StarTalk Radio - StarTalk Live! from SF Sketchfest 2016 (Part 2)

Episode Date: April 1, 2016

This week we’re still on Mars with Andy Weir, author of “The Martian”, and Dr. Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. Join Bill Nye, Eugene Mirman and Maeve Higgins for Part 2 of our show recorded live at SF Sketchfest. ADULT LANGUAGE. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome back, welcome back to StarTalk. This week we're on Mars with Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, Maeve Higgins, funniest woman here. Oh, that includes all the women in the audience. I think the Earth is pretty good. All the women on the panel, one.

Jim Green, Division of Planetary Science at the Science Mission Directorate at NASA. And our beloved Eugene Merman. Everybody. So we've been talking about Mars.

Andy, why did you, how did you pick that place on Mars? Acidalia Planitia? Yeah, Acidalia, Acid Plane. How did you pick that place on Mars? Acidalia Planitia? Yeah, Acidalia, Acid Plane. How did you pick that place?

I had the plot line. Hey, more spoilers. He goes to pick up the Pathfinder. He follows the nickname. Pathfinder's the name of another spacecraft. It's spacecraft landed in 1997. But I wanted him, that was a plot point I wanted right from the beginning, is that he goes and recovers Pathfinder to communicate.

Was he looking for life? Is that why they were there? Oh, well, the excuse I gave for why they were in Nassau Valley Plain is different. The motivation. Okay. The reason I wrote it that way was I wanted him to be a good distance away, but an achievable distance, so there'd be this adventure of getting there and getting back. So I wanted him to be about 800 kilometers away from Pathfinder. So I kind of drew a circle around Pathfinder and said, where's a cool place for him to be?

I chose Acidalia Planitia because at the time, before Curiosity went and ruined everything, a lot of people believed that Acidalia Planitia was an alluvial plane where water had flowed. And so I decided the reason they chose that landing site was that it would have many, many layers of geological history all in one place, and they could sample them all. It turns out it was just the bottom of the ocean. That's right. It's the bottom of the ancient ocean on Mars. It's the bottom of an ancient ocean. So it would still be cool, but there's much better places to go

if you're going to have a manned mission. But it was Ares III. I mean, all the good spots had already been taken, right? The beautiful landscapes that, like, I saw in the movie, is that what it looks like? Yeah, Ridley did a really great job, because we gave him enormous amount of imaging and things that he could look at, and they ran around the world. You know, Art Max, a production designer who is also up for Academy Award, went out and they found locations, and they went to the desert in Jordan. Where is it?

In Jordan. Yeah, a desert called Wadi Rum in Jordan, and that's all the exterior shots. Ridley Scott loves practical effects, like the sandstorm. You'd think that'd be just a bunch of people walking around in a CGI sandstorm, right? No.

Big, big sound studio, way the hell larger than this entire auditorium, and a big pile of sand and some really powerful fans. Those poor extras. Those actors were falling over and stuff because they were being blown over. Oh, my God. So. Wow.

Oh, wow. Yeah, it worked. It looks beautiful. I thought that was a set. I can't believe that was the place, Jordan. Yeah. Beautiful. On Earth. It's the same place they filmed Lawrence of Arabia. Ah. that was the set i can't believe that was the place jordan yeah beautiful yeah on earth yeah

it's the same place they filmed lawrence of arabia ah love that doc so there is a strong argument that our robots our rovers are doing a great job but wouldn't it be cool to send people there right that would be fantastic because they would make discoveries absolutely so here's what i want to know we find the weeping craters right yeah can curiosity just drive over to one no but we are looking for perhaps they know let's get into it all right so he's got to be nice he's got to be nice because he works for NASA and he's got to be all diplomatic but I can go ahead and say I'm not a big fan of planetary protection Dun dun dun

Two things everybody if just to get a planetary defense is where we keep the earth from getting hit with an asteroid I am a fan of that. Yeah No evidence that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program Even the T-Rex's evidence, no evidence that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program. Almost certainly did not. Not even the T-Rexes? They had stubby little arms. At least that's the speculation. So anyway, that's a serious matter. But then there's this other expression, which is very important, which is planetary protection, which is essentially the prime directive. You can't violate that prime directive. And so that is where humans show up and contaminate the surface with our microbes and barf. We're not going to Mars

because we're afraid of giving it germs? Well, what we are afraid of is taking our germs with it, bringing back samples and say, oh, we found Mars germs. We don't want to do that so planetary protection also hold on we do want to find Mars Joe we do want to do that but we don't want to fire our own job that's right because why don't you use gloves problem solved well they cut you hit the nail on the head. They do. They have space gloves and space solvents that kill everything and space ovens that kill even more stuff. It's certainly crazy dead. We do. But we cannot send the Curiosity rover over there, which has been on the surface of

freaking Mars for three years, irradiated with ultraviolet of death and night and hot and cold. And there's some concern that there's something still alive on the outside of it well this is a really good point maybe we can in the sense that we are indeed looking at whatever microbial human life we took with curiosity whether it might still be alive or not and if we do that well we do that through computer programming you know we hire and Andy's firm and bring him back on the job. So you're saying there's an app for that. There might be. There's so many.

But we do that analysis, and then we've got to be able to demonstrate what we call bio-burden, what kind of material might be on the rover that that if it's gone or it's at such a low level then we might be able to creak over to what would be a weeping area so you're afraid that something would get would go from the curiosity correct correct so a bunch of birds would form or what like what, what's the practical fear? The concern is that we will basically infect Mars with Earth life and displace the local population with Earth microbes. Well, that would be the end-of-the-world, evil, mad-person scenario. But more likely is you think you've found something that you really haven't.

Right. I mean, we really want to find life beyond earth so that is the significance of water right that is the significance of water that at least life that we know has to have water and so now that we're finding how rich mars is with actual water that really bodes well for us giving it a shot to find that find these places where water exists because everywhere on earth there's water everywhere there's something alive that's right yeah they're they're they're related we've been following the water concept of how we do Mars research now for well over 10

years and it's really served us quite well so but we're gonna have to design something pretty special to be able to do that and we'll have to bake it and I'll have to do a variety of things to protect it make it super sterile super sterile and then go there and find the indigent at light what would be the significance of finding it life on Mars ah well would prove Buddhism is true only only if that was you that was there well validate david bowie's eternal question yeah no i think it would change the course it would absolutely i think everybody would think differently about what it means to be a living thing in the cosmos if i can offer my opinion on that it's um there if we found actual life on Mars or fossilized evidence of past life on Mars, we would then very quickly discover one of two things.

Either one, Mars was, well, three things, I guess. Either one, Mars was infected by Earth by some natural process in the past. Like maybe material from Earth got kicked up by an asteroid collision. That's not so likely. More likely is more likely is Earth got infected by Mars meaning that like life managed to travel through natural means from Mars to Earth that's the kind of panspermia theory in that there was if life evolved in one place once in our solar system but managed to infect two planets we're the

Martians we're looking for. We are. In that scenario. There is a good chance. If you look around this room, there is a good chance that what you're looking at is a bunch of alien invaders. Are you talking about me? Yes. Yes.

That's right. With alien of extraordinary ability visas. Yes. The rust-colored colors. Yes. And thencolored cars. Yes. And then the other opportunity is equally exciting, possibly more exciting, is that if life independently evolved on Mars,

if that were the case, then that would mean, okay, we have a sample of two planets here, both of which have or had liquid water on them. Both of them develop life. This implies, does not prove, but implies that life is almost an inevitability in any location.

Everywhere. Everywhere all over the universe. That's why we want to explore. That would be a huge, huge discovery. So, right on. Yeah. So, right on. Yeah. So, Jim, one of the traditional

supposed evidences of life would be natural gas. Methane. Methane, yeah. And we're finding that now on Mars, too. You know, many years ago, from ground-based telescopes,

we looked through the methane that's here on Earth in our atmosphere, through that to Mars. So we made a very difficult measurement and discovered that Mars has vents of methane. Vents? How big is a vent of methane? Well, it just weeps out.

It could be as big as this auditorium. We really don't know. But there is a season for which the methane really takes off. Fart season. It's in the summer. It's in the summer. But there is a season for which the methane really takes off. Fart season. And it's in the summer. It's in the summer. So methane can be generated abiotically. How would you make natural methane without living things?

Well, you need water, you need the right minerals, and you need a heat source. What's the right mineral? Olive oil. Charcoal. No, no, yeah. It's in the rock. Yeah, it's in the rock. What is it? Olivine. It's in the rock. What is it?

Oliving. It's in the rock. It's greenish under a microscope. It has veins. Yeah, it has veins. Sure. I mean, yeah. Tell us the truth, diplomat.

What's in oliving? It's carbon. If that makes you feel good, Bill, we'll go with that. What's in oliving? It's carbon. It's carbon, yeah. You've got to have a source of the carbon. You've got to grab the carbon. Why didn't you call it carbon the first time though

well because it's not elemental carbon that's why he called it olivine it's bound up in a mineral right and so you know that's abiotic but biology of course is uh is really a potential one we see these methane blooms so to speak during the summer months from our telescopes very controversial all the little Mars cows are out to graze well we now know there's no Mars cows because are they maybe underwater Mars cows well they have to be you know when when the the when it when the climate and everything is severe, you go underground. You get into the rocks. Down to the glacier.

Pardon? Down to the glacier. Well, into the glacier, right. So you're saying there's a possibility abiotic is no bio, no life. No life. But it's also possible that there's some mars crobes oozing natural gas so curiosity has measured that methane so now there's no doubt mars does indeed how do we measure methane from four billion kilometers away or whatever well we do with curiosity curiosity sitting on the surface

it's a mini cooper yeah it's mini cooper It brings in that atmosphere and just dissects it and looks at everything in it. And during certain times of the year, it sees the methane. It uses its face nose? Yeah, it sniffs really well. It's a spectrometer, right? A few parts per billion it can get.

Oh, that's very good. Jim, is it a spectrometer or a spectroscopy or which one? Yeah, so they actually measure the isotopes. So they really handle the individual molecules. By shining a laser through it or by squirting it at high speed in a vacuum or something? So they have to kill us. No, we don't have to kill you.

Sounds like you maybe do. No murder today, today. But the methane that's leaking, you know, we've done the analysis and it looks like it's coming right through the soils where Curiosity is sitting. They measure it during the day and we know the winds during the day in Mount Sharp around where Curiosity sitting, all moves away from the crater. So there's no way that the methane that's being generated at other locations can come down to Curiosity. So it has to be leaking right through the ground. So if we really follow the methane, we might be heating our HABs with a source of methane underground.

It's another example of how you'd use the environment follow the methane I always say that kind of and so along that how often does that come up that you say that eight times so far okay you're stuck in an elevator the along that, things have come from Mars to the Earth. Mars gets hit with something, right? And they... Like ALH 84001. Yeah. So what happens, of course, is big impacts on Mars' gravity.

What meteorites are you talking about? ALH 84001. It's Allen Hills. Allen Hills is a place in the Antarctic. And every summer, we go down to the Antarctic, get in snowmobiles, and we go across the ice sheet. Have you done this for fun? No, not yet. Eugene?

No, but it sounds like you're describing G.I. Joe. Oh, yeah, when they had to get one of the parts of that death ray thing. Oh, that was awesome. So here's the thing thing when you find a rock on the ice it's black you see it i mean it i mean there's no other way to get there the only way for the rock to get there is from the sky that's right so well you know it falls in gets embedded in the ice and the ice moves and then some of that stuff just gets uncovered over time and so as you know we'll gather 600 to 800 uh, you know, meteorites now,

and bring them back and analyze them. And in that set, over the years, we've found about 100 meteorites from Mars. How do we know they're from Mars? Ah, so when you look at the gas... Surgatites. Yeah, so when you look at the gas that's trapped inside... That is some nerd comedy right there. Yeah, yeah. So when you look at the gas that's trapped inside the rock... They're called Surgatites. They're called Surgatites. That's not a joke.

They are. They're Surgatites. They had a technical name when they were first found, and then when we determined that they were from Mars, we call them Mars meteorites now. But first they were called sugar tights. Sugar tights. Sugar tights.

You know what? Gibson was like arrested for calling them. Not sugar tits. It's sugar tights. So what happened was they were analyzing it back before they knew that they were from Mars. They were analyzing meteors that they'd found all over the world. And they said like most meteors have this kind of chemical composition. A smaller percentage of them have this other chemical composition.

That we don't know where. And we don't know why they're different. And then there's this teeny tiny percent of them that have this yet more unique one. They found out that the big ones come from the asteroid belt, the bulk of them. Then the smaller set come from the moon. Things hit the moon. Things hit the moon, it gets knocked off and comes here. And they're like, but we don't know where this is.

And for years they speculated on what the sugar-tight main body was. They're like, we don't know. Something out there is a single thing that all of these little things came from. Was the original one named after a place? It was a scientist, I think, who isolated it. Johnny Sugar. Johnny Sugar Tits. And he was mostly tight yeah so but then when Viking land it put this you put this meteorite in an oven and

yeah you look at the trap gases how do you have a vacuum chamber and you have some stainless rocker openers yeah you guys want to science the shit out of yeah so I mean how Has that phrase, like, echoed around NASA's offices since it was in the movie? Like, are you tempted to say it daily? No, I try not to.

But it's what you're doing. But they don't say it. So, that's ALH 0084. ALH, yeah. ALH is a famous one. There's Murchison. Murchison is a different one. But, you know, when you look at the gas on ALH and the Allen Hills meteorite,

and now you've measured the gas as a high percentage on Mars, they're identical. And that's what really was the clue that said these are from Mars. Now, Murchison was another meteorite, came down in the 1970s sometime, maybe 77, 79. And it is a completely different type of meteorite. It's a, what we call a carbonaceous chondrites in another pile. It's also small, small number of piles. And this meteorite's got amino acids. This meteorite is really one of the primitive ones. The amino acids. The building blocks of life? Yes. Carbon double bond, oxygen double bond, some stuff, hang on. And so the amino acid is like a complicated molecule and it survived going through the earth's is like a complicated molecule,

and it survived going through the Earth's atmosphere and smashing into something. Yeah, right. And so what we believe is happening here is these amino acids, these basic building blocks of life, are part of our collapsing cloud that created our solar system, and then they are running around seeding all our planets over time. Is there a plan with that? Well, there might be a grand plan.

We haven't uncovered it yet. So they hit all these planets. Yeah, the Earth, you know. So these are really of particular interest to us to get more information about them. So we're launching a mission to one right now or really big one it's called Bennu the media contest to name that huh yeah we did yeah sure winter was Bennu yes all right you didn't hold a very extensive contest was an ancient an ancient got

the name the name came from an ancient god. And it's a big asteroid. We're going to try to learn more about the primordial solar system so that we can answer these deep questions. And that mission is called Osiris Rex that we're going to launch in September to go to Bennu.

How hard could it be? Just my one little story about ALH 84001. I got to go to NASA. It was one of the perks of writing a book. I got to go to NASA for a bunch of tours, and they brought me to the meteorite. Did they know you were there? Yeah, right.

It was just on the regular tour. I was ahead of security the whole time. And they gave me a tour of the meteorite lab. Where was this? At Johnson Space Center. They curate all our meteorites. In Texas. The guy was showing me various

meteorites, and he's like, and now this one, and I knew it from the shape. I was like, oh, that's ALH 84001. He's like, yes. And I was like, I felt a little proud of myself. Does he hold it? No, it's in a bag.

Well, first off, it's a clean room. So you're all dressed up in the bunny suits. And then additionally, that sample is in a sealed bag. Yeah. But the other silly thing I'll say is that my, you know, once I started making pretty good money off of the book,

my stupid, pointless impulse purchase was I bought a Martian meteorite. I own one. It's at home. It's about 33 grams. It's a little sample. Yeah, but you didn't buy it from NASA. No, no, no. This is legal.

Things that just fall to the ground from space belong to whoever picks them up first. No, there's rockhounds. Yes, this is real. Yeah, yeah. There's a guy called the meteorite man, the meteorite hunter. Yeah, and you can just contact him. So great places to find them

because they do look like normal rocks in many ways, you know, like the Sahara Desert. So there's a lot of Bedouin tribes that will go out and find meteorites and bring them in and sell them. How do they know that they're, how do the Bedouins prove that and find meteorites and bring them in and sell them. How do they know that they're... How do the Bedouins prove that they're meteorites? Well, you see there's sand, and then there's a rock sitting on top of it.

And there's no way that rock would be from Earth. That would be idiotic. No, they have... They look different. My bad. Well, they look different. And you know, you're... I don't know how the Bedouins...

I don't know how the Bedouins tell them apart, but then the scientists analyze it and the makeup and they can tell whether or not it's from the asteroid field, the moon, the Mars, whatever else. And so my little rock comes with all the paperwork to prove it. And how much was it? Is that rude? What?

Was it like $5,000 or like a lot more? Oh, it was more than that. 33 grams is more than 5K? Yeah, it was about $10,000. Andy's doing all right, ladies. I'm just saying. I acknowledge that, you know, it's a silly purchase, but man. No, it's so cool.

Not for someone who wrote The Martian. No, I think it's pretty cool, man. No, everybody who comes over to my house, I'm like, see that rocket? It's from Mars. No, really. Welcome back. I'm Bill Nye, hosting this week. Up here on stage, we have Andy Ware, who wrote The Martian, the book and the movie.

We have Maven Higgins, who's now in the house. Maven. Maven. Maven's a spacecraft. You're working on that. Speaking of which, Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA. Curiousity Green. And MRO.

Maeve and Maeve. No, it's cool. I might change my name to Maeve, totally. Well, keep us posted. So do you guys have, here's what we at the Planetary Society, representing people in over 130 countries around the world.

We want to know what's the specific, have some milestones so now we do markers we do yeah yeah so well we're doing a number of things in the near-earth area using space station this includes you know growing some food on you know hydroponics we use we use a water solution with a little soil around the seeds. What about air, oxygen? We have a variety of processes already in place on Space Station to scrub out the carbon dioxide. But as I mentioned, Mars 2020 will have its own experiment to bring in carbon dioxide from Mars' atmosphere and split out the oxygen and then store it.

And from that we can use it for a whole variety of purposes. It's basically, it's the real life version of what was at the time fictional, the oxygenator from Mars. And it's called MOXIE, right? It's called MOXIE, yeah. That's right. Because it's an acronym. Of course.

Mars Oxygen Exchange. ISRU. And also, isn't it like, she's got MOXIE. So it's an acronym and oxygen exchange isru and also isn't it like isn't it like she's got so it's an acronym with an acronym you need i want to get the scuba radar oh you think you're gonna go to mars and make oxygen well that would take a lot of moxie that's right now you got it that's where they come from i'm oh you're helping her yeah okay so that's very important also on 2020 is we have a ground penetrating radar you know and so for how far does it penetrate it'll go down 30 40 meters you know and it'll be looking for the strata but

also potentially looking for aquifers for water furs yeah water furs aquif, water furs, aqua furs, as we call them here. No, I like aqua fur. Yeah, I'll go with NASA. That's wise. So look, with that said, are we going to send a mission after that to really go look for signs of life, like serious biz? Well, we're talking about that right now and what that would look like you know life is um kind of hard to do if you're making measurements to go there and the reason why is our astrobiologists have defined life this way it has three basic attributes it metabolizes brings in material and that's where you need to solve it you need the water to extract food out of it and dump the waste and then exchange material

so an astrobiologist is a biologist of the stars out there an astronomer or an astrophysicist we're talking about astrobiology around exobiologist maybe so You throw the astrobiology around like, yeah, astrobiology. Exobiologist, maybe?

Astrobiology is another one. But so you want to metabolize. You want to reproduce. But you also, life evolves. And so it's hard to build an experiment to go do that. But life has a whole variety of other attributes. Like dancing? It does. Like if you found a cat dancing, you'd be like it like dancing it does look if you found like a cat dancing you'd be like that's a lie that's a lie let me put it yeah if it reproduced

jim let me have sex and dancing sorry let's say hold a second uh let's say you found a weeping crater yeah and it's got water yeah and you got a rover that's got enough power to drive over to the weeping crater wall can we just just for nothing else can we have a microscope big enough powerful enough to see a microbe scoop up the material and bring it in and look at it and tear it apart look for cells look for now uh this composition can we just plan to do that? You know, as I like to say, some of my best friends are geologists, you know, and I like rocks, but I want to go up there like we're really going to look for life. Well, we are discussing the next generation experiments that would go do that. How's this for a scenario? Wouldn't it be cool if there was one of those RSLs, which is what... RSL is a... Recurring Slope Linear, which is what he's been calling Weeping Craters.

Weeping Craters, real. Wouldn't it be cool if there was one of those within a reasonable range of Curiosity right now? And Curiosity's been sitting on the surface, and its little drill bit has been hit by ultraviolet light for three years. And wouldn't it be cool if we had this entire Mars science laboratory, if you will, sitting on the surface? And we could just drive over there and look at it. Oh, man, that would be awesome. If that were only true. But we don't because...

Well, we do. But we don't want to contaminate. Because it will infect the planet. What we found by our orbiting satellites is there may be some weeping going on in Mount Sharp. And we haven't studied that enough to really determine if that's water or that's material sliding down the hill. But if it's water... Because you can't tell the difference from orbiting cameras. From orbit, yeah. We have other research...

Is it a dust slide or a water slide? Right, right. And they're not very long. They're not as long as some of the others that we've seen. But indeed, if... What's not very long? This far? Oh, no.

Well beyond the length of this auditorium. So if you were up close to it... The weeping craters that we see, though, are several football fields long. I mean, they're enormous. Come right down the side of the crater. But we don't have a rover near them. No, we don't. a rover near them no we don't but we do on mount sharp and if there if there's rsls there the weeping weeping material we want to go over there you bet we just don't know enough about

them yet right do you think we will in like uh half a year well uh they are several kilometers away, and we'll have to plan a route if we really decide to go over there. And it would take probably at least a half a year or a year to get to them, probably. But we got time. We got a gizmo there. Yeah. Are you in favor of it going there? Or you can't answer?

If that's water, and it's flowing on the surface, and it's that close, absolutely. Yeah! Whoa! Absolutely. Whoa, took a chance. Take that for a spin. All right. water and it's flowing on the surface and it's that close absolutely yeah absolutely whoa took a chance take that all right and is there a chance that there's something that you'll be that you won't even need a microscope that there'd be life that you could see with no not even like a bug like a ladybug that's like like a ladybug now you'd be looking at four complex carbon compounds that are down in the water

that are telltale signs of life. But there would be nothing living in the water that would be obvious to a... It's not like there's going to be a fish. Not a fish, a ladybug that lives in the water and swims like a fish. You know.

So there's people who want to go to Mars one way yeah right that's not our plan though yeah uh i mean nasa's plan that's not nasa i could understand when i watched the movie i couldn't i was like he had such great solitude up there i live in new york and i was like oh the space time yeah you had the whole planet. Yeah, I could understand. And it's a different thing that you're talking about, but I could understand why you'd want to go to Mars and die there. That would be incredible. Well, you had disco music, and you'd have to love that.

I think you'd notice it right away, that you can't eat very easily. You get water. It's a really hard life. Yeah, you can't breathe. It's not like Costa Rica, but it does It is expensive. It's really all about spending as much as your

time surviving. I mean, you have to plan ahead. You have to grow your food. You have to make sure the solar panels that are receiving light that you need the energy for are all dusted off. All the stuff that is done in the book and in the movie, that's a, you know, sometimes. How many people here want to go to Mars one way?

One way. Wow, look at that. Whoa. Are people raising hands? We can't see. How many people want to go to Mars? We've got to come back. Yeah, that would be cool.

It was funny when you asked that question and one wife put up her hand and her husband's sitting right beside her like, what, you want to go to Mars and not come back? Yeah, I don't buy into the, so there was a thing where they had the sign-ups for like, oh, you can be on a one-way mission to Mars, and they had like 100,000 people sign up, and I'm like, yeah, it's pretty easy sign ups for you know like oh you can be in a one-way mission to Mars and like

that like a hundred thousand people sign up and I'm like yeah by the way easy to fill out a web form but when you were actually on the rocket you'd be like wait a minute by the way I just got a message Neil's watching you Neil's watching me sure you get the science right he's watching me okay all right this is for you, Neil. Well, he took me to task last time. I wore these because I knew he would eventually see this. My last pair of pants at the Planetary Society event had, like, some loose threads on the bottom.

Well, you're a software engineer. Yeah, right. And you're spending all your money on rocks. Yeah, and rocks. You get a pair of pants. Okay, so that's one. But he took you to task. He took me to task because of my frayed pants. And he's like, your mother let you go out in those pants.

So, Neil, I've got good pants. Good tip. So with that said, you guys, we're coming to a close. And I think it's important just to want to mention, I cannot help but mention the recent death of David Bowie. I mean, the guy was a visionary. He talked about life on Mars. He talked about life in space.

Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut, had a multim-million dollar view of his recreation of Commander Tom. There was... Major Tom. Major... Gee whiz, Bill. Major Tom.

He's probably a commander by now. Yeah, sure. Better be. He's still up there. Killer star. Born in a UFO. He had a lot of cool stuff. So, just to wrap it up,

how do people feel about sending people to Mars? Andy, just real quick. I definitely think that in the long term, we do need to send people to Mars because I want us to be a two-planet species, which means a catastrophe on Earth, whether it be war, disease, asteroid strike, doesn't eliminate our species. But in terms of scientific

discovery, I mean I hate to go against what most of the people here would want, if all you're doing is trying to discover things scientifically, I don't see a reason to send humans yet. The reason I want to send humans to Mars is to colonize it. Wow. So you are a computer programmer and you can back up your software. Yes. Yeah, sorry. This is... No, that's a thing I say.

So, Jim, why do you want to send people to Mars? 25 years of being a computer programmer has taught me the value of backing up things. And you're afraid to fly, by the way, right? I am, yeah. I'm getting better, though. Good. Jim, why do you want to send people to Mars? Well, I think as explorers, as Americans, this is what we do.

You think about America and how it was created over time with people coming in that wanted to explore this nation, that wanted to do the pioneering. It's in our genes. There's a lot of people out there that, oh, that wanted to do the pioneering, it's in our genes. There's a lot of people out there that, oh, we can't leave the earth. Well, it must not be in their genes. They stayed home. We're the ones that have colonized America. We're the ones that keep exploring. We are the nation that has been first to every one of our planets and a couple of our dwarf planets and we're still exploring this is what we do and it's critical I think. The Soviets got to Venus first. Now okay let me say that space exploration brings out the best in us

no matter where we're from it's I'm serious exploring the cosmos tells us more about answering these two deep questions where did we come from and are we alone in the universe and if you want to know the answers that you have to explore space and furthermore whenever we go out there we solve problems that have never been solved before and this is worthy of our intellect and treasure this is what makes humankind a worthy species on this remarkable planet in the cosmos so stay tuned we'll be right back with star talk so now everybody it's time for the questions and answers from you so uh there are microphones up here we do not we do not have two turntables we've only got a few minutes so if you were

going to ask a question just make it crisp crisp and please um make it a question and our hope is our hope is that it would be about Mars it would be about the Martian it would be about so on so is this the first question right here go for it yes okay so we've talked throughout the program about you've discovered water on Mars if we were to somehow be able to transport the water that we found on Mars to Earth and say were to make a glass of it I don't know why but say you were to make a glass of it, I don't know why, but say you were, what differences from that and Earth water would be apparent if, say, you just had it in your house?

Well, if it's really water, there would be no difference. Would there be a different number of neutrons? It's the impurities in it. It's the salts that are keeping it liquid on the surface. So anyway, what these guys, geologists, are the worship words for these guys, gals, is sample return. So everybody who's into it, you meet certain geologists, they believe that if you had a sample of Mars, you could tell who was president of Mars three billion years ago, because there's so much information in a rock. So along that line, maybe not bringing

back water, but bringing back rocks, I hope you as a taxpayer and voter will support this. That's a cool question. He's probably neither of those things yet. He's a child. Well, someday. Yeah. No, it's coming. You can count on the tax thing, especially. Who's next? Is it all down here? Here we go. In the middle. Wait, wait, wait. He wants to give you a pin. He's got a NASA pin. Oh, cool. Sorry, for you. Cool. It's the real deal from the real man.

Cool. Next question. So, not to knock NASA, but government is... Boo! ...horrously inefficient. And nowadays we've got the private space race heating up and Elon Musk with SpaceX has said that he wants to send human beings to Mars by, what is it, 2027? Next week. Do you think that he's going to beat you guys there? And if so, why or why not? So I don't believe it's a race and we want to help Elon any way we can.

Okay? So he's got some ideas. He's got different approaches. And that's wonderful. We want to see if they work. We want to be able to help him in terms of where he wants to go. We want to give him the information he needs to determine how to do it. I just wanted to jump in as well.

No, SpaceX is not going to put humans on Mars in the 2020s. Just accept that. Also, I do believe that the first manned mission to Mars, my belief is it's going to be a large international effort, more organizationally similar to ISS than to the Apollo program. more organizationally similar to ISS than to the Apollo program. And those commercial space companies like SpaceX and their competitors are going to be what NASA and the other government agencies hire to put things into orbit. So what I think the ideal situation is NASA makes the ships that go to Mars

and makes the stuff that lands on Mars and trains the astronauts that go and probably even they're going to want to make the launch vehicle that puts the astronauts themselves up. But the just raw freight transport of mass up into orbit will be done by these companies. So I think it'll be just everybody working on it. Yeah, it's a team effort. Andy's right. And if we do this internationally, it will lower the cost to everybody.

Yeah, let's get to the great question. Here we go. What about Elon moving the pole? So hang on, we're going to take the people who have gotten in line and everything. So go ahead. Can I call you Bill? I guess. Who are you talking to?

Quickly, I just want to say for everyone here, thank you for helping us, like inspire us and articulate wonder. I love you, man. Thank you. I love you, Bill. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. So love you, man. Thank you. I love you, man. Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil. So I'm pretty young, and you help me feel wonder, but as I get older,

we also realize that life is full of infinite possibility, but it's also full of risk. Planetary exploration, writing, comedy, it's all full of incredible possibility, but incredible risk. What would you say to all the young people here who are realizing that you have to mitigate risk, but also possibility? Like, does that, like, for young people, what words of encouragement would you give in terms of, oh, you discover something, there might be risk? Well, just keep in mind, in general,

not entirely, but in general, you don't regret what you do. You regret what you don't do. And to accomplish anything, you have to assess the risk, the chances of success. So this gets into something my parents talked about quite a bit. Common sense. And they always said common sense is not that common. What you want is this mix of fear and a belief that you can accomplish something. So in general, I would say go for it. You'll surprise yourself. You'll get more done than you think. That's what I would say. Thank you. Jim's handing out the pins. Yes. Yes, ma'am.

Yes. Hello. So I was wondering, besides things that are already plentiful on Earth, like water, is there anything that would be super valuable to us on Mars? Oh, good question. Is it filled with diamonds? To live and work, you know, the methane, in addition to the water, the methane, because we could heat our haves. But are you talking about bringing stuff back? Like minerals or something?

Well, I'm saying, yeah, like, do you see a potential for commercial mining, like, in 100 years or something? Like, is there something on Mars that we would want here that we don't already have tons of? You know, that's thinking out of the box, and I never really thought about it. I'm just trying to get there. My guess would be no, because just simply transporting things from Mars to Earth would make it better just to get it from Earth. But if there's some kind of jewelry.

What Mars has right now that we lack is an enormous amount of knowledge about the formation of our solar system and the possible formation of life. So that's the real asset Mars has for us right now. So the word you used was commercial, but if you said scientifically, that's the real asset Mars has for us right now. So the word you used was commercial, but if you said scientifically, that's samples. Those are a variety of rock samples, soil samples, everything that we can bring back and study here on Earth far better than we can with our robotic missions. If you bring back a rock this big, I can sell it for $10,000.

You can buy it. You got a buyer. You know people are willing to buy it, right? Yeah. So let's get to the next question. Thank you. There you go. Good question.

You're welcome. God, Jim, you're fabulous, man, with the pins. Yeah. It is not... Roll close to the microphone. It is not really well known that permafrost in the Arctic is melting very quickly. It is not or it is known? It is not very well known.

Oh, I see. People don't realize it. People don't realize it. We should tell them. Yeah, right. Well, hi. So it is not really well known that that's a really problem right now in the art in the polls and so i'm asking if you could please prove me wrong that we uh that that's a runaway greenhouse gas effect does not oh you mean the clathrate gun we love the methane gun the methane gun yeah so everybody that there's methane stored in the ice in the permafrost and maybe in continental shelves and as the world gets a little bit warmer

this these will be released it'll be a huge amount of methane put in the atmosphere and the world the earth will get warmer catastrophically quickly if you like to worry about things that's a good one i worry about it every day man so uh here's the thing you guys you can say what you will but we have people running for president of the world's most influential government who right now at this point in the election cycle claim they don't believe in climate change you guys uh yeah okay just keep in mind that you have a chance to vote. And whatever you want to do, I'm not supporting a candidate. I'm not supporting a candidate. I'm just saying I encourage everybody to take the environment into account.

And here's why. We can compare Venus to Mars to the Earth. And we're doing that. And we're doing that. It's very valuable. And what we have learned on these other two worlds is that this one is special. So when it comes time to vote, I strongly encourage you to take the environment solar system those other two terrestrial planets. Because what happened on Venus could happen here on Earth. What's happened on Mars could happen here on Earth.

And it's a matter of how these planets evolve over time. They were all so very different. And we're just becoming aware of that. And that is so important for us to study and understand. Because it's going to affect our life in the long run. Venus' atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide. because it's going to affect our life in the long run. Venus's atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide, and it's hotter than Mercury. Draw your own conclusions.

Which is much closer. Which is, yeah. Comparative planetology is something that Carl Sagan talked about all the time. Know your place in space. Yes, sir, next question. Hey, guys, thank you very much. I know it's kind of early, but I was wondering what you guys thought about the Planet 9.

Love Planet 9. Cookie for Planet 9. Planet 9. Well, first off, I think if you went back in time to like 1960 and said, in 2015, there will only be eight planets, they would think something very exciting was going to happen. But anyway, this is, everybody, if you don't know, it's reasonable that there's an

enormous body, a planetary body, out beyond the orbit of Pluto 10 times, 20 times farther from the Sun than we are. No, 200. That's what I was kidding. 200. You're absolutely right. 200 times farther from the Sun

than we are, and this has gravitational influence out there and it just shows you there's so much that we don't know right here in our own solar system and that discovery was made in your lifetime and that's pretty cool well you know if it's out there we'll find it uh we haven't found it yet there's always that's that nasa confidence yeah well if it's out there we're gonna find we're gonna find it how hard can. If it's out there, we're going to find it. We're going to find it. How hard can it be? It's a whole freaking planet. I mean, what's wrong

with you guys? How could we miss it? So we have a huge telescope called James Webb Space Telescope, JWST. And what we'd like to do right now is narrow the search area because, you know,

that whole region is huge out there. And James Webb has got such a beautiful mirror right in the infrared, right at the wavelengths that it will see it. And we just want to point there and find it and see the disk and understand it and look at it and really try to figure out how it got there because it didn't form there. It had to have formed inside this group of planets we have. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

I have been informed. This next one's the last question. I'm sorry, you guys. Stripe sweater, man. Bring it on. This is it. Okay, so... Close to the microphone.

Let them hear you outside. Blow the roof off the dump. So I was thinking, after humanity colonizes Mars the way we will yeah yeah where are we going to go next as a species where would you like to go Europa maybe your solar system is ours let's make it piece of cake come on Europa has twice as much seawater as the Earth. Are there European fish people swimming around out there? And if we discovered them it would

change the course of human history and I want to do it in my lifetime. Yeah. So support the work of space exploration and let's change the world. Thank you all very much for coming. Give it up again for Andy, Mae, Eugene, and Jim. Thank you all so much. And Bill. And I'm Bill Nye. We'll be signing books in the lobby in just a few minutes.

Thank you all for coming. Music Music Music