Ologies with Alie Ward - Areology (MARS) Part 2 with Jennifer Buz

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

Last week we got a big thicc primer on ol' Mars, that dusty desert doomsday cabin millions of miles away. This week, Alie continues the conversation with areologist Dr. Jennifer Buz and asks your Patreon questions about whether we could landscape Mars to look like a golf course, what a water balloon fight on Mars would be like, and if people in Jennifer's lab quote science fiction. Plus we hear directly from Kim Staney Robinson on the moral quandaries of inhabiting the red planet and explore the question: "Why is Elon Musk so horny for Mars?"You're going to want to look at Dr. Jennifer Buz's website JNNFR.BZFollow Jennifer on InstagramMore 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 

Oh, hello. Hi. It's still your stepbrothers girlfriend with the pet rat because Oh, Allie Ward is back for yet another episode on Mars. I'm not on Mars because honestly, fuck that. I get lonely like on business trips. I'm on a business trip right now in a hotel room outside of Detroit. I'm a little lonely, but I understand there are fireflies outside and I'm just waiting for it to get dark. But yeah, so this episode is on Mars. If you haven't heard one yet, like what are you doing here? What are you doing? There's so many spoilers, such as the fact that we just found fish in a dry lake bed on Mars. So we talk about that in part one. Wait, is that true? No, it's not. But go back and listen to part one. Anyway,

part one will give you all the primers you need on what is Mars deal? Why is it cold? Why was it named after the deity of battle? What's up with its two moons? One named after the fear and the other of the dread that a company wore? And why does one of them crash and reform itself over and over again? And how many rovers are up there? And what happens when you give birth to a moonrock? And where is the next rover going? And what is the best Martian sci-fi? Okay, all of that in part one. But now on to part two, all the weird juicy questions you guys asked about Mars and had answered. But first, I'm going to be quick, oligiesmerch.com. This is the part where I shouted out. There are hats and shirts and totes and pins and backpacks, y'all. There's bathing suits now for summer,

and I decided to have a summer sale. So through July, you can enter camp oligies for 10% off your whole ding-dang order. So get yourself something nice. Sale support the making of this podcast, as does becoming a patron at patreon.com. You can do so for as little as a buck a month, because I like to keep thresholds of showing your love pretty low. Also, if you spend all your money on otterpops and inflatable pool unicorns, that's okay, I get it. You can support oligies even by rating or reviewing or subscribing via iTunes. That keeps whole podcast van dad word up in the charts for others to kind of stumble on. And also, you know, I read your reviews, I do it every week, I just want you to feel seen. And then to prove it,

I read one each week, because also it's really delightful that you guys even write that. So this week, first off, I want to say, get well to Sarah Maya, who left a review about snapping her fibs and tibs on a trail run. Get better, man. Also, Justin Soe wrote, had to go to an Apple store to leave a review. I know how important iTunes reviews are for Uncle Al, so I may or may not have gone to an Apple store, used a MacBook there and left her this five star review. I love this podcast and have been binge listening to it. Also, thank you to no nicknames left, who says, remember when Discovery Channel, the learning channel and the history channel weren't just all aliens and reality TV. Remember when you could randomly find a documentary on the

three gorgeous dam in China and would just be sucked in for the duration, oligies is that. So thank you guys so much for leaving those reviews. I read, I just read three of them, I normally just pick one. But today, I just, I just wanted to say thanks to more than one person. But I do, I've read all of them that you guys left this week, and you're just charming, you're charming human beings. But let's get the heck back on Mars. Do you want to? Okay, good. So first off, many of you were like, Ward, areology, is that got something to do with nipslips? Or what? And sadly, no, areology comes from Aries, the Greek god of war. So Mars is his Roman stage name. And the nipples areola region comes from the Latin for little garden, which I don't know,

maybe that says something about Roman breast hair, I'm not sure. I just wanted to answer that oversight of the part one episode. That should have been the first thing I even talked about. Everyone's like, how did you not talk about areolas? So boom, part two, I did it. Okay, speaking of questions, let's now commence the part two of all listener curiosities answered in very squeaky chairs at Caltech by the very prepared and enthusiastic, wonderful, hilarious, brainiac, interplanetary rock enthusiast and ariologist, Dr. Jennifer Booze. I have one million questions for you. Okay. Is it okay if I ask you one 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. 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. Well, I didn't, I didn't want to leave anyone hanging. You're amazing. This is amazing. Okay. Well, then in that case, I'm going to do them out of order. Oh my God, you're amazing. You have notes right up. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay, I'll put my notes away. Maybe you can reference them. You can reference them if you need them. Okay. This is the level of preparation is like warming my heart right now. I was excited. Dude, you rule. Okay, I'm going to do them a little bit out of order. You go for it. Jessica

Tubesang wants to know, was the God of War being named Mars a suitable choice? The God of War being named Mars was it a suitable choice? Yeah. So I thought about it. And so the reason they named it that is because it's red. And so they're like blood and war and stuff. And so I was thinking like, are there other planets that would be like more war like and I think maybe not planets, but like moons that have a lot of volcanoes and they're like turbulent kind of they're kind of more angry. But I do like that Mars, I think it's appropriate because it also has volcanoes and it has like ash deposits and stuff. So you know that like stuff was exploding. And but it also has these like catastrophic flood events that we think happened. So like huge amounts of water just like

flowing over a surface and like so it is like it does have some like super active processes. And so yeah, I think it is appropriate. I like it. And I like that it's red. I think a lot of people figure this is I'm saying a lot of people I mean me because it's red. We associate that with heat. And we associate like Mars with like fury and fire. I think it's hard to wrap your brain around how cold it is. Yeah, now now it's cold. I mean, I remember I asked a question of of a friend who works at JPL. I was like, how do these rivers withstand the heat? And they're like, Hey, bitch, it's cold. I was like, Oh, yeah. Well, I thought it too. Like I was like, would Venus be better for a war planet? Because it's really hot on the surface of Venus. But

then I was like, could the volcanoes on Venus or like the lava from Hawaii, which is like really flowy. And it's not very explosive. And I was like, that's not very warlike. Okay, that's a good point. Yeah, how do you feel about the book? Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. I don't know anything about that book. It's garbage. Okay, next question. Stu wants to know what is the latest stance on Mars habitability with regards to things such as bone density, deterioration, and other physiological aspects from reduced gravity and cosmic radiation? Biologically, could we deal with Mars? Yeah, I think it takes a lot of engineering, but we could. The moon is like one tenth the gravity of Earth, I want to say. And Mars is about one third the gravity. So

there's still gravity on Mars. And so it's like probably not going to be as bad as like other places you go. For example, like the space station, where there's like no gravity. So you can be a human, I feel like on Mars. But yeah, you got to take your other stuff with you, like your air and your water and your food. Yeah, it's like BYOE, like bring on everything. Yeah, exactly. For reals, it's like. Yeah, but it's not impossible. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Greg, Ariel Belk, Craig Curry, and Jorge Barnett all ask the same basic question. Okay. So this is a super question. Okay. In light of the giant dust storm that seems to have knocked out the curiosity, what is the most useful to humanity right now information that it has collected since its arrival to the red planet?

So questions about dust storms. Yeah. And what's the best stuff that the rovers have gotten? Okay, so like, I was thinking about this a lot. What's the best stuff the rivers have gotten? I think that like seeing that Mars was habitable in the past was probably the most interesting and maybe useful to humanity kind of thing, because we can see like how we see how Mars has changed with time and like how Earth might change with time to and also like what the different extremes like that we can have on different planets are. So that's like super interesting. And then, yeah, the dust storm, I don't know, it's just like a cool global phenomenon. But yeah, for curiosity, we're not super worried about it. That's the other stuff, the other rivers. And this is a pretty

big one. Yeah, it is. I think it is a global dust storm. And there have been global dust storms that have lasted I think like months. I don't know that they know how long this one will last, because I think it's still getting worse. Yeah, the first like one of the first satellites they sent to Mars when they got there, it was in a dust storm. So they actually couldn't even really see the surface, which is so frustrating. And it was like a flyby too, I think. So it's like not like they could go back. It's like getting your period on your wedding day. Yeah, maybe. Sorry, Mars, red planet indeed. Okay, Elliot Anya and El Martinez both want to know realistically, how close are we both politically and technically to a crewed mission to Mars happening? And by

crewed, I mean crew, C-R-E-W, not like a crewed mission. Oh, yeah, C-R-U-D-E. Yeah, like crewed. And I'm saying crewed because sometimes people still say manned. And let's be honest, it's crewed. If you're like, what? Okay, so manned suggests all dudes, which is not accurate sometimes. And also, if we want more women in space, let's not suggest that they do not belong there. So manned is kind of as awkwardly specific as saying woman. Crewed, nice and neutral. So saying a manned mission to Mars, just FYI in today's day and age, is a little crewed, because manned is a little fashion. Yeah, for sure. So like NASA has plans to have humans on Mars by the 2023, I think there's like a directive or something. But I don't think that there's like actual, a lot of like stuff

happening related to that. I'm not positive about that. But that was like, they were like, we will do this. We will do this. And then with like SpaceX, like they want to be on Mars like in the 2020s. What? Yeah, that's nuts. That's so soon. That's within like 10 years. I 100% have underwear older than that. But yes, NASA and SpaceX have crewed Mars missions on their 10 year to do list. So I think that like technologically, I mean, I'm not, I'm not someone who does this kind of engineering work or whatever. But politically, I think, I mean, like NASA wants to go there. And then technologically, I think, like we're capable of some pretty incredible things. So I don't think it's like impossible. I feel like it seems really soon to me too, though. But like I said,

I'm not involved in that kind of stuff. So I don't know. Who do you think they should pick for stuff like that? There's a graduate, she was a postdoc in this department, and she was just selected as an astronaut last year. Her name is Jessica Watkins, and she studied Mars. Oh man, this lady, Jessica Watkins from Colorado, former rugby player, pilot, 30 years old, and officially an astronaut. I tried to see if she had an Instagram upon which I could fangirl, but alas, I could not find her. So maybe the trick to kicking ass is doing less scrolling of memes and not looking at videos of people manhandling slime late at night. I don't know. But if I ever meet Jessica Watkins, I'm going to ask her for all of the life tips. Her tip will probably be,

I don't know, just be me. She's a Mars geologist and now a NASA astronaut. Holy smokes. I'd be so psyched if she was the one going on that. Did she want to go? Yeah. She's into it. Yeah, she's so into it. Oh my god. Yeah. She's like, buy Earth your toast. Yeah. I don't blame her. It's pretty garbage right now. Yeah. This is a good time to hit the eject button on all Earth. We're like, well, we fucked this up. Mariner Cosplay, El Martinez, Ira Kasha, Stefan Titus, and Justin M. Gifford all wanted to know, what are the biggest hurdles for terraforming? And is there an initiative within NASA or another

agency to do so? Also, follow up question from Allie Ward. What is terraforming? I think terraforming, I don't know the definition, but I feel like it's when you make the surface like have grass on it. Really? No, no, definitely not. That's just what I imagine is like what terraforming is. Landscaping. It's actually landscaping. Yeah. You'll have to look that up. Okay. So quick definition here. Terraforming is mostly at present a sci-fi term, and it means to transform a planet to be more like Earth, presumably so that we can go live there. So I imagine in the future, HGTV will have a whole Flip or Flop-esque series dedicated to making over dry, barren planets into like lush, boho habitats of our dreams. All we have to do is just

painstakingly alter what already naturally exists. Can you repeat the question? Yeah. Essentially, what are the biggest hurdles for terraforming? Okay. So yeah, that we don't have a lot of water oxygen in the atmosphere, or that the atmosphere is so thin in general. So it's either going to have to be like you make the atmosphere thicker somehow by like melting the caps or like taking an atmosphere, but then you need a shield for the atmosphere. So like, I think if they existed in bubbles, like if we had like a big dome, maybe you could kind of start doing that that way, where you can like contain your atmosphere and your water and stuff like that. Yeah. So those are the big hurdles and radiation is another hurdle. Because there's not a lot of

atmosphere to shield you from it. Exactly. Even though the sun is farther away, you're still like sizzling. So even if you landscape Mars, you're still going to get a pretty high dose of radiation because of a really thin atmosphere and also the place is pretty dry. It's pretty sandy. Now, there is water trapped in minerals, but getting it out would be in technical terms, a shit ton of work, which brings up the age old question of why bother? Jeffrey Katz wants to know, is it worth the trouble and expense to send humans to Mars, or should we put our effort into more sophisticated robots? Hello, I am a sophisticated robot and I like French films and expensive coffee. So robots live for a very long time and you can put

all sorts of cool instruments on them. And in that sense, robots may be the way, but like humans, like we've gone to the moon and collected rocks and it's like so useful for a person to just like, if you walk around and you know what's cool and you pick it up and put it in your pocket and also be super sick to be on Mars. So that's like really cool too. But then like, if you go to Mars, you can only be there for so long, I mean, without taking like a ton of stuff with you. So like, you probably need just like way more stuff with you. And so it's going to be like way more expensive than just sending like a robot that doesn't need food. It's also, it also seems like a pride thing. Like why, why send humans to Mars when we could have robots? It's

kind of like cause we can. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it'd be cool. Cause we did that. Yeah. But the robots can accomplish a lot and we can send, you know, like 10 robots to Mars, like to 10 different spots. You know, it's just like way cheaper. If you go to Mars and you pee on it, who owns Mars? Do you own Mars? If you just peed on it? Is that how it works? Or is it just like, in an, in, does the world, does Earth even own Mars or does Venus own Mars? Uh, yeah, I think it's like a big debate. I don't know if necessarily it's debated, but it's a big issue with, with Mars. There's like a whole thing called planetary protection where like when we send stuff, we have to go through like incredible lengths to make sure that we're not contaminating the planet. Like NASA has like,

they're like, no, you can't do that. Like you can't even go a place, place that you think there might be water. Cause they're like, well, what if we accidentally took some bacteria and then we accidentally colonized Mars? You know, like there's all this debate about that. But then there's all these like private companies and they're like, well, we're going to do it. So I don't know. We're kind of going to be trespassing. Yeah. So there is a wealth information about planetary protection. This is keeping space microbes off of earth and also not shipping our gross earth microbes to Martians. These planetary protections include these complex equations of how many spores per square meter are acceptable on equipment so that we can send it into outer

space. And the whole thing just kind of reads like a very long winded, like employees must wash hands after using the restroom sign. Like so duh. But also if these rules weren't in place, you know, some people would be like, eh, whatever. Okay. Guy R. Thomas wants to know, my daughter wants to know how many different rocks have been identified on Mars and how long does it take to send commands to the rover and get a response back? Okay. So there are many different types of rocks that have been found on Mars, but they're pretty much all the same as earth rocks. So there's like basalt, which is like what we get, like kind of lava from Hawaii type rocks. And then there's like sedimentary rocks that like from the lake. So like layered rocks.

There's like sandstones, like mudstones. There are meteorites on Mars. They came from other places. Damn. Yeah. That we found with the rovers. It's weird to think there's a chunk of earth on Mars and someone's like, wow. Yeah. Actually, I think that like they wanted to send a part of a meteorite back to Mars, just like a little bit. Yeah. Like you dropped this. Yeah. It's harder, I think, to get a rock from earth to Mars, like because of their orbits and their distance from the sun. Okay. So I don't know. I mean, you know, there's probably is one though, because things, there's been a lot of time in history. Danny Kaye wants to know, is it possible to have a water balloon fight on Mars due to the atmosphere? Yeah. So yes, in certain places at certain times.

So the question is related to the fact that water's not stable on the surface for a lot of the time. So it's either it's like too cold. So it'd be ice or it's like low pressure. So it would be gas. And so like liquid water is not really there. So you'd have like a like a soft like a baseball or exploding balloon. But if you go like low enough elevation, I think you can get in some places for brief moments in time, enough pressure and enough atmospheric, I mean, enough pressure and a high enough temperature that you could maybe do that. Yeah. So certain spots and that's why we need to send more rovers is to find out where to have the water balloon fights. Yeah. And also the street value of that water balloon is like millions of dollars because it had to be shipped from

elsewhere. Yeah. So that's like having a balloon fight with a gold dust on earth. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, don't even think about a super soaker is asking too much. So side note, for more information on the inventor of the super soaker, who was a NASA engineer, you can see my mini soad about summer that just went up a few weeks ago. Aestheology should be a word. So it's all about summer in the history of water fights and also melon genetics. Laura Mulligan wants to know if you were to get bored or tired of Mars, what other planets would you like to study and why? Okay. Yeah. So like I already studied the moon and I still think the moon's pretty cool. It's really cute and we can see it from earth. It's really cute. It is really cute. I love that.

It is. Yeah. And it's cool that it's like part of, you know, it's part of earth. There are a ton of small moons like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn that I think are super fascinating like the icy, icy moons where there's like water underneath and super volcanic moons and stuff. Quick check in on Jupiter and Saturn's moons. So while earth has one moon, kind of, kind of like a sweet elderly couple who fell in love in high school and have just been married for like billions of years, Jupiter and Saturn have more populous relationships with their moons, like just a sexy consensual Polly situation. Saturn has 62 moons and Jupiter has a blessed auspicious 69, including the icy Europa, which is the star of an upcoming NASA flyby mission

and a possible lander way down the line, all on the hunt for interplanetary critters. Despite that these two planets have like moon orgies and literally rain diamonds, perhaps the best planet is just whichever goddamn one you're sitting on. I really like earth too. I am a geologist and sometimes I like want to spend a little more time thinking about earth. Yeah. Do you do that on weekends? Yeah, all the time. Yeah. You just go hiking and you're like, look at that.

Yeah. Sandstone and that sediment. Yeah. That's gotta be great because you know how sometimes you'll go on a hike and if you don't know shit about geology, you're like, it's a bunch of cool rocks, but you kind of need someone to go with you to be like, look at that, look at that, look at that. Yeah, I know. I have a problem right now, which is I just moved to Flagstaff and I have one friend. Flagstaff.

So people in Flagstaff shouldn't come on a geology hike with me. Now I have to visit Flagstaff. Yeah. I feel like you're going to have some serious Flagstaff friends after this. Flagstaff, hit up Jen Booze at bugaboozebugabuz on Instagram. Be friends. Enjoy some rock hikes. Yeah, you're going to have a whole posse in Flagstaff.

That'd be cool. Okay, Olaf Dachke wants to know, is it true that the Mars day, which is 24 hours and 37 minutes, better suits the human bio rhythm? Yeah, I think that would be really weird if that was the case. But so like the rover teams, when the rovers first land, the first 90 saws, they live on Mars time. So they artificially make their days that long and they do operations during that. But it's super hard because the Earth is not on that time.

So then they'll be awake like in the middle of the night and stuff. So it's hard for me to imagine that that's the case, but no idea. Is it only another 37 minutes? Yeah. But it adds up. Yeah, I mean like two days into it, you're already like one hour off and stuff. Yeah. I think it's interesting that we call them days, they call them sols.

Sols, yeah. Sols, yeah. And that's kind of cute. Yeah, it is. Yeah, so we celebrate the sols on Mars. That's cute. Um, Eolanth just straight up wants to know, is there a life on Mars? I want to say that there's probably like no way that we took every single bug off

the rovers that we sent. So like maybe there's like some little microbe still alive. And I want to say that, you know, maybe there were microbes way early on. This was a very pregnant pause, pregnant with moon rocks. Maybe. Maybe. I'm not going to say, you know what, I'm going to just, I'm just going to say yes. Okay.

This is a good prediction because later, like when they find it, you'll be like, please see my 2018 interview where I would just said definitively yes. I'm just going to say yes, but okay. Christopher Barley had a great question that I didn't even, I hadn't considered. He says, uh, I seem to remember that the northern half of Mars is completely smooth while the southern half is full of craters. Yeah. What's up?

Do we understand what caused this and why the inconsistency? Yeah. So like, uh, I think that maybe the major idea for this is that, um, there was a big impact that, that came in like at an oblique angle and just like shaved off the top of Mars. And then it was like low and there's also a lot of debate about, um, the, they're called the northern lowlands, the southern highlands. And so like, yeah, the southern highlands are like way older, super effed up, um, landscapes. And people think they're, and there's like, uh, what we think were like catastrophic floods

going up there. So there's some idea that there was an ocean up there too, which it may explain that. And then like, um, volcanism related to that like impact. So all things that like could have smoothed it out. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's so odd. I didn't even know that about, about Mars.

Yeah. It's called the crystal dichotomy boundary. Oh, crystal dichotomy. So it's like, it's got, um, just half, like half of the crust is high and like effed up and old and the other half is low and smooth. Oh, that's so interesting. It's like it got an acid peel and it's like new, right. It's exfoliated.

Yeah. On a half of its face. Yeah. It was a group on it was half of an acid peel. Yeah. Um, Thomas Meyer wants to know thoughts on Elon Musk and nuking the poles of the planet. What is that question about? Yeah.

So there's this idea that like, if you want to make the atmosphere of Mars thicker, you could just like melt the poles. And so all that water and carbon dioxide that's like trapped in dry ice and water ice will be in the atmosphere. Got it. Yeah. But I love Mars. It's like really pretty as it is.

Yeah. I don't really want to do that. So that's my opinion on it. And also now that I'm a Mars expert, there's kind of not going to be an atmosphere to keep all that stuff in or would that give the atmosphere to keep it in? Is there another shield? Yeah. I don't think you'd have to, you'd have to protect it.

Okay. It would go away eventually. Like the rest of Mars atmosphere did. I mean, I weren't careful. I'm pretty much like your coworker now because I know so much. Yeah. Okay.

00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:39,040 I'll just check in. How do you feel about Elon Musk's fetishizing of Mars? Yeah. I mean, like the same. I'd be really sad if I, if I looked at Mars and it was just like another Earth because it's so cool that it's not and it like it's like so fascinating. So I'd be, it's like what, you know, your favorite desert landscape. And then all of a sudden it's a suburb.

It's like not the same. It's lame. Suddenly there's a Best Buy on Mars and you're like, the fuck? Yeah, exactly. It's like a Chick-fil-A. You're like, who are you Mars? Yeah. Why does Elon Musk have such a boner for Mars? I don't know.

He's so horny for it. I'm going to look into that. So why does he love it so much? I'm not quite sure, but he has said that space travel is the best thing we can do to extend the life of humanity. And he said that he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact. Now in part one of ariology, I mentioned my hardcore, brilliant scientist friends, Casey and Christine, both NASA scientists who introduced me to Jennifer.

So the day after this episode went up, Casey and Christine happened to have seen their other pal, the science fiction writer, Kim Stanley Robinson, who I mentioned, he's the writer of these really beautiful books, the Red Mars series that people love. I naturally freaked out and Casey and Christine were kind enough to conduct an impromptu interview with them that they just recorded on one of their phones. Hi, Ally. Hi, Jennifer. It's Stan Robinson.

To get his take about interplanetary habitation, what did a brilliant science fiction writer who owned describing Mars say about us being on Mars? Well, it's a wrong idea. So you don't want a wrong idea hanging out there with the notion that, and I think actually, and maybe it's one of these ideas that floats around the internet at the level of commentary that isn't really thinking. So maybe nobody really believes this idea and it's not that much of a moral hazard. But the notion that we have any other place than Earth is clearly false.

And it's not that you couldn't tear for Mars. It's just that it might take 10,000 years to do it. And we've got a 100-year emergency that we're living in. So the time scales are badly off. And you don't want to ever think that we've got any other place than Earth. The one thing that you do keep hearing from people is the idea that if we had 5,000 people on Mars and they're living semi-independently of Earth,

and then Earth was somehow by some mysterious and basically fictional disaster that everybody on Earth died. That after that, those 5,000 people from Mars could come back to Earth and then it would all be okay. That you don't want to have all your eggs in one basket, this is how it's put, that there should be a backup to humanity itself. To me, the badness of that idea is not only the moral hazard, like maybe we could just go ahead and blow ourselves up,

but that that would be any kind of compensation for the loss of so many humans. That humanity isn't that valuable. That if we were to lose all of humanity on Earth and all of the rest of the mammals, etc., etc., who cares if some humans come back 20,000 years later? We probably should have gone extinct at that moment from our own stupidity. So I'm completely against that whole line of thought of we need an emergency population somewhere else in case we accidentally killed everybody off on Earth.

You can't kill off everybody on Earth, we're like cockroaches. The only conceivable thing that might do it is a gigantic asteroid impact. To detect and deflect asteroids that are incoming and save ourselves from a big old bang is the obvious first thing that spacefaring work ought to be devoted to. So, saving our species while kicking it on an annex planet while Earth burns? Maybe not a good idea. Sandy Moore wants to know,

how much time and money do we spend studying Mars and the Earth's oceans? Should we focus on one more than the other when it comes to making life better for life on Earth? Essentially, why are we studying Mars so much when we are catastrophically fucking up Earth? Yeah, there's actually a lot of people say we know more about Mars than we know about the bottom of the ocean. It's really hard to study the bottom of the ocean. Mars is a thing that makes people so curious and broadens our perspective.

So does the bottom of the ocean. It's hard for me to really say we shouldn't study the bottom of the ocean. Also, there's that necklace from Titanic down there. A lot of the reason we study Mars is because early on in its history, it was so Earth-like. It's basically an old version of Earth and it's so fascinating to see how it evolved. Whereas, I don't know if you could say that about the ocean. Maybe I shouldn't compare them so much.

Maybe it's like a cautionary tale. Yeah, that could be us cold and dusty. Yeah, like when you watch E! True Hollywood story and you're like, oh man, what happened? What happened to them? So if you ever think that your life is kind of slow and boring, just think. We are experiencing a live fast, die young, crash and burn,

tawdry, cautionary tale every day just by using plastics and fossil fuels to ruin the planet. This was meant as like a lighthearted aside, but now I'm depressed. Anyway, Mars exploration is important both scientifically and existentially, Jennifer says. Okay, so maybe I'm going to say that it's a cautionary tale thing. I think it serves to broaden our perspective of life and of the solar system and evolution of it and it's just a great thing for us to think about. So that's how it gives us a little bit more of a perspective. Yeah, do you think people have a lot of existential crises thinking about

Mars and other planets and that this isn't the only planet? Like, do you think that it's psychologically a lot of people kind of grapple with Mars and other planets as a concept? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think especially when we start to think about life. Yeah, so what does it all mean? You know, we're not alone on this earth's not the only planet. I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, how big there's like more earths now, you know, like with all these exoplanets being discovered, super earths and other types of planets. Yeah, I think people often like feel very small when they think about these things. Right. But I think it's almost a relief to feel like you don't matter. Oh, yeah. There's a relief in that. Everything seems so huge, parking tickets and like this person like didn't follow me

back on Instagram or whatever. And then you're like, oh, shit, I'm just like a tiny microbe that doesn't matter. Maybe I can relax a little bit. Yeah, unless you start to think that we are the only life and then you're like, we're the only life and we're fucking it up. Oh, no. Yeah, you could take it both ways. You're like an only child who ends up like being a hellion.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I do think that having an appreciation, fostering an appreciation for other planets, maybe does make us look back. At least the question is being asked, Sandy Moore, like, should we be paying more attention to our own planet? Maybe appreciating Mars makes us have more appreciation for our own planet too. Yeah. I don't think that Mars research has wasted money at all.

I think it inspires a lot of people and it's super fascinating and we learn a lot about it and gives us a lot of perspective. For real, yeah. I don't think that, yeah, in terms of like how much money we spend on it and stuff, I think it's worthwhile. Right. Do you know how much people spend on like the hair restoration in Viagra? Yeah.

Like a lot of money. So just a little FYI, the US spends about a billion and a half dollars per year on Viagra. It's like $70 a pill. I had no idea. It was so costly. Did you know that? Don't tell me. So the US Department of Defense alone spends roughly $84 million annually on dick pills.

So many dollars. So many dicks. Now, Americans spend $800 million a year on hair restoration and we collectively spend $8.5 billion on manicures in the US every year. So I don't know. When it comes to what we spend our money on, I have no answers. I have no answers. It's all confounding.

I mean, we should probably spend more on food for people who need it and clean water or corn dogs. Hugs are free. I don't know. I don't have answers. Billy Marina wants to know, from the data we've gathered so far, have we learned anything from Mars that has significantly changed the way we understand Earth? Yeah.

So, okay. So this is, I was thinking about, we compare Mars a lot to early Earth and so in that sense, it is a little bit, we have talked a little bit about it because it gives us this different perspective of our own planet and how these planets have evolved. But then there's also these fundamental differences between Mars and Earth. Like Mars doesn't have a magnetic field now. Mars doesn't have plate tectonics. Mars is super iron-rich.

Like, what do those differences mean for us? Like, because we only have one data point here, now we have more info on this other planet and seeing how those things make it different. So that's like, those are the big things that we learned just comparatively. Mars gives us a glimpse into the early solar system and stuff that was going on in that early time. And then we learned processes that happened on Earth could have happened on Mars, but in totally different ways. Like sand ripples, like my friend Mathew did this work where he found these ripples on sand dunes

on Mars that are sub-aqueous here, but they're just like, because of the Mars atmosphere is different, they happen. Oh, wow. So we can compare geologic features and realize that they can be created under two completely different sets of conditions. Yeah, exactly. And it's like kind of mind-blowing. Yeah, that's nuts.

Because you're like, oh, this would lead you to believe it's definitely this causing it. And it's like... Not really. Exactly. That's creepy. That's cool. So I think that's like really valuable stuff. Okay, Baron wants to know, since once there was water on Mars, is Mars dust as horrifically

nasty as lunar dust? And apparently dust on the moon had no water to erode around the edges. And so it was spiky and super damaging to equipment and fleshy bits like, say, lungs. Yeah. So the Mars dust, in terms of it being sharp and stuff, it's not as sharp as moon dust. So it's really fine. It's just like a lot of ways of earth dust, but sometimes it has salt and stuff in it that are really toxic.

So you don't want to eat it necessarily, but it's not going to kill you either. I think you probably need to wear a dust mask, but otherwise, I think it's probably fine. And actually, there's experiments where they have fake Mars dirt and dust, and they grow stuff in it. Just like thinking about if we could grow stuff on Mars. Does it work? Yeah. It does.

So from Andy, we're taking your desiccated feces and mixing them with Mars dust possibly could work. Yeah. I think they have to do some stuff to it, but I think the idea is like, could we? And I think the answer is yes. Right. Yeah. Do you guys have to put money in a jar every time someone in your lab says,

let's science the shit out of this? No one ever says that. Okay, just checking. If someone did, would you guys be like, oh, come on. I think so. I think there'd be some irels going on. Catherine Woodrow and Michelle Sullivan both asked about microbial life on Mars. Yeah.

Which type of bacteria do you think would be the most likely to be found? Michelle Sullivan was like cyanobacteria? Yeah. So like extremophiles, I think for sure. I couldn't tell you a specific bacteria, but extremophiles are things that live in extreme places. And so I think that's what we could find there. And I think cyanobacteria, there are some cyanobacteria that fit that category.

And then like these microfossils that they thought were in this meteorite, those were magnetotactic bacteria. So if it were true that they were fossils, then maybe we'd find that there. And since Mars did have a magnetic field, it's not totally out of the question that they could have used it. Interesting. Yeah. And there's a lot of iron there, so it's another possibility.

So quick aside, I got to tour JPL with my lovely NASA engineer friend, Holly Bender. Hi, Holly. And I was particularly struck by the observation deck that looked into a clean room, which appears to be a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but with more golden capped on space tape and wires and less candy. And I was like, these people building these rocket ships, like do they have to shower 12 times a day every time they come in and out of this room? How does this work?

If I applied to NASA, would they hook me up to a lie detector test to find out how often I actually wash my hair? How do they know when they're building the rovers and when they're in the clean room that it's actually clean? I think they have a bunch of these things that measure how many particles are in the air. Okay. Yeah, so they have to be below a certain particle count. And then I think they also probably autoclave a bunch of stuff.

But otherwise, I don't know. Jude Kidney wants to know, what color is the sky on Mars? Are there long sunsets or does it switch to dark quickly? And can you see Earth from Mars? Okay. So the color of Mars, the color of the sky on Mars is like a butter scotch color. So the, which we know like from taking pictures and stuff of Mars. So there's a lot of like dust in the atmosphere.

So it's dimmer. It's like way further from the sun than Earth is. So it's dimmer, but there it's still sunlight, but it's just darker. And so you think and the days are about the same length. So I guess in a way it gets darker quicker, but only because there's less light to begin with maybe. Yeah. But then the dust like interacts with the atmosphere and the sunlight differently than it does on Earth because it's just like super iron rich dust.

And so I think that's why it's like a more butter scotch color than here. We have like this blue color. I know that asking like, why is this guy blue is a kid question trope. And I'm always a little embarrassed that I'm a grown adult. And I don't really remember why it is blue. It's always like, oh, is this guy blue? I don't know. I don't know.

So if you're like, uh, me too, I just looked it up for the both of us. So according to a NASA webpage made for five year olds, all the colors in the visual spectrum add up to white, but blue light is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. So it scatters. We see it mostly blue, but on the red planet of Mars, the sky is this butter scotch color because of all the iron dust, which got me feeling very entrepreneurial.

Hear me out. Yeah. What if we open a brunch place called blood and butterscotch? It's all Mars themes. Everything is made of cast iron skillets. It's very iron rich. Okay. It's red.

It's really cold, but we never turn on the heater. And we never dust anywhere. Never dust anything. It doesn't sound that appetizing. Really? She gets points for honesty. But like it could have like that like interesting factor. Maybe we could only have like freeze dried food.

Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Composting toilets. I'm going to work. Oh, yeah. Okay. Kevin McPhilips wants to know. Five year old Finley McPhilips, I'm thinking as a relative,

wants to know would a helium balloon still float on Mars? Also, Finley, I'm sorry if you've heard me say the F word like 50 times during the course of every podcast. So, yeah, I think helium is still like lighter than the atmosphere of Mars. So it could work, but like, I guess you'd have to. So the way we have like balloons here is that they're buoyant, right? So like they're less dense, but there's like has to be enough density difference, including like the weight of the balloon itself, like the plastic.

So I think if it was designed well, I think it could work. But I think it could be better if it was hydrogen. I think the short answer is yes. Okay. What is one thing about Mars that people don't know that would really flabbergast them at a cocktail party? Just how wet it used to be. People often ask me like, is it true that we found water on Mars?

And I'm like, yeah, we found that like a million times already. But that's the thing that they're often blown away by, right? But I think it's just still, for some reason, not common knowledge yet that Mars used to be this like awesome place that was like not as cold and dry as it is now, but it's like wet and just lush pools and spas. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Slimy.

Maybe. Well, I was just thinking like you said lush and I thought of like plants, but like in actuality, if there was any life there, you'd probably be like microbe so it's like slimy. Yeah. That's okay too. What about some flim flam about Mars that you'd like to debunk? Flim flam? Yeah, what's some real horseshit that you're like, no.

Dang, that's a good question. Is it that Matt Damon lives there? So I got to make water and grow food on a planet where nothing grows. But if I can't figure out a way to make contact with NASA, and none of this matters anyway. Once again, if you didn't listen to part one, number one, what is wrong with you? Why didn't you listen to instructions from your old dad? I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed.

Two, also the Martian Recap was a book, then a movie with Matt Damon stranded on Mars. Oh, I think that the that actually I think that has generated a lot of misinformation is the dust storms. Like they are global dust storms, but they are not destructive like that. They're because the atmosphere is so thin. There are strong winds, but there's just not a lot of atmosphere. So it's like just like a breeze really. So like the premise the whole premise of that, which is was like the major thing that was wrong

with it was that they were like stranded because there was that huge dust storm and destroyed their stuff. Right. But yeah, not going to happen because there's not the winds wouldn't create that much force because it's not pushing a lot of molecules that are in the atmosphere. Things like aren't impacting you as much. Right. Because there's not a lot of air that's actually pushing past.

I think it's like one hundredth the amount of stuff in the air. Oh my God. Okay. Something like that. Yeah. That is some solid flim flam that you just debunked. I never would have thought of that because you think about the dust storms and you're like, it's pretty much a hurricane full of dust.

That's what people think. Yeah, they think it's like this crazy catastrophic thing. But yeah, no, it's just like a little dusty. Have you been caught in dust storms in Arizona or Mojave or like, have you been to Burning Man during a dust storm? Yeah, pretty much all of those things have happened. Really? Have you been to Burning Man?

Yeah. How is it? I went in like 2007 and like, I had a good time but I thought, but I don't know that well, I obviously haven't been back. FYI Burning Man is a festival set on this big dry lake bed in Nevada and it features a lot of Instagram worthy chain mail bikinis and steampunk hats and furry boots and glow sticks and electronic music. And for some people, a really sexy Saturn and Jupiter's moon situation if you catch

midriffed kids. So some people really into it. Others, not so much. I didn't do like so many drugs, you know? So I think that's how a lot of people have fun. Right. And then I thought it was like a cool experience, but that I could just do that experience and not pay $400 for it.

Right. I think it costs even more than that now. Yeah. I think when I went, I even applied like for a low income ticket. I was like, I'm a student, but I really want to go to this. And then they gave it to me and I sent them like drawing. That's nice. Yeah.

But I think you can't do that now. I think it's like really intense. I think it's more intense. But what were the dust storms like? They were, I was like really bad. I remember yet I was wearing goggles, but and I had like a bandana over my face because that's what you do there. Could have had a dust mask on, but no one has dust masks on.

You got to get a bandana. But yeah, like people's tents were blowing over and stuff. And I was riding a biker and the playa and like couldn't see anything. Like would lose your sense of direction really easily. And it was really abrasive on your skin. So if you need to go down a YouTube rabbit hole, and you do, I highly recommend typing in burning man plus dust storm. Also known as a hubbub, which is appropriate for a festival that celebrates the freedoms

of toplessness. So a username just Joe captured one dust storm just ripping into the glamping oasis. And it just looked like it turned into a science fiction nightmare. Also, as long as we're diving into the etymology for areola in this episode, why not follow up with a nugget on boobs? So hubbub and boobs, totally different word origins. The meteorological event comes from the Arabic for blowing furiously. Well, the Memerian features get their names from the German for teats and grandma,

bubby. So is this is this podcast getting too weird? Is it getting uncomfortable? I'm just, I just, I'm here to present facts. I just want to give you facts. What were we talking about? Dust storms. So are the dust storms at Burning Man worse than on Mars?

100% sure. Yeah, way worse. Wow. More art cars though. Yeah. And more. You can't see them. You can't see them.

No. That's really good to know. I would never would have guessed that. What is one thing that about your job? That it sucks. What do you hate? I guess like some days I don't want to look at pictures on the computer. You said that in such a confessional tone like mom, I don't like your meatloaf.

Yeah. I mean, it's really cool sometimes. But other times I'm like, I want to go outside. Yeah. Can you ever take your desktop and drag it outside and or do you have like four huge monitors? No, actually I could work outside. It's more that like I rather be looking at a rock than a picture of a rock some days. I get it.

Yeah. I understand. Yeah. It's like looking at a picture of your long lost love. You're like, I'd rather be just hanging out with you. Exactly. Yeah. I get it.

And also like I do get asked a lot. Is it true we found water on Mars? That might be like maybe my least favorite question. Maybe it should be my favorite question. But what do you say to that? Are you just like, do you the first time are you like, we did? And then now you just like, duh. Yeah, I try not to.

But I'm like sometimes a little bit too honest and then I'll be like, yeah. And that's like the opposite attitude I should have for people who are getting excited about Mars, which I love. So maybe that's why it should actually be my favorite question. But I'm working on that. You got to flip the script. Yeah, I need to do that. Yeah.

Sorry. What's your favorite thing about Mars or your job surrounding Mars? I love that I can be paid to think about another planet and what it used to be like and what we could have been like. And just these like crazy questions that are, you know, really removed from the day to day. But that like, that's my job, like, because I could have a really practical job. But I instead get to do this really out of this world thing. Literally.

Yeah. And it's like a really cool to be part of these teams. And so you're excited about the 2020 rover. That's the thing that you're stoked about. Yeah, I'm stoked about that. I've stoked about a lot of things. Anything else that you're just like, I'm sorry that I turned into what sounded like a drunk dolphin.

That was a happy noise. Like a thing I really want to look at are dry lakes in the Mojave and like relate them to Mars. And so that's like another thing that I'm like super psyched to be able to do, hopefully. And any advice to anyone who's like, I want to work on Mars? Yeah, there's so many ways to get involved with Mars stuff. And like one great thing about NASA is that all of our data that we get is publicly available. You can, anybody with the internet can go on the internet and look at like dope pictures of Mars for free download data.

The rover guts, like anybody can have the same data that the scientists who work at NASA have. So you can literally just become, you can just do that on your own. And you can go to like seminars and stuff and meet people and read books. Like there's tons of podcasts and stuff like that. There's like a million ways to get involved with NASA stuff. And there's lots of NASA outreach that is like pretty accessible, I think to most people. Thank you so much for being on. Thank you.

I was so excited. Thanks for caring about Mars. Dude, I do care about Mars. I love Mars even more now. Great. It worked. So there you have it. I am so much more about Mars than I was before meeting the amazing Dr. Jennifer Booze.

Now to become her friend either online or in Flagstaff. Again, her Instagram, bugaboos, B-U-G-A-B-U-Z, where she posts photos of insects and rocks and her website. What a destination on this worldwide web. It features self-portraits of her as a turtle with octopus hair. It's gorgeously perfect. It's J-N-N-F-R dot B-Z. So it's her name, no vowels.

Now you can find oligies at oligies on Instagram or Twitter. I'm on both at Ali Ward with 1L. And to support the podcast to make future episodes possible, you can head to if you want to, patreon.com slash oligies for hats and swimsuits and pins and totes. It's oligiesmerch.com. We have you covered. And once again, summer sale code, camp oligies. 10% off everything in the shop in July.

And huge thanks to Shannon Peltis and Bonnie Dutch for helping me run that. And thank you to Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for adminning the oligies podcast Facebook group, which is really full of the internet's kindest and most lovable nerds. No turds among them. It's amazing. Thank you as always to Stephen Ray Morris, who painstakingly pieces these episodes together from a 30 page transcript and makes each episode so, so much better. The music is by Nick Thorburn of the Ban Islands.

And special thanks to NASA engineer working on the Europa Clipper mission, Christine Corbett at Corbett C-O-R-B-E-T-T on Twitter and her husband Casey Handmer, C-J Handmer, E-J-N-D-M-E-R on Twitter. Also of NASA's JPL for being such wonderful pals and supporters of oligies and conducting that supplemental interview with sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson. What a surprise that was. Now, if you listen past the credits, you may know that I tell a secret at the end of every episode. In this one, this might be the most embarrassing episode.

That's not true. I have more embarrassing secrets. I just haven't told you them, but this is pretty up there. So a few people asked me this week about Mars being in retrograde until August 27th and confession. I just read a whole article about it, even though I don't want to believe in it. And I don't. But still, I'm like, should I not sign any contracts until after August?

But I also just didn't understand what retrograde even was. And it turns out that it just means that it looks like the planet is traveling backwards in the sky, but it's kind of an optical illusion. So I emailed Jennifer and I asked, is there any possibility in any realm scientifically that Mars being in retrograde could fuck with anything for real, like electronics or angering ghosts? And she said, I usually say that an apparent retrograde orbit has no bearing on anything physical because it's literally just a change in perspective.

But the orbits are still the same. But as for ghosts, though, maybe they don't understand orbits and they live their afterlife strictly by apparent motions in the sky. So if Mars decides it wants to go backwards, they might also go backwards. Question mark, question mark, question mark. So I believe she was humoring me and entertaining my questions about Mars retrograde. I appreciate it. Okay, keep asking smart people stupid questions because I seriously, I think that they love it.

I think it's good for all of us. Thank you for listening. I heart you all very much. Hack a dermatology. Hamiology. Hryptozoology. Letology. Amp technology.

Meteorology. Hoolofectology. Vampology. Seryology. Cellulogy.