you you've already disrupted everything. And obviously nothing disrupts a
Speaker 1: would disrupt a culture's ascension, of a planetary culture's attention
Speaker 1: more than seeing a starship suddenly appear in the sky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. Oh yeah, that's another good example of that.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about later when we get into cargo cults
Speaker 1: is seen in a Star Trek into Darkness of course
Speaker 1: at the beginning where they see the enterprise and then
Speaker 1: they start sort of worshiping it by drawing the images
Speaker 1: of it in the sand. Uh So, I can actually
Speaker 1: think of worse if they piped in some like Van
Speaker 1: Halen singles. I could see that that could go beyond
Speaker 1: the starship. But you know, one of the things it
Speaker 1: would be Beastie Boys given uh that that particular version
Speaker 1: of multi Yeah. Uh so. Yeah. One of the things
Speaker 1: about the prime to active as throughout the show, I
Speaker 1: mean even a a a Star Trek light viewer like
Speaker 1: me can observe is that it's not a rule that's
Speaker 1: simply followed, but it's something that is often debated. People
Speaker 1: are weighing the pros and cons uh that. You know,
Speaker 1: they often want to have a conversation about, well, should
Speaker 1: we follow the non intervention you know, guidelines, or should
Speaker 1: we step into help where we can, And a lot
Speaker 1: of times it's sort of like the following the lawful
Speaker 1: path versus following the good path. Yeah, it reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot too of the journalists Um Connundiam at times
Speaker 1: like if I'm I'm not gonna observe, I'm gonna stand
Speaker 1: back and take this photo, or do I jump in
Speaker 1: and help in a situation where help is required. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this leads us into the let's just break down
Speaker 1: the very beginning or science that we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between planetary protection and planetary contamination. Well,
Speaker 1: protection is a term that we give to our goal
Speaker 1: to protect other celestial bodies. Actually, you know, we're talking
Speaker 1: about planets, moons, comets, or asteroids here. Uh. We don't
Speaker 1: want to contaminate them with life from here on Earth
Speaker 1: as we're going throughout the galaxy, mainly the Solar System
Speaker 1: right now and interacting with them. That's what's called forward contamination,
Speaker 1: US contaminating other celestial bodies. And and later in this
Speaker 1: presentation we will give you some examples where that has
Speaker 1: already happened unfortunately. Uh, But we also want to protect Earth,
Speaker 1: right We don't want a scenario like the Andromeda Strain
Speaker 1: to happen. So we want to make sure that Earth
Speaker 1: is protected from possible life forms that may have returned
Speaker 1: from extraterrestrial samples. Anybody here familiar with the Osiris REX
Speaker 1: mission that's taking off the next couple of I think
Speaker 1: it's like in the next month, right UH, NASA is
Speaker 1: sending a spacecraft called Ocyrus REX to the asteroid Baynu,
Speaker 1: and the goal is to go to Baynu. UH scoop
Speaker 1: a piece of dirt off of Baynu, put it into
Speaker 1: a capsule, and then bring it back to Earth so
Speaker 1: that we can study it. UH mainly about so that
Speaker 1: they can get some ideas about the origin of life.
Speaker 1: They think Baynu has got some particularly carbon rich minerals
Speaker 1: in it that might give us some some kind of
Speaker 1: history to the universe. So in that case, we really
Speaker 1: don't want there to be I don't know, like space
Speaker 1: worms on it that are affect everybody and turn us
Speaker 1: into zombies or something. So in the unlikely scenario that
Speaker 1: this UH, this return the soil returned from the asteroid
Speaker 1: has some kind of microbe in it that could infect
Speaker 1: our bodies. What if they bring it back and it
Speaker 1: escapes from contamination there that received the retrieval areas. What
Speaker 1: if it explodes in the atmosphere upon re entry and
Speaker 1: then scatters all over the place. They're not very worried
Speaker 1: about that with the Osiris REX mission because they're they're
Speaker 1: not very good scientific reasons for thinking you're likely to
Speaker 1: encounter life on an asteroid, and asteroids just a death zone.
Speaker 1: It's out in the middle of space. It's bombarded I radiation,
Speaker 1: micro meteoroid impacts, and there's just it's not a friendly
Speaker 1: place to live. But there are some other places in
Speaker 1: the Solar System that we do think are are much
Speaker 1: more likely to be friendly to life. Yeah, probably the
Speaker 1: bathrooms here at the jab At Center are friendly to life,
Speaker 1: I would imagine. Uh No, But so we're talking about
Speaker 1: backward contamination when we're talking about these asteroids bringing samples back.
Speaker 1: In particular, NASA is worried about Mars. I don't know
Speaker 1: if any of you have been down to the show
Speaker 1: floor yet, but they have a really cool exhibit about
Speaker 1: their plans for Mars missions. And if you talk to
Speaker 1: some of the NASA volunteers that are down there, uh,
Speaker 1: they know all about backward contamination and what their policies
Speaker 1: are concerning this. We'll talk a little bit about today,
Speaker 1: but we're not the experts, right. But then also you
Speaker 1: might be asking so The reason for preventing backward contamination
Speaker 1: is obvious. We don't want to get infected with space
Speaker 1: germs and I'll die. Well, this is the selfish side
Speaker 1: of it, right, I mean, we know, like, whatever you
Speaker 1: get into out there, don't bring it back home, don't
Speaker 1: not don't bring it back and then the potentially knows
Speaker 1: of our environment. Right. But the motivations for preventing the
Speaker 1: contamination of other bodies in the Solar System is maybe
Speaker 1: less obvious, Like why would you care if a probe
Speaker 1: that you send to Mars or Saturn's moon Titan has
Speaker 1: microbes living on it? I mean, who cares? They're probably
Speaker 1: gonna die anyway, What does it matter? Well, there are
Speaker 1: several reasons we want to prevent that. One is protecting
Speaker 1: science objectives. Uh So, if we're going to Titan or
Speaker 1: to Mars to try to figure out if there is
Speaker 1: microbial life living in the soil there, we don't want
Speaker 1: to take contaminants with it that are going to make
Speaker 1: it impossible for us to do that scientific research. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like visiting a crime scene, right, You don't want
Speaker 1: somebody to go in and leave their fingerprints or their
Speaker 1: genetic material all over the place because we need to
Speaker 1: get down to who has had access to it. Instance,
Speaker 1: the case with with a foreign body. It would be
Speaker 1: like if detectives investigating a crime scene couldn't investigate it
Speaker 1: very easily without having all the prime suspects come in
Speaker 1: and bleed everywhere, um exactly. But but it's difficult. But
Speaker 1: then there are also other potential concerns. One is the
Speaker 1: protection of in digenous life. So introducing microbial life forms
Speaker 1: to a new environment very often kills what's already there.
Speaker 1: And it's quite possible that if there are life forms
Speaker 1: on Titan or on Enceladus Europa, Mars, and we bring
Speaker 1: our own microbes there, there could be a battle of
Speaker 1: the bacteria and our bacteria might win. Again, that's very
Speaker 1: bad obviously for those bacteria. That you could have a
Speaker 1: debate about whether that ethically matters or not, you know,
Speaker 1: should we care about those bacteria, But it certainly matters
Speaker 1: for the science. We we want to be able to
Speaker 1: know if they're there, and so we don't want to
Speaker 1: kill them all. And then a final reason is that
Speaker 1: we can disturb natural environments by introducing life forms just
Speaker 1: like bacteria here on Earth and and uh small organisms
Speaker 1: have geoengineered the Earth. You know, they've changed our atmospheric composition.
Speaker 1: We don't want to potentially do that to other planets
Speaker 1: in the Solar System by accident. So let's give you
Speaker 1: like a like a real world analogy that will sort
Speaker 1: of hopefully bring it all together. Right, Like, whenever you
Speaker 1: travel abroad with an animal here and on Earth, right,
Speaker 1: you usually have to have documents of some sort that
Speaker 1: they have their vaccinations. Right, So it's a similar sort
Speaker 1: of situation. You don't you would sometimes quarantine an animal
Speaker 1: in those situations you also don't want to, well you do.
Speaker 1: You have to declare agricultural items when you come into
Speaker 1: and out of certain countries, right, So how many people
Speaker 1: here have been through customs before? That's supposed to It's fun, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, So like the example that we're gonna use
Speaker 1: here is like what if we brought a watermelon up
Speaker 1: here from Florida and it's just filled with mosquitoes that
Speaker 1: are infected with the Zeke virus. Right, But that probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a great example, uh because you guys would
Speaker 1: hate that, But that would be forward contamination. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can find plenty of examples just by thinking of
Speaker 1: all the missteps that we've we've taken in our in
Speaker 1: our in our you know, recent history here on ourth
Speaker 1: spreading invasive species across the planet and exactly stabilizing natural environments.
Speaker 1: The carp car carp fish are notorious invasive species here
Speaker 1: in America. Yeah, we have a podcast about that, by
Speaker 1: the way, you can look it up. It's about jumping
Speaker 1: fish in the rivers of the Midwest. They jump out
Speaker 1: of the water and smash people's facebones. They do pretty cool. Joe,
Speaker 1: is there any law? Is there anything that's like keeping
Speaker 1: us from doing this? Like why can't I just build
Speaker 1: my own rocket and shoot a zeke a mosquito and
Speaker 1: outer space? That is a good question. So there actually
Speaker 1: are guidelines for how you're supposed to behave in space.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are tons of different organizations treaties that
Speaker 1: put space law on space guidelines into place. Where's the
Speaker 1: boundary between law and guidelines, I don't know a lot
Speaker 1: of times we haven't tested that boundary, So we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what would happen if you broke certain guidelines,
Speaker 1: but we have them. Uh, for example, what prevents Spain
Speaker 1: from flying to Europa? Here? This is Jupiter's moon Europa.
Speaker 1: It's believe that it could possibly contain life because it's
Speaker 1: got an icy crust with liquid oceans underneath it. There
Speaker 1: could be something living in that water. What prevents Spain
Speaker 1: from flying a rocket to Europa, sticking a flag down
Speaker 1: in the ice and saying, I declare Europa for Spain,
Speaker 1: it is Spanish territory. Now, well, fortunately we have the
Speaker 1: UN Outer Space Treaty, and all signatories and parties of
Speaker 1: the treaty agree that, for example, you can't go claim
Speaker 1: the Moon for your country. It doesn't belong to you.
Speaker 1: It's the common heritage of all mankind and you can
Speaker 1: access it equally. But there are other things that are
Speaker 1: entailed by this treaty as well, right, Yeah, Well it
Speaker 1: was developed in nineteen sixty seven. It was really you know,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Cold War, but they managed
Speaker 1: to get the U S, the Soviet Union, the UK
Speaker 1: and a couple of other countries to sit down and
Speaker 1: you know, agree to this at the United Nations to
Speaker 1: prohibit mainly countries from placing nuclear arms or other w
Speaker 1: m D weapons of mass instructions UH destructions de duction
Speaker 1: UH in outer space. So that was mainly why this
Speaker 1: was put together. But it also holds all nations accountable
Speaker 1: for whatever their various actions are in outer space according
Speaker 1: to international law, so that's important. It does kind of
Speaker 1: underlie one of the problems with any of this kind
Speaker 1: of legislation is they always emerged from the time and
Speaker 1: in which they're rolled out. They speak to very specific
Speaker 1: near future concerns, and when it gets to the you know,
Speaker 1: the more far future concerns, Uh, they don't really grapple
Speaker 1: with them with with with a degree of detail that
Speaker 1: might be necessary. Yeah, that's the thing of this And um,
Speaker 1: there were arguments not like a year or two after
Speaker 1: it had first been written that it was already either
Speaker 1: too stringent or not stringent enough, and we're still seeing
Speaker 1: arguments like that today, decades later. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people argue the Outer Space Treaty is out of date
Speaker 1: and needs to be updated. But in any case, how
Speaker 1: it relates exactly to the topic we're talking about today
Speaker 1: is that Article nine of the U and Outer Space
Speaker 1: Treaty says that all parties to the treaty have to
Speaker 1: avoid harmful contamination of the Moon and other celestial bodies,
Speaker 1: and they also have to avoid adverse changes in the
Speaker 1: environment of Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty vague, right it It basically just says,
Speaker 1: don't pollute outer space with our microbes and don't bring
Speaker 1: anything you find out there back here that could kill us. Uh.
Speaker 1: So how's it gives to work? Like, so Spain's gonna
Speaker 1: go plant their flag on Europa? Right, So how does
Speaker 1: that work? Can can Spain just do that on their own?
Speaker 1: They can't do it at all? What are you talking about? Exactly?
Speaker 1: So Spain is supposed to go to all the other
Speaker 1: international bodies and say, hey, we're about the send that
Speaker 1: every I think everybody be pretty astonished if they did that.
Speaker 1: But they they're gonna We're gonna send a flag up
Speaker 1: to Europa. Right. They're supposed to tell everybody what their
Speaker 1: plans are, what their mision, mission parameters are, and what
Speaker 1: kind of regulations they have in place. Uh. Now that
Speaker 1: holds for international bodies like nation states, It doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: hold for commercial entities. And we were talking about that
Speaker 1: a little bit later. So for instance, UM, I'm sure
Speaker 1: many of you have heard that the SpaceX rocket exploded
Speaker 1: yesterday on the platform, right, Um, what if it didn't
Speaker 1: explode on the platform. What if it exploded in orbit,
Speaker 1: uh and it contained something? Yeah? Or what if it
Speaker 1: was an orbit or orbiting Mars and it exploded there
Speaker 1: and showered Mars with whatever was inside it. Or it
Speaker 1: was returning from an asteroid orbiting Earth and exploded in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. So okay, so we've got this this Outer
Speaker 1: Space Treaty from the United Nations. Okay, that's about as
Speaker 1: close to the federation as we have right now. Um, well,
Speaker 1: what do we do then for these guidelines? Like who
Speaker 1: who cooks up these guidelines? Who decides between all these
Speaker 1: various space agencies all over the planet right now? What?
Speaker 1: How how do we prevent backward or forward contamination? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the U entreaty gives us the vague objectives. The
Speaker 1: actual Uh, some more specifics I guess come from what's
Speaker 1: known as the Coast Bar Planetary Protection Policy. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: Coast BAR stands for the Committee on Space Research. It's
Speaker 1: part of the International Council of Science. So it's an
Speaker 1: international body, but it's it's mainly like a committee, uh
Speaker 1: that has a panel within it. It's a little arcane here, Uh.
Speaker 1: But the planet, the panel focuses on planetary protection. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind the policies that Coast Bar puts out
Speaker 1: are not legally binding in any way. It's just a
Speaker 1: set of guidelines on contamination that nations should consider. And
Speaker 1: they've got five categories that they look at, uh and
Speaker 1: there for various possibilities. There's flybys, orbiters, landers, probes, non
Speaker 1: earth returns, and then Earth returns and those are the
Speaker 1: ones that were the most worried about because they're the
Speaker 1: most likely to have backward contamination involved. Alright, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, more
Speaker 1: of this special live episode of stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Okay, Well, maybe we should transition to
Speaker 1: another question, which is why should we even worry about this?
Speaker 1: I mean, why tax dollars going to this? Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's an it's an interesting question because we look at
Speaker 1: all this this legislation and sort of pseudo legislation in
Speaker 1: some some cases where it really paints biocontamination up as
Speaker 1: this is kind of like the ultimate sin, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, breaking the prime directive. Really, but what if
Speaker 1: it's less of sin and more just the way things
Speaker 1: work in the universe. What if it's a cosmic standard,
Speaker 1: and in that it would line up rather nicely with
Speaker 1: pan spermia hypothesis. And uh, the idea that life exists
Speaker 1: throughout the universe. It spread from place to place by meteorites, asteroids, comets,
Speaker 1: planetary fragments, and yes, even spaceships carrying hearty extreme of
Speaker 1: file microbes. And there are a few different variants of
Speaker 1: pan spermia um that play in this. Uh. The first
Speaker 1: one I'm gonna mention he real quick is radio pan
Speaker 1: spermia ambular podcasts. Right radio radio pant spermia. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can listen to it. I think it's a's out of
Speaker 1: a w N y C. But this is the dust
Speaker 1: in the wind hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, And this is pretty
Speaker 1: cool because there's no rocks, no spaceships, the ideas that
Speaker 1: the micro organisms may live in space driven by radiation
Speaker 1: pressure away from distant distant stars. So it's very if
Speaker 1: we have any lovecraft readers in the and the audience
Speaker 1: is very love crafty and feeling like something like the
Speaker 1: Mego creatures flying across the void of exhalation of cosmic horror,
Speaker 1: just floating free. Fortunately for for any of you who
Speaker 1: are not fans of cosmic hard drifting in UM. Most
Speaker 1: of what we know about the lethal nature of space
Speaker 1: radiation tends to rule this one out. Then then there's
Speaker 1: a litho pan spermia, and this is the one that
Speaker 1: most of the attention is revolving around. That's the idea
Speaker 1: you of rocks, they go from one planet to another um,
Speaker 1: and it jives far better with our understanding of life.
Speaker 1: Microbes just have to be able to survive ejection from
Speaker 1: their planet, survival through the radiation radiations wet void, and
Speaker 1: then atmospheric reentry into planet b um. Yeah. And this
Speaker 1: this is actually something that uh, some nations on Earth
Speaker 1: they're trying to test the hypothesis of we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit later. That's one of the instances where
Speaker 1: we may have been responsible for forward contamination right there.
Speaker 1: There's even a you know, hypothesis that life traveled throughout
Speaker 1: our own solar system, that life on Earth might have
Speaker 1: originated on Mars exogenesen. Then there's some kind of major
Speaker 1: impact that spread it from one planet to another. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not something we know or that they're strong
Speaker 1: evidence for us. Is very interesting possibility. Now as as
Speaker 1: as far as panspermia goes. Obviously, you have two possible
Speaker 1: variants here on top of this. There's accidental and then
Speaker 1: there is directed Accidental is that the idea that the
Speaker 1: Spanish go to Europa and they leave some trash. They're right,
Speaker 1: that we accidentally eat life on the world. The other
Speaker 1: is directed pants spermia. And this is the stuff of Prometheus.
Speaker 1: This is the stuff of the founders and track right,
Speaker 1: it means the deliberate seating of worlds. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: comes up both in terms of near future concerns. We
Speaker 1: don't want to accidentally see the world with life, according
Speaker 1: to some, But then there are those who advocate, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we should see dead worlds. Why not? I mean,
Speaker 1: life is kind of what we're all about. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of our thing here on Earth. Why shouldn't
Speaker 1: we want to see this flourish elsewhere in the universe. So, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've we've thrown a lot of theory at you all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, all this pant spermia stuff. But let's
Speaker 1: get down to some concrete examples. Where has this happened
Speaker 1: before in our recent past? Well, arguably you mean fermia
Speaker 1: or you know, you're talking about planetary protection polls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about backward and forward contamination. Yeah. Well, let's
Speaker 1: start with looking at some protection against backward contamination. I
Speaker 1: want to visit a picture from Space History with you.
Speaker 1: A lot of you may have seen this before, but um,
Speaker 1: if you can see the screens. So here we have
Speaker 1: a picture of the Apollo of an astronauts after they
Speaker 1: returned from the Moon, and they are they're they're on board.
Speaker 1: This is July believe did I get that date right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But anyway, so they're on board the USS Hornet in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean after they've splashed down, and the three
Speaker 1: of them are contained inside this metal box. Uh, and
Speaker 1: so what is this box? To me? This picture has
Speaker 1: always looked like Nixon has trapped them in some sort
Speaker 1: of steel pizza oven and he's about to bake them.
Speaker 1: And he's explaining to them that he's about to bake them,
Speaker 1: and how good looking happy they are about it. They're thrilled,
Speaker 1: they're laughing. But yeah, anyway, so so what is this box? Well,
Speaker 1: this box is known as the mobile Quarantine Facility, and
Speaker 1: in reality it was a converted air stream trailer like
Speaker 1: you would travel around in and uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess you take the family to go see the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon or something in it. But the trailer maintained
Speaker 1: quarantine on the freshly returned astronauts. Now why would they
Speaker 1: need to maintain quarantine. It's like that scene an Alien
Speaker 1: when you know, uh Ash returns with the alien on
Speaker 1: his face and and Ripley is saying, I don't think
Speaker 1: we should let him in, and then they ignore her
Speaker 1: and one of the great lawful neutral characters in science
Speaker 1: fiction is overridden. Ripley is really kind of a patron
Speaker 1: saint of a planetary protection. Yeah, she is, totally I
Speaker 1: would agree with that. But anyway, so, so how did
Speaker 1: they keep this quarantine? Well, uh, they kept the air
Speaker 1: pressure inside the airstream trailer lower than the pressure outside,
Speaker 1: so things we want to be pushing in rather than
Speaker 1: bleeding out. And then they filtered all exchanged air. And
Speaker 1: then also on their way from the splash down point,
Speaker 1: when the astronauts came down in the water to the
Speaker 1: m QF, they had to wear these sealed suits called
Speaker 1: biggs or biological isolation garments, and they look great. They're
Speaker 1: like full body gas masks. Uh, you know the kind
Speaker 1: of thing you see in those apocalyptic movie where there's
Speaker 1: radiation event, everybody runs in with guns in the bio
Speaker 1: containment suits. It's kind of like what Data wears in
Speaker 1: the episode where he's observing everybody and then he just
Speaker 1: rips that mask right off episode. Wait that was a movie,
Speaker 1: wasn't sorry the movie? Yeah, these are the kind of
Speaker 1: details that are going to get us chewed out after
Speaker 1: this panels over. Uh, wait to be afraid to show us.
Speaker 1: You have a theory here that I think you should
Speaker 1: share with the audience. Hold on, I'm getting to that
Speaker 1: all right. Okay, So, so after the Apollo Paulo love
Speaker 1: An astronauts. They've been on the moon, they returned to Earth.
Speaker 1: They were kept in quarantine in this trailer with a
Speaker 1: bathroom and a kitchen. I'm sure it was just great. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had to spend twenty one days in here to
Speaker 1: make sure, yeah they have bathroom. Uh, to make sure
Speaker 1: that they didn't set loose anything that they brought back
Speaker 1: with him. And I always wondered, Okay, so what happens
Speaker 1: if one of the astronauts does start to show signs
Speaker 1: that they have contracted in an infection? I mean, nothing
Speaker 1: happened but what would they have done if buzz Alderan
Speaker 1: started erupting with parasitic moon worms? And would they just
Speaker 1: keep the other two guys in there and just have
Speaker 1: like Nixon watching through the window like, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, I'm pictures. It's like that scene in
Speaker 1: the Thing where like the the one dog right starts
Speaker 1: turning and just like tentacles shooting everywhere, ripping the other
Speaker 1: dogs apart. They wouldn't have much choice. They just have
Speaker 1: to set the whole thing on fire. Well, anyway, fortunately
Speaker 1: nothing happened to our brave astronauts. But but why were
Speaker 1: people so afraid? I have a pet theory? So this
Speaker 1: was July of nineteen sixty nine. And do you all
Speaker 1: know what movie came out in nineteen sixty eight? What?
Speaker 1: Wo Barbarella? I'm trying to get my okay, I'm sure
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon loved Barbaralla. I'm sorry, we're just here we go. No,
Speaker 1: it was Night in the Living Dead. Does anybody remember
Speaker 1: in Night of the Living Dead what explanation is given
Speaker 1: by the scientists on TV who were talking about why
Speaker 1: the dead have come back to life? Anybody remember it's
Speaker 1: it's radioactive contamination. That's hitching a ride on a probe
Speaker 1: that has returned from Venus. The radioactive contamination part doesn't
Speaker 1: really make any sense, but I can see how this
Speaker 1: might have planted a seed in people's heads. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: the procedure into and I'm kidding by the way, I mean,
Speaker 1: they've they've been talking at NASA about protecting the planet
Speaker 1: for for many years about forward and backward contamination. But
Speaker 1: to discount the power that that fiction and popular media
Speaker 1: was on on the psyche, I think the idea, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: the idea was in the zeitgeist. I mean we're seeing
Speaker 1: it in U n policy, we're seeing in movies, and
Speaker 1: then obviously in actual space missions. What year did the
Speaker 1: andromedas trained by Michael Crichton come out? Was that nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. I think it might have been so right
Speaker 1: around the same time. I mean, this was obviously on
Speaker 1: people's minds, and you know, I think for good reason.
Speaker 1: But then the procedure after it ended after Apollo fort Team,
Speaker 1: when scientists they're like, yeah, we've been to the moon.
Speaker 1: The Moon's dead. You know it's dead, We've seen it.
Speaker 1: They just weren't really worried about microbial life being there anymore,
Speaker 1: and that that makes sense too, because the fear of
Speaker 1: backward contamination is one of those things that we don't
Speaker 1: even know what all of the numbers to plug into
Speaker 1: our risk equation are because we don't know how common
Speaker 1: life is out there. I mean, it could be that
Speaker 1: all kinds of planetary bodies out there are teeming with
Speaker 1: life that we could bring back and could kill us.
Speaker 1: Or it could be a totally dead universe except for Earth.
Speaker 1: We we just have no idea yet. Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with the Drake equation, So let's let's explain it just quickly.
Speaker 1: The Drake equation, Well, it's a hypothetical equation in the
Speaker 1: history of thinking about technological civilizations in the galaxy. For
Speaker 1: you know, you come up with a number of other
Speaker 1: technological civilizations in the Milky Way by multiplying together all
Speaker 1: these variables like the number of habitable planets, the probability
Speaker 1: that life will arise on a habitable planet, the probability
Speaker 1: the intelligence will arise from life, And you multiply all
Speaker 1: these together and you get your number of planets. But
Speaker 1: the problem is most of the variables in the equation
Speaker 1: are just a big question mark, and so it's kind
Speaker 1: of the same if we were to come up with
Speaker 1: a formula for backward and forward contamination. Right. But but
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean we should end our concerns, because after all,
Speaker 1: scientists are gonna want to do sample returns from all
Speaker 1: kinds of objects in the Solar System, and until we know,
Speaker 1: it's probably a good idea to practice caution. So we
Speaker 1: want to have Mars sample return. We pick up some
Speaker 1: soil from Mars, bring it back, pick up some methane
Speaker 1: soaked soil from Titan. I love the idea of what
Speaker 1: organisms might be like on Titan. They might be the
Speaker 1: super cold, slow metabolism, long planning, slow moving organisms that uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. The slow ones are scarier to me.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking like a greenland shark basically, yeah, yeah, very sleepy.
Speaker 1: But also you let from D and D the land sharks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that is. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to I'll get chewed out for that too. But then
Speaker 1: also like water from the Jupiter's moon Europa, like we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, from Saturn's Moonenceladus. But then there's also
Speaker 1: the forward contamination concern that we could look at from
Speaker 1: the past. Okay, so you got Mars here, this is
Speaker 1: the landscape of Mars. What if we want to send
Speaker 1: a probe to Mars, what lengths should we go to
Speaker 1: to make sure that nothing is alive on that probe
Speaker 1: in case there's something alive on Mars to contaminate, or
Speaker 1: even just in case that there are places where organisms
Speaker 1: we bring with us could settle in and and make
Speaker 1: a new home and contaminate our future science. Well, we
Speaker 1: have sent landers to Mars before. Of course you'll probably
Speaker 1: know that. How about the Viking Landers, right, we said
Speaker 1: the Viking Landers one and two down on the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars in the nineteen seventies, and at the time
Speaker 1: we had very little idea what might be on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars. You had people like Carl Sagan and
Speaker 1: saying that they're they're could be microbes there, and if
Speaker 1: there is a microbial environment on Mars, we don't want
Speaker 1: to destroy it. So we need to put rigorous standards
Speaker 1: in place to make sure that the probes we send
Speaker 1: are as sterile as dental equipment. They're just you know,
Speaker 1: the war. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: we set our dental equipment on fire. Well, you know this,
Speaker 1: this underlies them. You know, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the big problems about trying to be to behave um,
Speaker 1: you know, with with cleanliness to avoid uh contamination of
Speaker 1: other other planets is that it's it's kind of the
Speaker 1: wild West. And yeah, the idea of like a sterile
Speaker 1: wild West just doesn't doesn't jive with how we operate.
Speaker 1: I'd agree that's true. I mean then again, yeah, so
Speaker 1: this highlights this tension again like how much how much
Speaker 1: time and money should we put into this? How much
Speaker 1: does it really matter? Well, I'm glad that you asked, Joe,
Speaker 1: because there's two recent examples that will show you how
Speaker 1: much or how little it may matter. Remember I was
Speaker 1: talking about that there were some missions that were testing
Speaker 1: this this han spermia idea. Right. Well, in two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten, I don't know if you've heard about this,
Speaker 1: but the director of the International Committee against Mars Sample
Speaker 1: Return that's a thing. His name's Barry E. D. Gregorio.
Speaker 1: He wrote a piece in New Scientist Maggan's magazine about
Speaker 1: how there's a Russia. There was a Russian mission that
Speaker 1: was going to Phobos Mars Moon, and it was called
Speaker 1: the Phobos grunt. I love the name of this mission,
Speaker 1: Phobos grunt uh. And it was supposed to be similar
Speaker 1: to os Iris recks. It was supposed to go to Phobos.
Speaker 1: It was gonna get a sample of the Moon, and
Speaker 1: the idea was that while it was there, it was
Speaker 1: also going to test transpermia by leaving life behind on Phobos.
Speaker 1: That's transpermiama. We transferred deliberately an organism to this place
Speaker 1: and it survived. The basic idea being similar to the
Speaker 1: rocks thing we were talking about earlier, that that planets
Speaker 1: get life forms on from rocks being ejected from meteorites
Speaker 1: or asteroid collisions. Okay, but the probe totally failed and
Speaker 1: fell back to Earth that it was actually destroyed over
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean. At the time, this is what six
Speaker 1: years ago now, Russia's space program had several space failures
Speaker 1: in a row, and the head of their space agency
Speaker 1: actually publicly wondered if there were saboteurs at work. So
Speaker 1: maybe this committee against Mars sample return was up to
Speaker 1: no good. Well that makes me wonder if yeah, so,
Speaker 1: do we have planetary protection Ninja's out there are spies
Speaker 1: going around trying to enforce it's like the infection guidelines
Speaker 1: by sabotaging missions that are not appropriately about abiding by.
Speaker 1: That's like Gary Abusey's son in contact, right, wasn't he
Speaker 1: like against that? Uh? So there was another one. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: it wasn't Russia this time, it was US. We we
Speaker 1: committed forward contamination when in eleven we're working on the
Speaker 1: Mars Science Laboratory Curia City, were over after it already launched.
Speaker 1: They discovered that there was a set of drill bits
Speaker 1: that they had put on board and they had not
Speaker 1: been sent through their final sterilization step. God, dirty drill bits.
Speaker 1: That's horrible. They're very dirty. But it deviated totally from procedures,
Speaker 1: so much so that NASA's Planetary Protection officer, who am
Speaker 1: gonna talk about later and is the most important woman
Speaker 1: in the world. Uh, she recognized this is a problem.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of miscommunication. We're gonna trying to
Speaker 1: make sure it doesn't happen again. They weren't that concerned
Speaker 1: about it because where they were sending this lander two
Speaker 1: is a place called the Gale Crater on Mars, and
Speaker 1: it was mostly just dead ice. They didn't think it
Speaker 1: was possible if there was any life that could be
Speaker 1: harbored there, especially as deep as these drill bits were
Speaker 1: going to be going down. So they were hoping, crossing
Speaker 1: their fingers that they weren't going to commit forward contamination.
Speaker 1: But it slipped through the system despite the fact that
Speaker 1: we've got cost bar and all these guidelines and every
Speaker 1: you know, it comes comes down to just like this.
Speaker 1: The brigger is of sterilization because it's one thing to
Speaker 1: you go to the dentist and you see that neat
Speaker 1: little tray of items there, right, and yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: that's not that big of a deal, right to sterilize
Speaker 1: a few different instruments and have like a fresh little
Speaker 1: packet of horrible toothpaste to open. But they'll imagine going
Speaker 1: on a family vacation, Like, how would you sterilize all that?
Speaker 1: You gotta sterilize the van, the clothing for the for
Speaker 1: the children, right the toothbrush to the toothpaste the children.
Speaker 1: Right there, you highlight a problem is that it's hard
Speaker 1: to sterilize people. Um, so what are some protocol options
Speaker 1: we we gotta probe We want to send it to Mars,
Speaker 1: we want to send it to Titan, and we want
Speaker 1: to make sure that it is just pristine has nothing
Speaker 1: on it. Well, So one option is we can build
Speaker 1: in a clean room. So like those clean rooms you see,
Speaker 1: electronics are constructed in people wearing the bunny suits and
Speaker 1: then you have to go through decontamination to get in.
Speaker 1: Would this be the same as when I'm watching, say
Speaker 1: like a drug dealer movie where they have in their underwear,
Speaker 1: I think everybody, yeah, Uh no, I I don't think
Speaker 1: that they're about people trying to escape from the clean
Speaker 1: room with pieces of the lander. But maybe. But so
Speaker 1: you can also clean it with solvents like spraight down
Speaker 1: with some cleaner, just wipe it out. You can This
Speaker 1: is a wonderful phrase that I've heard from several NASA
Speaker 1: scientists involved in this. You can bake it out, so
Speaker 1: that's dry heat baking of the environment of the thing
Speaker 1: you're gonna send. But the problem with that is a
Speaker 1: lot of times they have sensitive instruments on them. Uh,
Speaker 1: these don't respond very well to a lot of the
Speaker 1: sterilization tactics we want to use. So if you have
Speaker 1: sensitive equipment and electronics on something, how hot can you
Speaker 1: bake it before you damage all that stuff? You can
Speaker 1: also encase it in some kind of BioShield essentially put
Speaker 1: it in a big plastic bag or plastic container until
Speaker 1: it gets out of the atmosphere. Um. You know, there
Speaker 1: have been also other methods that have been explored in
Speaker 1: the past, I know, like gassing things with killer gas,
Speaker 1: ethylene oxide, or radiation bombardment. Though a problem with radiation
Speaker 1: bombardment is that's not as effective at killing microbial life
Speaker 1: as it is at killing people, you know, larger organisms
Speaker 1: like us. And then you go back to the sensitive
Speaker 1: instrument aspect of this. I mean, a lot of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is internal stuff that is ideally not
Speaker 1: going to be a factor unless the thing explodes or
Speaker 1: crashes or gets torn apart by like a large space
Speaker 1: monster and and partially consumed. Yeah, I mean you point
Speaker 1: out that this is a reason this is all much
Speaker 1: harder than it sounds. So you think, like, okay, I
Speaker 1: could stare alze, you know, dental equipment again and can
Speaker 1: sterilize that white down. You can stare life the whole
Speaker 1: of something conceivably, But when you start talking about all
Speaker 1: the inside exactly, so if this thing explodes and the
Speaker 1: interior components leak out all over the planet, that they've
Speaker 1: got to be clean too, and that's so so hard
Speaker 1: to do. And then once you enter crude missions missions
Speaker 1: with humans on them, there's a whole other stage because
Speaker 1: you cannot bake out an astronaut. There's no way to
Speaker 1: do it. You bring, you bring microbial life with you.
Speaker 1: They can't just wipe you down and make you clean
Speaker 1: the stuff that's inside out of us. Well, for one thing,
Speaker 1: you poop some of it out. So that introduces the
Speaker 1: question of should we poop on Mars? I think this
Speaker 1: is a very important thing going forward in human space exploration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this should be a whole department dedicated to that. And
Speaker 1: they just have those like doggie bags. Yeah, should you
Speaker 1: bring the same ethics to to Mars that you bring
Speaker 1: to your neighborhood when you go out and walk your dog,
Speaker 1: you pick it up with you. Hopefully you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: pooping on the ground in Mars, but yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be rough. However, there are current efforts that are in
Speaker 1: this area. Specifically, NASA is what we're going to focus on.
Speaker 1: So together with the the U N Treaty that we
Speaker 1: talked about and co SPAR, there is a basic guideline
Speaker 1: idea for how we should go forward. With this stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's all overseen by who I mentioned earlier, NASA's
Speaker 1: Planetary Protection Officer. She oversees compliance with requirements for each mission,
Speaker 1: and she's typically directly involved in the development and planning
Speaker 1: stages of all missions that occur in our solar system.
Speaker 1: Her name is Katherine Conley. You probably don't hear about
Speaker 1: her all that much. I don't know why she's super important.
Speaker 1: She makes sure that NASA and all us organizations that
Speaker 1: journey into space adhere to that U n Space Treaty.
Speaker 1: She's way more important than a Kardashian, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: understand why. And I don't mean Star Trek Kardashians, I
Speaker 1: mean the the reality TV ones. I'm just I'm surprised
Speaker 1: that she's not more high profile. Well, she doesn't represent
Speaker 1: like the sexy side of I know, but man, she's important, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: no doubt if it if it weren't for her. She's
Speaker 1: like Wilford Brimley and the thing. It's the kind of
Speaker 1: office where you immediately know the person occupying the office
Speaker 1: once there has been a major scrept exactly. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: all learn her name when there's some huge catastrophe. But
Speaker 1: she just did an interview with Scientific American in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, and she stated that she's actually
Speaker 1: less worried about asteroids and you know, not so much
Speaker 1: worried about the NASA stuff because they're following these guidelines
Speaker 1: we talked about. Uh. The one thing that she's concerned
Speaker 1: about our commercial entities sending missions into space, because NASA
Speaker 1: isn't supporting all of those, and there's no oversight for
Speaker 1: any of them, especially with regards to planetary protection. So
Speaker 1: currently the Federal Aviation Administration is in charge of launches
Speaker 1: and landings, but only within our atmosphere. There's nobody in
Speaker 1: charge of space. So UH, NASA is in a regulatory
Speaker 1: agency and they can't do anything about it either. What happens, uh,
Speaker 1: if there's a commercial mission, like we mentioned earlier, maybe
Speaker 1: they scoop up some dirt off and asteroid or Mars
Speaker 1: or something and then accidentally backward contaminate the Earth. This
Speaker 1: is the opening of a James Bond movie, right somebody.
Speaker 1: It's like Moonraker, except probably hopefully better. Uh Moonraker. I
Speaker 1: think if I had to rewatch a Bond film right now,
Speaker 1: you would beat Moonraker. Moonraker is the one where a
Speaker 1: pigeon does a double take. Can you remember that, Like
Speaker 1: he drives by on a car that comes out of
Speaker 1: the water and the pigeon. Anyway, we stray from the
Speaker 1: subject back back to the requirements that we have for
Speaker 1: these space space missions. We have certain cleanliness requirements, as
Speaker 1: Joe is talking about right, like how sterile they get,
Speaker 1: how much we bake them out, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So here's the question related to Star Trek. Does the
Speaker 1: Federation have a cleanliness policy? I couldn't find anything about
Speaker 1: this online. Do they have like some clean rooms on
Speaker 1: board the ships where they make sure that everything is
Speaker 1: like super clean and they don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: back order forward contamination? Does anybody know? Oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: have an answer somebody. Oh that's smart. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: transport kills everything that goes through it anyway, including you. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: we were guessing that it had something to do with
Speaker 1: the transporters, but we weren't sure. Yeah. Like for me,
Speaker 1: I start thinking about cleanliness and transporters, and then I
Speaker 1: just go down a rabbit hole thinking about the fly
Speaker 1: and like, how do you how do you root out
Speaker 1: fly DNA when you have to worry about other like
Speaker 1: all the microorganisms that are part of the human body.
Speaker 1: But that's a separate that's that's true. Brundle should have
Speaker 1: become Brundle gut flora rather than just Brundle fly. The
Speaker 1: general rules that we operate under now though, don't have
Speaker 1: transporters unfortunately, So we try to avoid unintended encounters with
Speaker 1: objects inner solar system, especially those that have a probability
Speaker 1: of no more than one in a thousand of their
Speaker 1: being life on them. This is the ideal, is that
Speaker 1: it's supposed to extend for fifty years after emission arrives
Speaker 1: at its protected target. So, but think about all the
Speaker 1: organic molecules that could accidentally get on something just from us,
Speaker 1: just from us breathing, Like this microphone right now, I'm
Speaker 1: getting all kinds of bacteria on it, or shedding your
Speaker 1: dead skin, all of them. Right. Yeah. We we basically
Speaker 1: walk around life and with with just a cloud of
Speaker 1: dead skin falling behind us. We really do so. Similar
Speaker 1: to coastpar now, USA actually has five categories that they
Speaker 1: use for planetary protection as well. Their main concerns are about,
Speaker 1: you know, whether the mission is critical to discovering the
Speaker 1: origin of life, how much of a chance there is
Speaker 1: that contamination will be a part of it, and they
Speaker 1: look at protection requirements from everything from what is referred
Speaker 1: to as bio burden reduction UH to clean rooms and
Speaker 1: bakeoffs as we talked about earlier. I think instead the
Speaker 1: Great British Bakeoff, they should have the Great NASA Bakeoff.
Speaker 1: I would watch that just like cooking the Osiris rex
Speaker 1: to perfection. But it's pretty rare that they actually sterilize
Speaker 1: any of these crafts. The most concerning of these missions,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, are the ones that will return
Speaker 1: to Earth after they've brought something back. Now there's unrestricted returns,
Speaker 1: and that is when we go to something that has
Speaker 1: theoretically no chance of life, like the Moon, like we
Speaker 1: just mentioned earlier, they be pretty sure that there's nothing
Speaker 1: on the Moon unless there's like transformers buried under their like,
Speaker 1: they're at least confident enough to gamble with the life
Speaker 1: of everyone on Earth. But the restricted ones are the
Speaker 1: ones that we're worried about. Those are the ones where
Speaker 1: there is the possibility or a sign of what is
Speaker 1: referred to as a non terrestrial replicating organism, so so
Speaker 1: life yeah exactly, so we get worried about that. Here's
Speaker 1: the reality though, no matter what we do, these missions
Speaker 1: will never be a dent secure. Our detection methods are
Speaker 1: getting better and better every day, and we're starting to realize, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: these missions that we thought were sterile that we sent
Speaker 1: off ten years ago, we totally they were filthy. We
Speaker 1: sent all kinds of things in space. So well, our
Speaker 1: biodetection capabilities are getting better. Yeah exactly. And like I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier to that that U. N. Space Treaty is
Speaker 1: just getting old and inadequate. So this stuff really needs
Speaker 1: to be reviewed, especially when you've got elon musk firing
Speaker 1: rockets up like every week. This. Uh. One more concern
Speaker 1: I think we should introduce is the fact that this
Speaker 1: is not just at an Earth problem. The forward and
Speaker 1: backward contamination problem is a problem that we take with
Speaker 1: us anywhere we go. So if we establish a space station,
Speaker 1: you know, like a big space station like they have
Speaker 1: in I don't know, Mass Effect or something, it's got
Speaker 1: people walking all over it, that that is essentially like
Speaker 1: a new Earth that has the same considerations with it.
Speaker 1: Anytime you leave it, you are taking a forward contamination
Speaker 1: risk with you. Anytime you come back to it, you're
Speaker 1: taking a backward contamination risk with you. Uh. So this
Speaker 1: is it's not so much about the Earth as a rock,
Speaker 1: but about humanity and humanity's dwelling space, or not just humanity,
Speaker 1: Earth life dwelling space. Okay, but now everything we've talked
Speaker 1: about so far has been bio contamination. We've been dealing
Speaker 1: with micro organism. But of course there are there are
Speaker 1: other ways to contaminate, uh, an alien world, especially if
Speaker 1: that alien world, you know, potentially has language, it has
Speaker 1: a culture. Could we could culturally contaminate that world with
Speaker 1: you know, some of our our our top twenty musical hits, right,
Speaker 1: the Van Halen hits exactly as we said before. So
Speaker 1: maybe we should start with backward contamination concerns because that's
Speaker 1: more clear to us what the risks could be. So
Speaker 1: imagine we've got radio telescope array that we have decided to,
Speaker 1: you know, listen to a certain patch of sky that
Speaker 1: we think might have alien life on it, and we
Speaker 1: actually do get a message. Uh you know, they're listening
Speaker 1: to the Tao Setti system. It's about twelve light years away,
Speaker 1: and this obvious sign of alien intelligence comes through. It
Speaker 1: is clearly a message. It's made for us to be
Speaker 1: able to decode and understand it, and we do. And
Speaker 1: what are the messages contain? Well, imagine it contains like
Speaker 1: coded schematics for building some kind of machine. What is
Speaker 1: the machine? Or it's maybe the holy text of a
Speaker 1: two setti in religion, or it is a statement of intentions,
Speaker 1: just like hello, here we are, here's our attitude toward you.
Speaker 1: I would argue that any of these things could potentially
Speaker 1: be as destructive to humanity as a foreign microbe that
Speaker 1: we brought down from Titan or from Mars. We'll just
Speaker 1: think back to the primatologist example. If we just if
Speaker 1: all we we had was a clear message, an undeniable
Speaker 1: message that said, hey we're watching, or hey we've been
Speaker 1: we've we've been checking out, Like that alone is enough
Speaker 1: to just cause just just cataclysmic dust the world. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, so take this statement of intentions example.
Speaker 1: They they're just saying, hey, here we are here, here's
Speaker 1: something you need to know about us. What if that
Speaker 1: message decodes to we are inbound to your planet at
Speaker 1: the speed of light. We're decelerating currently and we'll arrive
Speaker 1: within less than one of your Earth years, and we're
Speaker 1: going to eradicate every living organism on your planet, even
Speaker 1: if they're lying, even if that's not true, you could
Speaker 1: potentially cause catastrophic damage to Earth just by spreading the message.
Speaker 1: It would be a killer meme. I think that the
Speaker 1: counter here would be for for everyone to agree on
Speaker 1: a lay down and play dead today. But the day
Speaker 1: that we realize the aliens will arrive, everyone just just
Speaker 1: just be really still, be really quiet. So we were
Speaker 1: talking about this before we were researching this. I remember
Speaker 1: this TV show maybe some of you remember it was
Speaker 1: called Threshold and it got like maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: like eight episodes. You remember that Bent Spiner was in
Speaker 1: it and Peter Dinklage, and it was sort of the
Speaker 1: premise of that show was that like through like I think,
Speaker 1: like a fourth dimensional entity was like somehow in you know,
Speaker 1: transmitting information that was basically designed for us to destroy
Speaker 1: ourselves so that they could take over our dimension. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are other ways you could do it too.
Speaker 1: That what if the coded schematics for the machine are
Speaker 1: for a planet killer super weapon. It's a suicide machine
Speaker 1: that they trick us into building, and they don't even
Speaker 1: have to come here to eradicate us. Or it could
Speaker 1: be you know what if the the holy text of
Speaker 1: that Taosettian religion is actually very attractive. It's something that
Speaker 1: a lot of Earthlings convert to, and it's a you know,
Speaker 1: destroy your planet religion. In any of these things I
Speaker 1: think could be potentially possible, but you need to consider,
Speaker 1: you know, the coroll area of this, which is also
Speaker 1: it could go the other way. You could send a
Speaker 1: meme from star system to star system that's encoded entirely
Speaker 1: in information, but there's no exchange of matter. That could
Speaker 1: be potentially very destructive, and we could be sending that
Speaker 1: meme entirely by accident. Yeah, like Pristans, a warlike alien species,
Speaker 1: receives our hanging their cat poster, and they were they
Speaker 1: were about the sublime. They were about it's completely drift
Speaker 1: off and just abandon all physical um complications, and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: we should hang in here and let's go conquer this planet.
Speaker 1: But this brings up what we referred to on our
Speaker 1: show a lot, because Robert's a big fan of E
Speaker 1: and M. Banks and his culture series. We talk about
Speaker 1: outside context problems. If any of you are familiar with that.
Speaker 1: We did an episode on cargo cults a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago and this was a big one for that.
Speaker 1: So think about it in relation to what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here with this cultural backward or forward can amination
Speaker 1: the society. If a society or civilization encounters a problem
Speaker 1: or a threat or or a complication like like we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, they have no context to prepare
Speaker 1: for or effectively deal with. That's an outside context problem.
Speaker 1: And as as far as the m banks goes, they're
Speaker 1: pretty much always fatal. Like those societies are just yeah,
Speaker 1: like in a big trouble or at least transformed in
Speaker 1: a really right I mean the restrial example is, you know,
Speaker 1: a unless advanced society is out there on the beach
Speaker 1: and then a warship shows up or a colonial vessel
Speaker 1: shows up, and then you know, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: You can't to fight is to be annihilated. All you
Speaker 1: can do is give in and or meet it halfway
Speaker 1: and find a find a way to still retain your
Speaker 1: beliefs while accepting these new movies. In the example that
Speaker 1: we talked about on the show, and this is real,
Speaker 1: cargo cults sprang up all over Pacific island societies after
Speaker 1: the Second World War because of this very thing. American
Speaker 1: battleships would show up, or maybe planes would land, and
Speaker 1: they would see them, and they it was very much
Speaker 1: like the beginning of Star Trek into Darkness. They would
Speaker 1: literally start worshiping them. They were they were they were
Speaker 1: radio towers and airstrips out of bamboo. It's sort of
Speaker 1: real life evidence of the principle that technology you don't
Speaker 1: understand is magic to you. Yeah. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: exposed to the military industrial complex, to the I mean
Speaker 1: not not just to the physical manifestation, but to the
Speaker 1: network that it represented. And and what can you do, Well,
Speaker 1: you neither change or you die, I guess yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, but you extrapolate that out to a
Speaker 1: larger scenario with us or maybe another maybe an alien
Speaker 1: civilization like that we're beaming cat memes to, uh, and
Speaker 1: it gets a little bit more difficult. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: want to think about the potential dangers of this kind
Speaker 1: of intellectual contamination between planets, and I'll venture a hypothesis.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this is true, but it's something
Speaker 1: to just think about. It. Could it be true that
Speaker 1: any planet occupied by a species intell leigen enough to
Speaker 1: understand written language, understand a coded message, and receive it.
Speaker 1: With technology, it is possible to spread a meme that
Speaker 1: kills that species or potentially kills that planet. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: on that note, I want to bring up the Federation again.
Speaker 1: I want to get back to the prime directive. So
Speaker 1: to join the United Federation of Planets, like generally, well,
Speaker 1: you need to have your planet altogether, right, you need
Speaker 1: to have a unified culture to a certain extent, everybody,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a certain amount of peace, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: and certainly I can. I think there's been a couple
Speaker 1: of episodes here and there where that has been an
Speaker 1: issue that's come up. Yeah, Planning wants to join the Federation,
Speaker 1: but there's still like two factions. You don't share our values, right, So,
Speaker 1: but I but I wonder to what extent then, is
Speaker 1: a mono cultural world like this is it? Is it
Speaker 1: kind of like having an entire field with one crop?
Speaker 1: Is it like having an asexual organism that has no
Speaker 1: genetic diversity? Uh? It makes it highly susceptible to its
Speaker 1: disastrous meme, to a disastrous cultural contamination incidents, far more
Speaker 1: vulnerable right, yeah, yeah, in the same way that I
Speaker 1: think you could argue that a diverse biosphere with a
Speaker 1: lot of biosphere, with lots of genetic diversity and different
Speaker 1: types of organisms, would be more resistant to an invasive pathogen.
Speaker 1: Could it be possible that a diverse culture is more
Speaker 1: resistant to an invasive meme? So on one on one level,
Speaker 1: you could well imagine that that something like the Federation
Speaker 1: would want to say, hey, make sure you keep your
Speaker 1: your population a little bit diverse, make sure you have
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a sort of flood barriers of
Speaker 1: language there to keep this thing from from disastrous ideas
Speaker 1: from running wild. But then, on the other hand, what
Speaker 1: is the Federation but a kind of infection itself? Like
Speaker 1: it it had it kind of sets back waiting for
Speaker 1: the planet to have a certain amount of uniformity and
Speaker 1: and monocultural susceptibility to infection in this case of beneficial infection.
Speaker 1: So it's its own version of cultural forward contamination. But
Speaker 1: but or maybe even inoculation if you want to look
Speaker 1: at it, and even alsositive step. All right, So there
Speaker 1: you have it. Hey, if you want to learn more
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