Ologies with Alie Ward - Areology (MARS) Part 1 with Jennifer Buz

Episode Date: July 3, 2018

The Red Planet. A mysterious dusty orb millions of miles away. Our emergency escape bunker. Alie sits down with Dr. Jennifer Buz to talk about what Mars’s DEEEEAL is, why we send rovers there, good science fiction, so-so science fiction, double egg yolks, the poetry of the moon Phobos and some of the best science dreams perhaps ever recorded. Jennifer is maybe the chillest areologist on this planet and an absolute gem.You're going to want to look at Dr. Jennifer Buz's website JNNFR.BZInfo on the 2020 rover workshop via JPLMore episode sources & linksBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick Thorburn 

Hey, it's your stepbrothers girlfriend the one with the pet rat. What's up? It's Ali Ward. Welcome back another episode of oligies Hi guys, I'm happy continued summer to all of our friends in the northern hemisphere happy sweater weather to the southern friends Boy, howdy. Do we have a special two-parter for you this week and next? Mars, are you ready? Okay, so that that orange orb in the night sky It's fodder for science fiction and it's a place where billionaires ask themselves Can we go there when we ruin the planet we're on? It's kind of like a very dry rebound after we crash and burn our marriage with earth So maybe you love Mars. Maybe you maybe you don't know why people love Mars

Maybe you're like me and until a few years ago. I was like wait, is Mars a really hot like fiery one because it's red and stuff I had no idea so this week you're not only getting answers to the questions You feel too stupid to ask but also some in-depth knowledge of what's coming up next from one of the most Chill but deeply enthusiastic Allegists I've ever gotten to sit down with whoo, okay, but first I'll be quick So this show would not be made without the patrons at patreon.com Ologies you can join that club for as little as a dollar a month 25 cents a week It lets you see what topics are coming up next you can submit questions that I ask the oligists directly also

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So if you decide you need an oligies bathing suit with bugs on your butt or boobs or whatever Go to oligies merch.com go get them also your reviews and ratings keep it up in the charts for other people to discover and I'm often writing this without a bra. I'm recording in my closet and Your reviews make my week and then I read them such as Nikki the nerd who titled her review I know you're reading this Ali. She's not wrong. She said this podcast is Flippin awesome every week. I now have new random factoids to spit out of people in awkward situations So thank you Ali for being a geek and giving your fellow nerds a place to geek out together I want to know how awkward your situations get

I told a hundred people over a PA system about getting my hand stuck in an escalator and the story did not go as well As I thought anyway, it happens Okay, ariology. Let's get into it So first off Mars has a lot of iron in the soil which makes it red which makes it look like the solar system's big bloody eyeball So hence we named it after the god of war Mars so it's Aries in Greek mythology and if you want to know more about Romans ripping off Greeks listen to the mythology episode So the Greeks were apparently kind of ambivalent toward Aries

They were like he's jacked and he could kick ass in battle, but also he's kind of a dick So the word ariology means study of Mars So thisologist was introduced to me via email by my NASA friend Casey Hi, Casey. Hi, Christine. Casey's email between us simply said do you need introductions? No, you do not Then I received a message back from her saying that she listens to the podcast She's been a patron since approximately 10 minutes after listening to her first episode And that once She played oligies with her friend where she pretended to be me and interviewed him and she said and I quote

I even talked about how dirty my hair was and put in asides And let's just say I wanted to print up her email and frame it in something or Nate and gold So this interview was on it was happening. So she grew up in the heart of LA She has the most laid-back Textbook so Cal accent I have ever heard maybe the chillest Ariologist on any of the known planets. So I got off a plane from a work trip I headed straight from the airport to a little conference room with squeaky chairs at Caltech in Pasadena To talk about like what Mars's deal is and the best sci-fi about it some super recent discoveries about moons and life

Insane dust storms the rovers they're building and some of the best science dreams I've literally ever heard in my life. So please prepare for a journey into space and your rocky subconscious with Ariologist Jennifer booze So you know the drill there's the microphone you talk into it, okay, this is gonna be fun. No, it's great You just write it. So we just talk regularly but with microphones. Yeah, exactly. You just hold you look at this You're already a pro You're already so good at this point I looked over and I saw that Jennifer was prepared with six printed sheets of questions

From the patreon page asked by listeners Annotated by hand with her answers. She took the liberty of printing and answering them to prep for this Oh my god, you printed them out and answered them. Oh My god, I want to be caught off guard. This is great. This is the most prepared anyone's ever been So we'll get to all those questions in part two of this series next week, but just know She's a wonderful genius. Also her website is so worth perusing. It's her name minus the vowel So J and then FR dot BZ and it features this pixely drawing of herself with purple hair and a turtle body

Floating in the cosmos and it has photos of her work Links to significant space labs and a ton of Easter eggs that you just have to click around to get into and as soon as I saw it I was like I'm interviewing this very Bizarrely amazing human being I love her also someone should clone her and populate a planet with a bunch more of her your website's so Spectacular by the way. I love you so much. I thought about making it more professional. Yeah, it was like that's lame. No, don't do that Okay, so you study Mars. Yes, you're an areologist Yes, is that correct? Yeah, well, I think I'm a planetary geologist who studies Mars, but I study Mars So I'm an ariologist. Okay. How long have you studied Mars? I'm gonna get straight into it with basic bitch questions

Okay, I started studying Mars when I got to Caltech. So it's been about six and a half years So Dr. Jennifer booze got her bachelors and master's degree in geological and planetary Sciences at this little startup school. I don't know if you've heard of it. That's called MIT Dude and she just defended her geological PhD this April at Caltech during her schooling She just always dreamed of working with rocks from far away lands And it's so easy to spend your 20s focused on dipping pizza into nacho sauce and trying to get your brother to buy you drugs But Jennifer was like I gotta get my mitts on some space rocks

When you got the call that you knew that you would get to work on this like for real Okay, so like maybe that moment would be when I was an undergrad I applied to work in a lab that studied moon rocks and That would be like my first time like my first real exposure and when I got that that research position It was like a summer position. I was like, oh my god I'm gonna be touching moon rocks like they're gonna be in my possession Like I get to look at them every day and like they came from the moon and I was reading Apollo transcripts like when they found their rocks and I was like Listening to the audio tapes and like oh, that's when they found my rock. Oh my god

And like and then one day I broke the rock and I was like they're gonna fire me for sure But they didn't because they were like y'all rocks break. Oh my god, but that day when I got that job. I was just Thrilled beyond belief that like I that they someone trusted me with a rock that came from the moon that like an astronaut collected Oh my god. Yeah, that must have just been such butterflies Yeah, that was like super super exciting and what a good lesson to learn that like you can break a moon rock and life will go on Yeah, I remember that day I broke the rock and I just packed up my stuff and went to my dorm I wrote an email to my advisor. I was like, I broke the rock. I'll be at my dorm

And I like went and I was like really upset and I told the people in my hall I was like you guys like I definitely got fired just now and like they all comforted me But they were like, yeah, that sounds serious and then my advisor was like are you coming back? We've all broken rocks And then I was like Did you like pack up your stuff like your desk area? Yeah Like I'd only been there like a couple days, but I like packed up everything in the lab I like made it all neat and I just like

Put it in my I just went back. I just went home and I was just waiting just so he was at lunch And it's like if he hadn't been at lunch I would have just gone to his office and probably sat down and like cried I'm like, I broke a rock, but I didn't I just send him this email like I broke a rock Oh, I just picture you walking across campus with like a box and like a mug that says I'm loony for the moon And like just being like I guess this isn't my office Yeah, oh my god, that's the cutest thing ever. It's great that they let like that in my in my experience advisors have been really

understanding and like You know just patient with me, too I mean, it's nice that even scientists who study like the coolest shit even on other planets are all like we're all earthlings Yeah, it's good. Yeah We're all just little humans. Yeah And speaking of little humans when Jennifer was just a wee one her folks took her on tours of NASA's JPL The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and she just became deeply stoked looking at the models and the replicas of the rovers These things bumble around Mars

Scrubbing rocks and taking pictures and eventually some models zap rocks with lasers Right now NASA is planning the next one. There's a 2020 Unnamed rover to add to the four already up there There's sojourner which kind of turned into a pumpkin metaphorically in 1997 and there's spirit which is stuck with a broken wheel But up until a few years ago was bravely pinging back and then there's spirits twin rover Opportunity which has been cruising around since 2004 and then there's a larger curiosity This is the one you've probably heard of a lot more recently

it's it's about the size of a mini Cooper so says NASA itself and Curiosity landed in August of 2012 and it's been kind of bebopping around a crater named Gale for the last six years So fun fact to help Areologists figure out how loose the soil is and how far the rover has traveled the curiosity tires Have a few dots and dashes in the tread that spell out a secret message in morse code What is it? spells JPL ding-dong

So I did some digging in the dusty soil of the internet and I discovered that rover driver mark memone He's ginger-haired jolly looking is responsible for that Morse code and also his cell number was just like listed so I Did what any classy stranger would do at 8 p.m. On a Wednesday and I texted him just being like hey mark You totally don't know me, but my name is Ali Ward and I just found out you're the one who proposed the JPL Morse code on the curiosity Tires, I'm just saying hey that was badass super cool idea But it's been five days, and I have not received a response. So don't do that So back to the curiosity rover landing in 2012 which was an exciting time for space nuts

So curiosity rover. Yeah, we landed it what six years ago. I think that's right Did you stay up late to watch it? Yeah, I volunteered at a like a public event where They were showing the the landing and stuff. So what was I didn't see the landing I think it was in the middle of the night, right? It was late. I feel like it's like 11 or something I don't really remember though. What was that moment like when it touched down like what were you doing? Touchdown confirmed We're just all watching the screen and I think there was lots of screaming and people crying and lots of general excitement There's raw video of the NASA JPL control room when the curiosity rover touches down safely

Millions of dollars so many millions of dollars thousands and thousands of hours and trials and failures and Redo's and teamwork to get this thing on fucking Mars people in the control room like bearded men Grown women just all weeping with joy. Did I watch it and cry? Maybe I did none of your business Jennifer at the time was also pretty jazzed because that meant she didn't have to throw her unfinished PhD thesis into a burning garbage can my like PhD research was gonna be using that data. So it was just like super Nervous also that it maybe it wouldn't work And then I was gonna have to pick a new project But I was like super excited also. So yeah, it was like high emissions night

Like if it literally bit the dust you'd be like, well, there goes my Yeah, what was your PhD project my PhD? Basically came down to like five projects related to Mars Wait a second Before we even talk about what she was doing on Mars. Let's just talk about Mars Let's just back the hell up for one second as a planetary geologist Can you run me through like what the fuck is Mars? What's it steel? Why is it so dry? How cold is it? How big is it? Just tell me what we're working with here

Give me some specs like if you were if you were a dog and you're like, I don't know what Mars is How would you start? Okay? So Mars? You know, it's the next planet from our Sun. So it's gonna be like holder. It's also a lot smaller At its closest Mars is around 34 million miles That's 55 million kilometers if you live in a country with a metric system and good health care away so scale-wise Mars is about half the size of Earth and Has roughly one-third the gravity one-third So I looked up a few

Simulators of Mars gravity and in one there's this human in an orange onesie supported by slings Taking these graceful leaps around an indoor track kind of like a giant Marionette in a prison jumpsuit in another video I saw what appeared to be a gaggle of French Cosmonautical tourists taking a ride in a vomit comet, which is a seat lists Commercial jet that makes these roller coaster dips in flights and simulates lower gravity I don't know from what I can tell less gravity looks fun as hell with these middle-aged Parisians Resorting to whoops. They're hooting like tiny happy donkeys are kids in a ball pit

So Mars gravity take your weight divide it by three that is your bounding happy space pony weight It's like atmosphere is super thin right now But in the past it had a thicker atmosphere and there was water on it for sure like we have evidence for like Streams and lakes and all sorts of like things like that and it was a lot warmer because it had an atmosphere And it used to have a magnetic field like we had on earth, but it's dead doesn't have one anymore How do magnetic fields die? The planet Mars because it's smaller it can like cool down a lot quicker on earth So we it's like hot down in our core and we have got

Iron spinning around and it's also like a big planet and so but Mars doesn't have like all those things and so it's like It's core is like just not putting out like that kind of motion anymore So we're not getting a magnetic field anymore. I had no idea that was even a thing. I didn't know that was an option Yeah, and the moon used to have a magnetic field too. I mean it doesn't have one anymore the Mars Moon. No our moon Earth's moon. Yeah Yeah So I studied the moon before I studied Mars. Oh god. I got so many questions. Oh, that's gonna be another episode Does Mars have moons it has two moons Phobos and Deimos, okay, there's like some debate about how the moons form how the moons form but I think

Most people think they're like captured asteroids. So they're really small moons and not like ours and I think from the surface they look more like a planets. So if you're on Mars, yeah Do you see two moons in the sky at the same time? I think you can but I but they're so small I think that they look more like planets. Okay. They just are like little dimmy dots. Yeah, I don't think they don't look like Armin for sure. Okay. Yeah, I thought maybe it you have you ever cracked an egg and you got a double yolk Yeah, it's my lucky day Side note, how lucky is it to get a double yolk or egg? I had to stop and check because I was like, how rare is that?

Maybe it's happened to me twice in my life. Anyway, some traditions say it's really good luck or that someone in the family Is gonna get knocked up with twins, but according to Norse legends, it's an ominous sign the death will visit So what's actually happening like biologically? So in about one in every thousand eggs a hen just boops out an extra yolk She's like boop usually younger hens do it more frequently. I don't know. Maybe their bodies are just like hell. Yeah, I'm a baby machine Let's go as for Mars's double moons some hot goss just came out this past week Jennifer emailed me That Phobos which she described as a 26 kilometer wide lumpy turd ball or a cocoa puff May not have been a captured asteroid But possibly it was formed out of a cloud of dust that was left over from a giant impact

Kind of like our own beloved moon and that possibly possibly Phobos has formed many times Over Mars history and it just periodically crashes into the surface forms a dust cloud around Mars again and then Recreates itself into a moon and then crashes again forms itself a new again But smaller over and over and over which is like the most poetic shit I have ever heard and also that's more comebacks than Brittany and I respect that now the decreasing orbit of Phobos this Tendency to kind of decrease and decrease and crash Convinced even Carl Sagan at one point that Phobos was just a hollow satellite put in place by aliens

And I love the idea that maybe Carl Sagan just thought of it kind of like a backyard shed Like aliens would just store holiday decorations in tubs or like coffee cans filled with nails and Ikea Allen wrenches Maybe a lawn mower that the Martians haven't used in a few billion years because landscaping got a little parched up there And so it's dry. Yeah, so what do they think happened to make Mars such a dust bowl? So it got dry basically it used to have water, but because it's so much smaller its atmosphere Like got lost basically doesn't have as much gravity like pulling it in And it also like didn't have a magnetic field anymore And like we say our magnetic field protects us and so like the atmosphere just got like stripped away over time

by like the solar wind and just like other atmospheric loss processes and so It just like lost its atmosphere got drier and drier and then now it has a thin atmosphere and everything's just dusty Does the water evaporate into the solar system? Yeah, it just gets like lost and I guess they're like Yeah, basically, I wonder where it goes. Yeah, I don't know. Just like out Can I just oceans just kind of Misting around maybe I think it's like probably really scattered apart. Okay, probably just a gas So we have a super dusty planet. Yeah, why is it red?

It has a lot of iron. It's like rusty. Oh, yeah, and same as like Utah. Yeah Yeah, mm-hmm. Okay in a lot of ways. Why do you think people? Fucking love Mars so much because it is awesome. I mean, it's like I agree with you It's like it could have had aliens on it It's like it's like a little earth that was like way cooler in the past and now it's like a little dead but like it has so much potential and It's like so similar to earth in a lot of ways that people are like we could go there if you know We screwed up our own planet. It's so like geologically diverse. You know, it's got

Evidence for like maybe an ocean. It's got lakes. It's got deltas and this crazy sand dunes and like there's just like so many Cool things you can look at on Mars that it's just fascinating I think that's why people love it and there's just so much potential for like thinking about life and aliens and space travel and Being on another planet and fantasies like related to that and Martians like literal Martians. Yeah, hear me out maybe Mars functions for us

Earthlings as like the idea of like an old cabin in Joshua tree like it's far away But not that far away and it's old and you don't really know why it's kind of like decrepit But it has a charm to it and maybe you could escape there if shit went down. Yeah So it's dusty too, and it's dusty. It's kind of like our our old vintage homesteader cabin in the desert. Oh Yeah, I like that idea, right? So what parts of this chilly desert are we really poking around now? The Curiosity rover landed in a crater Gale crater named for Walter Frederick Gale Who was an Australian banker by name, but he was a real space to eat by night

So Gale crater is this huge dent in Mars, and it's filled with a mountain of perhaps Wind-whipped debris that's taller than Mount Rainier It looks like if you piled a bunch of brown sugar into a shallow bowl or like a little tiny Tuft of lint in a belly button. Now. Why do we care about this crater? Because maybe it was a lake. Why did we put curiosity in the crater? That's where the lake was. Okay. Yeah, that's where the cool stuff was Got it So if they're gonna be like any old beer cans or like signs that people had a party there

We would find it in the bottom of what used to be like or we'd be like there were maybe some old fish in here Yeah, okay. Yeah, you know, it's like it's like a basin So stuff's gonna collect there and we had seen from orbit that there were like layers that looked like they could have been From a lake or something wet or people are actually really debated what the layers were and so it's just curious people were curious From many different perspectives and so that's why we went there But picking like the landing site is like a multi-year thing with like hundreds of people involved and stuff So do people debate ferociously are they like in a board room like over late night take out food being like no We're gonna put it in this basin. Yeah, so the landing site

process is really Interactive process and it's actually People in the general public can participate too, but they so like the 2020 rover We're having landing site workshops right now And basically the way it works is like people who study Mars or even anybody can propose a landing site They'll be like I want to go to this place but then they have to make their argument for it and so they have these workshops that are like yearly or bi-yearly and people

Present what they found out about their spot and like why we should go there and then like literally we vote Like we raise our hands people at the workshop and then and then it's like a popular opinion But then there's a little bit of influence from like NASA, you know headquarters So it's the wait so it is decided by a hand raised and then NASA's like I approve You know say there's like a hundred people suggesting sites Mm-hmm like the hand raising process will narrow it down to like eight Okay, and then once it gets to like those few landing sites then NASA starts being like hey now We have to consider like how feasible is it to go there like are there other engineering constraints?

And so people might be super psyched about a place for one reason But like if it's not gonna answer the question that it's a goal of the mission then they're gonna be like no We need to stay on track. And what did you think of the opportunity rover? Do you have a favorite between curiosity and opportunity? I mean, I know that opportunities Opportunity did bite the dust and it's just chillin somewhere right spirit spirit Yeah, what did I say opportunity? Yeah, I'm sorry. It's okay. What did I tell you? I'm gonna learn I went into this being like I'm gonna learn a lot about the way

Like a one-way that I remember that well in many ways, but like free spirit like Spirit stuck So what happened run me through what happened with spirit what's going on with curiosity? I know there's been some dust storms people are super worried about the dust storms and curiosity right now. Yeah, and What they're finding out and then there was the twin rovers spirit and opportunity and so a spirit got stuck like it's wheel Stop spinning and it was like dragging it for a while. I wasn't involved in this mission. So I only know like a high-level Public kind of thing, but yeah, so it's like dragon's wheel ran and eventually it couldn't get out of its Yeah, but

Opportunity is still operational. So yeah, but the dust storm super relevant right now because there's a dust storm on Mars Right, and so this is not the first time that there's been a dust storm with the rovers and what in the past actually When there was a global dust storm They were worried that we may never see spirit opportunity again because they use solar panels for their stuff for power But actually the dust storm like clean them off a bit. No Yeah, they were they had because as they're moving around dust is a major problem for our work Because it's just like it's really fine and it lands everywhere and it's like Just like a dirty apartment kind of and it's but if you're looking at the surface

It's like hard to to see stuff underneath the dust sometimes and so actually yet clean clean them off the solar panels And they're doing okay right now. Yeah, so opportunity is like not Operational right now because it doesn't it can't get enough sun Okay, but it's still alive like it's still sending pings like hey I'm here, but I can't do anything and is it because of like Seasonal things happening there because it because the dust is in the sky is like blocking the sun from going there How big is this dust storm and where why does Mars have these insane dust storms? There's just so it's a really dusty planet

You know, it doesn't have like an ocean to catch though the dust that's floating around and then there is an atmosphere And so the dust is like really fine. It can get get picked up and like just entrained in the atmosphere for a long time yeah, and So okay, so but curiosity Is also witnessing this dust storm like when we look at pictures of the sky that it sends us We can see that the sky is much darker. Oh, but curiosity uses like Nuclear power it does. Yeah, it's not using solar panels. So it's like it can still function

With the dust storm. I did not know that. Yeah, how long how much fuel does it have a lot? How long will it live? For more years, okay, I don't know I don't know the exact number of years But like so the battery it has a battery that it like can recharge and stuff I don't know the details of how it's powered, but it's some sort of decay and Yeah, it'll live for a while We'll be able to use it like the really power hungry things less in the future, but right now. It's like, yeah

It's chugging along. Yeah, I didn't know that I thought they were all solar. No, yeah And the next one it'll be similar to curiosity. Okay, and that's the 2020. Yeah, what's the 2020 gonna peep? What's it looking at? Where's it gonna land? So we don't know yet where it's gonna land It's like down to three sites. Okay, and you get to vote With your arm, you know, I think that At this stage, I'm not sure how much the like my individual opinion matters as as opposed to like the people in charge of the rover Okay, they may have a lot of say now

But there are still workshop. They're still landing site workshops So people are still working on the landing sites and presenting and then the like the public and scientists can still go and like Ask questions and stuff like that So side note, I wanted to see if any workshops remain and yes in October of 2018 NASA will be conducting the fourth and final Three-day workshop to determine the landing site for the 2020 rover now According to a page up at Mars next dot JPL dot NASA dot gov. I'll put a link in the show notes They'll be

Gabbing about the potential of three remaining candidate sites all possible sites where life could have existed and or There's a lot of evidence for rocks and fluids having interacted. So this workshop I picture it taking place in some secret marble hall But it's just happening at a Hilton and what's being called Los Angeles North, but hello It's just Glendale. That's I calling New Jersey New York East, but who am I to judge oops Then I went on Yelp to see how this Hilton was and reviews are mixed Some people think the pool is too cold and the walls are too thin and one person gave it three stars because quote The restrooms needed to be restocked due to my stall not having toilet seat covers and the lady in my stall asking for toilet paper

Lol, perhaps they should have sent a rover to this Hilton to see if it was the best place to host the conference Either way, it's gonna be exciting and now you have all the info you need to choose the rover spot on Mars And so one of the big ideas behind like past Mars life is that that was like microbes Maybe living in like cracks and rocks and stuff. And so there's also in that area. There's like also like volcanism and stuff um a wide variety of rocks there and a wide variety of ages Which is crucial because Mars was like probably habitable a lot old in the lot in it's like early history How long ago do you think Mars was probably habitable, right? Are we talking like five billion years ago or like 30,000 billion no a long time ago like billions of years

Okay, just three billion years or something like I mean, maybe there's like there is still some fluid activity More recently, but it's like such small amounts that like these would be like really lonely bugs Yeah, there's a big group of people that want to send a rover back to the same spot where spirit is which is kind of a cute Thought in some ways, but a lot of people are like no we want to go somewhere new, right? But that that spot there's like hydrothermal activity So which is like on earth where a lot of people think life might have started so that's why That's like a big that's why there's a big argument to go back there to like primordial Martian soup Yeah, kind of mm-hmm. Do you think that there's any hope of sending the 2020 rover and it like bumps butts with the spirit and spirits like

I'm back it like gets its group back. Oh You know that'd be kind of cute if they sent it a little toolbox to like fix its brown I don't know. I think that it may not go like to that exact precise spot, but it could I mean it's possible But yeah, it's like a highly debated thing if it should even be considered because we're like, it's a big planet We should go somewhere new, right? Yeah, I do feel like you know I've dated people that want to go to the same restaurant like every single night. Yeah, come on dude Yeah, a new place opened up down the block. Let's try it out. I feel like we can branch out Yeah, I'm excited to check out some new spots. So day-to-day Jennifer works on the computer

She looks at images she gets beamed from another fucking planet totally normal Or she looks at how light hits the surface of certain materials and what they're composed of and then of course Fulfilling baby Jennifer's dreams. She works on Mars rovers And then another thing that I do often is I'm on the Curiosity rover team And so we some of my days are spent doing operations for the rover And so we figure out like where's the river today like what's cool around us like where are we gonna shoot our laser? Yeah, and so there'll be like telecons and stuff and so I'll be on the on a telecon like most of the day PS I had to email Jennifer to ask if a telecon is a fancy word for a phone call and she said yeah

But also you share computer screens. So my guess is it's kind of like a role-playing game But instead of your cousin in another state Having her elves attack you it's a space scientist being like check out these sweet-ass rocks Planning out that making little rovers a little agenda for it Is that crazy to you that like you came to JPL looked at rovers when you're a kid and now you're like I'm on the team deciding where to point the labels on Mars like is that banana? Yeah, it's pretty exciting Like I definitely think back to those when I'm being little and and seeing the rovers at JPL That's pretty cool to me

Then another cool part about being a Mars geologist is that we often study analog sites And so that'll we'll go to places on earth that remind us of Mars and study them and think about like oh if we were on Mars Like how would this be different or like we'll ask a question Like Iceland is like a place where people go to study Mars or also like the dry valleys of Antarctica people go there Really Mars. Yeah, and what is it about those places and specifically Iceland like I know a lot of people Love Mars and are thinking about going to Iceland. Where in Iceland do you go if you want to pretend like you're on Mars? I don't know specific. I couldn't say like a specific place but like there's like lots of rift evidence of like volcanic rifting and so a lot of just like hydrothermal interaction kind of stuff so like where water and

Hot rock met and there are volcanoes on Mars. Yeah. Yeah, so Mars is like a super volcanic super basaltic So basalt is like what's coming out on Iceland, which is why people go there and then it's like cold too Iceland's super cold and Mars is really cold So that's like you got kind of a lot of the stuff in common already a correlate there Yeah, would you go to Mars if given the opportunity? I think it it depends on the circumstances of it, but like yeah business class. You're at least going business class Yeah, I mean like it's like is it is there like a colony on Mars? That's like already established and like yeah

But like or if I'm going to be like a cool geologist on Mars like yeah for sure, but like one of the first are you like Maybe I was like a little older You just eaked out what you could on earth and you're like, all right, I'm ready to retire on my yeah I think I would just like weigh it out be like Am I ready to die? And then I would say if I'm like, okay. Yeah, that'd be kind of cool and then yeah, it's like moving to Arizona Yeah, I'm ready to have the last phase of my life when you were trying to figure out what you wanted to do Like with your life like your job at what point did you know where to steer yourself at what point where you're like, okay?

I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna study this. I'm gonna work there. Yeah only very recently really yeah, because I I was like So I was like super into science in general, but I had a really hard time Like figuring out what is what exact science I wanted to study. I like love nature of camping and stuff like that So like I also love like weird biology things so it's like into a lot of stuff like environmental science and I didn't get Exposure to geology until pretty late like until basically my freshman year in college and then I was like, oh dang You can go camping and do science So that's like how I got into geology, but then I was like I didn't even know planetary geology

like I knew about the rovers and stuff but like I didn't really realize how big a field it was and then I Just like slowly got like more and more into it and I was like this is sick And it's only like now that I just graduated I'm like thinking now I need to make a plan for what I want to do in the future and Strategic like projects to work on strategically for things that I know will crop up crop up So like getting involved with the 2020 rovers like I want to be continue to be involved with that kind of research And so like I've been doing some stuff related to the 2020 rover calibration and things like that just to like get my Name out there, you know. Yeah, you're like come to me for your calibration and rover needs

Yeah, and then like participating in the landing site workshops I want to be like it's like super exciting to me now to know Like all this background because when I got involved with curiosity, I didn't know as much about Gale crater as like I know about the potential landing sites for 2020 So it's like exciting to be involved from an early stage. Oh because Hear me out. Is it like watching the bachelor from the beginning you really care about Who's in the last couple shows? Yeah, probably I've never had that experience, but I imagine that's probably the case Except this rose

It's just in like an investment in the playoffs, you know what I mean? Then when it comes to the World Series, you're like this matters even more to me because I've been watching since the beginning Yeah, yeah, I get that so now that you're in the stage with 2020 where they're deciding where to land it Decisions are being made and so it's gonna mean even more when you see that through to completion to the end Or they actually the rovers there at the site that you all the help decide on yeah, that's gonna be enormous. Yeah Yeah, it's really exciting. Um, do you dream about Mars? Yeah, I've had lots of dreams about Mars You have what happens in them? Um So like some of them are nightmares. Really? Yeah

Just heads up. I'm so so so glad I asked this question because the payoff was fucking enormous Well, I had one that was like kind of like a It was like we we were on Mars and I requested an image be taken of like a crater wall by the rover and Like so the the image came down and it was like not that interesting And then somebody was like, do you know how much money we spent on that image? And then like the guilt tripped me about it That was like

I have like just I mean all my dreams are really bizarre Like I had other dreams for like I went to Mars and like landed in a crater And then there was like a lake there and then there was like an escape convict. That was a stowaway on my rocket ship like Yeah You're like, what are you doing here? Do you like go to your business? Yeah, exactly Like really, I mean just like weird dreams like that and then I had a dream one time That's like maybe my weirdest dream that I gave birth to a moon rock And

Like in my dream world you could have a boy or a girl or a rock Like those are your options and then the the science the doctors took my rock baby from me And like if you had a boy or a girl, you know, they just like weigh it on like the little scale But if you have a rock, maybe they put it like in a mass spectrometry So they put my my rock baby in their instrument and then they're like, um Miss booze we have to tell you something Like are you ready for this and I was like, what's wrong with my rock, baby? And they're like It's a moon rock

And then I looked at my boyfriend at the time and I was like, are you an alien? And his mom was like, I never told you you're an alien That was my weirdest dream I ever had everything about this is the best I That's amazing. Were you so disappointed when you woke up to real life? Yeah. Yeah It was a nightmare also no I can't believe these things happened in the dream world and like I'd never know this unless I put a microphone in your face

I I have really vivid dreams. I used to keep a journal. I don't blame you You gotta publish these things speaking of publishing in mars. Yeah, let's talk about the martian Cliff notes best-selling book that became a movie dude stranded on mars has to survive says things like I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this Okay, so andy wear wrote a book self-published. Mm-hmm. I read it. You read it. He was not A mars scientist. No, just a fan. Yeah, it was fanfic about mars, right? Yeah, but it got people kind of pumped about mars How did you feel about it as someone who works on mars? I was excited about it I I enjoyed the book and I like people getting excited about mars

I love when people, you know, ask me questions and I can answer them and uh And I enjoyed the book and for the most part like I wasn't like appalled by by it like So so yeah, I was good. There are other books Like similar kind of in the same line that are Super accurate about really what what's some of the best sci-fi about mars? I think like the kim stanley robinson series like red mars blue mars green mars like the first book red mars

um he he just stood like a ton of research on like what's actually happening on mars and He paints these landscapes that are actually incredibly accurate and the way he describes them is just like incredible and beautiful and he did a great job Um and of like painting mars scenes good on good on him, man So this is a trilogy about mars and making it habitable and long story short I went down a rabbit hole about author kim stanley robinson who is not a girl kim Little boy kim and he's married to a chemist and sometimes he goes by his wife's last name, which is cute Also, he lives in davis california. He prefers to write out of doors

Anyway back to andy weir's the martian which I did read on a plane and confession I will say I did read the martian and I cried. You're really a couple times. I was like they're coming to get you, buddy I felt very emotional. I didn't think the movie was Did quite as good a job, but what are you gonna do? Also, I had to stop to look this up But scientists say that the reason we're more likely to cry on an airplane than on the ground Maybe due to hypoxia or lack of oxygen due to air pressure because being on a plane Is equivalent to being in an altitude of around 8,000 feet. Isn't that crazy even with the pressurized cabin?

Or it may be the emotional liability of unfamiliar surroundings And humans tend to cry when we're a little scared to promote emotional bonding with others to increase our safety So the next time you find yourself like sobbing at a tender moment of a john claude vandam movie like Blame hypoxia. Okay. Let's get back to mars rovers Okay, tell me a little bit about how the rovers are gathering They gather rock samples, correct? Yeah. Now. Well, they're not like gathering them Tell me how they tell me how they do their business. Okay, so they like take pictures and they zap them with lasers and they um the pictures are not just like regular pictures though

They have like many wavelengths of light sometimes and so you can tell more from than you could just have a regular picture And then they drill them sometimes And they put them in like a on the curiosity river. There's like an instrument. That's like an oven So they put their rock powder that they drilled in the oven and they heat it up And then they measure the stuff that comes off of it and they learn about different Compounds that are in the river and then there's another thing where they like Vibrate the rock and they can like tell what the crystals like different mineral crystals are Um, yeah, and then do they just dump it? Do they just blow it off when they're like done with you?

Oh, yeah, but for the most part. Yeah, they drill it and then they like analyze that It's called the dump pile. Okay I didn't know that. Yeah, um, they like dump out the stuff they drilled and then they look at the dump pile And we have like an arm on the rover and so like we'll put the arm up close and like look at it and then Yeah, it's just like a lot of imaging. Um, and then a couple different like scientific instruments So that's like for the geology, but then there's also like stuff for atmospheric detections like that sense the winds and like Um gases and stuff like that

And so is there like a a feed coming through that just is like de de de de like this is what we're gathering We get okay. So the way it works is kind of uh, cool We uh relay with satellites that orbit Mars So we send um stuff to the satellites and the satellites send it down to the rover and the rover sends it back to the satellite and back to us So to recap they send information up to the satellites the satellites send it down to the rover The rover sends it back to the satellite and back to us the satellites like our mutual friend Who has cell service when we don't and we keep being like, oh my god Ask the rover to take a soil sample and the rover is like, holy shit satellite. Tell them the soil is so red

I can't even and so we get our data in like batches So in a way, yes, but it's not like constantly coming down. We'll get like data deliveries Okay at like specified times. Yeah Oh, and are you are you ever waiting for one like knowing like we should get a data delivery in like 12 minutes? Yeah, no, that's how planning works sometimes where like we might not get data Until like a certain place on our planning cycle and so we'll be waiting for Something to come down to like figure out how interesting something was if we want to like keep looking at it or if we want to move on Yeah, what do you think the weirdest thing is about

Mars's surface? maybe Like the sand dunes, they're really weird really Did they look like sand dunes like when you when people ride camels? It's for egypt and then like look at my vacation There's like a large variety of sand dunes on mars and like some of them are are like dusty and some of them are less Dusty and then like sometimes we can see the sand dunes moving which is kind of cool Like with the winds on mars

But then like something like a dust devil will pick up and then we can like see active motion What are some of the weird pictures that come back because I think I went down like a I think I went down on google hole once of like shit that may or may not have been placed there by aliens Yeah, what are some weird pictures? Okay, so like the most famous thing Um, I have two two examples. Oh my god. I'm so excited. Okay. So like first Was like personville lowell, you know, he looked at mars through his Telescope and lowell observatory and flagstaff personville lowell p.s. Was a boston Aristocrat aka a hella rich guy in the late 1800s and he was so passionate about astronomy that he founded

observatories with all of his monies He also had a formidable moustache and he had some theories that were well-intentioned but turned out to be um Crackpot and he thought he saw canals like they're like rivers and stuff He thought he saw and so he picked paint made all these like drawings of like what he thought was like a mars civilization He was sure there was like people on mars and so um, but like when we got better pictures It was like no, there's no canals that are built there You know, so that's like that was like people were so psyched on that Yeah, and he was super psyched on it

But then we got like higher resolution stuff and we're like, oh now it turns out it's not the case And then well like when we our first images you might have seen heard of the face on mars Yes, yeah, so it looks looks really creepy like i'm not gonna lie. It looks like a like a giant Guy just angry and he's looking at you If you haven't seen this there are images taken in the Sidonia region of mars that appear to be an alien face monument Staring into the void of the cosmos But it looks like someone left a halloween mask in the bushes for a year

And then you took a picture of it with a razor phone at night from 300 feet away Also, sadly, it's just called the face on mars Like no one even named it luke or denise or anything Which is kind of a bummer also the tendency to see faces in inanimate objects like light sockets and toast Etc is called Paradolia I follow an account on instagram called face book like f a c e d book And it's a collection of things that look like they have faces It's like rocks and clothes pins and wood grains and it creeps me out so hard

But I can't Unfollow it because it's like a good creepy. Anyway, face book if you're interested Okay, the face on mars when we got better cameras we zoomed in on this shit and But then when we like took a higher resolution image like many years later It's like, oh, it's just a little mountain that's got some shadows on it. Like damn it. Yeah, so those like those are really weird The the polar caps of mars. Um, they're like carbon dioxide and water and dust and uh, like when they melt or like evaporate they make like crazy morphologies like weird pits and like Stuff that it was just like the dye you like you you have a hard time

Like your brain has a hard time figuring out what's up and down When you're looking at these pictures and then they just look so alien Oh, how much water is on mars and when did we find it? Um, I say we as though I had anything to do with it Uh currently on mars Uh, there's not a lot of water. There's like some water like liquid water Just like in pores of rocks and like buried basically not really exposed on the surface But there's like water ice in the caps And when did we find it? I think probably the the best like when we started getting these early images that showed like channels

There was no, um Like solid evidence that it was formed by water But people are like the looks like it was formed by water and then you know get more and more info on it. Yeah How fast does our knowledge of other planets accumulate like have we just gone crazy with information in the last like 20 30 40 years? Yeah, we've uh, we right now we're in a time when like we have got Recently and are still getting lots of information about planets from different satellites that we've sent But like we're about to enter a time when we don't have a lot of stuff going out now And you know like a lot of the emissions that went out

They took like many years to get to where they were going And so now like either now or like recently they've gone and done their stuff And so but we haven't sent out a steady stream and so we're about to enter like a little bit of a wall Oh, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, and how long just refresh for me. Does it take? For us to get something to mars. Um, so like the data transmission. I think it's like seven minutes one way And then what about an object? Oh, okay So like it depends on like where mars is and it's orbit and stuff like that, but I think it's like three months

Okay, that seems really fast. Yeah, I think that's like for a really fast thing But you can you can take way longer also sure you can send it ground or something Not primed it. Yeah I want to mention that we also have mars rocks though Tell me about mars rocks that they came to earth Um, like meteorites that like were on the surface and then they got ejected and then we can study them too How does that happen? How does a mars meteorite just get fullung off the planet and just go? And just land here. Yeah, so like a big rock flies through space

And it hits mars And then it shoot makes a crater on mars and it shoots off rocks some of the rocks land on mars But some of them get shot off Like straight up in the air and like they reach mars, you know escape velocity and they're just flying through space And then they fly through space for like millions of years probably And then they land on earth as as another impact and then we collect them It goes from a meteor to once it hits it becomes a meteorite Is that right? I think that's right. Okay. So once it touches down, it's like boop. I just turned into a meteorite. Yeah

Um, how do you know? What they are Yeah, so um, we now have like classes because we can like kind of lump them And so like these are similar to these other ones and then but then there are some that are like bizarre And so like that's like how we found out that we had like a group of meteorites that different from the rest And people started to wonder if they could have been come from mars because the minerals in them were similar to what we thought We knew was on mars and then so This group was like finally confirmed to be from mars when we sent a lander to mars

And we measured the atmosphere and like isotopes in the atmosphere like the different ratios Were the same ratios that were like trapped in bubbles in these rocks. And so we're like yep, they're from mars And then where do you put the meteorites? Like do they get stored under like lock and key because you're so rare. Yeah, they um, well, it depends who found them Okay, so like nasa has like missions to Antarctica to collect meteorites and like to some deserts I think and so those are property of nasa and you can like apply to study them But you you can only ever borrow them They are owned by nasa and they're stored at johnson space center in houston. Whoo. Yeah, um, but like people

Can also find a meteorite on their own and then I think that's their meteorite depending on where they found it How often do areologists Planetary geologists have someone say yo I found a meteorite and you're like that's a lump of granite. Like how often does that happen a lot? Yeah. Yeah People like bring me rocks all the time and ask me if they're meteorites How do you how do you know? That they're not uh sometimes I can just like be like that's an earth rock because it looks like

Yeah, like I'm like that's a lump of granite Um So like meteorites often have like a fusion crust which is when it's all glassy on the outside of the rock And that's like from heating up when it enters the atmosphere So that's like one thing that we can tell and then like there are certain things that we only see in meteorites Like this cool metal pattern called a vid month's dotten pattern And it's like a crazy like kind of etching looking thing by the by these cross hatch patterns and meteorites are caused by Apparently nickel iron crystals and they're credited to an australian painter named ready

Count alwa von beck Wilmen staten which honestly would be such a great name for a cat Anyway, he discovered the patterns. He was like, whoa Look at these patterns. So we named him Vidden Vidden staten in his honor And then we found out later that a british guy with a way more boring name William Thompson discovered them like four years earlier, but no one cared. So some people call these pretty

geometric meteorite patterns thompson structures out of fairness, but I think we should just say vidman thompson or William staten people into meteorites Let me know because I'll have a press conference about it. Note. I will be wearing a monocle Just for flair. Do you have a favorite meteorite? Like a favorite you do. What is it? I love that there was zero hesitation Yeah, it's so meteorite that I studied um for one of my phd projects to martian meteorite Okay, it's called alh 8401. Sure it is. Um, which is uh named from the allen hills of inardica That's how the alh it was fine. I found in 84. That's where the 84 comes from

And then 001 it was the first meteorite found that year and it was this meteorite that sparked this Great debate about if there were life was life on Mars because the people who first studied it thought that it had fossils in it and So it's like a little bit still a bit debate. Is it serious? Yeah That was one of my projects was like trying to like figure out people study this rock since 96 was when that paper came out like people still think that some people still think that there's fossils in it like Like a bacteria fossils And so like I was trying to apply like new techniques to see if there could be like a more definitive test

And so like even my stuff it was like a little inconclusive Oh my god, what kind of test do you do to figure out if there's bacteria in there? So I was like trying to figure out I was using what's called like paleo magnetism where we're studying the magnetic properties of the rock And so I was trying to figure out if proposed like bacteria, which are They they thought were magnetotactic bacteria so that they travel like along magnetic field lines and have little magnetites in them So I was trying to figure out Which one it was and basically It was inconclusive. Oh, yeah, I know and we thought we were being so clever

What I mean at what point do you have to call it and say it's inconclusive? So like it's really easy to say no, but it's not so easy to say yes So what happened with the recent announcement like everyone? Watch out. We have an announcement to make about mars and everyone's like i'm setting my alarm clock. I'm staying up late What happened with that announcement? So there were there um like the what people call like the building blocks of life that were found with a curiosity rover. Um, these like Just like molecules that uh are actually really hard to preserve. They were found By the rover pretty like fresh looking and so they're

I don't know just like the building blocks of life that were found And we didn't think that we would find them because they can get destroyed really easily So that means that they were like resurfaced like pretty recently Which is really exciting and we that they were there at all was exciting that they could have formed And so this was a heads up. We have the ingredients to make life We didn't find it yet, but we found the ingredients. Yeah, and that's a big deal

Yeah It's especially a big deal that we found it at all because like it's so easy for these things to be destroyed on the surface of mars Mars like surface is like Subjects a lot of radiation and then there's like lots of things on the surface that like oxidate oxidizing species or they're just kind of like not good for These molecules and so we just like I don't think we expected that they would even still be there and they were there How did you react when you found out the news and did you get a heads up like way before? Well, that was like a a curiosity rover

like Press release and so like I didn't know about that before What did you how did you feel when you found out with your team? It's exciting like a lot of times when stuff like that when when there's like an exciting like potential for astrobiology kind of Thing coming out what people do is like try and figure out. How could it be wrong? like to you know, kind of Okay, this is what it looks like but could we explain it some other way? Like could we have screwed up or something and so like a lot of times there's discussion about that like

Could it be actually a blip in the instrument or could it be something else? And so like that's Like a hard discussion to go through but it's like kind of a little interesting too And so but then when all those things get like crossed off the list and like what's left is that it's actual a detection Then it's exciting. Whoo. I bet because it's just like Kind of incremental discoveries too until you have another breakthrough, right? Yeah, like the methane Like there are people Proposed like so many different ways So like methane is a thing that like it doesn't survive a long time in the atmosphere

And so if it's there at all like it had to have come from like relatively recent times And it's like it's often a product of life, you know, like Like they say like um cow farts and stuff like that So or like bacteria and so yeah, they're um people were like, oh man How can we explain this methane any other way other than like life? I don't think anyone's saying that it's like life making this methane But there was like lots of debate like could the methane have come from something that we did Like the tire breaking or you know the wheel breaking or something like that

Yeah, but it might just be an underground cavern of farting cows. Maybe you never know. Yeah, you don't know I mean say anything's possible Just a cow emerges from a space cave being like, oh hey, I didn't see that The next rover the 2020 rover has like a little microphone on it Does it really? Yeah, so you can listen to the surface of Mars and then maybe it'll hear like Now is it called the 2020 rover because they're gonna launch it in 2020? Yeah, okay, that's that's cool. And it's also like clear vision. Yeah, that's why it's like catchy. Okay, but it's gonna it's gonna be named

Um, yeah, it's like a contest school children contest Like they're gonna pick the name like all I think all the rovers have been named like that Oh, that's such a cool distinction. Yeah, it's like, hey kids You're gonna inherit this planet once we turn it to garbage. So you get to name the rovers for your next one Pretty much. Um, I have 1 million questions for you. Okay. Is it okay if I ask you 1 million? Yeah, okay So many questions. I love that you know, you're a patron You've looked at some of these. Yeah, you've looked at all of them The ones that were posted as of a few hours ago

I like this is what I want in someone who studies other planets is this level of like detail and preparation Like this gives me faith in the space program Okay, that is it for part one. You now have a primer on ariology Mars the absolute gem of an earthling jennifer booze So next week we come back with all kinds of very weird and awesome questions We talk about habitability more sci-fi stuff. It's all the weird stuff next week So to learn more about jennifer and her work visit jnnfr.bz. It's her name no vowels We are at oligies on twitter and instagram and I'll post some photos of me and jennifer at caltech recording this

I'm also at alley ward with 1l on twitter and instagram and thank you so much to steven ray morris for editing this Literally the day that it goes up I've been shooting on a new show for the past few weeks and have not had a lot of time for sleeping or eating or anything And so steven you're a trooper for helping me get this up on time Thank you to the patrons at patreon.com Slash oligies for the amazing mars questions you asked next week. They are hilarious questions You are going to want to hear them. Trust me. Also feel free to join if you like little list 25 cents an episode Thank you, body dutch and shannon feltis for running oligies merch.com for me

Feel free to join the facebook oligies podcast group. Thank you. Hannah lipo and erin talbert for running that you're amazing Theme song was written and performed by nick thorburn of the band islands and if you stick around pass the credits, you know I tell a secret and this week Um this week I freaked out because I've known erin talbert since I was four And I've been so crazy with early call times that I forgot her birthday on the 25th And I almost started crying. I texted her apologizing. I'm so sorry. I was mortified and she was like Bitch, my birthday is in january and I was like, yeah And she's like it's june

so Happy early birthday next year erin and thank you for reminding me that it's not currently january and that I should probably get some sleep Okay, come back next week for really weird mars questions. It will make you 1000 more informed for your next cocktail party or Capable of making the decision of which planet to live on if shit goes down here Okay, bye Meteorology Oh