SciShow Tangents - Mars

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

From countless stories of little green men to colonization plans and endless rover and satellite missions, humans are sort of obsessed with Mars. One of those obsessed humans is Hank Green! This week he finally gets to put all his knowledge about his favorite planet to good use: winning fake points on a game show he made up!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!And if you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:[Truth or Fail]https://docs.google.com/document/d/12swg6fcCIZYuQh4q9vmW6SBwMoLwnb7jq3s2qT9_Djg/edit?usp=sharing[Fact Off]First Mars image: The picture: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA14033Plutonium-238:https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbyz4v/scientists-are-automating-plutonium-production-so-nasa-can-explore-deep-spacehttps://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/plutonium-production-space-exploration/https://www.greenwichtime.com/technology/businessinsider/article/NASA-s-deep-space-nuclear-power-crisis-may-soon-13530374.php[Ask the Science Couch]Earth tectonics:https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/pltec/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/science/plate-tectonics-continents-earth.htmlhttps://phys.org/news/2018-09-plate-tectonics-earth.htmlMars (lack of) tectonics:https://marsed.asu.edu/mep/tectonicshttps://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/exploring-the-planets/online/solar-system/mars/surface/volcanoes/[Butt One More Thing]Poop-eating bacteria:https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/03/582968023/making-space-food-with-space-poop

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, that lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. is it okay that we just claim to be geniuses in the intro uh some of us we're not saying which ones this week as always i am joined by stephen chin hello how you doing okay what's your tagline oh uh juniper bushes they smell Pee? They smell a little like pee to me. Interesting. Oh, like urine or peas? Urine.

Ooh. You know what smells like pee to me? Cheerios. Whoa. Oh, Sam. That's not normal. I want to know more,

but also we're still in the intro. We're also joined by Sam Schultz. Hello. What's your tagline? Charter member of the Big Dog Fan Club.

We're also joined by Sari Riley. Hello. Hello. What's your tagline? Charter member of the Big Dog Fan Club. We're also joined by Sari Riley. Hello. Hello. What's your tagline? Ghost sneezes. A-boo! And I'm Hank Green. My tagline is Tootsie Ghost.

Every week on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, and we're also keeping score and awarding Hank Bucks from week to week. Sam, who's currently our Hank Buck leader? All right. So, in's currently our Hank Buck leader?

All right. So, in last place is Sari with 32 points still. Sorry. No, I accept this. In co-last place is Stefan with also 32 points. Oh. In second to last place is Hank with 33 points. Just clawing my way up.

Continuing to be the reigning champ is me with 37 points. You're way ahead of us. Damn. I've fallen so far. So we do everything we can to stay on topic in this podcast. We are not going to be great at that. So if anybody goes on a tangent that we deem unworthy, they will have to forfeit one of their Hank bucks. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem, This Week from Sari. week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from sari a name born of fire but of destruction we tire so we look at the skies and instead get inspired like a viking or a mariner

exploring the seas or a pathfinder so fearless even though she's on an odyssey to the cosmos seeking friends not phobos to go and to know and to observe every hollow and express opportunity for curiosity with insight ahead. The spirit of science breathes life into this planet of red. Oh my. Sari, way too good. Did you get everyone in there? Not everyone, just the fun words. There were some like Mars 2, Mars 3, and I didn't want to stick those in. I love the way that we name missions.

Sometimes we're like, oh, and then sometimes we're like, Mariner and Viking. That's very good. Mariner on the seas of space. So this week we're talking about Mars, which is in my wheelhouse. If you know anything about me, I'm a pretty big fan of that particular planet. Sari, can you tell us what Mars is? This is what we do. I know, but you should do it today.

It's the fourth planet from the sun. It's red because of iron compounds on its surface. It doesn't have a magnetic field. It's a cold place. Sometimes people think it's hot because it's red, but it's a cold place. It has no atmosphere. Well, it has some atmosphere, very little. If you were there, you would die of a number of

different things. But I think the main one would be suffocation because there's nothing to breathe in. It would suck all the air out of you. The atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, which is also poisonous. So even if there was a lot of it, it would be bad, but there isn't. And there's a lot that we don't know about it, but we know more and more as we get more and more really great missions that are successfully exploring the red planet. Despite the fact that we have a pretty bad track record of getting them there, a lot of Mars missions fail, especially early on. And early on, we tried to go to Mars a lot and we failed a lot, especially if by we, we mean Russia. So we're talking about Mars today. I guess we sort of

figured out what mars was when we were figuring out what planets were um and that we were on a planet and we're like that is also a planet and then it was a very long time before we were like well you can see it there it is we sent a probe there and we know that there aren't intelligent things there and you know in my lifetime we knew that there was no like life and certainly no intelligent life on Mars. But in the 60s, people were like, I don't know, maybe. What's the deal with the lakes and the whatever? There's stuff under Mars, water under Mars.

What's the latest on that? So, yeah. So, there's near, I think, the southern polar cap, very far underground. There is a body of water down there. So, in order to be liquid, one of two things has to be the case. One, there's some source of heat down there, like geothermal heat that is heating it up and melting it. That is the more unlikely one. Or two, it is like full of salt and dust and mud.

And so it's kind of a lake, but it's kind of just like this slushy thing down there. And that's keeping it liquid. And then there's sort of this other thing, which is higher, like closer to the surface, running water. And I'm using quotation marks around that because one, we're not entirely sure. There's some question and debate about it still.

And two, it seems to be happening because there's heavy concentrations of salts, of like ionic compounds dissolved in it that's keeping it liquid, even though it's very cold and also the pressure is very low. I still see articles that are like, water on Mars? And I'm like, yeah, there's lots of water on Mars. It's just ice water and it's below the surface. And now it is time for me to do a treasure hunt. So I have prepared three science facts for your education and enjoyment,

but only one of those facts is real. The other panelists, you guys, have to guess or figure out which of the facts is the true one. And if you get it right, you get a Hank Buck. If you get it wrong, I get your Hank Buck. So I've decided to do some Mars facts about the early era of Mars missions, Mars facts about the early era of Mars missions, specifically like mid-60s when Mariner 4 happened, which was the first time we got pictures of Mars from deep space. Very cool. So here are three mid-60s related Mars facts. Fact number one, the Mariner 4 was the first mission to return images from the surface, not from the surface, of the surface of Mars taken from deep space. But it was not the first to try. In fact, the Russians tried a lot.

And during the same launch window as Mariner 4, Russia launched Mars 2 MV, which was lost while Mariner 4 sped onto Mars. Nikita Khrushchev was at the time on the way to the UN, and he had with him a model of the probe that he was going to present to the UN, but then the rocket failed and it did not get into orbit. And in a fit of rage, he destroyed the model of Mars 2MV that he had to present, which was found in pieces by the hotel staff. Fact number two.

In the 1960s, before the first missions to Mars, many scientists believed that there was likely life on Mars. We even thought there might be intelligent life on Mars, as previously discussed. Well, it turns out that Gene Roddenberry originally wrote Spock to be from Mars, but then decided to have Spock not be from Mars just in case it turned out there were intelligent aliens on Mars that didn't look like Spock. Or fact number three, Mariner 3,

which was before Mariner 4, had an onboard tape recorder. And listeners to SciShow Tangents will know that in early days of computer science, tape recorders were used to transmit data. So not like a cassette tape that you would have in a normal cassette tape recorder, but basically a small thing that had tape and that would store data on it. And that thing on Mariner 3 was hit by a micrometeorite, which resulted in that mission not being able to transmit its data back to NASA. So fact number one, on his way to the UN, Nikita Khrushchev destroyed a model of the Mars 2V spacecraft. Fact number two, Gene Roddenberry was going to say that Spock was from Mars, but then just in case didn't because he didn't want to be wrong about it. Or fact number three,

Mariner 3's tape drive was sliced by a micrometeorite, which ended that mission's ability to transmit data. I know nothing about any of these. I have never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life. I do know who Spock is.

Yeah, you know Spock. I do know Spock, but that's like my baseline of I know nothing about any of these three things. And so they all sound equally plausible. That one seems weird to me because like, yeah, Earth is in Star Trek, but there's so many planets that are so far away that like, why would he have chosen Mars to be so unimaginative? And you can't copyright the name Mars and make Mars toys and stuff

probably they don't make toys of the planet Vulcan yeah probably somebody has and I would definitely smash up

a little model if somebody was like sorry I would throw it on the ground in a rage so I'm gonna go American Probe is being all successful

on my probe this probe sucks I'm going to go with... American probe is being all successful in my probe. This probe sucks. I'm going to pick that one. All right. He's going for Nikita Khrushchev having a tantrum in a hotel. The only one that's like really sort of science-y is the Mariner 3 tape one. But I don't know anything about Mariner 3.

I like the Khrushchev one. I'm going to choose that one. All right. We're going with Khrushchev tantrums. Well, I don't like everyone going all in on one. And the micrometeorite seems plausible. I don't know. Things go wrong in space.

Things go wrong in space. That's definitely true. Things go wrong in space. It is also true that Gene Roddenberry originally had Spock from Mars. What? We wrote it because there was going to be a bunch of Mars missions and he was like, yeah, it's too weird.

We're going to know too much about Mars by the time this comes out. So he wrote it, he changed it just in case there were people from Mars? Well, he wrote it

because he wasn't sure what was going to be there. He wrote it because there was a flurry of Mars missions coming up and he was like, we're going to know too much.

It won't be mysterious enough. So Nikita Khrushchev did bring a model of Mars missions coming up. And he was like, we're going to know too much. It won't be mysterious enough. So Nikita Khrushchev did bring a model of Mars 2V to the UN and he kept it in its case, but he did not destroy it in a hotel room. He was probably so mad though. I kind of picture him as pretty stoic, honestly, just being like, you know, whatever. They tried so much and the things that kept going,

it was like the same thing would happen and they would try again and without fixing the problem. Just like, you guys, the third stage of your rocket clearly blows up. So stop using it. Were they in a big hurry, though? Yes, they were in a big hurry. And they did not have the money that America had. And it was the 60s in the Soviet Union and things were rocky. And there was a micrometeorite impact on Mariner

4. So there's two different facts in this one. There was a failure of the tape drive on Mariner 3. There was a micrometeorite impact on Mariner 4. Interesting. But they were separate things. How often are things getting hit by micrometeors? Not often, actually. It's pretty uncommon. And it's bad when it happens. And sometimes we know when we're going through areas of high probability for that, and it's always just sort of a cross your fingers thing. Because things go wrong in space. So I don't know if anybody else noticed, but I got three points.

Oh, no. I certainly did notice. And now I'm going to go smash my model rocket. Next up is the fact off. But first, a word from our sponsors. Welcome back, everybody. Everybody but Sari's got zero points, except for me. I got three.

Poem coming in clutch. You know what? You are one point behind me now in the grand total. Really? Wow. You better not get any more points. Now, everybody get ready for the fact-off. Two panelists bring science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow our minds.

And we get to award our Hank Buck to the fact we like the most. And so, Sam and Stefan present us with your facts. Simultaneously. Like we just did. And we're going to choose who goes first by picking the person who's wearing the most red. Oh. Why?

Why? That's actually pretty Mars-colored now that I'm looking. It's my Mars shirt. You got any red on you at all? Nope. Not right now. Yeah, Sam's got some red

on his phone and he's wearing an orange shirt on the watch. Am I wearing my phone right now? You are. You got your finger in the pop socket. Is that wearing? Dang it. That's how it works. Do Am I wearing my phone right now? You are. You got your finger in the pop socket. Is that wearing?

Dang. That's how it works. Do you have a Mars cosplay right now, Sam? You're basically dressed like Mars. No. I always have to go first, but that's fine. You looked at me for a long time. You're the one who picks the question.

So, in November 1964, the Mariner 3 space probe was launched, and its mission was to perform the first flyby of Mars and broadcast back the first close-up pictures of the planet along with some other data besides that. Previous to this mission, the only image we had of Mars was like an adaptation of a drawing from the 1800s by Percival Lowell, and it still had canals on it. So we were like, we didn't know.

I don't know if that counts, but okay. We didn't know what the heck it looked like. We were trying to figure it out. So unfortunately when Mariner 3 got to Mars, the protective covering around its instruments did not come off. So it was just taking pictures of like nothing or it couldn't get solar or solar power or anything like that. But fortunately JPL built two probes at the same time. So later that month they launched Mariner 4. And that one got to Mars and its protective covering did come off,

but they were getting some error reports about the image capturing devices on the probe. So they were a little bit nervous, but it was sending data back to them. But it was 1964, so it was going to take the computer eight hours to decode the image to show them what they had a picture of. So the dude in charge of the image capturing devices was a guy named Richard Grum. And he couldn't handle waiting anymore. So he went to an art store. He bought a bunch of oil pastels. He printed out the binary version of the image being sent back to them, taped it to a wall, and he colored each pixel in.

image being sent back to them taped it to a wall and he colored each pixel in because the number on the ticker tape corresponded to the value like the darkness or lightness of every pixel on the image basically uh so a couple hours later he was done and he had created humanity's first close-up image of mars out of oil pastel and paper and that image is framed and it still hangs in JPL today. And it's very good. It's a good art. It's a good art. Like, if I could have an art, like any art

in the whole world in my private collection, I might be it. Yeah. I might, like, I wouldn't want to, like, deprive the rest of the world, but it shouldn't be at JPL.

It should be in a museum. Yeah, probably. I read that they sawed the wall off where he had taped it. Right. So it's like a chunk of the wall a museum. Yeah, probably. I read that they sawed the wall off where he had taped it. Right. It's like a chunk of the wall. So it looks like you're looking at

a vista of Mars when in fact you are looking at a big bright Mars and the lower curve and the space behind it. Mars' butt. And we'll link this in the show notes that Siri so graciously puts together

every week and you like also I really love the close up picture where you can see the numbers that they had yeah I didn't

I was like this is not science-y enough but all day I kept looking at the picture again and I was just like this is so freaking amazing he made it out of crayons

because he was impatient and I love that like they they picked at random what the color palette was yeah it's just that the pastel kit that they got had the most variations in lightness and brightness and red, orange, brown tones.

So it looks like it's Mars colored, but it's just because they didn't have grayscale pastels. Did they know the color at that point? Of Mars? No. I mean, we knew roughly that it was kind of ready. Yeah, sure. We've always sort of known that it's a more red dot in the sky, which is kind of amazing. I couldn't figure out how it was transmitting the data back. But then when you said the thing in your fact off about it being like sound based, because it kept saying a tape recorder.

And that didn't make sense to me how it would be sending back an image with a tape recorder. But I should have known from previous Tantions episodes. Mars! Stefan, what's your fact? So there's a rover on Mars called Curiosity, and it... You bet your butt it meant there is. Oh, yeah. Did I say buttom?

Yeah. But Curiosity is very large, and whereas previous rovers used solar panels, they had to find a different way to power Curiosity. And so it's carrying a bunch of pellets of plutonium-238, which it uses to generate electricity, but also keep the components warm. Plutonium has been used in the Viking Landers, the Voyager probes, New Horizons. And apparently it's kind of hard to send things past Mars or to like hang out on Mars for a long time without some kind of nuclear power source. We stopped producing plutonium-238 in 1988, and we were buying it from Russia.

But Russia stopped supplying us with that in 2010. So we knew we were running out of plutonium that we could use for NASA projects. And apparently you can't really make it the same way that we used to because we don't have access to the same kinds of nuclear reactors that we had in the Cold War. So they're kind of having to reinvent the wheel a little bit. In 2012, Congress was like,

okay, here's some money. Let's start making plutonium again. By 2015, we had actually made some. And I think that's because it takes up to three years to actually produce a batch of plutonium. You have to like radiate it for like several months and then it has to cool forever. It's got to decay some. Yeah.

And so in 2015, they produced 50 grams of plutonium. That was the first amount that they made. And the goal of this company, there's like one company, I think there might be two now, but there's this one company that's primarily producing plutonium for NASA. Their goal is to make 1.5 kilograms per year, which seems like a laughably small amount to me. Especially since Curiosity used

like four and a half kilograms. Oh, wow. So, like, it's still, I don't know how this is going to fuel missions. Well, I mean, Curiosity is very big and we only send one of them every 10 years or so. That's true. But we've got to be ramping up the missions.

That's right. We've got to get more plutonium. We've got to find the Vulcans. Basically, plutonium is really hard to make, and surprisingly hard, actually, to find detail on the actual process, like the specifics, maybe. That's surprising. It's not super surprising. I don't like to send out information on how to create radioactive materials. Well, I submitted a letter to the government asking for the recipe, and they didn't send anything back, so I don't like to send out information on how to create radioactive materials. Well, I submitted a letter to the government asking for the recipe,

and they didn't send anything back, so I don't know. Basically, part of the process involves hand-pressing these little pellets. They hand-press these pellets of neptunium and aluminum, and then those go into the rods that they bombard with radiation. But the ingredients are all radioactive, too, so this whole process takes place inside a chamber that contains all the radiation. And so you have to interact with that chamber. And so it's a really like tedious, slow process. And they're also limited in how long they can work because even though there's the containment, they're like still

exposed to radiation. This company that's producing the plutonium has developed a device that fits inside this chamber that does automate the process so that they can up their production capacity. And it's taken their production from 50 grams a year to 400 grams a year. That's basically the thing. They're not at 1.5 kilograms, but I just think it's

super cool that we were hand-pressing these pellets and that was the bottleneck and now we have this little device they just basically made a robotic arm that like does the little process for them and now they can produce a bunch more plutonium it's also kind of wild that like we have like curiosity is only possible because of byproducts of nuclear reactions that we're not making anymore probably because our nuclear reactions are better now yeah hopefully we use more of the

like super hot stuff but if you need some super hot stuff that's relatively stable and throws off a lot of energies that you can capture to run your mars rover then like we've got stuff that's just hot like it's weird like we told him it's just hot yeah it just sits there and is it just keeps being hot and it's like glowing yeah it can melt itself yeah all right sary it's time for us to award our hank buck i knew both of those facts i i'm gonna give mine to sam because i really like the art and science that's like a soft spot in my heart me too and so it's like both of them were very cool but hank who are you gonna give me like so like i originally had your fact as one of my my truth or fail facts before i found out it was your fact so i am tied to it um because it

is very god it's yeah I gotta give it to Sam. It's just cooler. It's just so cool. I love scientists. It made me smile so big when I found it. So I guess that means it's time to ask

the science couch. Sam is gonna read us one of our listener questions and our couch of finely honed scientific minds will attempt to answer it. James asks,

how come Mars seems currently tectonically extinct while Earth remains so active? So the way we consider like Earth has plate tectonics and basically that means that the Earth's crust, so like the top layers, it's considered the lithosphere, is fragmented up into different segments. And because the underlying layer is molten and there are different densities and it's kind of like gooping around there then the tectonic plates on earth can subduct and melt and then also come back up and and reform on other sides of these faults and so essentially like

tectonically active is just that the earth's crust is constantly regenerating itself and squishing up against. That's why we have mountains like mid-ocean ridges form because of plates separating. And that is a fairly unique phenomenon to Earth. And it's also a thing that geologists think it's part of the reason why we can have life on Earth because of this cycling of minerals and other atoms that are necessary. They don't just get trapped in rock forever. They get melted down and then recycled and re-released or get captured in that rock and then brought down into the Earth. Like carbon sequestration is part of that, I think. Where carbon ends up on the seafloor and then it gets into the the molten right magma within the earth but thanks our mars expert so yeah so the non-tectonic activity of

mars is a big question and uh there are some other places in the solar system that have active tectonics they're like mostly ice moons they actually have plates of ice that seem to form and move around kind of like the way that we have plates of... But not a molten core. I mean molten in that it's liquid water. Oh, okay. But the Mars situation is weird. So it is not tectonically active

in that there are no plates. So one piece of this, and it seems to be explained by a number of different things. One piece of it is that it's smaller. So it's easier for a smaller body to lose its heat like earth is bigger so it's sitting there insulating all of that interior of earth and then the mantle stays hot and like all the squishing that happens even even in the crust like that stuff can be pretty rubbery and malleable so there's some thought that it's just because it's

smaller. There's also some thought that we talked a while back on Tangents about this potential very early massive meteorite impact that happened on Mars, like potentially 40% of the surface of Mars being an impact crater. And that happened 4 billion years ago. So like very, very early in the history of the solar system. And that allowed a lot of the heat in the interior of Mars to exit. So like the crust was forming, like all that stuff was happening, but then this big impact happened and it all got a chance to start leaking out again. The process through which tectonics forms is also very weird and it takes time. And the difference between continental crust and seafloor crust is actually different and sort of relies on a lot of geologic activity to have stuff like

granite which is lighter float up to the top and so sort of that you can kind of think of the continents as like a actual like solid crust like ice sort of floating on top of other heavier but still solid materials. Geology is very cool. And then the last thing that I'll say about this is that we think that Mars still is geologically active. So it doesn't have plate tectonics. Definitely not. Doesn't seem to have ever had.

And that's why it has the largest volcano in the solar system, because it has a hotspot that doesn't move. So the magma just keeps coming up in the same place for billions of years. And that's why Olympus Mons and the Tharsis Bulge is so big. And the last evidence we think for Olympus Mons erupting was 25 million years ago, which is a long time. But compared to the 4 billion years that Mars has been roughly in the same shape that it is right now, not that long ago. Like there were apes on Earth 25 million years ago. Were they like, oh, what the heck was that? Were they even able to hear it?

No. It turns out space is a pretty good sound insulator well you know maybe a big enough sound the sun is very loud uh we cannot hear it okay that's good um and that like kind of indicates that on the geologic scale this might not be the last time that olympus mons erupts like it could potentially happen again someday in millions of years or right now. Who the heck knows? So it does indicate that there is, you know, molten stuff inside of Mars. But the other big consequence of all of this is that Mars doesn't have a magnetic field because there's no solid core inside of the molten.

So Earth has like solid, liquid solid. And that ball of iron inside of us is what gives us our magnetic field. And that is also what gives us life being easier to have without being constantly bombarded by solar winds and radiation. We really lucked out. I mean, Earth is pretty great. And like compared to everywhere else in the solar system, like really great. And like, compared to everywhere else in the solar system, like, really great. Yeah.

Like a bunch of things all happened this way in this place. Yeah. It's weird to think of how it all sort of came together. Yeah.

And then like, I get to drive a car. Have a wife. Eat pizza. Eat pizza. Oh my gosh. Oh, that's

very good stuff if you want to ask the science couch your questions follow us on twitter at scishowtangents where we will tweet out our topics for upcoming

episodes every week thank you to the librarian LT and studying notes and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week

alright so here we are at the end of the podcast Sam you came out with two points. I humbly accept. Sarah, you got one. Stefan, you got nothing. I'm sorry. I'm now truly, well and truly in last place. You are. And I'm climbing back up there in the lead as a winner with three points.

If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's really easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's helpful and lets us know what you like about the show. Or you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us today. I have been Hank Green.

I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Jin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz and Caitlin Hoffmeister. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno, and we couldn't have made any of this stuff without our patrons on Patreon.

Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. To get humans to Mars, we need food. So researchers are trying to build toilet systems with bacteria that break poop down and produce methane to feed another bacterium called Methylococcus capsulatus that can supplement astronaut diets as a protein and fat-rich microbial goo. Oh, come on. Poo into food.

Poo goo. Poo to goo.