StarTalk Live! from SF Sketchfest 2016 (Part 2)

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome back, welcome back to StarTalk. This week, we're on Mars with Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, Maeve Higgins, funniest woman here. Oh, aw. That includes all the women in the audience. I think the Earth is pretty good. All the women on the panel, one. Jim Green, Division of Planetary Science at the Science Mission Directorate at NASA. And our beloved Eugene Mirman, everybody. So we've been talking about Mars. Andy, why did you, how did you pick that place on Mars? Acidalia Planitia? Yeah, Acidalia, Acid plane. How did you pick that place? I had the plot line, hey, more spoilers. He goes to pick a pathfinder. And so I wanted to have... Pathfinder is the name of another spacecraft. It's spacecraft landed in 1997. But I wanted him... That was a plot point I wanted right from the beginning, is that he goes and recovers Pathfinder to communicate. Was he looking for life? Is that why they were there? Oh, well, the excuse I gave for why they were in Acidalia Planitia... The motivation. Okay, the reason I wrote it that way was I wanted him to be a good distance away, but an achievable distance, so there'd be this adventure of getting there and getting back. So I wanted him to be about 800 kilometers away from Pathfinder. So I kind of drew a circle around Pathfinder and said, where's a cool place for him to be? I chose Acidalia Planitia because at the time, before Curiosity went and ruined everything, a lot of people believed that Acidalia Planitia was an alluvial plane where water had flowed. And so I decided the reason they chose that mining site was that it would have many, many layers of geological history all in one place and they could sample them all. It turns out it was just the bottom of the ocean. That's right, it's the bottom of the ancient ocean on Mars. The bottom of an ancient ocean. So it would still be cool, but there's much better places to go if you're going to have a manned mission. But it was every three. I mean, all the good spots had already been taken, right? The beautiful landscapes that I saw in the movie, is that what it looks like? Ridley did a really great job because we gave him enormous amount of imaging and things that he could look at. And they ran around the world. Art Max, production designer who is also up for Academy Award, went out and they found locations. And they went to the desert in Jordan. Where? In Jordan. Yeah, a desert called Wadi Rum in Jordan. And that's all the exterior shots. Ridley Scott loves practical effects, like the sandstorm. You'd think that'd be just a bunch of people walking around in a CGI sandstorm, right? Big, big sound studio, way the hell larger than this entire auditorium, and a big pile of sand and some really powerful fans. Those actors were falling over and stuff because they were being blown over. Yeah, it worked. I thought that was the set. I can't think that was the place, Jordan. Yeah. On Earth. It's the same place they filmed Lawrence of Arabia. Ah. Love that doc. So, there is a strong argument that our robots, our rovers are doing a great job, but wouldn't it be cool to send people there, right? That would be fantastic because they would make discoveries. Absolutely. So, here's what I want to know. We find a weeping crater, right? Yeah. Can curiosity just drive over to one? No, but we are looking for perhaps... What did he say? Let's get into it. So, he's got to be nice. He's got to be nice because he works for NASA and he's got to be all diplomatic, but I can go ahead and say I'm not a big fan of planetary protection. Dun, dun, dun. So, two things, everybody, just to get it. Planetary defense is where we keep the Earth from getting hit with an asteroid. I am a fan of that. Yeah. Well, that's... There is no evidence, no evidence, that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program. Almost certainly not. Not even the T-Rexes? They had stubby little arms. At least that's the speculation. So, anyway, that's a serious matter, but then there's this other expression which is very important, which is planetary protection, which is essentially the prime directive. Can't violate that prime directive. And so that is where humans show up and contaminate the surface with our microbes and barf and... So we're not going to Mars because we're afraid of giving it germs? Well, what we are afraid of is taking our germs with it, bringing back samples and say, oh, we found Mars germs. We don't want to do that. So planetary protection also... Hold on, we do want to find Mars germs. Oh, we do want to do that. But we don't want to farm our own germs. That's right, because we took it there. Why don't you use gloves? Problem solved. Well, they cook. Eugene, you've hit the nail on the head. They do. They cook. They have space gloves and space solvents that kill everything and space ovens that kill even more stuff. It's certainly crazy dead. We do. But we cannot send the Curiosity rover over there, which has been on the surface of freaking Mars for three years irradiated with ultraviolet of death and night and hot and cold. And there's some concern that there's something still alive on the outside of it. Well, this is a really good point. Maybe we can in the sense that we are indeed looking at whatever microbial human life we took with Curiosity, whether it might still be alive or not. How do we do that? Well, we do that through computer programming. We hire Andy's firm and bring him back on the job. So you're saying there's an app for that. There might be. There's so many. But we do that analysis and then we've got to be able to demonstrate what kind of what we call bio-burden, what kind of material might be on the rover that if it's gone or it's at such a low level, then we might be able to creak over to what would be a weeping area. So you're afraid that something would go from the curiosity to... Correct. And then a bunch of birds would form or what? The concern is that we will basically infect Mars with Earth life and displace the local population with Earth microbes. Well, that would be the end of the world evil mad person scenario. But more likely is you think you found something that you really haven't. Right. I mean, we really want to find life beyond Earth. So that is the significance of water, right? That is the significance of water. We believe firmly that at least life that we know has to have water. And so now that we're finding how rich Mars is with actual water, that really bodes well for us giving it a shot to find that, find these places where water exists. Because everywhere on Earth there is water. Everywhere there is something alive. That's right. Yeah, they're related. We've been following the water concept of how we do Mars research now for well over ten years, and it's really served us quite well. But we're going to have to design something pretty special to be able to do that. We'll have to bake it, and we'll have to do a variety of things to protect it. To make it super sterile. Super sterile. And then go there and find indigenate life. What would be the significance of finding life on Mars? Well, you know. But would prove Buddhism is true. Well, only if that was you that would be. Well, validate David Bowie's eternal question. No, I think it would change the course of your history. It would, absolutely. I think everybody would think differently about what it means to be a living thing in the cosmos. If I can offer my opinion on that. It's, if we found actual life on Mars or fossilized evidence of past life on Mars, we would then very quickly discover one of two things. Either one, Mars was, well, three things, I guess. Either one, Mars was infected by Earth and by some natural process in the past, like maybe material from Earth got kicked up by an asteroid. That's not so likely, more likely is. More likely is Earth got infected by Mars, meaning that life managed to travel through natural means from Mars to Earth. That's the kind of pan-spermia theory in that there was, life evolved in one place once in our solar system, but managed to infect two planets. We're the Martians we're looking for. We are. In that scenario, yeah. There is a good chance, if you look around this room, there is a good chance that what you're looking at is a bunch of alien invaders. And then the third possibility... Yes. With alien of extraordinary ability visas. Yes. The rust-colored cars. Yes. And then the other opportunity is equally exciting, possibly more exciting, is that if life independently evolved on Mars, if that were the case, then that would mean, okay, we have a sample of two planets here, both of which have or had liquid water on them, both of them develop life. This implies, does not prove, but implies that life is almost an inevitability everywhere. That's why it's everywhere. Everywhere, all over the universe. That's why we want to explore. That would be a huge, huge discovery. So, we'll be right on. So, Jim, one of the traditional supposed evidences of life would be natural gas. Methane. Methane, yeah. And we're finding that now on Mars, too. You know, many years ago, from ground-based telescopes, we looked through the methane that's here on Earth in our atmosphere, through that, to Mars. So, we made a very difficult measurement and discovered that Mars has vents of methane. Vents? Yeah. How big is a vent of methane? Well, it just weeps out. I don't know, it could be as big as this auditorium. We really don't know. But there is a season for which the methane really takes off. It's in the summer. It's in the summer. So, methane can be generated abiotically. How would you make natural methane without living things? Well, you need water, you need the right minerals, and you need a heat source. What's the right mineral? Olyvene coal. No, no, no, no, no. Rock. Yeah, it's in the rock. What is it? Olyvene. It's in the rock. It's greenish under a microscope. It has veins. Yeah, it has veins. Sure. I mean, yeah. Tell us the truth, diplomat. What's an olivine? It's carbon. If it makes you feel good, Bill, we'll go with that. What's an olivine? It's carbon. It's carbon, yeah. You gotta have a source of the carbon. You gotta grab the carbon. Why didn't you call it carbon the first time, though? Well, because it's not elemental carbon. Aha! That's why he called it olivine. No, it's bound up in a mineral. Right, and so, you know, that's abiotic, but biology, of course, is really a potential one. We see these methane blooms, so to speak, during the summer months from our telescopes. Very controversial. When all the little Mars cows are out to graze. Well, we now know there's no Mars cows. Are they maybe underwater Mars cows? Well, they have to be, you know, when the climate and everything is severe, you go underground. You get into the rocks. Down to the glacier. Pardon? Down to the glacier. Down to the glacier. Well, into the glacier. Right. But, so you're saying there's a possibility abiotic is no bio, no life. No life. But it's also possible that there's some Mars crowbs oozing natural gas. So, Curiosity has measured that methane. So, now there's no doubt Mars does indeed. How do we measure methane from 4 billion kilometers away or whatever? Well, we do with Curiosity. Curiosity is sitting on the surface. It's a Mini Cooper on Mars. It brings in that atmosphere and just dissects it and looks at everything in it. And during certain times of the year, it sees the methane. Yeah, it sniffs real well. It's a spectrometer, right? You know, a few parts per billion it can get. Oh, that's very good. Jim, is it a spectrometer or a spectroscopy or which one? Yeah, so they actually measure the isotopes. So they really handle the individual molecules. By shining a laser through it or by squirting it at high speed in a vacuum or something? You'd have to kill us. No, we don't have to kill you. Sounds like you maybe do. No murder today. But the methane that's leaking, we've done the analysis and it looks like it's coming right through the soils where Curiosity is sitting. They measure it during the day and we know the winds during the day in Mount Sharp around where Curiosity is sitting all moves away from the crater. So there's no way that the methane that's being generated at other locations can come down to Curiosity. So it has to be leaking right through the ground. So if we really follow the methane, you know, we might be heating our habs with a source of methane underground. It's another example of how you'd use the environment. Follow the methane, I always say that. Kind of. How often does that come up that you say that? Eight times so far. If you're stuck in an elevator. Along that line, things have come from Mars to the Earth. Mars gets hit with something, right? And they... Like ALH 84001. So what happens, of course, is big impacts on Mars' gravity. What meteorite is he talking about? ALH 84001. It's Allen Hills. Allen Hills is a place in the Antarctic. And every summer, we go down to the Antarctic, get in snowmobiles, and we go across the ice sheet. Have you done this for fun? No, not yet. Eugene? No, but it sounds like you're describing GI. Joe. Oh, yeah, when they had to get one of the parts of that death ray thing. Oh, that was awesome. So here's the thing. When you find a rock on the ice... It's black. You see it. I mean, it's right there. There's no other way to get there. The only way for the rock to get there is from the sky. That's right. So, well, it falls in and gets embedded in the ice, and the ice moves, and then some of that stuff just gets uncovered over time. And so we'll gather 600 to 800 rocks, meteorites now, and bring them back and analyze them. And in that set, over the years, we've found about 100 meteorites from Mars. How do we know they're from Mars? Ah, so when you look at the gas, surgetites. Yeah, so when you look at the gas that's trapped inside... That is some weird comedy right there. So when you look at the gas that's trapped inside the rock... That wasn't a joke. They're called surgetites. They are. They are called surgetites. They had a technical name when they were first found, and then when we determined that they were from Mars, we call Mars meteorites now. But first they were called surgetites? Surgetites. You know when Mel Gibson was arrested for calling them... It's not sugar tits. It's surgetites. So what happened was they were analyzing it back before they knew that they were from Mars. They were analyzing meteors that they found all over the world, and they said most meteors have this kind of chemical composition. A smaller percentage of them have this other chemical composition. And we don't know why they're different. And then there's this teeny tiny percent of them that have this yet more unique one. They found out that the big ones come from the asteroid belt, the bulk of them. Then the smaller set come from the moon that got, you know, things hit the moon, it gets knocked off and comes here. And they're like, but we don't know where this is. And for years they speculated on what the surgetite main body was. They're like, we don't know. Something out there is a single thing that all of these little things came from. Was the original one named after a place? It was a scientist, I think, who isolated it. Johnny Sugar. Johnny Sugar Tits, yeah. And he was mostly tight. But then when Viking landed, you put this meteorite in an oven and you crack it open. Yeah, so you look at the trap gases. You have a vacuum chamber and you have some stainless steel rock cracker openers. Yeah, you guys want to science the shit out of this subject. Has that phrase echoed around NASA's offices since it was in the movie? Like, are you tempted to say it daily? No, I try not to. But it's what you're doing. But they don't say it. So that's ALH 0084. ALH is a famous one. There's Murchison. Murchison is a different one. But, you know, when you look at the gas on ALH and the Allen Hills meteorite, and now you've measured the gasses, the high percentage on Mars, they're identical. And that's what really was the clue that said these are from Mars. Now, Murchison was another meteorite, came down in the 1970s sometime, maybe 77, 79. And it is a completely different type of meteorite. It's a what we call carbonaceous chondrites in another pile. It's also a small number of piles. And this meteorite's got amino acids. This meteorite is really one of the primitive ones. Amino acids. The building blocks of life. Yes. A bunch of them. Carbon double bond, oxygen double bond, some stuff, hang on. And so the amino acid is like a complicated molecule, and it survived going through the Earth's atmosphere and smashing into something. And so what we believe is happening here is these amino acids, these basic building blocks of life, are part of our collapsing cloud that created our solar system, and then they are running around seeding all our planets over time. Is there a plan with that? Well, there might be a grand plan. We haven't uncovered it yet. So they hit all these planets? Yeah, the Earth, you know, and so these are really a particular of interest to us to get more information about them. So we're launching a mission to one right now, or a really big one. It's called Bennu, the meteorite. You didn't hold the contest to name that, huh? Yeah, we did. And the winner was Bennu? All right, you didn't hold a very extensive contest. You got the name. The name came from an ancient god. And it's a big... After, we're going to try to learn more about the primordial solar system so that we can answer these deep questions. And that mission is called Osiris-Rex that we're going to launch in September to go to Bennu. How hard could it be? Just one old story about ALH 84001. I got to go to NASA. It was one of the perks of writing a book. I got to go to NASA for a bunch of tours, and they brought me to the meteorite lab. Keeping a step ahead of security the whole time. And they gave me a tour of the meteorite lab. Where was this? At Johnson Space Center. They curate all our meteorites. In Texas. The guy was showing me various meteorites, and he's like, I'm now this one, and I could tell... I knew it from the shape. I was like, oh, that's ALH84001. He's like, yes. And I was like, I felt a little proud. Does he hold it? No, it's in a bag. First off, it's a clean room, so you're all dressed up in the bunny suits. And then additionally, that sample is in a sealed bag. But the other silly thing I'll say is that my... Once I started making pretty good money off of the book, my stupid pointless impulse purchase was I bought a Martian meteorite. I own one. It's at home. It's about 33 grams. It's a little sample. Yeah, but you didn't buy it from NASA. This is legal. Things that just fall to the ground from space belong to whoever picks them up first. No, there's rockhounds. This is real. There's a guy called the meteorite man. The meteorite hunter. Contact him. So, great places to find them because they do look like normal rocks in many ways, like the Sahara Desert. So, there's a lot of Bedouin tribes that will go out and find meteorites and bring them in and sell them. How do they know that they're... How do the Bedouins prove that they're meteorites? Well, you see there's sand, and then there's a rock sitting on top of it. And there's no way that rock would be from Earth. That would be idiotic. They look different. Well, they look different, and you know... Sure. I don't know how the Bedouins... I don't know how the Bedouins tell them apart, but then the scientists analyze it and the makeup, and they can tell whether or not it's from the asteroid field, the moon, the Mars, whatever else. And so my little rock comes with all the paperwork to prove it. And how much was this? Is that rude? What? Was it like $5,000 or like a lot more? It was more than that. 33 grams is more than $5,000? Yeah, it was about $10,000. Andy's doing all right, ladies. So I acknowledge, but you know, it's a silly purchase, but man, it's so cool. Not for someone who wrote The Martian. No, everybody who comes over to my house, I'm like, see that rock is from Mars. No way. Welcome back, I'm Bill Nye, hosting this week. We have Maven Higgins, who's now the outer space. Maven, Maven's a spacecraft, you're working on that. Speaking of which, Jim Green, Director of Planetary Science at NASA. No, it's cool, I might change my name to Maven, totally. Keep us posted. Do you guys have, here's what we at the Planetary Society, representing people in over 130 countries around the world. We want to know what the specific, we have some milestones, some kilometer markers. Well, we're doing a number of things in the near earth area, using Space Station. This includes growing some food on Space Station. Figuring out how to grow food. In hydroponics, we use a water solution with a little soil around the seeds. What about air? Oxygen. We have a variety of processes already in place on Space Station to scrub out the carbon dioxide. But, as I mentioned, Mars 2020 will have its own experiment to bring in carbon dioxide from Mars' atmosphere and split out the oxygen and then store it. And from that, we can use it for a whole variety of purposes. It's basically, it's the real life version of what was at the time fictional, the oxygenator from Mars. And it's called MOXIE, right? It's called MOXIE, yeah. That's right. It's an acronym. Mars Oxygen Exchange. ISRU. And also isn't it like, isn't it like, she got MOXIE. So it's an acronym. With an acronym. You need MOXIE. I want to invent the SCUBA radar. Oh, you think you're going to go to Mars and make oxygen? Well, that would take a lot of MOXIE. That's right. Now you got it. That's where they come from. I'm learning. Oh, you're helping her. So that's very important. Also on 2020 is we have a ground penetrating radar. How far does it penetrate? It will go down 30, 40 meters. It will be looking for the strata, but also potentially looking for aquifers. For waterfers. Yeah, waterfers, aquifers, as we call them here. No, I like aquifer. Yeah, I'll go with NASA. That's wise. So look, with that said, are we going to send a mission after that to really go look for signs of life, like serious bids? Well, we're talking about that right now and what that would look like. You know, life is kind of hard to do if you're making measurements to go there. And the reason why is our astrobiologists have defined life this way. It has three basic attributes. It metabolizes, brings in material, and that's where you need to solve it. You need the water to extract food out of it and dump the waste. And then exchange materials. So astrobiologist is a biologist of the stars out there. That would be an astronomer or an astrophysicist. We're talking about biology. You can have an astrobiology around like this. Exobiologist maybe? Astrobiology is another one. So you want to metabolize. You want to reproduce. But you also, life evolves. And so it's hard to build an experiment to go do that. But life has a whole variety of other attributes. Like dancing? It does. Like if you found like a cat dancing, you'd be like, that's a lie. That's a lie. If it reproduced. Jim, let me put it this way. A cat having sex and dancing, sorry. Look, let's say, hold a second. Let's say you found a weeping crater. Yeah. And it's got water. Yeah. And you got a rover that's got enough power to drive over to the weeping crater wall. Can we just, just for nothing else, can we have a microscope big enough, powerful enough to see a micro? Oh, we would scoop up the material and bring it in and look at it and tear it apart. Look for cells. Look for this composition. Can we just plan to do that? You know, as I like to say, some of my best friends are geologists, you know, and I like rocks. But I want to go up there like we're really going to look for life. Well, we are discussing the next generation experiments that would go to that. How's this for a scenario? Wouldn't it be cool if there was one of those RSLs, which is what... Recurring Slip Linear, which is what he's been calling weeping craters. Wouldn't it be cool if there was one of those within a reasonable range of curiosity right now? And curiosity has been sitting on the surface at its little drill that has been hit by ultraviolet light for three years. And wouldn't it be cool if we had this entire Mars science laboratory, if you will, sitting on the surface and we could just drive over there and look at it? Oh, man, that would be awesome if that were only true. But we don't because... Well, we do. Because it will infect the planet. So what we found by our orbiting satellites is there may be some weeping going on in Mount Sharp. And we haven't studied that enough to really determine if that's water or that's material sliding down the hill. But if it's water... Because you can't tell the difference from orbiting cameras. From orbit, yeah. We have other work... Is it a dust slide or a water slide? Right. And they're not very long. They're not as long as some of the others that we've seen. But indeed, if... It's not very long. This far? Or... Oh, no. Well beyond the length of this auditorium. So the weeping craters that we see, though, are several football fields long. I mean, they're enormous. Come right down the side of the course. But we don't have a rover near them. No, we don't. But we do on Mount Sharp. And if there's RSLs there, the weeping material, we want to go over there. You bet. We just don't know enough about them yet. Do you think we will in like half a year? Well, they are several kilometers away. And we'll have to plan a route if we really decide to go over there. And it would take probably at least a half a year or a year to get to them, probably. But we got time. We got a gizmo there. Are you in favor of it going there? Or you can't answer? If that's water and it's flowing on the surface and it's that close, absolutely. Yeah. Whoa. Took a chance. Take that. All right. And is there a chance that there's something that you won't even need a microscope that there'd be life that you could see with a camera? No? No. Not even like a bug, like a lady bug that's like a lady bug. Now, you'd be looking at four complex carbon compounds that are down in the water that are telltale signs of life. There'd be nothing living in the water that would be obvious to him. Well, don't really know. Not a fish, a lady bug that lives in the water and swims like a fish. You know. So, there's people who want to go to Mars one way. Yeah. Right. That's not our plan, though. I mean NASA's plan. That's not NASA's plan. I could understand. When I watched the movie, I was like, he had such great solitude up there. I live in New York, and I was like, oh, the space, time. Yeah, you had the whole planet. Yeah. I could understand, and it's a different thing that you're talking about, but I could understand why you'd want to go to Mars and die there. That would be incredible. Well, he had disco music, and you didn't have to love that. I think you'd notice it right away, though. You can't eat very easily. You get water. It's a really hard life. Yeah, you can't bleed. It's not like Costa Rica, but it is expansive. You have to live in a dome. It's really all about spending as much as your time surviving. You have to plan ahead. You have to grow your food. You have to make sure the solar panels that are receiving light that you need the energy for are all dusted off. All the stuff that is done in the book and in the movie, that's sometimes significant. How many people here want to go to Mars one way? One way. Are people raising hands? We can't see. How many people want to go to Mars and come back? It was funny when you asked that question and one wife put up her hand and her husband sitting right beside her like, what, you want to go to Mars and not come back? So there was a thing where they had the sign ups for, you know, like, oh, you're going to be on a one-way mission to Mars. And they had like 100,000 people sign up. And I'm like, yeah, it's pretty easy to fill out a web form. But when you were actually on the rocket, you'd be like, wait a minute. By the way, I just got a message. Neil's watching you. Neil's watching me. He's making sure you get the science right. He's watching me. This is for you, Neil. Well, he took me to task last time. I wore these because I knew he would eventually see this. My last pair of pants at the Planetary Society event had some loose threads on the bottom. Well, you're a software engineer. Yeah, right. And you're spending all your money on rocks? Yeah, on rocks. You get a pair of pants. Okay, so that's one. Well, he took you to task. He took me to task because of my frayed pants. And he's like, your mother let you go out in those pants. So, Neil, I've got good pants. Good tip. So with that said, you guys, we are coming to a close. And I think it's important just to want to mention, I cannot help but mention the recent death of David Bowie. I mean, the guy was a visionary. He talked about life on Mars. He talked about life in space. Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, had a multi-million dollar view of his recreation of Commander Tom. There was Major Tom. Gee whiz, Bill. Major Tom. He's probably a commander by now. He's still up there. Killer star, born in the UFO. He had a lot of cool stuff. So just to wrap it up, how do people feel about sending people to Mars? Andy, just real quick. I definitely think that in the long term, we do need to send people to Mars because I want us to be a two planet species, which means a catastrophe on Earth, whether it be war, disease, asteroid strike, doesn't eliminate our species. But in terms of scientific discovery, I mean, I hate to go against what most of the people here would want. If all you're doing is trying to discover things scientifically, I don't see a reason to send humans yet. The reason I want to send humans to Mars is to colonize it. So you are a computer programmer and you back up your software. Yes. Yeah, sorry. This is... No, that's a thing I say. 25 years of being a computer programmer has taught me the value of backing up things. And you're afraid to fly, by the way, right? I am, yeah. I'm getting better, though. Good. Jim, why do you want to send people to Mars? Well, I think as explorers, as Americans, this is what we do. You think about America and how it was created over time with people coming in that wanted to explore this nation, that wanted to do the pioneering. It's in our genes. There's a lot of people out there that, oh, we can't leave the earth. Well, it must not be in their genes. They stayed home. We're the ones that have colonized America. We're the ones that keep exploring. We are the nation that has been first to every one of our planets and a couple of our dwarf planets. And we're still exploring. This is what we do. And it's critical. The Soviets got to Venus first. Now, we flew by. I'm just saying. Well, just let me say that space exploration brings out the best in us no matter where we're from. I'm serious. Exploring the cosmos tells us more about answering these two deep questions. Where did we come from? And are we alone in the universe? And if you want to know the answers to that, you have to explore space. And furthermore, whenever we go out there, we solve problems that have never been solved before. And this is worthy of our intellect and treasure. This is what makes humankind a worthy species on this remarkable planet in the cosmos. So stay tuned, we'll be right back with StarTalk. So now, everybody, it's time for the questions and answers from you. So there are microphones up here. We do not have two turntables. We've only got a few minutes. So if you are gonna ask a question, just make it crisp, crisp. And please make it a question. And our hope is that it would be about Mars. It would be about The Martian, it would be about so on. So is this the first question right here? Go for it, yes. Okay, so we've talked throughout the program about, you've discovered water on Mars. If we were to somehow be able to transport the water that we found on Mars to Earth and say we were to make a glass of it, I don't know why, but say you were, what differences from that and Earth water would be apparent if, say, you just had it in your house and tried to make it? Well, if it's really water, there would be no difference. Well, there'd be a different number of neutrons, would there be something? It's the impurities in it. It's the salts that are keeping it liquid on the surface. So anyway, what these guys, geologists, or the worship words for these guys, or gals, is sample return. So everybody who's into it, you meet certain geologists, they believe that if you had a sample of Mars, you could tell who was president of Mars three billion years ago, because there's so much information in a rock. So along that line, maybe not bringing back water, but bringing back rocks, I hope you, as a taxpayer and voter, will support this. That's a cool question. He's probably neither of those things yet. Well, someday, yeah. No, it's coming. You can count on the tax thing, especially. Who's next? Is it all down here? In the middle. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He's got a NASA pin. Oh, sorry. For you, cool. It's a real deal, from the real man. Cool, next question. So, not to knock NASA, but government is... Boo!... obviously inefficient. And nowadays, we've got the private space race heating up. And Elon Musk, with SpaceX, has said that he wants to send human beings to Mars by, what is it, 2027? Next week. Do you think that he's going to beat you guys there? And if so, why or why not? So, I don't believe it's a race. And we want to help Elon any way we can, okay? So, he's got some ideas, he's got different approaches, and that's wonderful. We want to see if they work. We want to be able to help him in terms of where he wants to go. We want to give him the information he needs to determine how to do it. I just wanted to jump in as well. No, SpaceX is not going to put humans on Mars in the 2020s, just accept that. Also, I do believe that the first manned mission to Mars, my belief is it's going to be a large international effort, more organizationally similar to ISS than to the Apollo program. And those commercial space companies like SpaceX and their competitors are going to be what NASA and the other government agencies hire to put things into orbit. So what I think the ideal situation is, NASA makes the ships that go to Mars and makes the stuff that lands on Mars and trains the astronauts that go and probably even they're going to want to make the launch vehicle that puts the astronauts themselves up. But the just raw freight transport of mass up into orbit will be done by these companies. So I think it will be just everybody working on it. Yeah, it's a team effort. Andy's right. And if we do this internationally, it will lower the cost to everybody. Yeah, let's get to the great question. There we go. So we can take people who have gotten in line and everything. So go ahead. Can I call you Bill? Quickly, I just want to say for everyone here, thank you for helping us, like, inspire us and articulate wonder. I love you, man. So I'm pretty young and you help me, like, feel wonder. But as I get older, we also realize that, like, life is full of infinite possibility, but it's also full of risk. Planetary exploration, writing, comedy, it's all full of incredible possibility, but incredible risk. What would you say to all the young people here who are realizing that you have to mitigate risk, but also possibility? Like, does that, like, for young people, what words of encouragement would you give in terms of, when you discover something, there might be risk? Well, just keep in mind, in general, not entirely, but in general, you don't regret what you do. You regret what you don't do. And to accomplish anything, you have to assess the risk, the chances of success. So this gets into something my parents talked about quite a bit. Common sense. And they always said, common sense is not that common. What you want is this mix of fear and a belief that you can accomplish something. So in general, I would say, go for it. You will surprise yourself. You will get more done than you think. That's what I would say. Thank you. Jim's handing out the pins. Yes, yes, ma'am. Yes, hello. So I was wondering, besides things that are already plentiful on Earth, like water, is there anything that would be super valuable to us on Mars? Oh, good question. To live and work, you know, the methane, in addition to the water, the methane, because we could heat our habs. But are you talking about bringing stuff back? Like minerals? Well, I'm saying, yeah, like, do you see a potential for commercial mining like in a hundred years or something? Like, is there something on Mars that we would want here that we don't already have tons of? You know, that's thinking out of the box and I never really thought about it. I'm just trying to get there. My guess would be no, because just simply transporting things from Mars to Earth would make it better just to get it from Earth. But if there's some kind of jewelry. What Mars has right now that we lack is an enormous amount of knowledge about the formation of our solar system and the possible formation of life. So that's the real asset Mars has for us right now. So the word you used was commercial, but if you said scientifically, that's samples. Those are a variety of rock samples, soil samples, everything that we can bring back and study here on Earth far better than we can with our robotic missions. If you bring back a rock this big, I can sell it for 10,000 bucks. You got a buyer. You know people willing to buy it, right? So let's get to the next question. Thank you. Good question. God, Jim, you're fabulous, man, with the pins. Yes. It is not... Go closer to the microphone. It is not really well known that permafrost in the Arctic is melting very quickly. It is not or it is known. It is not very well known by the public. People don't realize it. People don't realize it. We should tell them. Yeah, right. Well, hi. So it is not really well known that that's a really problem right now in the polls. And so I'm asking if you can please prove me wrong that we that that's a runaway greenhouse gas effect is not. Oh, you mean the clathrate gun. We love the methane gun, the methane gun. So everybody that there's methane stored in the ice, in the permafrost and maybe in the continental shelves. And when the world gets a little bit warmer, these will be released. There will be a huge amount of methane put in the atmosphere and the world, the earth will get warmer catastrophically quickly. If you like to worry about things, that's a good one. I worry about it every day, man. So here's the thing, you guys. You can say what you will, but we have people running for president of the world's most influential government who right now at this point in the election cycle claim they don't believe in climate change. You guys, yeah, okay. Just keep in mind that you have a chance to vote. And whatever you want to do, I'm not supporting a candidate. I'm not supporting a candidate. I'm just saying I encourage everybody to take the environment into account. And here's why. We can compare Venus to Mars to the Earth. And we're doing that. It's very valuable. And what we have learned on these other two worlds is that this one is special. So when it comes time to vote, I strongly encourage you to take the environment into account. Thanks for bringing that up. You know... San Francisco, the notoriously conservative city you are, please. We are so lucky to have in our solar system those other two terrestrial planets. Because what happened on Venus could happen here on Earth. What's happened on Mars could happen here on Earth. And it's a matter of how these planets evolve over time. They were all so very different. And we're just becoming aware of that. And that is so important for us to study and understand because it's going to affect our life in the long run. Venus's atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide and it's hotter than Mercury. Draw your own conclusions. Which is much closer. So comparative planetology is something that Carl Sagan talked about all the time. Know your place in space. Yes, sir. Next question. Hi, guys. Thank you very much. I know it's kind of early, but I was wondering what you guys thought about the Planet Nine. Cookie for Planet Nine. Planet Nine. Well, first off, I think if you went back in time to like 1960 and said in 2015 there will only be eight planets, they would think something very exciting was going to happen. But anyway, this is everybody, if you don't know, it's reasonable that there's an enormous body, a planetary body out beyond the orbit of Pluto, 10 times, 20 times farther from the sun than we are. No, 200. That's what I was kidding. 200. You're absolutely right. 200 times farther from the sun than we are, and this has gravitational influence out there, and it just shows you there's so much that we don't know right in your own solar system. And that discovery was made in your lifetime, and that's pretty cool. Well, you know, if it's out there, we'll find it. We haven't found it yet. There's always the... That's that NASA confidence. Yeah, well... If it's out there, we're going to find it. We're going to find it. How hard can it be? It's a whole freaking planet. I mean, what's wrong with you guys? How could we miss it? So we have a huge telescope called James Webb Space Telescope, JWST, and what we'd like to do right now is narrow the search area, because that whole region is huge out there, and James Webb has got such a beautiful mirror right in the infrared, right at the wavelengths that it will see it. And we just want to point there and find it and see the disk and understand it and look at it and really try to figure out how it got there, because it didn't form there. It had to have formed inside this group of planets we have. I have been informed this next one is the last question. I'm sorry, you guys. Stripe sweater, man. Bring it on. This is it. Okay, so... Close to the microphone. Let them hear you outside. Blow the roof off the dump. So, I was thinking, after humanity colonizes Mars... The way we will. Yeah. Where are we going to go next as a species? Where would you like to go? Europa, maybe? The solar system is ours. Let's take it. It's a piece of cake. Anyway, Europa has twice as much seawater as the Earth. Are there Europanian fish people swimming around out there? And if we discovered them, it would change the course of human history, and I want to do it in my lifetime. Oh, I would, too. So, support the work of space exploration, and let's change the world. Thank you all very much for coming. Thank you all so much. And Bill. Thank you. Thank you all for coming.