StarTalk Radio - Extraterrestrial Oceans – StarTalk Live!

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

What are the oceans like on Enceladus? Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the oceans of other planets in the search for alien life with planetary scientist Kevin Hand, oceanographer Julie Huber, and comedians, Eugene Mirman, Ellie Kemper, and John Mulaney!NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/extraterrestrial-oceans-startalk-live/Thanks to our Patrons ​​Nate Gilman, Amy Morton, erika brennan, Rob Cordes, Tyler Pitts, Arya Menon, Jessie Desmond, Beth Leitch, Zach, and Karen Berthot for supporting us this week.Photo Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Live from the Beacon Theatre in New York City and beaming out across all of space and time This is StarTalk Where science and culture collide Welcome to StarTalk Live from the Beacon Theatre in New York City Tonight, we explore the depths of our search for life on water worlds, from the bottom of the Earth's oceans to the icy seas of Jupiter's moon Europa and beyond. My co-host tonight is comedian Eugene Merman. Eugene, come on out.

Eugene, the voice of Gene, the little boy Gene on Bob's Burgers, and one of my favorite comedians, Eugene Merman. Excellent. Joining us tonight on this subject is planetary scientist Kevin Hand. Kevin, come on out. Kevin. Kevin, come on out. Kevin. Kevin hails from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. And also joining us is deep-sea oceanographer Julie Huber. Julie, come on out. Julie. She hails from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Cape Cod.

So, Gene, who do you have for us tonight? I have two comedians. The first I'd like to bring out, John Mulaney. Oh! John, pleasure to meet you. And she's the star of The Unbreakable, Kimmy Schmidt. Ladies and gentlemen, Ellie Kemper! Let's do this!

Alright, Julie, Kevin, you do ocean research. You go under the ocean and you find oceans on planets, or moons, or anywhere else you can find them. And how are they related? Other than that, I know they're made of water. Very good. But otherwise, why does your research intersect? Sure.

Well, I study life at the bottom of the ocean, where I study single-cell life that basically eats rocks to get energy. And that's kind of a weird way to make a living. For the things that eat the rocks? For you, it would, you know, it'd be strange. But we think some of the ways that life works at the bottom of Earth's oceans are applicable to how life might be surviving outside of Earth. Aliens. Say it. Okay, aliens. Okay, so do you care about the oceans as places where you find water or do you also care about life in these

exotic spots? Oh, both absolutely. And simply put, when it comes to the search for life elsewhere, if we've learned anything about life on Earth, it's that where you find the liquid water, you generally find life. So this is life that thrives in extreme environments. Yeah, and it isn't just the bottom of the ocean. I mean, there are extreme environments everywhere. The New York subway is an extreme environment. I mean, when you think about how

life has to get by down there. So there's lots of really interesting examples but from the bottom of the ocean to the desert to the ice all sorts of places. How far down at the bottom? Like at the bottom of the ocean? Yeah like meaning how like if you if you're at the edge, it's very, it's like that much, but then how far are we talking? Like miles? Miles, like seven miles. I always thought we used the term leagues referring to how far deep we were going. Oh, you mean 150 years ago?

Right. Yeah, oh, okay. 20,000 leagues under the sea is the only example I have. Of the ocean. Yes. So, so, let's have some, so how, how, how big is a league? Uh, a league is, uh, what should it be, Ellie?

A few, it's a, it's a, it's pi miles. Right? Yeah. No, I'm not, you can't just throw in pi and think you're getting the right answer here. I think I've established myself as a scientist by using pie. Between three and four. Yes, roughly.

So, Kevin, if you're thinking about the rest of the universe, but you need representative places on Earth, what place is called to you? So, our planet, our beautiful home, is obviously covered in life. And so when we think about building these bridges to assessing whether or not some of these other worlds could be habitable, we look for these environments on Earth that are extreme and don't have too much life. So the bottom of the ocean, the dry deserts of the Atacama, the...

Miami? Miami. Yeah, potentially. Antarctica, the Arctic, places that are icy, dark, cold, deep. These are some of the conditions that we think exist on these worlds out there in the solar system. And so if life exists in those environments,

we can study, as Julie does, the metabolisms, the way in which they feed off the rocks, and then see whether or not someday, with our robotic vehicles, whether or not life exists under those conditions. You did say they feed off of the rocks. They eat rocks. That's badass if you could just eat rocks.

Yeah. Thank you. Sure. So they're eating chemical energy that they're extracting from Earth's crust. And at the bottom of the ocean, you have seawater moving through those rocks, and it releases energy like hydrogen and methane and sulfur. Molecules that have energy contained in them. Yeah, and they can use that to then make enough energy to build a cell and keep growing.

So, yes. Yeah. Yeah, front row, yes. Go ahead. This is one thing I need to get past. Are we talking about, like, they're, like, chewing on rocks, or am I totally wrong? So you can actually think about it like the microbes

that live on your teeth. You know when you go to the dentist and they scrape all that stuff off? I haven't been in two years. Well, that's what I'm talking about. They're coating the rock and extracting energy from it through seawater or sea ice or things like that. And they just absorb it through suction? Well, they bring it into their cell and create energy. Right.

Yep. Go to the dentist. They'll bring it into their cell and create energy. Right. Yep. Go to the dentist. Julie, why is the deep sea considered Earth's final frontier? It's so out of sight, out of mind.

It's so inaccessible. And if you think about the size of our planet. Why is it inaccessible? It's just down a couple of miles. We've been to the moon. Why is the bottom of the ocean inaccessible to you? I mean, it's really hard to get there. So was the moon. Why is it? I can take an anvil and drop it. It'll get to the bottom of the ocean. And I can throw an anvil towards the moon.

Might not work out. A key thing, like, we can point a telescope at the moon and get incredibly high-resolution images of the surface of the moon. Yeah. But the same thing that gives the ocean life, the water, the water gets in the way of our ability to map the bottom of the ocean. On any given dive, Julie's looking at a few hundred yards, I don't know how many leagues, but of space. So I got to ask both of you, you both think about and have been to these depths where

none of us can see, it's where the sun don't shine. Is there any really creepy stuff you've seen? I mean, I think the most fascinating part of it is once you leave that sunlit zone, and to save battery power, you turn off all the lights. You turn off all the things that make noises. It's very quiet and dark. And then all of a sudden, looking out the windows,

it just lights up around you because of all this bioluminescence that these organisms are creating. But you can't actually see the outline of the organism. You just see trails of light everywhere. And your imagination. Bioluminescence. Bioluminescence. This is like, this is like fireflies. Yeah, it's the way organisms who live away from the light can communicate, can find each other, can attract prey, all of these things. Or they can just swim at a higher depth, and then... They would die there, because I would eat them.

They stay down. I can't get my little hands on them. What does it sound like down there? So, in my experience, it's really quiet. To my ears. We know this on every submarine TV show. There's this sound. Yeah, we don't actually have that.

Just putting it out there. Just putting it out there. Just putting it out there. But actually, we have put microphones on the seafloor, and you can hear all sorts of crazy stuff, like the Earth's crust cracking. That was an audible gasp. I feel like you wouldn't believe

what some of the fish are saying. I can't... I just can't believe... You just lost your breath on that. Pardon me? You just lost your breath on that. I did. That's called a nerdgasm, by the way. I am one of you. Yeah, an uncontrolled, guttural... I was, just because I always

imagine the Earth's crust as a graham cracker crust. Simple, simple woman. And so imagine, I can imagine what a graham cracker crust cracking sounds like. So when you said the microphone can pick up the sound of the Earth's crust cracking, first of all, it makes it sound very fragile in a way. I mean, if a microphone can pick that up? Well, I mean, the Earth's crust is constantly being regenerated because of plate tectonics, which is pretty important.

It's the reason we have volcanoes and everything. But yeah it makes a lot of noise actually and organisms in the ocean can make a lot of noise just a lot of it we can't hear it's not tuned to our frequency, Kevin, you had an expedition to something called the Lost City. What is that? Lost City is a type of... Apparently not any longer. Right, it's found. The found city. And it's a type of hydrothermal vent.

You go down there. It's about a kilometer below the surface. And it's this beautiful white cathedral of rock on the bottom of the ocean. These, this hydrothermal chimney stands a couple hundred feet high, and it's just stunning, and it's not powered by the spreading rock. The hydrothermalism is powered by a chemical reaction called serpentinization, which is sort of similar. You know the hand warmers that you get on a really cold day to put in your gloves? That's an exothermic reaction, a reaction that creates heat. We get those on set when it's below 60 degrees and the masters get cold.

Yeah. They hand them to you. Yes, because we're fragile. So it's kind of like that at the bottom of the ocean. The asters get cold. Yeah. They hand them to you. Yes, because we're fragile. Yes. So it's kind of like that at the bottom of the ocean. Okay. So it's a chemical reaction that releases energy. Exactly. And it manifests in the form of heat. Right.

And interesting chemistry. Okay, so there's life down there. And lo and behold, there is. So how does that relate to the origin of life on Earth? Sure. there is. So how does that relate to the origin of life on Earth? Sure, so a lot of people think very early in Earth's history that the deep ocean was a great place that life could have begun. It was sort of protected from all the bad stuff that was happening up here. And you had all this... Like asteroid impacts and things. Yeah. Noah's Ark, that stuff.

And you had all this chemical energy that these organisms can extract, and it did not rely on, you know, photosynthesis or the sun. So scientists are really interested in trying to make that connection as well. And so we think a place like Lost City might have been where the origin of life occurred on Earth. And tying it back to our exploration of the solar system,

one of the key questions is, is the origin of life easy or hard? If it's easy, then life will be any place where the conditions are right. If it's hard, then life might be quite rare. All right, we're going to find out more about alien life lurking at the bottom of the sea when StarTalk continues.

Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Bringing the universe down to Earth, this is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. We are talking about the search for alien life on other planets. Julie, you're looking for life not only at the bottom of the ocean, but below the bottom of the ocean. What's that about? So the ocean doesn't stop at the seafloor. So the seawater is moving through the crust and with it bringing life, bringing energy, and

there's a ton of life actually living beneath the seafloor. That is crazy. So we have life in the air, on the surface, in the water, and below the water in the crust that's below the oceans. Correct. So life in the dark, very broadly. And this whole program

is about studying those life forms at the bottom of the ocean. Is this what I've heard of called the deep biosphere? Yeah, the deep biosphere. I mean, we have found evidence for life miles beneath the seafloor. And when you say evidence for life, do you mean like microbes or do you mean tiny? So not like tiny horses, even a little. Or any other kind of, just only microbes, not even nothing? You know, there's some worms, maybe. All right. Strapping together more than one cell. Yeah, I mean, we're mainly talking

microbial life, which for most of Earth's history was a microbial game. So the organisms living deep beneath the seafloor, you know, are some of our most ancient relatives to many life forms that we have here now. Has anyone discovered a talking crab in any of this? A talking crab? A talking crab like Sebastian. Oh. That would be, who's musically inclined. Okay, yeah.

I feel like if a crab could say even three words, I'd be like, that's pretty good, crab. That counts as a talking crab. Yeah, yeah. And so what she's finding beneath the ocean, does that have any correspondence to what people are trying to find on Mars? Not on the surface, but beneath the Martian surface? Yeah, and so broadly speaking,

we're raised, we're educated to think of the food chain as being based on photosynthesis. So the plants use the sunlight, the animals eat the plants, and then more animals eat those animals, and so on and so forth. The connection with the rocks has really been... That would mean we are all solar-powered at some level. At some level, right. But this... Looks like everybody's hungry. But so this kind of food chain at the bottom of the ocean is driven by chemosynthesis. The chemistry coming out of the hydrothermal vents and the rocks etc. And so that's a kind of new framework to think about the food chain. And we can take that chemosynthetic food chain

and say, would it work on Mars or Europa and solidus, these other worlds? Because on Mars, without an ozone layer, the UV would be quite hostile to any biology on the surface. Right. So there's a lot of talk that if it's going to have life, it would be beneath the surface, and we have the water bias. So let's look for water beneath the surface, and maybe there's life thriving of talk that if it's going to have life, it would be beneath the surface, and we have the water bias.

So let's look for water beneath the surface, and maybe there's life thriving there. That's right. And so if you go down in the surface, there could potentially be life on Mars. We don't currently have a program to dig that deep. Our exploration of Mars with rovers like Curiosity, it's going up a mountain with all sorts of different geologic layers, and we're looking for evidence of life in the past, extinct life.

So we're looking for fossilized microbes. How do you find fossilized microbes? It seems hard just from what I know. There's actually lots of fossilized microbes in New York. You see these patterns in the rocks that are created by the microbial mats. So if you think of microbes as living in a community, they kind of build up their own little cities. And then something changes.

Probably the economy. Well, no, you're absolutely right. The chemical economy changes yeah and that the microbial give him credit for getting that right no but it's it's a good analogy and so um so the microbes then become lithified they turn into rocks and we've got evidence of ancient rock ancient microbial life on earth going back billions of years. And that's amazing. And we look at those rocks, and then the Curiosity rover

is looking for similar kinds of rocks. The current rover of record on Mars. Yes. Now, the only problem with that is that you can't go up to one of these ancient rocks and extract DNA or proteins or amino acids. So as exciting as it would be to find fossilized microbes. Why not?

Because it's not possible. Those compounds don't last that long. So you get the fossilized microbes, but no actual biomolecules. What if you spit on it? Then you would find your DNA, definitely. Great, that's all I'm interested in. And so on Mars, we're looking for extinct life.

With these oceans beyond Earth, we have the capability to potentially find extant life, life that is alive today, which if we study it, could then reveal interesting biochemistry. So Mars has all this evidence of what water does when it flows. Right. But dried riverbeds, river deltas, floodplains. And so at some point, water must have coursed heavily over its surface.

That's right. A water world. Right. Covered by water. Yeah. Okay. So what might that have been like long ago? It could have been pretty Earth-like.

And on Mars, that evidence shows that there might have been an ocean in the northern hemisphere. So Mars would have had all of this water in the north, and that ocean could very well have been habitable for life as we know it. It might have been very Earth-like. Sun could have powered life in that ocean. But there's also one problem. When we think about the origin of life, I'm curious if there's a separate independent origin elsewhere. Is the origin of life easy or hard? Well, on Mars and Earth, we're close neighbors. And so in the early history of the solar system, Earth and Mars

were sending rocks back and forth. And some of the microbes that Julie likes might have been eating those rocks, and they might have hitched a ride from Mars to Earth or Earth to Mars. And so it could be that life on Mars has the same tree as life on Earth, which would not be conclusive as far as a separate origin. Let's go beyond Mars now. Right. And so why are both of you so hooked on water? That seems so Earth-life biased.

Could you have life based on some other fluids? And are you limiting your search? Oh, yes. What about milkshakes? Oh! I like milkshakes. I love milkshakes, by the way. I love a milkshake.

It's my favorite thing. Something in common. I would, I would, if, if it was one of the food groups I would bring on a mission to Mars, it was milkshakes. I would, too. I think we got a movie. Okay, so milkshake world. Right, right. Tell me.

So the key motivating... Why are you so biased? Well, we're not. We're just doing good science. We'll decide. You tell us the reason. So it's not that we're not thinking about those things. We are looking for things in the deep biosphere. But when we search for life beyond Earth, we have to generate a hypothesis. And the

hypothesis is, if you bring together water, some chemical energy or solar energy. Energy. Energy and the elements, the building blocks for life. If you bring together those keystones, you can formulate the hypothesis that life as we know it could arise. Saturn's moon, Titan, I think. What kind of places are you looking? Well, so we've got these ocean worlds of the outer solar system. These are moons of Jupiter and Saturn, possibly.

Name a few. Europa, Enceladus, Titan. Those are sort of the prime ones for the search for life. There's also Callisto. Because they all have liquid in them. Right. So these are oceans that are covered in ice, but beneath their icy shells, exist vast, global, liquid water oceans. And in the case of Europa, we're talking about an ocean that is 100 kilometers

or about 60 miles in depth. That's about 10 times deeper than the deepest part of our ocean. You don't even want to know how many leagues. A billion is a conservative estimate. So you do the math and it turns out that Europa has about two to three times the volume of liquid water in all of Earth's oceans. And so if there's that much water, could there be life? And that is a motivating question. That excites you. Yes. All right. When we come back, we will discuss the search for life in the oceans of worlds beyond when StarTalk continues.

We're back on StarTalk live at the Beacon Theater. We're talking about the search for life on Ocean Worlds and beyond. So Julie, we've got a portfolio of space worlds. Which one of those would you want to explore first? When I walk through the chemistry, Europa is a great candidate for supporting life forms similar to some of the life forms we find at the bottom of the ocean. So if you find life on Europa, you'd have to call them Europeans, right? Is there the same, you know how there's

Uranus and Uranus? I mean, do people ever pronounce that planet Uranus? Or no? Yeah, when you're older than eight years old, yeah, you pronounce it Uranus. It's called Uranus? Yes. It's not called Uranus? Definitely not when you're giving a talk to eight-year-olds.

Until you're eight years old, yeah, it's Uranus. But after that, it's Uranus. Sometimes you're never corrected. This is news to me. Yeah. I thought it was... It's from the Greek. It's from the Greek. And if you look at the Greek spelled in Greek letters...

Which is actually butt. Then you pronounce them. It's oranus. Oranus. Oranus. So that was my question. Does anyone pronounce... Is it spelled...

Is it orapa? It's Europa. Europa and Zeus had a little thing okay get back to where you guys were coming so so where you where you want to go to europa yeah so walking through the chemistry what we know about europa from flyby missions what we know about enceladus from flyby missions there are a lot of good ingredients for life. Life as we know it. Life as we know it.

So, for example, Enceladus' ocean is being spewed out into space, and the Cassini mission was able to capture some of that material and measure it in space. The Cassini mission to Jupiter that stayed. To Saturn. But to Saturn. Didn't only look at Saturn, it looked at many of the moons of Saturn as well. Many of the moons of Saturn as well. And in that plume of material, it found things like hydrogen and methane

and also little particles that suggest it has a rocky core. So why is it spewing oceans into space? That's unusual or no? That's unusual and I have no idea. Oh, okay. No, no, isn't it true that the heating of the interiors can actually trigger evaporation of the water, and it's got to come out?

The pressure has to release. So it punches through the ice, and you get basically these ice volcanoes. Volcanoes is not the exact right word, but they're geysers. Geysers, there you go. And geyser is even not quite the right physics. The term cryovolcanism is used.

Because that has more syllables. Geyser, yes. Yeah, thank God we're not saying geyser. We would all maybe remember. Okay, cryovolcanism. Cold volcanoes. And we don't yet actually know the detailed physics of what's happening. But on Enceladus, Enceladus is a tiny little moon.

It's 500 kilometers, 300 miles in diameter. And it's getting tugged and squeezed by Saturn, that tidal energy. And you look at the surface, and the ice is all fractured. And so as those fractures open up, the ocean below is exposed to the vacuum of space, and a bunch of that liquid water just essentially boils out. And it may also be geyser-driven physics, which has to do with pressure. But that's why it's jetting out, because the ice is fracturing and allowing the ocean to just escape into space.

So there was a movie called the Europa Report. In fact, it's on... It did feel like it needed some kind of reaction. Let's try that again. There was a movie called the Europa Report. And you were a scientific consultant on that thriller. Is that right? That's correct.

And I've done some science consulting on different things, but when that team came to me and said, we want to make a movie about Europa, I was like, this is my baby. We've got to get the science right. And they were fantastic. They actually got a lot of the science of, like, the radiation on the surface of Europa.

Europa is bombarded by these charged particles, electrons. From Jupiter. From Jupiter. Yeah, yeah. And so you don't want to send any astronauts to Europa because they'll get cooked by that radiation very quickly. And so, but that's what happens in the movie. And spoiler alert.

Don't give it away. I've got to give some of the ending of the film because i want your comments on it in the europa report they do find life and it looks for all the world squid like or basically or what's the general term for these creatures cephalopod cephalopod cephal. It looks cephalopoidal. Okay. How real, Julie, have you thought about how realistic that is? I have thought about it. I don't think it's very likely, personally. But there was yet another movie that had a cephalopodal alien.

It was the movie Arrival. It's a great way to end a movie, right? Cephalopods are... If it's in that many movies, it must be a real thing, right? But let's not miss the big picture here. Part of what's fun about this is, like, for so long we've thought about, you know, little green men on Mars.

Now we're thinking about octopi and cephalopods on Europa, and part of why we went with about octopi and cephalopods on Europa. And part of why we went with the cephalopod and Europa report is because if you think about evolution in an ice-covered ocean, and you think about evolution of intelligence and then technology, cephalopods can use tools, right? Those tentacles can do things. You can be a tool using octopus. Fish? Not so much, right? Not. Totally not. And so that was part of the rationale.

I tweeted recently that if an octopus wanted to imprison a human, to jail them, they'll have to put you in a room where the exit door had three doorknobs, and then you wouldn't be able to get out. Yeah. Interesting. I like that. Yeah, yeah. What? I'm just... Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What? I'm just...

That's good. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just one of the reasons to never be in a room with an octopus. So, Kevin, what is in store for us? We've been talking about doing this search in the solar system, but what about the doing of it? So what's coming up? What's the future of Europa? Yeah, it's a great question. And part of what's exciting about being alive today is that for the first time in the history of humanity, we actually have the tools and technology, the scientific robots,

to go out and potentially answer this question of whether or not we're alone. Does biology work beyond Earth? And so think about it. We've been asking this question forever. Yeah. And now we can potentially answer it. And the way in which we will potentially answer it is by sending spacecraft, robotic spacecraft, no humans, to...

Boo! Lame! All right, we'll send Eugene on the next one. I am very impressed by robots. So first up is a mission that NASA has approved to fly by Europa. It's called the Europa Clipper. And it will orbit Jupiter and make some 40, 45 or more flybys of Europa

and map it out in wonderful detail. All sorts of instruments on board. Just to be clear, exploration, generally you want a map of where you will go next. Right. And so you don't go there and start digging immediately. Right. You want to characterize the environment

that you are about to occupy. That's right. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, and so the Galileo spacecraft was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and to give us the initial reconnaissance of Europa. And then the Clipper mission will do an incredible job of giving us stunning images and close-up detail,

spectroscopy to help us figure out the surface chemistry, ice-penetrating radar to figure out the ice thickness and the cracking of the ice. And that information could then feed forward into a mission that goes down to the surface where we can then actually dig into the ice and start looking for. So you're going from an orbiter to a lander. The mission after that. And how many years into the future is this? Right, so here's where it gets depressing.

That's where it gets exciting. Right, so this business is not for the faint of heart. By the way, this is the first rule of science. Whatever experiment you do, make sure the results come before you die. OK? That's a rule the first rule of science. Whatever experiment you do, make sure the results come before you die. Okay? That's a rule with a lot of jobs. So I started working on Europa in the year 2000 or so.

The Clipper mission, if all goes well, it will get to the launch pad in the year 2022-2023. It then takes several years to pinball through the solar system and get out to Jupiter. But it'll get there, if it launches in the early 2020s, it gets there to Europa in the mid to late 2020s. And then after that, we would potentially send a lander, and that lander wouldn't get there until the early to mid to late 2030s or possibly the 2040s. Wow. I moved, well, the renovators moved a toilet in our bathroom from this corner to this corner, and it took two years. So that doesn't sound like that long.

No, it's very similar. So Julie, if you had the choice, would you pilot a sub in the oceans of Europa, or would you send robots to do that? I would send robots to do that. Most of these types of jobs, you should send a robot. I won't even send a person to an exploding underwater volcano on Earth. So I'm certainly not going to send them on a five-year journey out into the outer solar system.

Well so then, but what's the best, okay so forget the outer solar system, Earth. What's the best way to explore Earth? Is it without the people? So what's the need to do that if you can just send a robot and you don't even have to worry about bringing it back? Well I think there's an important role for both in all exploration. Humans are wonderful storytellers and having the experience of doing the exploration and being in the environment you're studying, it's incredibly powerful. But there are situations where it simply doesn't make sense. And you can do inside of volcanoes like inside of volcanoes like Europa and even some really really extreme depths if you want to spend a long time on the sea floor so what are

the tech challenges going to Europa and trying to get through the ice well there are many so arguably the biggest challenge is that radiation environment. So unlike the deep ocean, you can't bring a robot back up and take out your screwdriver and fix it. Once something leaves the launch pad, it's out there, it's done,

you're not going to be able to break out the screwdriver. And so you have to have everything tested. The mantra at JPL is test as you fly, fly as you test. And so just get your robot ready for that environment. One of the tricky things is that the robot then has software on it, and it's running through programs. And radiation, radiation noise hits on a microprocessor can cause the software to do weird things. So once you enter the Jovian environment, the Jupiter

environment, the radiation around Jupiter could cause the robot's brain to kind of go a little haywire. And be like flirty or like weird, like inappropriate? Wait, wait. So how is it getting through the thickness of the ice? Right, so here's... Part of what's interesting about this kind of exploration is that the technology exists. It's hard. We could melt through the ice with a melt probe that has a nuclear power source

or even some variation on a solar power source if you had a big enough array. We don't need to invent warp drive to get to Europa's ocean. The technologies are out there. They're hard. They're expensive. But we can do it. There's not like new physics that we need to invent.

And so the Europa Clipper mission will fly by. Then we'll have a lander at some point. And that will sample the surface and help inform how to design a melt probe that could go all the way through the ice. And then out of that melt probe would be a submersible that would run with a lot of autonomy, a lot of smarts. And that's where the partnership between Woods Hole Oceanographic and JPL comes into play, where we're trying to take some space technologies and apply it to our ocean to design robotic vehicles

that are small, tiny, and robust and easily deployable. Julie, what innovation are you just waiting for? Well, one of the benefits of working on Earth is that... That's a great sentence. As hard as it is, I can still go on a ship. I can use a submersible. I can bring samples back. I can sequence the DNA.

I can grow the microbes. One of the biggest challenges to working in space is that you have to just bring the whole lab with you out there. And so where we really need the innovation is basically taking our science to the environment so that we can make the measurements in the environment and get the data back without bringing samples home. And so Clipper is an amazing mission, but we need to get on the surface of Europa. We need to get those samples with the right sensors to try to detect evidence of life.

Okay. We'll have more for the search for alien life on Waterworld when StarTalk continues. We're back on StarTalk live from the Beacon Theater, New York City. So, Kevin, Julie, lightning round here. You ready? When might we discover alien life?

Kevin. Within the next two decades, depending on whether or not we commit to it. Julie, if we find that life, what might it be like? Alien life. I think it will be using energy in a similar way to how life uses energy here. Okay, and likely to be microbes, not whole macroscopic. Microbial life, yes, single-celled life.

Single-celled life. Okay, when we discover life, what then? Is that a good or bad thing? And the reason why I ask that is NASA has a branch of itself called planetary protection. And it does two things. When we leave Earth and go to places, it wants to protect those environments from our contamination

so that when you do study it scientifically, you're not accidentally studying your own rhinovirus that you sneezed on the spaceship before you launched it. A. B. If you bring samples back, you don't want that to contaminate us. So is it a good thing or a bad thing

that you want to go find life and study and bring it back here? So let's put this into context. Over 400 years ago, Galileo turned the telescope to the night sky and discovered the moons of Jupiter. And in so doing, we were able to then understand that physics, the science of physics, works beyond Earth. And in the decades after that, with spectroscopy, we would come to learn that the principles of chemistry work beyond Earth. And then with our robotic exploration of the solar system, we would come to appreciate that geology works beyond Earth. But when we think of that fourth fundamental science, biology, when

we think of the phenomenon that is us, life, we have yet to make that leap. We don't yet actually know whether or not biology works beyond Earth. Or is the same elsewhere as it is on Earth. That's right. But we have this potential to revolutionize our understanding of whether or not biology is a singularity on our home planet or a universal phenomenon throughout the universe. Julie, are you on the universal side of that argument? Well, and also to be clear,

I don't want to bring it back to Earth. I think we need to be able to study it out there because of exactly what you're talking about. I think we need to preserve and protect on both ends of it. And so I think we need to raise a generation that first cares about this ocean and this planet

and wants to understand how it works. And then we can take all of those lessons in technology and put them out in space. You want people to care about the oceans. and wants to understand how it works, and then we can take all of those lessons in technology and put them out in space. You want people to care about the oceans. I want people to care a lot about the oceans. Yes. What's the future in your field?

I think we're looking at a new age of ocean exploration. And it's one where we develop new technologies, new robotic capabilities to explore our ocean. And those serve as a bridge for someday exploring these oceans beyond Earth. And so there's this beautiful partnership where we learn more about the home planet while also building the capabilities to explore these worlds beyond Earth. So valuing home, you suspect, will empower us intellectually, emotionally, spiritually to value other things that we find out in space. 100%. Let me get some parting thoughts from you guys. Ellie. Well, I want to thank you guys, because I read a lot.

I'm not a scientist. Finally, I'll come out and say it. And I read a lot of things that sound scary and hopeless. And so hearing you guys speak intelligently about life on Earth and life beyond Earth, possible life beyond Earth, has given me great comfort this evening. So thank you for letting me listen to it

and every now and then talk about milkshakes. Yeah, I... Eugene. I would say that listening to both of you, it makes the search for extraterrestrial life very practical. Like, it sounds like it's like you're looking for microbes.

You're not looking for people or creatures to destroy us. And there's something really just kind of life-affirming about it. So, John, I save you for last. Just because you're so well-dressed all the time. Thank you. Well, I wore ocean blue. And... I'll say this.

I know many people are looking for E.T. or a way to live on Mars like Matt Damon. But I think that if we can just find the smallest microbial or IKEA-like life... the smallest microbial or IKEA-like life will achieve something that a little guy named Galileo achieved. And that was knowledge. So, I'd like to offer some parting thoughts of my own. Anytime you read about a scientific discovery in the paper, someone was working on it for 10 years,

and you never saw or heard of them because they were busting their ass trying to get a satellite to fly, trying to get a submersible to get to the bottom of the ocean, trying to get data that you can trust and then understand it and interpret it and then publish it. So I'm delighted to have the two of you on this program. And I think of what your exploration has done for the world. Consider if you go far enough back in time,

the academic scientists of the day, they were called natural philosophers. Philosophy, you break that word apart, is lover of knowledge. And if you were a natural philosopher, you were in search of knowledge that came to you from nature. Back then, there were no sort of stovepipes

of one science versus another. That would come later, as people who studied life realized they needed different methods and tools, different tactics to understand life than the chemists needed to understand chemicals, than the physicists needed to understand matter, motion, and energy. So what arose in recent centuries is that the natural philosopher

split out, and then you got the biologists publishing their own works, the chemists, the physicists, the astronomer, studying everything that's not on earth. So then what happens? Wait a minute. Does nature split up into these professions? Does nature care that your textbook looks different from that person's textbook? No. Nature is one.

Nature is a whole. And so what began to happen in the 20th century? You started finding previously distinct fields coming together. We start stapling together previously distinct paths of inquiry. And now we learn that life isn't just separate from even the rocks. Oh my gosh. There are rocks you wouldn't have had unless life had been operating, and you have life that you wouldn't have had unless you had the rocks for them to thrive on. So now we have, is it biogeology? What's the new thing we're stapling together because of the work you're doing? So I foresee a time in the not so distant future when all the scientific professions are stapled together as one,

just as nature had intended all along. That is a cosmic perspective. Thanks for coming out tonight. And join me in thanking our panel.