StarTalk Radio - Can You Terraform Mars? with Kennda Lynch

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Can we grow food on Mars? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Paul Mecurio learn about a new NASA project "Plant Trek" and the challenges of surviving on other planets with astrobiologist Kennda Lynch. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/can-you-terraform-mars-with-kennda-lynch/Thanks to our Patrons Konrad Kalinko, Shawn Allison, Kevin Mitchell, Skylar Gravatt, Terry Sullivan, Carol Anklam, and Chantal for supporting us this week.Photo Credit: NASA/Clouds AO/SEArch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I love that Kendra would just go into the ship and just start getting samples from people. Oh, heck yeah. And they'd be like, see, this is why the humans are a little bit annoying. They just come right in and they just take over, as opposed to at least chit-chatting for a minute before you start taking swaps. I kind of liken myself to Grace from Avatar. She's like, I need to get samples wherever she is, you know? Welcome to StarTalk.

Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. I got with me Paul Mercurio. Paul, welcome back to Star Talk. All right. Great to be back. Great to see you, buddy. How are you? All right. Paul's a professional comedian. You're an Emmy and I just learned also a Peabody Award

winner. You never told me that. You get an Emmy just for being funny, but you get a Peabody Award for being funny with purpose. With intellect. With intellect. Why are you laughing that I don't have an intellect? No, I didn't. No, that's not. No, you know. No, that's not why. With intellect. With intellect. Why are you laughing that I don't have an intellect? No, I didn't know. That's not, no, you know. No, that's not why. I know. No, just congratulations.

Thank you. I think Peabody, we've always counted that among the highest possible awards someone can get who's got stuff online or on TV or in video. So congratulations on that. Thank you. And you perform regularly on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. So great to have you here. Yeah. And by the way, if I can just mention,

I'm taking my Broadway show out on national tour called Permission to Speak. And December 29th, it's going to be in Orlando at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. I know that facility. Yeah, it's a beautiful venue. They let anybody in there if they let me in. December 29th, 2023. Yes. And so people can go to my website, paulmacurio.com and get tickets and come out. And if you buy tickets, my son can get that kidney that he needs. That's all I'm saying. Oh, okay. Okay. If you want a kid to lead a normal life, he'll come to my show. And you've got a podcast called Inside Out with Paul Mercurio. Which he's been on. And on your list of guests, Paul McCartney, Spike Lee, Kevin Costner, many others.

And someone named Neil Tyson was on your show one time, too. Yeah. There was a lot of weeping during that episode. He would talk and then he would cry and it'd be like, I have to hug him. No, no. Yeah, we had a great conversation. We talked about black matter and it was the best. No such thing as dark matter. Dark matter. So apparently it didn't, I didn't educate you at all. Okay. See, you could have

just. Okay. No such thing as black matter. There's black holes and dark matter. Just let it slide and pretend you didn't hear it. No. Black holes and dark matter. There's no black matter. Okay. Just so you know. Okay. Let's retake this whole thing. Black lives matter There's no black matter. Okay. Let's retake the whole thing. Black lives matter, but no black matter. All right. So today, it's Cosmic Queries, and we're going to talk about astrobiology. We don't talk about that subject enough. And so we're going to bring a returning guest, Kenda Lynch.

Kenda, welcome back to StarTalk. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here. Excellent, excellent. You're a staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, the LPI, just outside of Johnson Space Center in Planet Houston. And you're an astrobiologist.

And we have you on primarily to talk about a new NASA project called Plant Trek. That's correct. Now, we all know Star Trek. Plant Trek sounds a little derivative, but investigating strategies. Wait, I got the line here. Investigating strategies for regolith preconditioning to support establishment of plant microbe systems in Martian habitats. I wrote that, by the way.

No, he did in English. You're welcome. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. So, Kenneth, don't ever repeat that phrase on this show. Ever. Okay? Just, what the hell is a regolith? I think I know. But it sounds like you've been hanging out with geologists too long. So let's give us in plain English what PlantTrek is and what your relationship is to the project. Mars and grow on food on Mars using in situ resources or basically Martian regolith. We can't call it dirt or soil because it doesn't have microbes in it that we know of. So anything

that doesn't have life in it is regolith that we define in the geology, geological terms as regolith. And so Martian- Wait, wait. So your roots are in biology, astronomy, or geology or all of the above? I wear a lot of hats. So my actual bachelor's degrees, I have two because I'm crazy, and I got two at University of Illinois at the same time. My bachelor's degrees are in engineering and biology, and I designed my secondary field in engineering to focus on what's called advanced life support systems.

So back when I was doing engineering and I was an engineer, I learned about how to develop life support systems. So back when I was doing engineering and I was an engineer, I learned about how to develop life support systems for astronauts. And back then we were talking about something called bioregenerative life support systems or closed-loop life support systems, ways to basically take Earth with us and recycle the things, use plants to help us make air, help us clean our water, help us grow our food. Without needing a supply ship without without needing a supply ship or any kind of resupply because relying on a two-year turnaround for resupply from earth is going to really suck if you're living on mars you don't want to have to do that all right now these are now these are tools and things so how does astrobiology relate to this well that's an interesting thing that i discovered and i am and you asked about my

relationship to it i am the principal investigator this This is one of the projects that I got funded. Yes, I'm the PI. I got this funded with NASA to test this process that me and my colleagues came up with. Wait, wait, wait. So you're PI. Yes. So it is your fault that it has that title. We just call it plant track, and yes, there's a T-shirt.

And you should have my logo somewhere. You should have my logo there. Can I just propose this? I work at CBS. I think this is a drama. It's called Regolith PI. And then you show up. Good one.

I love it. You got a shovel and a hat and a thing. And then there's a plant. So Regolith. So when I reach into the soils of Earth, I don't see it, but it is teeming with microbes. Millions and millions of microbes that have made that soil possible.

Yes. That enables plant life to grow in it. So if I go to the moon, I can still grab up a handful of dirt on Mars, but there's no microbes in it. So you don't call it dirt. No, we don't call it dirt. We call it regolith because dirt, and we don't even, you know, and if you talk to a soil scientist, they hate the D word. They don't like it called dirt.

They like it to be soil. I've learned this from my colleagues who's the soil scientists. Oh, the D word. They call it the D word. I didn't know dirt was a four-letter word, but apparently for this science it is. Wow. Okay. Okay, so now what, so tell me how astrobiology fits in.

Well, astrobiology fits in because one of the things that we learned is that, you know, Mars, what we know from all of our missions to both the moon and Mars is that the lunar regolith and the Martian regolith have a lot of interesting things in them. They have a lot of like heavy metals. They have a lot of iron. They have a lot of lunar soil has a lot of titanium. Martian soil has a lot of iron and sulfur. They have a lot of lunar soil has a lot of titanium. Martian soil has a lot of iron and sulfur. The big thing about Mars is we have a thing called perchlorate in it. And perchlorate is something that there's more of it in Martian regolith than there is on the highest site on Earth, which would be the Atacama Desert. And perchlorate is a really cool molecule that does cool things that we like to use it for spaceflight, like to mail solid rocket engines. Wait, wait, wait. You say that?

Wait, wait. The highest spot on Earth is Mount Everest. So what do you mean the Atacama Desert? The highest concentration of perchlorate is in the Atacama Desert. Oh, God. So it's not the highest elevation. Yeah, no. The highest concentration. I am sorry.

Because the Atacama Desert is a very high elevation. It is. We have telescopes there for that reason. Yes, yes. So I was confused there. Okay, thank you for clarifying. It is the highest concentration of perchlorate because it is one of the driest places on the planet. And perchlorate accumulates naturally.

Perchlorate is raining actually all over the planet all the time. It's generated in the atmosphere using photochemistry with ozone. Photochemistry reactions with ozone make perchlorate and it rains out all over the planet. But it only accumulates. Wait, so what is the whole make perchlorate and it rains out all over the planet. Wait, so what is the whole molecule perchlorate? Perchlorate, it has got one little chlorine atom in the center

surrounded by four big oxygen atoms. Oh, it's only chlorine and oxygen? I didn't know that. Yeah. It's very simple. Come on, Neil. Everybody knows that. Come on, Neil. I mean, what up? I can't work like this.

I'm sorry. He's always playing catch up on this stuff. Okay. All right. So per chloride. I got you. So ozone gets you three oxygen molecules for free. Okay.

And how many total is surrounding the chlorine? Four. So four for per chloride. Four. And there's total is surrounding the chlorine? Four. So four for perchlorate. And there's another one called perchlorate. It's just three, but we kind of focus on perchlorate right now because that's the big one that we care about the most right now. And why is that important? Because for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's important for humans because perchlorate is a contaminant that affects human health. Perchlorate is the perfect size to compete with iodine for binding on your thyroid. So if you have perchlorate in your system,

it's going to knock that iodine out of the way and bind to your thyroid. And guess what? Your thyroid is not going to work too good. So if you're... Our bodies are just so stupid. They can't figure out what... They don't know basic chemistry. Right, right, right. So it's got the right affinity

where it just likes to knock the iodine away. So if you're eating, let's say if you're eating Martian potatoes that were grown in the Martian dirt, like Matt Damon did. Matt Damon, right? Yeah. Those are poop potatoes.

They are poop potatoes. But remember, he planted them in the ground in Mars, an actual Mars regolith ground, which there would have been perchlorate in those regoliths. Even though he mixed it with poop, he didn't take care of the perchlorate. So if he had eaten those poop potatoes, other than the fact that they're poop potatoes, he would have been ingesting perchlorate like all the time because perchlorate is so mobile. It would have actually been uptaken probably into the potato. And honestly, the bottom line is if he'd eaten those potatoes we would have killed matt damon i mean matt damon would have just also

the idea that like a group of people in all seriousness couldn't eat those potatoes because the poop has his pathogens in it which would be fine yeah but wouldn't work for others there's some other issues with regards to the pathogenic and i it. And I know this because as a hobby, I freeze dry my waste, just as a hobby. But the point is that, in all seriousness, it would not have worked as a concept, okay? Not without some bioremediation, which is one of the things that we try to do when we develop what we call biological life support,

bioregenerative life support systems. We remediate things. We try to clean up things and make them safe before we use them to grow our food. And the first thing we're trying to do with PlantTrack is we're trying to deal with this big perchlorate elephant in the room, which is, what do we do with the fact that there is up to 1%, in some cases, 2% weight, by weight, perchlorate in the Martian regolith? And if we're going to use that regolith to help us grow food, we need to figure out what to do with that perchlorate. So that's what we're trying to

answer. The moon is at least as dry as Mars. Why doesn't the moon have the same amount of perchlorate in it? Well, that is a good question. It's probably because, first of all, the moon doesn't really have an atmosphere. And so perchlorate on Mars is probably also, there's a lot of chlorine on Mars because of all the volcanism on Mars. So there's a lot more chlorine on Mars and there was a lot of, you know. Volcanism from long ago. From long ago, but it still put a lot of chlorine on there. And we're not sure if it's not quite the same process because there's not a lot of ozone on Mars, right? But we think it's more surface grain chemistry or other kind of chemistry.

Maybe even when there was, you know, surface or groundwater that made that perchlorate. The biggest theory is probably surface-type grain chemistry along with radiation, like, impacting it, causing, like, surface chemistry happening. By radiation, you mean high-energy light from the sun? Yes, yeah, high-energy photons hitting, you know, all the high-energy photons coming in. Just a quick question.

There was an experiment done in China in laboratories with lunar soil where they grew a certain strain of tobacco. Just a long question. And was that experiment able, was there any help that we've gotten from that for what you're doing in terms of what they were, they used three forms of bacteria to grow this sort of strain of tobacco. Anything from that study that helps? It does because it's interesting because there's a lot of different yes and no.

So no on the fact that we're really not going to try to encourage tobacco use on the moon or Mars. So I know. I know. Paul, not story? For the type of plant that they chose. Nicotine addicts on Mars? Paul. Well, listen, you're going to have a cigarette stand everywhere, so why not? Paul. But from the standpoint of that they tried different bacteria to try to improve the lunar regolith and to try to create a good community with the regolith, yes, that was very helpful. I've seen that study, and we're starting to move into some of the lunar regolith work to try to create a good community with the regolith, yes, that was very helpful. I've seen that study and we're starting to move into some of the lunar regolith work too. But

right now, one of our first things with PlantTrek and what we were funded to do is kind of solve that perchlorate issue. And the reason astrobiology ties in is because one of the things that I realized when I started thinking about life support systems with my colleagues again and things is that I learned so much about extreme environments and extreme microbes. And I actually happened to have this 2019 astrobiology paper where we discovered perchlorate reducing microbes

in a Mars analog environment. You know, just happened to have that. And I was like, you know, what if we took microbes from that environment and applied it to, you know, and test it and see if we could take, you know, Martian simulant that we preloaded with, simulated with perchlorate,

and we simulated actual mark and regolith. What if we took those bugs out of that environment and put them in Martian regolith to see if they could process all that perchlorate out? So, so, so, Kenna, this is a tiny part of the cog in the wheel of terraforming, isn't it? You're using the T word. The T word.

I'm saying. If you want to make Mars good enough for, you know, for prime time. Right. You got to fix everything up. You need, so you can put your microbes to work. You can have a microbe cocktail. You set it loose. Some will produce the ozone. Others

will take out the perchlorate. Others will make the soil, whatever. Others will poop where you need it with the right kind of poop. Not Paul's poop. Paul's poop won't grow anything. Neil, I'm glad you're getting excited, but I need to really end, because we got this little thing called planetary protection.

And we don't want to do that yet, because we're still trying to find out if Mars has its own life on it. But we do want to be able to support human life. We don't want to kill our man-taymans. We want to keep our man-taymans alive. So we do want to try to figure out ways to use NCT resources, because

like I said, that supply chain issue of two years, that's serious. It's even worse than the pandemic. Also, you should stay in the character and call him Mark Watney. That's fair. I'm just saying. We've had Andy Weir as a guest on StarTalk. Fair enough. And he would want you to call him Mark Watney.

Fair enough. Mark Watney. We don't want to kill our Mark Watney. Fair enough. Mark Watney. We don't want to kill our Mark Watneys. So, Paul, this is at Cosmic Queries, and you've got questions for Ken. I do, yeah. We're going to jump right in here. I haven't seen them. I don't think Ken has seen them. No, I haven't seen a single do. Yeah. We're going to jump right in here. I haven't seen them. I don't think Kenda's seen them. No, I haven't seen a single thing. Yeah. So Kenda, occasionally they drift

into the universe. I'm happy to take those if it drifts away from your planned expertise, but otherwise they're all for you. So let's go. That works. Well, this first one's appropriate based on what we were just talking about. So this is from Dennis. Greetings, humans. This is Dennis from Indiana. Dr. Lynch, were you ever approached by filmmakers for technical support when they were shooting The Martian? No. That's a good question.

But no, I was still in grad school when they were shooting The Martian. No. Okay, but if they were shooting it today, no reason why you wouldn't be on the list. Yeah, if they were shooting it today, I would give you wouldn't be on it. Yeah, if they were shooting it today, I would give tech support any day of the week. That would be fun.

Yeah, but then you would have ruined the poop potato because you'd say, that can't happen. Cut, cut. You would have had a big fight with Ridley Scott. Right, right. Oh, to just have a duke out with Ridley Scott. That's a gene chemistry. Right, I'm just saying.

I gave technical advice on the movie on how to kill any living plant known to man a gene coming through. I'm just saying. I gave technical advice on the movie on how to kill any living plant known to man ever. So I'm that guy. I can't grow air plants. That's how bad I am. I mean, they even skipped over the whole planetary protection issue about wondering about life on Mars. I mean, there were so many things,

astrobiology relevant, that they just skipped over. But, you know, you sit next to my friends who are both a planetary geologist and then a flight systems engineer when I went to go see the movie. And all of us were going, nope, nope, on different parts of the movie. But we had fun. We thought it was fun.

It was the closest movie that got close to, you know, accuracy on the science and the engineering. So we love it. We have fun. Science was its own character in that film. It was. It really was. I praise it for that. Absolutely.

And that's the film where science became a verb. There you go. I'm going to science the poop out of this. I'm going to science the shit out of this, right? There you go. To science. That's what Matt Damon uttered in the film. To science, yes.

What else you got, Paul? Okay. Andy Weber. Hey, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Lynch, and Dr. Mercurio. Oh, all right. I just added that. This is Andy. He got an honorary PhD from...

Yeah, from The Daily Show. This is Andy from Edmonton, Alberta. I'm a big fan of the movie The Martian. And in that movie, Mark Watney, you did it, right? Is able to plant potatoes on Mars using Martian dirt, water, and human waste. Would this be possible? How could this be more realistic? Thank you so much.

Love the show. So let's unpack that. So we are told that solid excrement is fertilizer. It's an entire cottage industry in the farming universe for just that. So let me ask you, what's the difference between human poop and horse's completely embedded the potato seeds or the eyes of the potato in poop? Then why does the rest of the perchlorate matter? Well, so, okay, so let's unpack that completely. So first, the difference between perchlorate poop and like horse poop. Well, horses eat a lot more grass and a lot more like vegetarian diet, whereas humans tend to eat meat and other things. No, no, just get the poop

of vegetarian humans. Line them up. No matter what you have. Do you know how annoying that poop would be? Oh my God, it'd be looking down its nose at the other poop. Judgment everywhere from the vegetarian. No, that's the vegan poop that would have the judgment.

Oh, that's true. Right, right, right. The vegan poop. Well, of course you, of. The vegan poop. Well, of course you, of course, percolate is a problem for you because you're not a vegan. And how do you make, how do you make the,

the, the Mark Watney scenario work? I think in the end, that's what we really want to know. I mean, so how we make the scenario work is how we do things here on earth. We do, we, we add a few more things in between the poop and the plants that make the whole loop, right? So we get the plant, we get the poop, and we process it a little bit.

We get the right microbes eating it, microbes that are making things that we like, like nitrates and things like that that we want to put in the soil. We get that in there, and then we can then, and we make sure we get rid of the microbes, the bugs that could make people sick or, like, could kill our helpful bugs. Because there are unhelpful bugs that could take over. And we don't want that. So we want to make sure that we have a good microbial, we want to make sure we have a good microbiome. Just because this microbe will do task A and this microbe will do task B

doesn't mean A plus B will work because A could eat B, is what you're saying. Yeah, and we want to make sure that we have a good population of A through Z that are going to be happy and keep, like, if A is the bad guy that could really make a human sick, we want A under control. A is always going to be there. I mean, like, for example, E. coli is everywhere. You know the kindergarten joke, why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine. Yes? Because seven ate nine. Yes, because seven ate nine. That's like safe for kindergarten.

Right, right. If you got microbes, you don't want microbes eating other microbes. They all have a task. Or just taking over and taking all the resources. What they do is they may not eat the other microbe, but they may be like, see all these resources? They're all mine. And then they deny it from the other microbes and the other microbes die of starvation. So you don't want that.

So you want to make sure- You can't genetically modify some of these microbes to make them what you want them to be? We can, but we, you know, we can, and there are folks that work on that. We're trying to, but microbes are pretty smart. Every time we think we got microbes understood, they go, yeah, here, hold my beer, watch this.

You know, so every time we think we got them understood, but they're pretty smart and they know how to organize themselves in a way to be optimal for the environment they're in. So we're trying to learn, at least on Planet Trek, we're trying to learn how microbes from an extreme environment, how could they organize themselves in a Mars simulated environment? How could they organize themselves to deal with perchlorate in a simulated environment? So that's what we want to try to do. So to get back to this unpack question is, yeah, we want, we want to use that poop. That poop is good. It's got nutrients. We just want to make sure that we control, we get the, we get the rough guys under control and we put them back in.

And then we want to make sure, and the reason that the perchlorate still matters is if you saw Mark Watney still put the potatoes in the ground where that regolith still had perchlorate in it. And perchlorate is super mobile. It goes wherever water is. It's really water soluble. So you put in water, it's wherever the water goes, it's going to go. So if you water your potatoes and there is perchlorate in the regolith, it's going to dissolve into the water and it's going to get uptaken by the roots of the potatoes and then get concentrated in the potatoes. So you don't want that. And I just was reminded, I reminded myself of the periodic table of elements where elements that appear in a vertical column

have similar external, similar electron configurations in their outermost shell, which means they make similar families of molecules to each other. So an iodine is right there below chlorine in their column. So wherever iodine goes, chlorine can go. And there you have it. And that's why they have the similar affinities. And that's why it can just kind of go, excuse me, iodine, boop, and knock it out of the way. And we don't want that because then you're going to be hypothyroid and you're going to be tired and lethargic. And then things are going to be bad. You can generate heart disease. If you have low thyroid, there's a lot of negative effects of low thyroid.

And if you have chronically low thyroid, it can lead to really bad stuff including the big D word. Dirt. Stop. We can't have two D words in one show that are different. Stick with one D word.

Fair enough. Are there any insects that translate to Mars that we can use? Like insects here that could sort of… She's got microbes. If you have microbes, you don't need insects. Yeah, I mean… Insects are microbes. Hugely microscopic objects that are, you know, microbes will do everything for you, right?

Well, ideally right now, we're kind of focusing on microbes. I mean, and insects are, again, that's another type of things like insects or, I mean, on earth, you know, earthworms are very much a part of soil, right? But, you know, we have, and there are those that I've worked on trying to add earthworms to like lunar and Martian regolith, but it takes a lot of work to keep them alive.

And you have to add them a little later after you've kind of already pre-processed the regolith with like microbes first, but then you can eventually add like earthworms and things like that to the regolith to kind of help them get that going into soil, right? But it takes a little work. That's part of the terraforming.

Let's just keep it in the habitat for now. We're going to try to keep it in the habitat so that the astrobiologists can still look for life on Mars outside the habitat. We're going to try to keep it in the habitat for now. So, Paul, give me more. Yeah. This is the artist formerly known as James Smith. Hello, all. James from Indianapolis here.

So, Kenda, in the movie Arrival, what do you think the best course of action would have been had they given someone with your knowledge and background when the aliens showed up? Thanks. Have a great day. Okay, so there are two Arrival movies. One of them had Charlie Sheen. Right. I think it was back in the 90s.

And I think they probably mean the more recent one where the aliens put these vertical ships around the world. And then they got a physicist and a linguist. They did. And I would have picked, and I tweeted this, and I got jumped all over because first, social media is accessible. Second, how often do linguists ever get portrayed in movies? I said, instead of a linguist and a physicist, they should have had an astrobiologist and a cryptographer. That's what I said, all right?

But then I felt bad because, you know, give the linguists some, you know, cut them, cast some shade on the linguist. So what would you have done in that case? Well, as a scientist with Astrobiology Crit, I would have said, let me go take samples and listen to the linguist. They're figuring something out. Wait, wait, take samples? You'd go up to the septopod and then say, excuse me, let me cut some of your flesh away. No, I'd just be like, Can you just do a little swab?

Can I just swab one of your tentacles? That's all I would have done. Can I swab your tentacles? That's all I would have done. Open the side of your head and I want to swab. Swab. That's all I want to do. Or give me some of that ink you're drawn with, right?

Or just swab the spaceship. I would have just taken some spaceship and just... Yeah, for those who didn't see the film, aliens arrived in these pods all around the world. I don't know how many locations there were. And we focused on the one that landed in the United States. There might have been several in the United States.

I don't remember. And of course the military is there and they've got to cordon it off and we learn that these aliens to them time is a loop rather than a linear thing and so so and they play with your your head about that right about events that happen either before or after but if time is a loop there is no before or after, there just is. Right. And so that's where they tried to take that. Yeah.

And they did a lot of interesting thing about, there was another underlying message about common language and commonness and understanding and communication being key, which when we're talking about searching for intelligent life, which is something we do do in astrobiology, we look for techno signatures. We try to look for signs of intelligent life life either in the past, especially if we're getting signatures from hundreds of light years away. We know that that happened, you know, in the past, that civilization may not be there anymore. And we try to look for any kind of signs of like techno, you know, technosignatures, even, you know, I would say nearby, but not, you know, they actually, for the first time, commissioned that committee on, what is it, UAE's unexplained events. Aerial. Yeah, UAE.

UAP's unexplained aerial phenomena. Right. So, we're actually starting to think about, you know, from a policy perspective, maybe we're not alone anymore, you know. So, maybe people are starting to think about that you know, from a policy perspective, maybe we're not alone anymore, you know? So maybe people are starting to think about that from that perspective. And that is something that we do have astrobiologists that think about that. So like I said, I would have been all about getting samples and trying to understand their, you know, their microbiome or their, you know, their genetics or lack thereof. Like, what are they made of? How did they come to be? So here we are talking about

swabbing the alien so we can study it. Whereas in the film Nope, which was like an alien horror film, basically. Yes. Oh, my God. It's sucking people up from Earth. And while it never says it explicitly, it's pretty clear they're getting eaten. It's like a giant jellyfish kind of thing, just eating it and digesting it. And digesting you while you're in

its digestive canal. And so in that case, it is swabbing us. Just taking a little taste and certain things it didn't like, it would spit back out, right? It spit back out! But it begs the question, it answers the question that we are not

alone in the universe. There are other humans because if they like humans and that's what they eat, how did they survive until they got to us to eat us, right? So they had to be eating other people. They were just unhappy campers eating lesser food. So like they chicken or fish, they didn't care, they'd go either way? Or, you know, deer, wolves, bears. They're too gamey. Humans are nice and fun. Well, they were eating horses for a while, it seemed deer, wolves, bears. They're too gamey. Humans are nice and fun. Well, they were eating horses for a while, it seemed like, in the show.

They bring a lot of horses. I love that Kendra would just go into the ship and just start getting samples from people. Oh, heck yeah. And they'd be like, see, this is why the humans are a little bit annoying. They just come right in and they just take over, as opposed to at least chit-chatting for a minute before you start taking swaps.

I kind of liken myself to Grace from Avatar. Like, she's like, I need to get samples wherever she is, you know? Right, right. If you're a scientist, you know,

there's a fun science comic where someone, you know, connects these two electrodes and there's a spark and they get shocked and they said, well, I'm never doing that again. And then another person comes up, connects them. They get sparked and said, wow, I wonder if that happens every time.

That's the scientist. Yes. yes I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery you can see my pottery on my website cosmicmugs.com cosmic mugs, art that lets you taste the universe everyday and I support StarTalk on Patreon

this is StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. I pull, I keep going. All right, this is Captain James Riley. Seedings and greetings from Houston. I was wondering what percentage of Mars soil, regolith rock, is seeming to work best in your soil mixes for healthy plants, And what kind of composition are we dealing with with Mars rock powder? I suppose you won't have to supplement iron.

No. Oh, good. Good question. And let me add to that. Really good question. Let me just add to that. Kenda, remind me, which mission intentionally landed at the boundary between the receding ice cap? Phoenix.

And? Phoenix. Phoenix mission. The Phoenix mission. So that one is finding Martian regolith soils that are right, that are damp, and maybe there's some action there. Right? So that's a place. Right.

That's a place. some action there. Yeah. Right? So that's a place. Right. That's a place. And the captain duly noted

that Mars has way more iron than the moon does, right? Which gives it its rusty color, I think. Yeah, because it gets

oxidized from that, like I said, that radiation, like the surface is very oxidized because of the heavy, you know, the heavy, you know,

radiation particles and things like that. That's where we get that red color from the iron. Solar wind. Solar wind. Yeah. Yes. Okay.

From that, yes. Okay. It's a great Frank Sinatra movie, by the way. Love his song, by the way, Frank Solar Wind. But anyway, go ahead. So to answer his question, great question. That's the beautiful thing is that Martian regolith has so many beautiful things that we love. It has that iron, so we don't need iron.

It has sulfur. It actually has, you know, it has a little bit of organic carbon, but it also has carbonates. It has a little bit of nitrates, like bio-biologically available nitrogen. It's nitrate, not a lot, but it has nitrogen in its atmosphere, which is good. We have a lot of other elements. We have some phosphorus. We have all these other elements that we need, and it does have a little bit of oxygen. phosphorus. We have all these other elements that we need, and it does

have a little bit of oxygen. What do we do with phosphorus? Because my first encounter with phosphorus was like phosphorus bombs. And so it was, oh, we need phosphorus for our health. What is it doing in our body? Phosphate backbone. DNA. The whole DNA backbone

is phosphate. Yes. Oh my gosh. What you should have said is the whole backbone of DNA. Yes. Oh my gosh. What you should have said is the whole backbone of DNA. Stupid. Let's do that again. Let's do that again. I forgot.

Why do we need phosphates? Okay, and then you go. DNA backbone, Dr. Tyson. No. No, let's do it again. Do it again. No, I'll do it. No, let's do it again. Do it again. Do it again. I can't do it.

No, I'll do it. No, no. No, no, I'll do it. Okay. You ask the question, you answer, and I'll tag it. Okay.

Go ahead. All right. Okay. So, Kenda, why do we need phosphate again? I don't understand. It's part of the DNA backbone. The phosphate backbone is fundamental to the part of the DNA backbone. The phosphate backbone

is fundamental to the creation of DNA. Stupid. Okay. Okay. Okay. So now I'm caught up. I'm all caught up now.

So if someone says you have no backbone, they're saying you have no phosphate. That's what they're saying. Phosphate, your phosphorus depleted you know you're depleted yeah i got you um so um um so yeah it has a lot of the different

it has like the chomps or sponge it has like a lot of the different things it has hydrogen it has all those things from a mineralogical standpoint from the actual regolith like the rockets in the rock we have lots of clay we like clay in earth. We actually have clay in earth because clay helps do a lot of things. Clay has activated surfaces, so it lets things bind to it. And it does cateye exchange. Cateye exchange is very important in soil for plant growth. Clay absorbs water. It can hang on to water.

So it can, you know, clays swell when they have water. So they're very good for water retention in the soil. So that water, so we don't have overwatering and we don't drown our plants, but then we have an access to water that the plants can take for a period of time. And then we also have, believe it or not, and I'm still not quite sure why this works.

I'm assuming it's the calcium, but gypsum. There's actually here on earth, they actually, to help certain soils, certain plots of agriculture improve their growth yield. They will actually like go out and lay out gypsum and add and supplement the gypsum. I think it has something to do

with the calcium supplementation and the calcium and the sulfate. And the sulfate probably gets used by microbes, but the calcium is an essential element that the plants need. And so those two minerals are two things that we have in abundance on Mars.

And remind me, gypsum is, is that the softest item on that hardness scale? On the Mohs hardness scale? Oh my gosh. Mohs hardness scale. I think gypsum was down there. It's pretty soft. I don't remember.

Or talc. I think talc and carbonates are softer, but you know what? I don't remember my mineralogy very well. Because I didn't take it officially. I'm a just-in-time learner. I learned my mineralogy on my own. Well, if you don't remember that, why is anything you say, we should take anything so seriously?

Because I do have degrees in biology and engineering. There you go. And environmental microbiology. All right, another one? Time for just a couple more, yeah. All right, Mary Lee Dewey. This is the subject I've been waiting for. I'm a high school biology teacher,

and this discussion comes up a lot. We've been studying the Miller-Urey experiment. My question is, what do you think is the actual probability our atmosphere could be recreated on another planet, like, artificially? Hmm. Like, artificially, like, I'm trying to understand. I think I understand. Okay.

Let me catch people up on the Miller and Urey experiment. Yeah. So, Miller and Urey, too, they're both chemists. One may have been a biologist working at the University of Chicago. This is back in the late 50s, early 60s. They put a mixture of certain base ingredients that we expected to find on Earth. They put in what we think was the early atmosphere on Earth. And they put a spark across that air as an energy source.

Then they went away and came back. And when they came back, they found amino acids formed spontaneously in that primordial soup, basically, that they were creating. And so, again, this is very terraforming-like. So I think the question is, can we set something loose that will then create the atmosphere that we now know and love on Earth, but on another planet? So there's a couple of problems that my terraforming friends sometimes don't remember. And that's that Mars does not have a magnetic shield anymore. We don't have an electromagnetic, we don't have a dynamo anymore. So we don't have an electromagnetic, we don't have a dynamo anymore. So we don't have that electromagnetic radiation protection.

So our atmosphere is being constantly stripped away. So I'm not 100% confident that we could do that. But there are a lot of concepts for how we'd have to basically build up the atmosphere. And how we'd have to, get things in the atmosphere to really kind of, to get some warmth and to basically get some more radiation. There's a bunch of different concepts out there. So this amounts to geoengineering. Yeah, it's geoengineering. And you got engineering chops, so this should be right up your alley. Yeah, I mean, from a theoretical standpoint,

is it possible to, I don't know if we need to go all the way back to Miller-Urey. What we need to do is we need to basically kind of make a simulated greenhouse effect. We need to get something in there to kind of get a controlled runaway greenhouse effect where we get enough of an atmosphere in there, where we get enough heating from the sun into that atmosphere where it generates heat and, you know, thickens up the atmosphere on Mars. And then we can actually have, you know, then we pump out some more oxygen and things like that. So it is possible. We can get a space pipeline from all of our energy generating plants and pump all the CO2 to Mars. There you go. But Mars already has CO2 in its atmosphere, but we increase the concentration. And then, yeah, that's how you do that.

And then Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos can fight to see who controls the pipeline. increase the concentration and then yeah that's how you do that and then elon musk and jeff bezos can fight to see who controls the pipeline that would be the rest of that can you explain to me what the plan is to deal with the radiation on mars so let's say we can grow something that supports life what do you do have you thought about i assume you have the effects of radiation on whatever you grow and how do you how do you that? So the big thing that we look at is we look at habitat, we look at habitats, we look at building habitats, including like a Martian-like greenhouse. And those habitats would have some level of shielding to manage, to protect from the radiation, especially from things from the solar rim, GCRs, things like that. One of the things that they

looked at, they're looking at building partial habitats. They're looking at like Martian, you know, Mars has caves. They have possible lava tubes. They're looking at, you know, or places where we just bury, you know, we use actually some of the Martian regolith and rock. Hide. Yeah, to hide. To kind of use it to kind of shield from all that radiation.

But basically you just kind of, part of that is you build that shielding into the plant. The other part is we look at how, we look at studies about how much radiation do we really need to shield the greenhouse? Like how much radiation before the plant, it really does, you know, cause plants to grow in a way that's not healthy and doesn't produce actual, you know, nutritious biomass and things like that. So that we can optimize. We can optimize how much shielding do we really need for the greenhouse versus like the hab where the humans are sleeping. If the greenhouse could take more radiation,

we maybe don't make the greenhouse as shielded. So those are some of the trades that we look at. If I'm going to Mars, I'm bringing a satchel full of cheeseburgers. That's all. I'm sorry. And potatoes grown in the right poop in the right poop in my own damn poop fry later to your fry

your potatoes grown in my own damn poop that would be the advertisement on Mars, potatoes grown in my own damn poop soybean oils to make the soybean oil for frying your potatoes too in your own poop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's your own poop cycle, right?

Now you're getting the vegans aroused with that soybean oil stuff. Should we go on? Give me like one more. Colby Hyde. Hello, Dr. Tyson. Colby Hyde from Colorado. My question is... We can get two more if you answer this in half the time. Okay. Let's try it. Hyde. Hello, Dr. Tyson. Colby Hyde from Colorado. My question is... But Kenda, we can get two more if you answer this in half the time. Okay. Let's try it. Fair enough.

Okay, go. Hello, Dr. Tyson. Colby Hyde from Colorado. My question is, what is the coolest part about being an astrobiologist, which I guess would be for Kenda? What is the coolest part? And Kenda, by the way, astrobiology is a field that has no data. Let me just be clear about that. That's not true. We have ambiguous data from biking. That's not true. Oh, it's still ambiguous data.

Just say it depends on how you define data, Dr. Tyson, and then it creates a big open-ended answer. I just want to make it clear there's an entire field of study out there that has the name of something it has yet to find. Yeah, but here's what you sound like. My field of expertise has data and yours doesn't. That's what you sound like. You sound like a six-year-old. He's just jealous because we're getting all the funding right now. That's all.

I know. They're totally getting all the funding. What I love about astrobiology is I get to go all over the world and meet totally new crazy microbes and learn the extent of amazing things that life can figure out how to do. And I just think it's amazing that we don't even fully understand life here on Earth. And I think that's a fun part of my job. I think you're being modest. I think the best part of your job is looking down your nose at anybody's garden and going,

really? You're a tomato? Really? Well, let me show you my tomato. I grew this using mouse feces and some french fries from McDonald's. Beat that. On Mars. On Mars.

On Mars. On a subway train. Wait, you had Mars tomatoes? That would get prime. I grew that on the queue line in Manhattan. Beat that. There's definitely some. All right, one more?

Last one, real fast. All right. I'm going to do the best with this name. It's Boyateb Bedayu. Dear Drs. Neal and Kenda, this gentleman is Boyateb from Nice, south of France. What kind of interesting feature could we bring from a plant grown on Mars and brought back to Earth? Could it be genetically more resilient to low luminosity, for example?

Ooh, nice. That is nice. Let me broaden that, and then you still have to answer it in half the time. Okay. Could studying life on Mars benefit life on Earth? 100%. How about that? And give me your best way that could happen.

Because we're having climate change here. We're killing our soil here on Earth, and we're going to have to figure out how to, in order to have food security, we're going to have to figure out ways to kind of help soil grow, whether it's open air, or if we have to make our own giant greenhouses where we basically process soil like we do on Mars to keep it healthy, so we keep growing plants, so we have food security. 100%. What you're saying is if we can grow plants on Mars,

nothing can stop us from growing plants anywhere on earth, even if there's a blight. 100%. All right. Yep. Well, that's all the time we have for it. You did two within one question. Thank you.

Two each and half the time. Kenda, thanks for being back on StarTalk. It's been a delight to have you. And weren't you in a documentary recently? What was that? Oh, I was in... The last one I was in was Alien Worlds. I was in Alien Worlds, episode two.

Jan is where I went to Ethiopia to study the Dalal hydrothermal system and the poly-extreme environment there. And the microbes... Okay, so hydrothermal is just heat from inside the Earth. warming warming water that does and it's a source of energy that doesn't even need the sun nope right so that would be whatever's thriving there is way more exotic on earth than anything else that just simply is founded on sunlight especially since they're living in a very acidic salty environment that's also hot that's like three that's that's a trifecta

of of extreme. So yeah. And Kenda, let me say, I think you're doing great work despite the fact that your area of expertise has no data. I think you do great work. Don't you let anybody undercut you, young lady. You're strong, you're powerful, your data, but other than that, you're a wonderful- You're telling me I sound like a sixth grader? I know you are, but what am I? There you go. All right, Paul.

Good to have you, man. Yeah, always fun. I'm still waiting for my next invitation for your podcast. Okay, we'll get it going. All right. This has been another installment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries, the poop edition. Don't say dirt, whatever you do. Alright, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson

as always bidding you to keep looking up.